Drop Out Between The 'Puter and Dac?

[Lizard_King]

I am experiencing on occasion, a drop out when I am listening to music. I use my IBM Stinkpad T43 with Windblows XP SP3 connected through a RSA Enopias USB cable to my Audio Note kit DAC. I use J. River Media center (latest) and ASIO driver (latest). Sometimes I can stop the player, pull the USB cable, place it back in and I get the music back. Sometimes I have to reboot the laptop.

 

Does anybody else have the problem? I do not think it is the DAC as I do not have to power the unit off then back on again. That leaves only the areas, the Software, OS and /or cable.

 

I welcome your opinions.

 

Liz

 

 

 

[Lizard_King]

Anyone?

 

[Shane55]

I'm using the Benchmark PRE. Athlon w/ XP SP3 as well.

It has only happened once using J River (w/ latest ASIO4ALL). When switching from one song to another, the DAC indicated that there was no signal, blinked and then went into standby. I just re-started the song and the Benchmark clicked-on and worked fine.

 

That said, it happens very often when using Soundforge 9. I'll be editing two music files and will be comparing changes... switching between the two and the DAC will suddenly decide that the USB signal isn't 'good' and I get silence. I just stop and hit 'play' again and it usually comes right back. Usually. Sometimes I need to do this a couple times, but I've never had a situation where I've had to reboot or re-place the cable.

 

I called Benchmark and they said it is not the DAC (of course), it is the signal coming out of the computer. I guess most of the time it's good, but sometimes it is off just enough to not be.

 

I know... I didn't help. Sorry.

 

shane

 

[davidR]

Lizard King, what do your energy settings look like under Control Panel / Power Options? Make sure these options are set to NEVER: Turn off Monitor, Turn off Hard Disk, System Standby, System Hibernates. Do you have any software in the back ground such as anti-virus or Diskeeper etc.. that can start up without you knowing? I have Diskeeper on my windows machine and the default option for Auto Defrag is enabled and will start defragging in the background without the main menu popping up or anything, quite a sneaky problem for an audiophile. I have read several posts online of people with this diskeeper and other software related dropout problem. If you'd like press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to open Task Manager and check the programs & processes (via the Programs and Processes tabs) running while you are playing your music, when the hickup occurs see if there are any programs or processes running automatically that you haven't opened, and end the process accordingly. If you find a program that is auto starting you can go to Start Button / Run then type in "msconfig" and choose Selective Startup. You can then disable certain processes so they won't start up automatically and it will ask to reboot. You can always go back into msconfig and enable the process again if need be.

 

[BobH]

Make sure that nothing else is connected to the USB ports, only the DAC. I notice that the T43 only has two ports - this will mean that they are probably using just one controller. If you have anything else connected via USB then you can suffer from 'interrupts' caused by whatever else is connected saying 'hello' to the system and nicking all the bandwidth for a while. If you have anything else connected, try disconnecting it and see if it helps.

 

[Lizard_King]

Thanks to all who have commented on this posting. I ended up applying a major System update (Lenovo's WWW site) and then I switched the DAC and Hard drive USB Ports. So Far I have only dropped the signal once in two days.

 

I am having my Preamp modified so the system will be down for a few days.

 

 

Liz Out