It may not apply to your situation but after moving my music to a Roon Nucleus+ all of the network noise (pops, clicks, etc.) have disappeared no matter which file format the recording is in when using the Bridge II input. I did not have a lot of trouble before anyway. When I was using my i7 laptop as a player the demands were very high and the cooling fan ran almost continuously while playing music. Of course YMMV.
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Hi ericsphone.
Iāve been following your thread with interest. I know you speculated that it may be your network, but it was dismissed. When I used to have my Bryston BDA2 and BDP2 gear, I would have static pop type sounds with FLAC files and hi res files coming from my NAS thru my home network. I had a variety of 10 baseT and gigabit router/switches. What I found was I needed to change my switches to gigabit switches and simplify my network path to eliminate the issue. I noticed that when my kids were on YouTube or just generally someone was increasing the load on the network this would happen more.
At the time I used Brystons own app, and 2 other 3rd party MPD based apps.
When I upgraded to the DS DAC, I had no issues with my new network adjustments. I currently run JRiver on my i7 based PC with my NAS as music storage, and JRemote as my controller. Occasionally Iāll use MconnectHD or McontrolHD when using Tidal.
I hope you can glean more troubleshooting tips from my information.
Streaming hires audio doesnāt take much bandwidth - DSD64 is about 6mbit/sec and 192/24 PCM is about 10mbit/sec. Your grandparentsā wifi can handle this bandwidth. If your music cuts out when your kids fire up youtube, there are other problems with your network.
On my DSjr streaming over the bridge II, I get small infrequent ticks only with DSD. They seem to be less frequent with 3.6.17 than with 3.6.2. Almost like a static tick when listening to an album. Only noticeable with quiet classical music. I get no ticks with PCM, even PCM formats that consume 2X the bandwidth of DSD64.
With both 3.6.17 and 3.6.2, I get small ticks/pops when changing audio formats or sometimes going between tracks within the same format.
3.6.17 has a known bug with Roon streaming hi-res PCM. If you pause a track, restart it, then pause it again, you will get a very loud scratchy pop when Roon terminates the stream (about 2 or 3 seconds after hitting pause.). A similar pop will happen when you restart and the bridge stays this way until you flush it out with some CD-res PCM. This only occurs with hi-res PCM on 3.6.17.
So pick the bridge bug that affects you the least. Please report it to support so they can track it.
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I agree, streaming take little bandwidth, however we donāt know what his network it like and thus all bases need to be covered for potential issues. I owned an IT company for 20 years and you would be amazed at what some lower level equipment would do to data.
I was only theorizing that the issues with .DSF was related to network because .DSF would take up more bandwidth than .flac. Now, I am not a network guru but I believe my network is more than capable at this point (considering the bandwidths for DSD64 and PCM listed above). I will work this weekend to try and improve this network performance by setting up some Quality of Service (QOS) rules on my router.
I would also like to try my Bridge II with 3.6.2 but I cannot find it in the downloads section. I understand the the bridge is supposed to stay updated over-the-air (OTA) is that not the case? is 3.6.2 newer (it should be by the numbering)? Where is 3.6.2?
It believe is would be fair for me to re-flash and try a different version on my bridge before I go sending my Bridge/DSD Sr. off to Boulder. But I donāt see how I can do that if I cannot find 3.6.2.
Advice?
If you email support, they will tell you where to get the bridge FW files and how to flash back-n-forth.
This is true, but what I have typically found when diagnosing these situations is that if you eliminate the full network (Computer ā router/switch with everything else disconnected ā DAC) and optimize the computer for audio (or have a sufficiently powered computer -both RAM and CPU) these problems go away. So itās not bandwidth per se, but prioritation of bandwidth and CPU time. It is rarely a DAC or DAC interface issue.
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Thank you for that advice @fdreed. Are you recommending that I plug my computer directly into the network port (with an RJ45 cross-over cable)?
You can try as a test, but if you are only hearing ticks/pops with DSD files, then it really would be a special network problem that pollutes DSD but not PCMā¦ More likely there is a bug with the bridge.
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I agree. It is at the very least worth trying to send it back to PS Audio to get it tested if the direct connection makes no difference.
Perhaps youāve mentioned it here and Iāve missed it, but have you tried reducing the level on the DirectStream to around 88-90?
You can use a router or switch. I would suggest for testing purposes you at least temporarily remove every other connection from your network. Monitor RAM and CPU usage while you test the problem files. In my experience DSD files use more resources, both computer and network, than PCM files.
So here is the bad news - at least to me it is bad news. when I plug in my Astell&Kern AK500N to the same network cable as my DSD Sr. has been on for all of this popping (and testing) the AK500N performs beautifully. No popping on the same .DSF files over the network. Back to sounding like a real high quality sound file.
I only hope at this point that it is a problem that can be fixed. I will contact PS Audio next week (after the Chicago Show). Meanwhile, I will stick with Astell&Kernās flawless performance.
Thatās too bad ericsphone. At least youāve done your due diligence in troubleshooting so you can report this to them.
They need to fix it or replace it. Thankfully Iāve never had any problems with my DS with either PCM or DSD audio but Iām still waiting to get my BHK 300 back from being repaired. I suppose one consolation is that the DS Dac is not very heavy.