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[jacobacci]

Hi all

I have a new PC build based on Ryzen 1800X, ASUS Prime X370 Pro and Windows 10 Creators Update.
I convert DSF Ffles with MC23 to 88.2kHz PCM files.
As seen in the attached screenshot, about one out of 5 files fails to convert. The target file is not created, the target directory is empty for those files.

With my previous PC (Xeon E3 1226V3, Asus P9DWS), I never had any failures with my DSF to PCM conversions. Has anyone else seen this phenomenon?

Thanks
Rudi

[jacobacci]

Another thing I noticed:
If I cancel the conversion before the whole queue is processed, MC23 crashes. At the next start of MC23 I get the improper shutdown screen.
This part of the problem was once also present in MC23, it was then fixed.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Pre converting DSD files to PCM files is not a way I personally would choose to spend my valuable time.  I have an extensive library of dsfs, and I listen to them all using JR on-the-fly conversion to 176k PCM for use with Dirac Live.  They sound terrific to me, and if I ever want to hear the native DSD, I can.

Yes, there are some potential disc space savings by converting dsf to FLAC, but disc space is pretty cheap these days.  Still not worth the time to preconvert.

[jacobacci]

Hi Fitzcarraldo215
I appreciate your view. However I want to be able to listen to my DSF files in the car and on my phone where I do not have a DSD capable DAC, so unfortunately pre converting is the only way to go - unless I am missing something.

[jacobacci]

I have done a bit more testing:
With MC22 current version, the failures occur as well. MC22 also crashes if I cancel the conversions.
I noticed that larger files >400Mb have a tendency to fail, but I have had some files 500 and 600Mb complete the conversion without issues.

Next I tried the conversions on a HP Elitebook 8770w which has an Intel i7 3740QM Processor. Lo and behold, no failures. I only tried an album which consistently failed on the Ryzen machine, so its far from scientific, but the result might point to issues of the conversion process in an AMD X370 / Ryzen environment.

Hope this helps

[RD James]

DSD conversion has never been reliable for me if it's doing more than one file at a time.
Since DSD decoding works on 4 threads, I would suggest no more than 4 files at a time with your 1800X processor. Hopefully that will be more reliable.
You could possibly limit DSD decoding to 2 threads and work on 8 files, but I'd expect you to run into I/O limitations if you did that. More threads working on fewer files tends to produce the fastest conversions.

[jacobacci]

Hi RD James
I have had my fair share of issues with JRiver's DSD to PCM conversion as well. Sometime around two years ago, someone seems to have taken a good look at the issues and then they were gone (Intel processor back then). No more failures, no more crashes during conversion, no more crashes when cancelling the conversion. I think it was a memory leak issue back then.
This behaviour with the Ryzen feels exactly the same way. Memory leak issue again?
I tried different numbers of concurrent conversions and this indeed has a major influence ont he number of failures. With 8 concurrent conversions around 50% or even more of conversions fail, with only 1 conversion at a time, I have not seen a failure. Also cancelling the conversion prior to the first failure does not seem to result in MC23 crashing.
One conversion at the time is not really useable for me. I am converting around 1'000 albums with DSD files, so it would take forever.
I hope someone will find the cause and fix it.

[RD James]

You tried 8 simultaneous conversions and 1 conversion, but did you try 4?
As I said, DSD will use four threads per track for decoding, and you have a 16-thread CPU.
It should be able to handle >4 gracefully, but may not. I can't test it right now.
 
Converting a larger number of tracks at once may not speed up conversions.
Too many tracks at once and the CPU will be waiting for the HDD to feed it data to process.
It's often faster to have many threads working on a smaller number of files.

[jacobacci]

Yes, I tried 2,3,4,6 with increasing numbers of failed conversions. The only one that works without any failures is 1 conversion at a time. With 2 simultaneous conversions I get about one failure in 20 conversions. 4 is around one in 5, 6 about one in 3 and 8 is one in 2.

[michael123]

Pre converting DSD files to PCM files is not a way I personally would choose to spend my valuable time.  I have an extensive library of dsfs, and I listen to them all using JR on-the-fly conversion to 176k PCM for use with Dirac Live.  They sound terrific to me, and if I ever want to hear the native DSD, I can.

Yes, there are some potential disc space savings by converting dsf to FLAC, but disc space is pretty cheap these days.  Still not worth the time to preconvert.

+1

[jacobacci]

Thanks for your view, michael123
Our priorities seem to differ with regard to this subject. I do not see any information in your reply that would lead me to change my view on the usefulness of the conversion capability in JRiver.

[jacobacci]

I managed to solve the problem. When I chose two physically different hard drives for the conversion source and target, everything worked fine, even with 8 simultaneous conversions.
Problem SOLVED