Hi,
I just tried DSD playback (via USB) on my DirectStream DAC for the first time since upgrading to Huron. I get a lot of (whitish) noise with very faint music. The front panel says DoP at the correct rate of DSD128 but I get serious loud noise. Does anyone else experience this?
I tried substituting two other DSD128 capable DACs, iFi Micro iDSD and Grace M9XX and they play fine.
Any help appreciated.
How are you playing the DSD files? I know that you’ll get a similar result if somehow on a Mac with Roon or JRiver if your PS Audio driver is at anything less than 100% volume. For some reason it will occasionally slip on my Mac Mini. I have no idea why, but the result is that digital hash sound you are describing. Another thing that could cause this is upsampling to anything higher than DSD 128. Oh, and one last thing: if using Roon, make sure to limit resampling to 24 bit if it tries to transcode DSD into PCM. If it tried to resample to 32 bit you get the digital hash. As for PC, I would assume there are similar issues to trip you up. Hope this helps!
Aha! Thanks for pointing that out. I just disabled the volume control in Jriver Media Center 22 and it now plays native DSD128 files just fine!
I guess it makes sense that you cannot do any DSP operations, including volume changes, on a DSD file without JRMC doing a conversion to PCM and back again to effect the change.
But then the files played fine on cheaper DSD DACs in my original test.
Glad you got that sorted out. Thought it would be something like that. Bitperfect playback is a blessing and a curse!