Audirvana Plus 3 for Windows (Official Thread)

[BobSmith8901]

Hi-Wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I have installed a trial version of Audirvana + for Windows 10 and really enjoy it except for one niggling issue that I think simply has to do with not having a very robust platform. It concerns early dropouts when playing Tidal MQA files.

 

My Win10 system is a Mini-PC

Intel N3450 CPU w/8Gb RAM

HD is a 64Gb eMMC

Internet is basic DSL 5mbps

System WiFI is internal 150mbps or USB 300mbps antenna

 

While fairly under powered compared to the typical Windows 10 PC, it runs the Tidal desktop app quite well and since Tidal updated their Windows app some 6-8 months ago, will play all the various sampling rates of MQA without issue, no dropouts or hiccups.

 

Problem is this:

 

Trial version of Audirvana + Win10-- on Tidal MQA files I'm generally getting 5-6 early play dropouts, as it seems the player is pre-downloading the song as the tune progresses but gets some sort of overwhelmed buffer. On non-MQA Tidal HiFi this never happens. It seems that the amount of musical information that is downloading at the beginning of an MQA  overwhelms my system.

 

I've tried adjusting the memory allocation in low level playback options--ie, I'll minimize it, put it in the middle or max out but no change. WASAPI I/O buffer on or off--same; WASAPI or ASIO--same. Same thing whether or not I am using just the internal mini-PC DAC (max 192khz) , Meridian Explorer 2 DAC w/full hardware decode or my FiiO Q1 Mk2 in DAC mode. Doesn't matter if I'm using the internal 150mbps WiFi or USB 300mbps WiFi card w/ antenna.

 

Interestingly, it doesn't do this with every MQA file--sometimes it plays even the most musically dense 192khz MQA no problem. Seems like the PC through some internal process, sometimes has the buffer space to properly play a given MQA. I would say it does dropouts 75% of the time on MQA.

 

I have no experience with this software so any advice would be appreciated. Unfortunately I don't have another Win10 PC with a little more under the hood to test things out. My gut feeling is that, at least in its current iteration, Audirvana +, at least in the MQA area, may be a bit much for this PC. Like I said though, otherwise, non-MQA Tidal, DSD and all sundry local file types play flawlessly in A+, just those MQA's are a problem. Thanks for any help!

[BobSmith8901]

11 hours ago, BobSmith8901 said:

Hi-Wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I have installed a trial version of Audirvana + for Windows 10 and really enjoy it except for one niggling issue that I think simply has to do with not having a very robust platform. It concerns early dropouts when playing Tidal MQA files...

regarding my post, it may be more accurate to say that the problem tracks pause; it's not really a drop out. It's like the song pauses very briefly (you can see the blue track bar stop) and then continues. It will do this about 4-6 times, then play the song through without problems..

11 hours ago, BobSmith8901 said:

 

 

 

[BobSmith8901]

On 11/26/2018 at 12:48 AM, BobSmith8901 said:

regarding my post, it may be more accurate to say that the problem tracks pause; it's not really a drop out. It's like the song pauses very briefly (you can see the blue track bar stop) and then continues. It will do this about 4-6 times, then play the song through without problems..

 

Update: Well, figured this thing out to some extent. When playing MQA stuff, regardless of its sampling rate, as long as I don't zing around, perpetually going from one song to the next, it plays without pauses/dropouts. IOW if I choose a playlist or album and just let it play uninterrupted and don't fast forward, it will play smoothly and without any hiccups. The first MQA song of the session will pause once or twice but after that it's smooth sailing, even in a long session of several songs. I guess it's just a limitation of the system as a whole, CPU/RAM/bus speed/bandwidth, etc.

[BobSmith8901]

Hi, new here also to VST3s and A+ Win10.

 

Thanks for the EQ suggestions for A+ in previous postings per Sonic77's post!

 

I've installed one EQ VST3 in regular install-able (.exe) format--SonEQ and it shows up fine in A+. But if one has a VST3 plug-in in the form of a .dll (N6 from RAZ Audio-- file format is just "n6_v1.03.dll"),  where in the working path should this .dll be placed?

 

I know Audirvana+ installs itself, for some reason, in users/user/Appdata, etc.,  but there are a lot of file locations to choose from in that zone. Of course maybe A+ only allows for executable VST3 installs. Thanks for any help!

 

 

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[BobSmith8901]

34 minutes ago, lucretius said:

I installed the 64bit VST3 and I too could not get it to work.

Same here w/bluecataudio when I installed the BlueCatTripleEQVST3-x64Setup file.

 

When I select it from the  drop down menu in A+/VST3 plugins and go to configure it (select the stereo one) a  blank screen comes up with the heading "Setup VST plugin Blue Cat's Triple EQ 4 (Stereo) and at the bottom you can Save or cancel). There is nothing in the screen to select or config. Running Win 10 Home v1809.

[BobSmith8901]

I don't know if this question has been asked before but here goes: if one has a DAC capable of supporting native DSD 512 tracks, will my Audirvana Plus 3 for Windows software player have any problem playing them? The reason I ask is that nativedsd.com is offering a sampler that consists of some DSD 512 tracks that are all pure DSD created and are not up samplings, but re-modulations of the original DSD 256. Just thought it would be a kick to see how these tracks sound. Thanks for any thoughts.

