EVGA Nu Audio

[the_bat]

I'm not actually sure they do claim that.  Nothing on their site or the packaging says it's USB Class2 Audio.  A couple of the review sites mention that it's a USB interface over PCIe and then talk about how well established USB Class2 is, which is true but not related, but I don't think EVGA make any claim.  

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, the_bat said:

I'm not actually sure they do claim that.  Nothing on their site or the packaging says it's USB Class2 Audio.  A couple of the review sites mention that it's a USB interface over PCIe and then talk about how well established USB Class2 is, which is true but not related, but I don't think EVGA make any claim.  

The card identifies itself as Audio Class when queried by the OS. Otherwise it wouldn't show up as an ALSA device at all.

[ferenc]

On 7/15/2019 at 9:23 PM, mansr said:

What that really means:

Despite the card claiming to be a USB Audio Class device, it actually isn't.

 

It works perfectly fine in PCM up to 384 kHz in Audiolinux, as an ALSA device, one needs to adjust the ALSA mixer level and this is it. It works as Roon Bridge and as an NAA endpoint. It is shows the playback part and the capture part independently. It does not work in DSD. According to Piero of Audiolinux the card probably need a kernel upgrade for working in DSD as well. 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, ferenc said:

It works perfectly fine in PCM up to 384 kHz in Audiolinux, as an ALSA device, one needs to adjust the ALSA mixer level and this is it. It works as Roon Bridge and as an NAA endpoint. It is shows the playback part and the capture part independently. It does not work in DSD. According to Piero of Audiolinux the card probably need a kernel upgrade for working in DSD as well. 

So the "not supported by Linux" statement was in error. DSD support was added to the kernel back in 2013, but since DACs differ in how they indicate the capability (and how it is activated), new models may require a tweak if they don't follow an already known pattern. Aren't standards wonderful?

[ferenc]

6 minutes ago, mansr said:

So the "not supported by Linux" statement was in error. DSD support was added to the kernel back in 2013, but since DACs differ in how they indicate the capability (and how it is activated), new models may require a tweak if they don't follow an already known pattern. Aren't standards wonderful?

 

Actually EVGA said it is Windows only compatible, which is true, as non of the apps related this card will not run in Linux and its target is the gamer community more than the audiophiles, so EVGA will not take any responsibility to get it work in Linux. However it works somehow in Audiolinux. I am quite sure that Euphony guys did not check it properly if at all. They probably just wanted to get rid of any responsibility to get it work and they may not had 5 minutes to think of it seriously. Piero was kind enough at Audiolinux to help me and going through the setup and settings. 

[the_bat]

Hi Ferenc

 

A couple of questions if I may:

 

Had you ever upgraded the card's firmware?  I think the original version it arrived with had some limited Linux compatibility, but the update included with the latest drivers seems to have broken that.  It may be possible to downgrade the firmware which may help.

 

Can you share what you needed to do in AudioLinux to get the card to work?  I tried it in Ubuntu but selecting the card in ALSAmixer crashed with a Protocol Error.

 

Thanks

 

Alan

[ferenc]

1 hour ago, the_bat said:

Hi Ferenc

 

A couple of questions if I may:

 

Had you ever upgraded the card's firmware?  I think the original version it arrived with had some limited Linux compatibility, but the update included with the latest drivers seems to have broken that.  It may be possible to downgrade the firmware which may help.

 

Can you share what you needed to do in AudioLinux to get the card to work?  I tried it in Ubuntu but selecting the card in ALSAmixer crashed with a Protocol Error.

 

Thanks

 

Alan

 

I did firmware upgrades, using the very latest version of it. 

Actually I had to check the two cards which were shown in the Audio Status menu, and realized that the Card 1 is the playback card and Card 2 is the capture card part of the card. need to increase the audio level up to 100% in Alsa mixer and it worked. It did not work for the first time because I was trying to use the capture card part as a playback device. Piero helped me to realize it. 

 

Since then I use it not only as NAA or Roon Bridge but as Airplay endpoint as well with my Apple devices . Works very well even as an Airplay device. 

[MhtLion]

Finally, I was able to free up a PCI slot and thinking of buying this Nu audio card.  I read some good reviews and also some not so good reviews.  I'm mainly interested in as a DSD DAC when used with HQP.  I have a sense this card just may be the best option for DSD/HQP under $500, but let's see..

[rickca]

@Miska have you had a chance to test and/or measure the Nu Audio card?  It's currently on sale for $189 in the USA and I'm wondering whether to pick one up. 

[rickca]

I asked EVGA for some details about how the Nu Audio card uses power.  Answer:

For the controller, it uses the PCI-e x1 and for the audio side of the card using the SATA connection which it's a 3.3 volts. The PCi-e x1 is 12volt and it draws very little from it.

