T+a dac 8 dsd

[craighartley]

[. We'll be offering a recent Mahler 3 recording made at 256fs DSD with five DPA mics on NativeDSD in the hopefully near future, but only in surround. All the spacial reality and magic collapses when mixed to stereo. Still great sounding though

 

Tom

 

Tom,

Do I remember right you were also doing this binaural?

Cheers

Craig

[craighartley]

I bought A Far Cry in "normal" stereo and agree it's terrific - exceptional playing and sound.

 

I think that now means you can download the binaural as part of the same purchase.

[craighartley]

They give you the Stereo DSD 64 if you buy the Stereo DSD 128. Or the Binaural DSD 64 if you buy the Binaural DSD 128.

 

No, that's not what I'm talking about. Binaural includes the stereo free of charge. (See the NativeDSD newsletter of 26 March 2016, and the info on the website)

[craighartley]

I have a new Kodi - HQPlayer solution which I wrote specifically for the Sound Galleries Music Server. Mainly to support Qobuz as that's not yet integrated in Roon. It also supports local files and Subsonic servers.

 

Could you plead explain that a bit further? You're using HQPLAYER (and Roon) to stream Qobuz via Kodi?

[craighartley]

In this situation Kodi is used as an alternative to Roon. My Kodi plug-ins send Qobuz/Tidal/Subsonic/local file urls or temporary files to HQPlayer. This also allows for iPad/iPhone or Android remote control.

 

Not nearly as slick as roon though.

 

The main need for it is that Qobuz is not yet a roon music service.

 

Thanks. Is your Qobuz plug-in for Kodi available separately from the SGM server?

[craighartley]

THANK YOU. That seems amazingly comprehensive. I'll look for the separate thread. Apologies for bringing this one OT

[craighartley]

This may be the cheapest device to do DSD512 upsampling with HQPlayer:

 

IntelÂ[emoji768] NUC Kit NUC6i7KYK Features and Configurations

 

KR

 

Matt

 

Does that processor match the 6700k then?

[craighartley]

I won't be able to post those for a few weeks. At my vacation home now. Will do when I get home.

 

I am using poly-sinc-shrt-mp and ASDM5. I like ASDM5 better than ASDM7 Bit Rate 22579200

 

Did you have the chance to try the AMSDM7 512+fs specific filter that Miska has added on his latest betas?

[craighartley]

Firstly this system cannot cope with DSD 512 with poly-sinc-{anything} quite frankly, so proved to be a bit pointless. I did do a quick back and forth in DSD 256 mode, to which there was certainly nothing obvious between that of the MacPro 6 core and the Dell i7 (4712HQ). ....

 

I'd be grateful if you could say which HQP settings (including buffers) you are using to successfully get 512 to the t+a in poly-sinc without needing to use the -2s variant? My MacPro 6 core won't manage that without stuttering. Have you got Roon on the same Mac? And have you had it working to a NAA as well as direct to USB from the MacPro?

 

Craig

[craighartley]

All my stuttering problems went away with a new i7 6700 Skylake chipped pc.

 

I appreciate that, but my question was prompted by inferring from guiltyboxswapper's posts that he had succeeded with the same Mac Pro 6-core that I have. If I decide to buy a new computer for this purpose then it would certainly have a 6700k CPU, but obviously I'd rather manage with what I've got.

[craighartley]

Sorry Craig, I misunderstood.

 

No problem - thanks for trying to help. [emoji4]

[craighartley]

Did you enable "pipeline sdm"?

 

Yes.

[craighartley]

Craig, as above, are you using OSX or Windows on the Mac Pro? AFAIK you can not do DSD512 with OSX at this time. I am not sure if guiltyboxswapper is using Windows or not on his Mac Pro to do DSD512.

 

If you are using OSX that is most likely your problem. If you can do a Boot-Camp and use W10 Pro (only use Pro version) that might work for you on the Mac Pro. Also if you are using the T+A DAC 8 DSD make sure you have downloaded the T+A Windows Driver (from the T+A web site) for the DAC 8 DSD that enables it to do DSD512 in Windows.

 

Thanks hifial, sydlow, for being so helpful. I should apologise for not explaining more fully: I'm using a Windows NAA with the correct driver. Mac Pro is doing the upsampling with Mac HQP and sending it to the Windows NAA. It s fine with Polysinc-2s 512 but stutters with Polysinc. I guess I should have just asked asked guiltyboxswapper to clarify if he was managing Polysinc with the Mac Pro to 512, and if so, with what configuration.

