Considering purchase of a new DSD Sr. With Bridge II. Contacted Technical support to determine status of firmware revisions to address SACD playback popping issues, display issues and Bridge II issues with display.
I was told By sales there are no Redcloud issues and Technical support that Redcloud firmware revision 3.0.6 was released on August 13, 2018.
I come to find that may be incorrect as that firmware update was for the DMP notthe DSD Sr.
Anyone know of a firmware release to address Redcloud popping issues? Also, what is the status of the Bridge II update? Sure would like to know prior to a purchase.
If I recall correctly - and I might be wrong on this - I think Ted Smith mentioned he gave them the fix for Redcloud issues last year, but it hasn’t been released yet. Regarding B2, last I heard (here on the forum) it had gone back to Conversdigital to fix the broken coverart issue (that update was pulled by PS Audio until it was fixed).
The problem is that there were more than one bug that manifest as popping (some, such as player software glitches between SACD tracks or DSD <-> PCM transitions are entirely outside the control of the DAC.).
The FPGA but that Brodric is referring to only happens at high volume with either dynamic music or compressed music. Turning the volume down a little (from 1 dB or so to maybe 6dB) completely bypasses the bug.
There were also a few different Bridge issues with the Bridge code that came with Redcloud - IIFC there has been at least one release of the Bridge code since that affected popping, but I’m not sure of the status of the Bridge releases.
Hi Ted, can you clarify something for me please. I still get clicks when playing dsd over pcm through usb, the worst example I have is Peter Gabriel II - it sounds like a Geiger counter going off. Which volume should I lower to fix this without breaking bit perfect playback? Note that there were no issues at all before RedCloud so the dsd files themselves are not the problem.
Many thanks
Use the volume control on the DS, if turning it down a notch or two (or at the most to about 88) doesn’t fix it then the problem is something else. The amount you might need to turn it down depends on the source material. (Also the problem isn’t restricted to DSD, but it is more common with DSD.)
There are other ways to get Geiger counter like noise with DSD, most commonly not having a bit perfect path to the DAC. You can use the bit perfect test (outlined in the How To’s at the Resources part of the site) to verify that something isn’t playing with the bits upstream of the DAC.
Could these pops be related to buffer size settings in the player? Per our discussion before, Foobar makes pops and ticks when the buffer is set too large. Roon or other players have this type of option?
Absolutely, buffers that are too large (or more often, too small) can cause ticks, pops or worse. There are a host of ways to loose bit perfect play back, but if you aren’t using DSD they don’t matter much. There were also a few who had a cable loose (most often the TOSLink) or even a bad cable and the problem seemed to be source material related but perhaps it was just coincidence.
In my experience there are only two issues with DS and Bridge. The one is the popping issues (which are easily manageable by turning the volume down about 3 steps on rare recordings), the other is cover art, which didn’t ever work for longer than a few days (it doesn’t bother me really, but it’s less than perfect for some expecting final fixes for small issues earlier than after 5-10 years)
For me the next firmware update is always more important and appreciated!