[Miska]

On 8/20/2019 at 12:25 PM, rickca said:

@Miska have you had a chance to test and/or measure the Nu Audio card?  It's currently on sale for $189 in the USA and I'm wondering whether to pick one up. 

 

I'm too busy on other things, so the card is still resting in it's box. Eventually I'll get there. But at that price the risk is in my opinion minimal. It is unlikely that it wouldn't be worth at least that...

 

[rickca]

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

But at that price the risk is in my opinion minimal.

I ended up buying one for $171 plus tax with free shipping.  If you look in the EVGA forum, you can find a 10% discount code which can be combined with the $60 instant rebate.  It's clear that EVGA is having trouble selling these cards at $249.

 

Weird.  I was streaming Qobuz to this card using ASIO while browsing on cnn.com.  The audio from CNN was intermixed with the Qobuz track!  Isn't ASIO supposed to take exclusive control?  Does this indicate that the EVGA ASIO driver has a problem?

 

I'm trying to figure out the best way to supply 3.3V via the SATA power connector from an LPS.  I'm probably going to need a custom cable.  No way this card can sound its best with SATA power from a traditional PC SMPS.

[Miska]

44 minutes ago, rickca said:

Weird.  I was streaming Qobuz to this card using ASIO while browsing on cnn.com.  The audio from CNN was intermixed with the Qobuz track!  Isn't ASIO supposed to take exclusive control?  Does this indicate that the EVGA ASIO driver has a problem?

 

Sounds like ASIO driver problem. ASIO drivers can be implemented in many ways and some are better than others. If the driver operates like ASIO4ALL in some cases, it can cause such end result.

 

Some Creative's ASIO drivers behaved in a similar way, but in that case because their hardware DSP had mixing capability and maybe they thought that multi-access with hardware mixing is a good idea... I find it unlikely that the card would have a hardware mixer in this case.

 

[Triplefun]

I have replaced my topping d50 and prefer the warmer akm sound (as opposed to sabre). I use foobar 2000 to upsample all music to native dsd256 with no issues. It is recognized by daphile but dsd is not supported.

[rickca]

On 9/10/2019 at 6:30 PM, rickca said:

I ended up buying one for $171 plus tax with free shipping.  If you look in the EVGA forum, you can find a 10% discount code which can be combined with the $60 instant rebate.  It's clear that EVGA is having trouble selling these cards at $249.

 

This card is now on sale for $149.99 at EVGA and major US retailers like Amazon. Luckily, my Citi card price rewind is good for purchases made before 9/22.  If you find an item online at a lower price within 60 days of your purchase made with an eligible Citi card, you can get a credit for the difference.

[rickca]

On 9/10/2019 at 7:18 PM, Miska said:

Sounds like ASIO driver problem. ASIO drivers can be implemented in many ways and some are better than others.

How do I explain to EVGA that an ASIO driver that doesn't get exclusive control is pretty useless?  I'd like to tell them something technically accurate that they can review with their development team.

 

Here was the EVGA response, which seems pretty lame to me:

I checked with a member of our product management team and it seems like the audio driver is working as intended. The ASIO driver is not supposed to take control of all audio processes in Windows. The ASIO driver basically bypasses the Windows layer so that the audio goes directly to the audio device, but the application running must be able to specifically select the ASIO driver or else the ASIO driver will not be used. This ASIO driver is not used for all application because it was not designed not able to distinguish multiple sample types coming through. You can have audio from one program utilizing the ASIO driver and audio from another program utilizing non-ASIO as a result. If your application does play through ASIO, then the ASIO status in the NU Audio software should show as active but it does not override the other drivers on the OS. Also, our product management team did confirm that some parts of the driver are licensed from Thesycon.
 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

How do I explain to EVGA that an ASIO driver that doesn't get exclusive control is pretty useless?  I'd like to tell them something technically accurate that they can review with their development team.

 

Here was the EVGA response, which seems pretty lame to me:

I checked with a member of our product management team and it seems like the audio driver is working as intended. The ASIO driver is not supposed to take control of all audio processes in Windows. The ASIO driver basically bypasses the Windows layer so that the audio goes directly to the audio device, but the application running must be able to specifically select the ASIO driver or else the ASIO driver will not be used. This ASIO driver is not used for all application because it was not designed not able to distinguish multiple sample types coming through. You can have audio from one program utilizing the ASIO driver and audio from another program utilizing non-ASIO as a result. If your application does play through ASIO, then the ASIO status in the NU Audio software should show as active but it does not override the other drivers on the OS. Also, our product management team did confirm that some parts of the driver are licensed from Thesycon.
 

 

I think Thesycon driver should behave correctly and mute out the regular Windows sources when ASIO driver is loaded. Unless EVGA has wanted it to behave in a different way, which is also possible.