 

Edit: it's fine with Polysinc-2s except for DSD256 to 512, which stutters very slightly.

[craighartley]

If you run Activity Monitor, sort by %CPU column, what %CPU is HQP using?

 

About 330% (for 256 to 512).

 

I've made progress. I've disabled hyper threading after finally working out how to make the setting stick. Didn't at first help with Polysinc but -2s could now do 256 to 512 without stuttering. I then upgraded OS to 10.11.6. Rather mysteriously (and excitingly!) I'm now listening to 256 to 512 with Polysinc (non 2s) without stutters.

[craighartley]

It's 12 virtual cores except when I turn off hyper threading it's actually just 6 real cores. Percentage doesn't change much when I change 12 to 6. So I'm guessing 330% is actually over 50%. I may be wrong!

 

Anyway polysinc still stutters with most rates up sampled to 512.

[craighartley]

 

All academic as we listen 100 pct to DSD512 as it is in another sonic ball park

 

Have you been using 24576kHz for everything?

[craighartley]

Usually using 22.4 MHz for 16/44 material

 

Thanks

[craighartley]

I made my own USB cable with 3 wires ( signal + & - , ground . NOTE : - is not ground) less the 5v wire as DSD8 do not need the 5v trigger , this maybe the reason for your doubt about the benefit of Regen & Intona with DSD8 , I do not have either of them.

 

Did you notice an improvement when you got rid of the 5v? I do something similar with a Sbooster Vbus2 but can't perceive much of a difference.

[craighartley]

I cannot reply to you if removing the 5v does make a big difference , you can see the USB cable below and I follow Curious Cable (?) to isolate the 5v+ground away from signal wire and I did away with 5v & Ground initially , i.e. just 2 signal wires but that did not work , DSD8 just did not detect any signal so I added in the Ground wire and it worked immediately.

I was using 1.5m WireWorld Platinum USB and I thought I had the best already but my own USB wire , just 1.5ft long , won immediately on the first minutes , it opened up the high and a much better defined base . I cannot tell you if it is due to removal of the 5v or to the structure of the cable , shorter length etc. but the improvement is very obvious . I am using the middle wire (shown in mid of the picture) as Signal + & - and a thick highly polished silver plated copper wire as Ground , no particular reason for the choice , just the best in hand only . Then it is covered with 3/4" copper foil and soldered everywhere to ensure working as a copper tube to assure max. isolation . But it beats my WireWorld immediately. [ATTACH=CONFIG]28064[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks, that's very interesting I wish my soldering skills allowed me to emulate you.

 

Has anyone found a commercially available cable without the 5v that works well?

[craighartley]

What buffer setting are people using in HQP to upsample to 512 DS to the T+a 8 DSD?

[craighartley]

Try poly-sinc-short-mp; ASDM7 or ASDM5; 22579200; SDM.

Vol. Max -3dB; Pipeline SDM enabled.

 

I'd recommend using the 'Auto' setting for sampling rate on the main window - I don't see the point in limiting it to 22579.2 when you can have 24576 kHz for 48/96 family recordings (and for everything else if your processor can cope with up sampling 44.1/88.2 recordings to 24576; my MacPro doesn't like doing that, so I leave it on Auto).

[craighartley]

.

I was trying to make it simple for straight DSD512...

 

I appreciate that, but I think 'Auto' is simpler or more straight forward, because, depending on the processor (I don't know about the relative capabilities of different flavours of the 6700k), the OP may get stuttering trying to up upsample 48/96 to 22579.2.

[craighartley]

hi , the micro rendu is not the perfect companion for the T+A DSD8 , the Intona works better with it ( i had both and sold the microrendu) even with PCM or DSD 128 (dop with the microrendu) for my point of view the Intona is a cheaper isolation device sound as good as the microrendu and you can play DSD512 with it.

 

Could you please remind me what PC setup you use that sounds better with the Intona?

[craighartley]

I wouldn't expect such thing to happen. Technically it should be possible, but I'm not aware of any activity on that front.

 

It does seem unlikely. Jesus at Sonore has just responded to me about the possibility of native DSD support for the t+a on the microRendu: 'That unit would not be supported on Linux.'

[craighartley]

windows 10 , fidelizer pro, I6700K processor ,separate linear power supply for the PPANG clock , SSD, and INTONA 5V choke input linear power supply for the PC .

 

Thanks. I wish there was an off-the-shelf Windows NAA equivalent of the microRendu!