This thread is mainly for future JRiver MediaCenter users with Schiit Bifrost USB DACs. The settings probably work for Gungnir as well.
I just purchased a Schiit Bifrost DAC to upgrade from my HRT DAC. This was due to very positive reviews of the two upgrades made to the Bifrost about six months ago - the new Uber Analog card and the new 2nd Generation USB card. Okay back to settings:Go to schiit.com/drivers and download the 1.03 drivers. These are dated May 03, 2013 for XP, Win7 and Win8 and August 20, 2013 for Vista (
BTW, if you have drivers from earlier, you should probably update your drivers ). Note that the Vista drivers are a separate zip and are
only found on the /drivers web page. Install as directed on that page.
In JRiver MC19, go to Tools->Options->Audio and the first line, Audio Device, select:
ASIO for C-Media USB Device
On the second line, click Device Settings and:
Make sure that "Use Large Hardware Buffers..." is
not checked.
Make sure that "Device uses only most..." is
not checked.
Under Buffering, in the drop-down, select:
Minimum Hardware Size
Click on Open Driver Panel, and there are two settings:
Bit-depth should be 32/32 bits
Latency should be 4 ms (if you hear any pops or noise, increase this setting to the next level and try again, but 4 ms seems sufficient so far)
On the third line, DSP & Output Format:
Sample Rate -> every line should be "No Change" except for the last line "Greater than 192..." should be set to 176,400 hz . Do not up-sample any sample rate - the DAC is specifically designed to provide optimum sound quality by not changing the sample rate. Schiit says:
Q: I heard about this upsampling stuff, where they take 16/44.1 and magically make it into 24/192. Does your DAC do that?
A: Not just no but hell no. None of our DACs will ever do sample rate conversion. Our goal is to perfectly reproduce the original music samples, not to throw them away and turn everything into a mystery-meat soufflé. Sample rate conversion destroys all the original samples. What goes in isn’t what comes out. We worked hard on a microprocessor-controlled, bit-perfect clock management system to ensure that all the original music samples going into Bifrost are delivered to the D/A converter, whether you’re running 16/44.1 or 24/192, rather than cheaping out and throwing in a sample-rate converter so we could use a single clock.