Audirvana Plus 2.5.1 with PCM->DSD Conversion

[adias]

Do you have the latest [iFi] 5.2 firmware installed?

 

Yes.

[DomieMic65]

Yes.

That is very strange! I have no issue after the 5.2 ... sometimes a very low level pop when stopping DSD playback!

[twluke]

Does anything change if you use DoP standard 1.1 rather than 1.0?

 

No change as shown in these pictures.

 

[adias]

Are you using A+ with or without 'volume reduction' and what amount?

[Jud]

Interesting. I asked about DoP 1.0 versus 1.1 because technically it was only with 1.1 that support for DSD128 was "officially" introduced, so I wondered, despite the UI showing DSD128, whether files were being upsampled only to DSD64. But no, it appears the UI is accurate. I'll try to see this evening whether playing with buffer sizes changes CPU utilization for me.

 

Yes it does. A 1024MB buffer works as well as a 512MB buffer for me, while 2048MB is the same as larger buffers.

 

With smaller buffers, CPU usage is fairly low (110-130%) for significant amounts of time, though it is mostly in the 180s or 190s. With larger buffers, CPU utilization is in the higher range almost all the time.

[RunHomeSlow]

Just looking at the syncing of my library in album view with nothing playing,

the activity monitor CPU usage is around 150% (100-200%)...

[twluke]

Are you using A+ with or without 'volume reduction' and what amount?

I'm not sure as I'm away from my Mac for now but I think I'm currently not using this function.

[adias]

I'm not sure as I'm away from my Mac for now but I think I'm currently not using this function.

 

I suggest you check your A+ Preferences > Audio Filters and try upsampling (Power of 2 or max) or conversion to DSD with volume reduction set at None and play a high volume (high peaks) track and see what you get. I get random static more prevalent on the left channel. It seems to go away if I reduce this volume control to -1dB.

 

I would like to know what this volume reduction does. it may mean a signal chop off, or a reduction in dynamic range.

 

[adias]

Just looking at the syncing of my library in album view with nothing playing,

the activity monitor CPU usage is around 150% (100-200%)...

 

Right! Damien needs to look into this and I am sure he will. There's no doubt he is doing a stellar job in providing this sound quality. Kudos!

[twluke]

I suggest you check your A+ Preferences > Audio Filters and try upsampling (Power of 2 or max) or conversion to DSD with volume reduction set at None and play a high volume (high peaks) track and see what you get. I get random static more prevalent on the left channel. It seems to go away if I reduce this volume control to -1dB.

 

I would like to know what this volume reduction does. it may mean a signal chop off, or a reduction in dynamic range.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]26315[/ATTACH]

Thanks for this guidance. Please have a look at the picture in my post #437. I did not select anything there.

[adias]

Thanks for this guidance. Please have a look at the picture in my post #437. I did not select anything there.

 

Does that mean you have not experienced static with the latest A+ and iFi micro iDSD when playing music with large peaks?

[twluke]

Does that mean you have not experienced static with the latest A+ and iFi micro iDSD when playing music with large peaks?

 

I'm not an iFi user. I'm using Hermes-Amanero/Cronus boards connected from a MacBook to a Buffalo III SE from Twisted Pear Audio via I2S as I wrote before. The Cronus board is quite efficient in signal isolation and reclocking via the on-board 22.5x and 24.5x clocks. Amanero will be capable of DSD256 if finely tuned.

[craighartley]

Yes it does. A 1024MB buffer works as well as a 512MB buffer for me, while 2048MB is the same as larger buffers.

.

 

With how much RAM in total?

[damien78]

Just looking at the syncing of my library in album view with nothing playing,

the activity monitor CPU usage is around 150% (100-200%)...

 

I'm working on an important update on the database management for 2.6 that will strongly improve its performance.

[damien78]

I suggest you check your A+ Preferences > Audio Filters and try upsampling (Power of 2 or max) or conversion to DSD with volume reduction set at None and play a high volume (high peaks) track and see what you get. I get random static more prevalent on the left channel. It seems to go away if I reduce this volume control to -1dB.

 

I would like to know what this volume reduction does. it may mean a signal chop off, or a reduction in dynamic range.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]26315[/ATTACH]

 

This is meant to reduce the volume of the track before making the upsampling.

Some very loud tracks (the "loudness war" ones) have even hard clipping of the signal. When upsampling those, this can cause the SDM filter to deviate. Thus the volume reduction before to avoid this issue.

 

The best way to detect such tracks, and apply the volume reduction only on those is by using the replay gain information. This is what is currently implemented when playing tracks from TIDAL.

