Okay, looking at the screenshots and the system info dump, here are a few things I'd try.
First: Read the Whitepaper I linked above. They give a bunch of specific recommendations for this exact issue. To be clear, that whole PDF is about this exact issue, from your device manufacturer, linked in the FAQ for that device. Clearly, it is something of a common issue with their DAC for whatever reason.
Further, looking at their guide, and your system info dump, a few things stand out immediately.
1. You
do not have your Intel Chipset Drivers installed! The version on your system is from June 2006! These are the drivers used for your DAC!
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_Drivers#Platform_Drivers2. You do not have your Intel SATA Drivers installed! The version of the Intel ATA Drivers on your system for this driver is
also from June 2006! You need to install the Intel Rapid Store drivers.
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_Drivers#Storage_DriversThose two things should be addressed before anything else. Also, I didn't look in detail, and it won't be relevant to this issue, but since those drivers are so old (they've basically never been updated, some of them appear to be the ones that shipped with Windows 7 RTM), you probably should check your GPU drivers as well.
Then, assuming it isn't fixed, moving on to possible causes within MC.
However, before I list the rest, to be clear: Do this stuff from here on out
one at a time. Test. See if there is any difference. If that fails, revert the change (with the exception of a few things you might want to keep, noted below) and then move on and do the next thing.
Do not apply them all or apply them all willy-nilly. If you do, even if you "solve" it, you'll never know what the problem was, or if you've enabled unnecessary things.
1.
Options > Audio > Audio Device > Device Settings > Buffering: As I said before, this is the most likely fix. This is further confirmed with what your DAC manufacturer said in their PDF guide for this exact issue. Try them all, one at a time. The PDF said that lower values were likely (but not always) better. Make sure you tried all of them from Min - 100ms at least, and then one of the high ones (300 or 400).
2.
Options > Audio > Settings > Prebuffering: This is less likely to have an impact, but is easy to test. Prebuffering controls the amount of the file that is "read ahead" by MC during playback. Increasing pre-buffering times can improve reliability of playback when the source media is too slow or otherwise unreliable. This would not seem to be the case here, except that you said it happens more often with 24/192 files which would be larger in size and so require higher performing disk. So, worth trying to increase this and see what happens.
3.
Options > Audio > Settings > Play silence at startup: Try with this enabled. This typically helps with pops and clicks when playback starts or stops, but is worth testing.
4.
Options > Audio > Audio Device > Device Settings > Disable event style: This puts WASAPI support into legacy mode (which uses a push method rather than raising events to send audio commands to the device). This is typically required for older hardware with older drivers. However, it is worth trying. I don't know for sure which mode that DAC prefers.
5.
DSP > Output Format: You don't have this DSP configured and you should. The Output Format DSP does not change audio files from bitperfect unless you tell it to or it needs to. It increases compatibility with files you otherwise could not play (because they have the incorrect number of source channels, are too high or low of Sample Rate, and other things like that). But it does not touch things it does not have to touch, and passes those through "clean". Make sure resampling is set to match what your DAC can handle natively (so they aren't resampled needlessly), and set the Channels stuff correctly and to your preference, and enable it.
This is unlikely to help but you should do it anyway.
6.
Options > Audio > Volume: This is also very unlikely to help with this issue, but you should do it anyway. Read:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/VolumeYou probably want
Internal Volume or
Disabled Volume (if you use the volume knob on your DAC exclusively), especially since you have Maximize device volume during playback enabled. MC's Internal Volume is possibly
better than the knob, and almost certainly not inferior. Also, the Loudness feature is awesome.
Okay, that's it from MC's Options. If none of that helps, it probably isn't MC. On to weirder and harder to diagnose stuff. Looking back at the PDF from the DAC manufacturer, two other things stand out immediately in your System Info dump. You have two other possibly meddlesome USB devices attached. Both exact examples aren't particularly poorly behaved, however, they are classes of products that often cause trouble, and it looks like from the PDF that the Audioengine is sensitive to stuff like that on the USB bus.
So, try with each of these items physically removed from the system:
* Logitech C910 Webcam
* Shure USB Audio Device: I don't know specifically what this is, but it is another USB Audio device and could be interfering or need new drivers.
If those don't help, then try:
* Realtek Onboard Audio: You can also try
updating the drivers for the Realtek onboard audio device (which are also ancient). Instead, if it isn't used and you can figure out how, go into your motherboard's BIOS and just
disable it entirely.
* It looks like you do have newer Intel Network drivers installed there, somehow, but you might want to double-check that.
* If you're totally at a loss, uninstall vmware and try. It could be a conflict with one of the system services or drivers that vmware installs. I've seen weird things from old, outdated copies of vmware myself.
Then, I'd start trying the more esoteric fixes suggested in their PDF, including the trying different USB ports and a powered hub, and the other stuff in their guide.
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Topic: weird "heartbeat" sound on HD (especially 24/192) files with AudioEngine D1 (Read 9271 times)