[BobSmith8901]

18 hours ago, BobSmith8901 said:

I don't know if this question has been asked before but here goes: if one has a DAC capable of supporting native DSD 512 tracks, will my Audirvana Plus 3 for Windows software player have any problem playing them? The reason I ask is that nativedsd.com is offering a sampler that consists of some DSD 512 tracks that are all pure DSD created and are not up samplings, but re-modulations of the original DSD 256. Just thought it would be a kick to see how these tracks sound. Thanks for any thoughts.

Yep, it works. The download file for the sampler (of 17 minutes of music)  was 4.1GB and took a while to download. In fact it took a while to inflate from the zip file on a pretty fast Corei7 w/16GB RAM. A five minute file clocks in at 1.6GB file size!

 

The DAC in question is just a Topping NX4 DSD portable Amp/DAC that I recently purchased. In Audirvana settings I have to choose ASIO to get the full ability to play all of the DSD rates above 64 (128, 256 and 512). It plays all of the files on the sampler fine and it does sound good, but I'm sure I could never tell the difference between 512 and the lower rates, maybe DSD64, but probably not even that. At least on this system.

[BobSmith8901]

5 hours ago, bodiebill said:

Yesterday I re-flashed my Amanero board with the new firmware 2006be10 (CPLD_1081_DSDSWAPPED) and this is the first time ever I am able to play DSD512 under Linux with my Lampizator hybrid B7/Lite, using HQPlayer on my Windows control PC and Gentoo Linux on my audio PC.

 

However, trying to do the same with Audirvana+ for Windows (sending the stream to mpd via upmpdcli), there is only noise.

 

In both cases the Linux command cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params gives:

 

access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: DSD_U32_BE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 705600 (705600/1)
period_size: 32768
buffer_size: 131072

 

Any idea why?

Take this with a grain of salt as I don't have a system of near your complexity. I recently purchased a Topping NX4 DSD amp/DAC and downloaded a DSD 512 sampler and experienced something like you have. With the Topping connected correctly and the driver setup as ASIO in Audirvana I also got just noise when I played the DSD 512. I then checked out all of my other lower bitrate DSD material and same thing, just noise. The Topping played all other types fine, FLAC, MP3, Tidal, etc. I thought the DAC was defective. I went into the Topping's control panel in the system tray and went into volume and it was just below max. When I maxed it out all DSD played clearly. If there's something similar in your setup make sure the volume is maxed out and see if that helps..

[BobSmith8901]

3 hours ago, lucretius said:

The old version for Windows (1.28 ?) has stopped working.  I still have the beta version 3.4.912.  Is this now out of beta? And is there a 3.5 version? 

lucretius--I also see your same posting on the community.audirvana website but I'll just comment here on this site for now. Here goes:

 

Wow, this is weird.

 

I installed beta 3.4.912 a few days ago from the download site. I'd been running beta 3.4.911. After reading your post I tried to open 1.3.8 and it opened but there was no Tidal, only local files. I closed it and then opened it again from the taskbar and it did its thing like it was upgrading to a new Audirvana version. I tried to see where this new program might be located but couldn't find it in any of the usual spots. So I opened up my taskbar link for 3.4.9.12 thinking maybe that's 3.5 but it still says it's 3.4.9.12 when I click the little gear. When I again clicked on my old 1.3.8 shortcut it said:

 

"Update to Audirvana 3.5 complete"

"Audirvana 3.5 is now installed. The old version can't be run anymore. Please uninstall it"

 

Er, huh?

 

Is Audirvana 3.5 installed? I don't want to uninstall anything yet as I'm just not sure what I have and don't want to lose my license and go through a bunch of nonsense. And when I go to Programs and Features it shows that there was an Audirvana Plus installed on 9 Sep 2019 (like, just a couple of hours ago--so OK that makes sense I guess....and it says, in Programs and Features that its version is 1.3.9.1068! No 3.5's showing anywhere).

 

This is most bizarre. If this is the final product, again, it's still saying it's 3.4.9.12 ( in the program itself) and the song and artist titles in the player are still cut off even when fully expanded like I complained about weeks ago.

 

damien--is what I described above actually the new final version Audirvana Plus 3.5 for WIndows? or if not, what Windows folder is 3.5 in?

[BobSmith8901]

3 hours ago, lucretius said:

The old version for Windows (1.28 ?) has stopped working.  I still have the beta version 3.4.912.  Is this now out of beta? And is there a 3.5 version? 

lucretius--read your post again on community site...did you go to programs and features to uninstall 1.3.8? If so, did your beta 3.4.912 (or whatever it is, maybe 3.5...) stay installed in your system? If it did, is there some version of Audirvana still in programs and features so that you, theoretically, could uninstall?

[BobSmith8901]

4 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

What happened is that 1.3.8 automatically upgraded to 1.3.9. Upon starting up 1.3.9, it checked for an installed "3.5" and when finding it, refused to start and displayed a dialog box saying I should uninstall it (1.3.9). See @damien78 post above.

 

I went to Programs and Features to uninstall 1.3.9. This removed 1.3.9 but did not remove "3.5" (which is currently at 3.4.912 -- this is the latest according to  @damien78). Note that I had 3.4.912 installed before any of this happened.

 

There is now no versions of Audirvana listed under Programs and Features. This is as it should be, since 3.4.912 is a Windows "universal app". You can see it under Settings -> Apps.

Thanks, you answered exactly what I wanted to know. My 1.3.8 never updated to 1.3.9 (I think) so I guess what ever is showing in PGMs/Features is what I would uninstall and my quasi-3.5 will remain untouched. I had not known about the concept of a Windows universal app that resided in the settings/apps spot but this Audirvana for Windows isn't the typical Windows installation (as I've known them) I guess.Thanks again!