For the other tracks, it would be too long to make an initial peaks & gain scan before the upsampling, thus this setting to set the volume reduction.

With 2.6, I'll implement replay gain, and thus when the tracks will have this information, it will be also used to determine whether or not to apply this safe volume reduction.

[Lee Henley]

I'm working on an important update on the database management for 2.6 that will strongly improve its performance.

 

Nice one Damien

[Lee Henley]

One for Damien to answer

 

Ive asked before but have not had any responses, are there any plans to stream Spotify through A+, the price now in the UK for TIDAL is £25.99 (33 euro's) per month for the premium service, Ive been using Spotify for a couple of years or more and still enjoy the way it sounds and the database and search engine is far better than the TIDAL one, this was based upon my last experience when I had TIDAL about 12 months ago

 

Best regards

 

Lee

[DomieMic65]

One for Damien to answer

 

Ive asked before but have not had any responses, are there any plans to stream Spotify through A+, the price now in the UK for TIDAL is £25.99 (33 euro's) per month for the premium service, Ive been using Spotify for a couple of years or more and still enjoy the way it sounds and the database and search engine is far better than the TIDAL one, this was based upon my last experience when I had TIDAL about 12 months ago

 

Best regards

 

Lee

+1 I was also thinking that it would be great!

OK Spotify is not about absolute sound quality but it has the biggest music library of all .... And most of all the music is what we seek no??

[Jud]

with how much ram in total?

 

8gb

 

Edit: Interesting, I had "GB" upper case in both original and edit, but autocorrect auto-changes both letters to lower case.

[craighartley]

8gb

 

Edit: Interesting, I had "GB" upper case in both original and edit, but autocorrect auto-changes both letters to lower case.

 

Thanks (and I had RAM in upper case !)

[MemoryPlayer]

This is meant to reduce the volume of the track before making the upsampling.

Some very loud tracks (the "loudness war" ones) have even hard clipping of the signal. When upsampling those, this can cause the SDM filter to deviate. Thus the volume reduction before to avoid this issue.

 

The best way to detect such tracks, and apply the volume reduction only on those is by using the replay gain information. This is what is currently implemented when playing tracks from TIDAL.

For the other tracks, it would be too long to make an initial peaks & gain scan before the upsampling, thus this setting to set the volume reduction.

With 2.6, I'll implement replay gain, and thus when the tracks will have this information, it will be also used to determine whether or not to apply this safe volume reduction.

 

And about MQA?

[DomieMic65]

MQA needs also a DAC with proper HWare. It's not only s/ware matter ..

[Jud]

Very pleased with what I heard last night after getting Direct Mode back in 10.11.5. (See http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/audirvana-plus-2-multi-channel-sound-5-surround-channels-and-1-lfe-low-frequency-effects-channel-pulse-code-modulation-direct-stream-digital-conversion-28428/index11.html#post544703; http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/audirvana-plus-2-multi-channel-sound-5-surround-channels-and-1-lfe-low-frequency-effects-channel-pulse-code-modulation-direct-stream-digital-conversion-28428/index11.html#post544753; http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/audirvana-plus-2-multi-channel-sound-5-surround-channels-and-1-lfe-low-frequency-effects-channel-pulse-code-modulation-direct-stream-digital-conversion-28428/index11.html#post544887; Warning: Not for newbies - if anything you see in these directions puzzles you, don't do it.)

 

With the lower buffer size and volume reduction for upsampling set to -1, playback converting to DSD128 was stable and I heard fan noise only briefly on part of one track all evening. For a 7-year-old laptop (age 49 in dog years!), that's really excellent. (When using mansr's offline DSD converters in sox, setting volume to -1 eliminated any errors from intersample overs, and thus far I haven't seen a need to reduce volume further than that. But not reducing volume at all did result in intersample overs with sox, so it seems like a good idea to be cautious and reduce volume for inline DSD conversion in A+.)

 

The only instability I've had thus far has been when rapidly switching among tracks with the remote app. Perhaps once or twice in an evening, this may cause the remote and A+ to go out of sync and A+ may crash.

[MemoryPlayer]

MQA needs also a DAC with proper HWare. It's not only s/ware matter ..

 

OK, but for HW decode, SW needs pass a MQA signal, am I wrong!

I think is something like the old HDCD!

[RunHomeSlow]

I'm working on an important update on the database management for 2.6 that will strongly improve its performance.

 

Hello Damien, thanks for all your work...

 

If you are adding Replay gain in database, is it easy to add another tab in the views? Dynamic Range... all my database is dynamic range already done in JRiver... is it easy for A+ to just read that in the file... if it's in the file :-) i only miss that info in A+. thanks again.