dCS Network Bridge

[Cooler]

yeah, sold functionality, which was not there, marketing works better, then dev department

[Patatorz]

14 minutes ago, mecani said:

dcs network bridge Sold
 
Disappointed with the way of selling this brand
 
In September of 2017 I bought the dcs knowing that the usb dac output was not activated, but the distributor assured me that in 2 months it would be active
but 10 months later there is nothing
  not to mention the wifi connection
  I understand that the updating process is complicated
what I do not understand is announcing updates when you still do not know are going to be carried out

Hello, somehow I understand you as I postponed for many month to buy the network bridge. Your dac usb input is so good compared to AES or SPDIF that you need the USB or is it more for a DSD matter (another topic) ?

Even from my side I don’t use all the functionalities like the double aes/spdif as my dac is not a dCS but as it is the best I heard since years.

Thanks

[Adyc]

Has the gapless issue been fixed in DLNA? I have bought NB recently and can’t get gapless working properly.

[Decur]

Can anyone confirm,will the network bridge output a signal to 2-separate dacs?

1-via aes and

1-via bnc ?

reason being,i would like to switch back and forth between 2-dacs in my system depending on which music im playing....

thank you in advance...

[The Computer Audiophile]

Good question. I can try this later. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Guys - The Bridge will output to multiple devices simultaneously.

[Patatorz]

Thanks

[Decur]

Yes,thank you for testing this chris!

[Albrecht]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys - The Bridge will output to multiple devices simultaneously.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your review of the Bridge. I really enjoyed reading it. By your review it seems like you really liked it, and you also really like the ultra/micro Rendu, - can you describe the difference in SQ between the two?

Thanks in advance.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Albrecht said:

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your review of the Bridge. I really enjoyed reading it. By your review it seems like you really liked it, and you also really like the ultra/micro Rendu, - can you describe the difference in SQ between the two?

Thanks in advance.

This sounds easier than it actually is. As you know there can be a huge difference between an AES input and a USB input on a DAC. Some DACs perform great via USB while others perform less than great. Because both products don't have the same features, I can't really compare apples to apples. The Rendus only have USB and the dCS only has AES/SPDIF/SDIF.  Would be easy of both had a common interface.

 

 

[Albrecht]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This sounds easier than it actually is. As you know there can be a huge difference between an AES input and a USB input on a DAC. Some DACs perform great via USB while others perform less than great. Because both products don't have the same features, I can't really compare apples to apples. The Rendus only have USB and the dCS only has AES/SPDIF/SDIF.  Would be easy of both had a common interface.

 

 

Hi,

Got it. That sounds fair. Funny that I don't think of the ultra-Rendu as an USB device as my Universal player can only accept SPDIF in, - so I have to include USB to SPDIF converters as a second nature requirement that I've been using for so long now, I don't think about it. If you're doing a review, - you'd have to go pretty far out of your way to get out the converters, power supplies and cables just to get the micro/ultra Rendu to SPDIF, - an application that many people wouldn't be using anyway. Thanks.

Cheers,

 

[Patatorz]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:39 AM, Adyc said:

Has the gapless issue been fixed in DLNA? I have bought NB recently and can’t get gapless working properly.

 

Hello, i just tried and i had no gapless issues in the following case :

• UPnP with dCS application 
• UPnP/Openhome with Lumin application
• Roon

Perhaps an issue on one of your file ?

[Chiong]

10 hours ago, Patatorz said:

 

Hello, i just tried and i had no gapless issues in the following case :

• UPnP with dCS application 
• UPnP/Openhome with Lumin application
• Roon

Perhaps an issue on one of your file ?

I also tried gapless today with UPnP/Openhome with Kazoo and LMS. Before previous firmware updates, gapless playing was not supported and my Elgar showed 16/44.1 -> 0/44.1 -> 16/44.1, if a CD quality file was played. Now, when the file is played, it keeps showing 16/44.1, but a very short gap is still noticeable. If I play files with continuing music like Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Bach's Goldberg variations, it becomes annoying.

 

If I play the file with dCS app, it goes smoothly.

[Patatorz]

It is strange : I tried with 2 different files (2 bootlegs) and really no gap. As UPnP is embedded in the renderer, the impact of the application should be close to...nothing.

With Kazoo, did you use bubbleupnpserver to transform your NB UPnP in NB OpenHome and selected the gapless option ?

thanks

[Adyc]

14 hours ago, Patatorz said:

 

Hello, i just tried and i had no gapless issues in the following case :

• UPnP with dCS application 
• UPnP/Openhome with Lumin application
• Roon

Perhaps an issue on one of your file ?

