Usb input on mk2 DAC

Audio Components
1

Is the usb pott on the Directstream mk2 usb 2.0 or usb 3.0?

2

USB 2.0 and USB Audio 3.0 - how’s that for confusing?

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3

I was not sure which port I shoud use on the computer. Sweetwater said if you combine a 2 and a 3 on the same source the speed would be 2 for both devices. I am fighting the dropout battle with a brand new dell inspiron 3910. The one I got has 32gb of ram, 512 gb PCIe SSD, i5 12th generation 6 core processor. My music is on a 2TB usb 3.0 Samsung SSD. I have set everything up acording to Sweetwaters recommendations. I still get DPC latency from the ACPI.sys driver and dropouts.

4

re ACPI: I do always keep my laptop in high power mode, various lower power settings will definitely cause audio dropouts in my setup.

Your system likely effectively has separate USB 3.0 trees and USB 2.0 trees: (From the USB wiki page)

  • SuperSpeed (SS) adds two additional pairs of shielded twisted wire (and new, mostly compatible expanded connectors). These are dedicated to full-duplex SuperSpeed operation. The SuperSpeed link operates independently from USB 2.0 channel and takes a precedence on connection. Link configuration is performed using LFPS (Low Frequency Periodic Signaling, approximately at 20 MHz frequency), and electrical features include voltage de-emphasis at transmitter side, and adaptive linear equalization on receiver side to combat electrical losses in transmission lines, and thus the link introduces the concept of link training.

I have a long USB cable with HUBs (repeaters) in the middle, note that I have multiple layers of it with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 on the same hubs:

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I definitely use the DS at the same time as my array of USB drives, my USB 2.0 scope, my USB 3.0 scope, my PIC debugging tool (the ICD 4) (Not all plugged in for the above screen grab) and, for that matter with my music on the NAS connected by a wireless mesh network. It’s all robust.

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5

Very good advice.

6

I have set power mode to high performance, turned off variable processor speeds, set the usb up against power shut down. I am learning allot but not getting anywhere. There is one thing I have been unable to try change the boot drive set up from RAID to ACHI. This would require reloading the OS. I did not go with a laptop again trying to avoid ACPI latency, as with the laptop I found if I turned off the battery management I had no dropouts. I went with the workstation thinking this would not be an issue.

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