Left / Right channels reversed on Nuwave DSD Dac I2S port?

Hello PS Audio Crew,

It seems that left and right channels are swapped when I play audio on my streamer (PCM) connected to the I2S port on the Nuwave DSD Dac. When i connect to the toslink port everything seems to be OK.

My setup is:

Allo Sparky -> Allo Kali -> I2S to HDMI converter -> Nuwave DSD Dac. It also occurs when the Kali is not installed (i know some early models had that exact issue).

Is this a known issue?

Oh goodness, it’s been so long since I heard about this one. Yes, I believe there is a quick fix we can do for you. It will need to be looked at by the distributor. If you don’t mind, shoot a quick email over to service@psaudio.com. They’ll be able to get the ball rolling for you

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Thanx for your response @jamesh. I will send them an email shortly. I have one additional question:

I have replaced my cheap aliexpress i2s to HDMI converter with this one:

It advertises to be compatible with PS Audio dacs, but something strange is happening. Audio is playing through the dac but the dac does not indicate a format (PCM / DSD) and it seems L/R are not swapped in this case. Also auto select does not work in this case. When auto select reaches the i2s input i get sound for one second but it continues to the next input, and eventually the dac goes into standby.

What could cause the format not being detected?

I’m not certain why this would happen. It may be that there is a shunted pin connection or misuse that is preventing the NuWave from detecting it does have a connection via I2S. Does it stay on this input if you select it by hand and does it continue to play the audio?

@jamesh when i select the i2s input manually it stays on the input. Do you have any idea which pin could be faulty? Can you explain why the left / right channels are not reversed in this state?

No, any speculation of mine on a faulty pin would be of no value. It’s likely because it’s not a DSD signal. There must be a bug in the code that flips the channels when playing DSD.

The L/R swap situation was when playing PCM with my other I2S board. With this previous board the dac detected PCM and channels were swapped.

With the current i2s to HDMI board the DAC does not detect the format (PCM) and L/R is OK.

I am unable to play DSD on my streamer because the Kali does not support it, so the dac should not get any DSD format signals.

I checked all the wiring again but the problem persists. Can someone at PS Audio give me some hint on what is going on?

If you haven’t already, your best bet is to send an email to service@psaudio.com. If they can’t help directly, they’ll be able to get you in the right hands.