I use Jriver. UltraRendu and SOTM 200 Ultra don't have gapless issue with Jriver. Very frustrating. 

[Chiong]

2 hours ago, Patatorz said:

It is strange : I tried with 2 different files (2 bootlegs) and really no gap. As UPnP is embedded in the renderer, the impact of the application should be close to...nothing.

With Kazoo, did you use bubbleupnpserver to transform your NB UPnP in NB OpenHome and selected the gapless option ?

thanks

Yes, I use BubbleUPnP for Openhome and gapless option is selected.

[Patatorz]

Thanks

23 minutes ago, Chiong said:

Yes, I use BubbleUPnP for Openhome and gapless option is selected.

 

1 hour ago, Adyc said:

I use Jriver. UltraRendu and SOTM 200 Ultra don't have gapless issue with Jriver. Very frustrating. 

Ok i will Check another time

[Chiong]

On ‎07‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 11:18 PM, Patatorz said:

 

Hello, i just tried and i had no gapless issues in the following case :

• UPnP with dCS application 
• UPnP/Openhome with Lumin application
• Roon

Perhaps an issue on one of your file ?

I downloaded Lumin app and tried again today with BubbleUPnP/Openhome and gapless option selected, but gapless playback is still not correctly supported.

[The Computer Audiophile]

35 minutes ago, Chiong said:

I downloaded Lumin app and tried again today with BubbleUPnP/Openhome and gapless option selected, but gapless playback is still not correctly supported.

 

Try some different music or try re-encoding your music to a different format.

 

I've had some uncompressed FLAC files that give DLNA renderers a hard time.

 

If you want to do an easy test, encode an album as FLAC and use the compression level of 4. That's an easy load for any renderer to handle gapless. Also, don't mess with metadata or album art for this test.

[Patatorz]

Good point. When I tag my files I remove the album art that some provides like qobuz, attach to the file. Sometimes the size of these arts could be higher than 2Mo. A simple art as folder.jpg in the directory of the files is enough. I don’t know,if it,is a solution but at least I do not see any issue at home and it is the way I manage my flac.

by the way if you don’t have any problem with a sotm or a sonore, perhaps there is still  something to do on the dCS.

[The Computer Audiophile]

It's tricky to say where the "problem" is because these devices from different manufacturers have some crazy customizations. For example, some DLNA/UPnP devices have code built-in to accommodate terrible UPnP devices that misspell common UPnP language or have completely messed up implementations. If something works with one device, it doesn't mean the other device is problematic or misconfigured etc... It could just mean the working device has been made to work with stuff that is "crazy."

[Patatorz]

I’m not doing finger pointing. My  message was more to say that there is some opportunities to find some solutions. I have confidence that suppliers of solutions like streamunlimited already understand/master these topics and for sure dCS.

The major problem is to identify the root cause and with all our configurations it is not easy. I consider myself safe with this gapless problem whatever the streaming solution used (roon, upnp, OpenHome, even lms with upnp plugins) : is it coming from tags, network I don’t know I just give orientations.

[AMP]

I wanted to give everyone an update on the USB audio output feature on the Network Bridge. Please see the statement from dCS below.

 

-----

 

Dear dCS Customer

 

After months of software development and testing we have had to change course on the roadmap for our Network Bridge. Although we had promising results early in our development cycle our engineering team could not get the USB audio output function to meet our performance standards. As a result we have decided that we cannot release a feature which we know is compromised.

 

We are truly sorry for any disappointment that this decision may cause our existing loyal Network Bridge customers and want to assure you that it was not one reached lightly. We invested a significant amount of time and resource into enabling this feature and explored every possible avenue to achieve our performance requirements. Sadly, there comes a point when development efforts no longer make business sense due to their impact on other major product improvements and enhancements.

 

In Spring 2018 we enabled MQA unfold on the Network Bridge and on July 1, 2018 we kicked off a project to enhance the user experience of our network streaming platform which will greatly enhance the usability of the Network Bridge. This project will generate multiple software releases for our entire product line as we refine the stability, performance, and feature set of our streaming offerings

 

We thank you for your continued support.

 

The dCS Team

[xtraktz]

Really bullshit for USB users

[firedog]

Glad I didn't buy one thinking the USB would come later.

Pretty hard for me to believe, in spite of what they say, that they don't have anyway of adding USB to their "performance standards". Does that mean SQ, or something else?

Maybe they should have let customers try a "beta" version of the firmware with USB output and see if they are happy with it? What if they were?