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McIntosh d1100 "fade-in" problem


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Hello,

 

I just added a new McIntosh d1100 to my system. Generally speaking, it works great, but there are a few quirky things that I was hoping I could get some help with.

 

My setup: Roon core runs on a dedicated Ubuntu Linux VM. I have Roon endpoint on a few Macbook’s, my iPad and my iPhone. I have a Raspberry Pi 2b with the latest build of dietpi on it, and Roon Bridge installed. I then utilize the USB to connect to the McIntosh d1100. Everything is running the latest builds of Roon. DSD over PCM (DoP) is my DSD strategy. Raspberry Pi and Roon Core is hard wired 1Gbps Ethernet

 

My issues: Pretty much in summary the "fade-in" issue described in part 1 of the d1100 review posted here at computer audiophile

 

  • Whenever I play an album, there is this weird thing where I miss the first bit of the first track. How much I miss seems to depend on source. For 16/44 CD quality, it is the first fraction of a second. For DSD it could be 2-3 seconds. In Roon, you can see the file playing the first few seconds, but the DAC does not lock and start outputting sound until between about 0.5s to 3s later, depending on source.For example, when playing The Beatles Please Please Me album, starting with “I saw her standing there”, you don’t hear the first part of Paul’s count in. When kicking off “A Hard Day’s Night”, you miss the first part of that epic first chord. This seems to happen regardless of what the source is (PCM, DSD, Various sample rates) and on every album

 

  • There is an intermittent issue with losing lock between tracks of an album. What happens is that at the end of one track of the album, typically during silence or low output parts during the last 3-5 seconds of the track, the DAC loses lock. Roon will still show the track playing. Then, Roon will move to the next track, the DAC regains lock and away it goes. It’s like a little “blip”. Sometimes, I end up missing just the first split second of the next track. This doesn’t happen between ALL tracks, or even between the same two tracks consistently. The issue seems to happen more frequently with DSD or high resolution PCM.

 

Sometimes, other than missing the first second or so of the first track, the album plays fine, with the DAC consistently keeping lock track to track. Other times, the DAC continually loses lock when one track ends, and locks back on for the start of the next track. Other times, it will lose lock after one track, then lock on for the next track, but I miss the first half second or so of the next track. This happens, but not all the time, and not between every track on an album. Very inconsistent.

 

I have tried playing with difference resync timer values, anywhere from 0.1s to 1s to 2s to even 5s just to see what would happen, as well as trying 250ms buffer to no avail. I also tried plugging my MacBook Air running Roon endpoint directly into the DAC, and experience the same problems.

 

I think what I am hitting is a result of how McIntosh implemented the firmware on their d1100.  McIntosh’ solution will likely be “use JRiver”, as they have a setting to add 2 seconds of silence between tracks that seemingly fixes this. I don’t want to use JRiver though…

 

Anything I can do or any ideas other than pray for future firmware that addresses this? It sounds GREAT, but losing the first few seconds of every album and the inconsistent inter-track behavior is really taking away from the album experience.

 

Thank You

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To elaborate more on the root cause and observations

  • When you start playing an album, the DAC is muted until it sees a signal with a certain very low amplitude

  • At the end of a track, if the signal flat lines the DAC mutes and loses lock. This in turn causes the problem where the very start of the next track is muted

  • At the end of a track, as long as the input signal and thus the fixed output of the DAC is not completely flat lined, it will keep lock and transition beautifully to the next track with no problems

 

This explains why some albums and tracks exhibit issue #2 and some do not.

 

 

 

Joey

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2 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

@joey_corleone It's the McIntosh USB ASIO driver.  My D150 does the same thing.  Went through 3 firmware versions - a PITA because you have to change the chip not just update by USB or something - and that was the best they could get to.  It's usually just the first track for me, whole albums play through after that.

 

I am not using Windows at any point in my chain, so I don’t think ASIO has anything to do with this. Roon Bridge is running on a light weight Linux box. Also, the first generation D1100 had issues with DSD pops, but they resolved that with hardware and firmware updates in subsequent batches. I think what I am seeing is actually a side effect of the firmware they implemented to fix the DSD popping issue

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4 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

@joey_corleone Apparently it’s the whole USB implementation, then.  It’s the same one in all of their DACs.  The DSD popping was the reason they did the “fade in”.   I understood at the time that it was due to the trigger level they set to determine if their was a data stream to unmute.  Popping is due to the relays. 

 

Did you end up keeping your d150 and finding any kind of solution?

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Thanks. At this stage, I have tried Windows with the McIntosh ASIO driver using Roon, Foobar 2000, and VNC, Mac OSX with Roon, QuickTime, VNC, Vox and JRiver, and Linux on a Roon Bridge, and cannot get it to behave.

 

In all cases I lose the first fraction of a second of the first album track and intermittently lose the first fraction of a second when an album naturally transitions tracks.

 

The only exception I found was that if you use JRiver, and enable the feature to add silence at start for hardware synchronization, it solves the first issue. However, that still did not solve the second.

 

If there is no reasonable solution proposed soon, I will have no choice but to return my D1100 and get something that works better with my setup.

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  • 6 months later...
10 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

The D1100, as far as I can tell anyway, is missing a feature my MAC7200 has, which eliminates the "muting" of the USB input.  Reading the manual of the MAC7200 I found a USB AutoMute On and Off control.  It works. I listen to albums rather than playlists so I generally don't have any problems with switching sample rates from song to song.

Screen Shot 2018-08-31 at 2.21.47 PM.png

 

Thanks for the post. Actually, the feature you are referring to here is exactly what they added to firmware 1.03 on the d1100 to address this.

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  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, MonstaChuck said:

Just to confirm, this will eliminate the forced muting of the initial tracks? That’s awesome. I run roon from Mac and even with the same bitrate I get jostled by the stop and start. 

 

Yes! With 1.03 you can toggle USB auto mute. If you disable this feature, it will fix the issue.

 

However, be aware that if you disable it, you will have “pops” in the following circumstances

 

1) Start of first track

2) 5 seconds after stop or pause

 

What I do is set the resync delay for the d1100 to 1000ms in Roon. When I start an album, I have my c1100 on mute. I press play. The 1000ms delay gives me time to press the button to unmute before the first note. Result is I miss the “pop” but don’t miss any music whatsoever. At the end of an album or if I pause, I mute to avoid the pop.

 

This will fix the issue where you miss the first fraction of a second of initial tracks and the first fraction of a second of some other tracks.

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  • 8 months later...

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