 

Does WASAPI Exclusive work correctly, for example from HQPlayer? It is supposed to prevent other applications from accessing the device simultaneously. So even if set as default output device, things like YouTube shouldn't be able to play to it when being used by HQPlayer. When ASIO driver is being used by HQPlayer it should work the same way as WASAPI Exclusive mode. Both are supposed to provide bit-perfect output and if the driver is doing mixing or other operations, it is of course not bit-perfect anymore and for example things like DoP would get broken.

 

Most ASIO drivers work correctly and don't allow other applications to access the audio device simultaneously. Only driver I remember not doing this is Creative's driver, but they do it in a different way and the mixing is performed in their hardware DSP which cannot be bypassed anyway.

 

Generally all applications using WASAPI Exclusive mode, or ASIO assume to get exclusive hardware access, other kind of behavior likely ends up with unexpected results as you already experienced. ASIO is designed for pro-audio use cases, and getting "bling, you have new email" kind of sounds mixed into a studio or live sound would be really bad.

 

[rickca]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

Does WASAPI Exclusive work correctly

I will try this today and let you know the results.

[4est]

Has anyone used this for online video such as youtube or netflix? I'd be interested in this if there is no lag with video sources.

[Miska]

24 minutes ago, 4est said:

Has anyone used this for online video such as youtube or netflix? I'd be interested in this if there is no lag with video sources.

 

It is probably pretty much same delay as external USB DACs, since it is essentially a USB DAC, albeit a built-in one with it's own USB controller. For example on Linux, you can achieve fairly low latencies with USB DACs too if you can adjust hardware buffers small enough. Inherent USB latency for UAC2 is 125 µs.

 

But PCIexpress/Thunderbolt interfaces are certainly better in that respect.

 

[4est]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

It is probably pretty much same delay as external USB DACs, since it is essentially a USB DAC, albeit a built-in one with it's own USB controller. For example on Linux, you can achieve fairly low latencies with USB DACs too if you can adjust hardware buffers small enough. Inherent USB latency for UAC2 is 125 µs.

 

But PCIexpress/Thunderbolt interfaces are certainly better in that respect.

 

Oh, OK. Thank you Miska. That makes sense. I hadn't thought of it in that way. Do you per chance know about how much latency there is w10 with WASAPI ex, ASIO or what the hardware buffer options might be? Perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree, but I'd appreciate a better DAC that can do DSD for my AV system.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, 4est said:

Oh, OK. Thank you Miska. That makes sense. I hadn't thought of it in that way. Do you per chance know about how much latency there is w10 with WASAPI ex, ASIO or what the hardware buffer options might be? Perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree, but I'd appreciate a better DAC that can do DSD for my AV system.

 

At least Thesycon driver control panel (from system tray) lets you adjust buffer settings and thus latency. If the EVGA drivers are based on Thesycon drivers, maybe they have the option too? There are practically two parameters, size of the buffer and number of buffers. I guess with Thesycon driver this translates to buffer size and "safety".

 

Usually DACs have fairly minimal RAM buffer, so the latency is mostly up to the playback application and driver. For music playback from files, latency is non-issue and maximum latency gives you lowest CPU load and best resilience against drop outs. But for live things, or when associated with another stream like video, this matters much more. For this purpose, ASIO drivers can report amount of total latency, so video playback applications can compensate  for proper visual synchronization. However, very few video players support ASIO drivers. Some playback applications like VLC have compensation for picture vs audio latency.

 

[4est]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

At least Thesycon driver control panel (from system tray) lets you adjust buffer settings and thus latency. If the EVGA drivers are based on Thesycon drivers, maybe they have the option too? There are practically two parameters, size of the buffer and number of buffers. I guess with Thesycon driver this translates to buffer size and "safety".

 

Usually DACs have fairly minimal RAM buffer, so the latency is mostly up to the playback application and driver. For music playback from files, latency is non-issue and maximum latency gives you lowest CPU load and best resilience against drop outs. But for live things, or when associated with another stream like video, this matters much more. For this purpose, ASIO drivers can report amount of total latency, so video playback applications can compensate  for proper visual synchronization. However, very few video players support ASIO drivers. Some playback applications like VLC have compensation for picture vs audio latency.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply! I was hoping that someone had experience with this IRL. In my situation, the HQP server is directly connected to my A/V system and then to an NAA for my main hifi.  The A/V kit is often used as background music and this card would allow me to also readily use SDM conversion there as well. Heck, the horse power is just sitting there, why not? At present I am using the TV analog out to avoid the latency issues, hence the interest in something better. Do you have a PCIexpress DSD solution that you might recommend? I'd like it to accept PCM and DSD/SDM and switch itself.

 

VLC? Is there a way to stream from Tidal or Qobuz using VLC as well as Netflix? That might be an option if possible. I am using TV analog out(could switch to optical I suppose) because this is dumbed down for house guests to use. I don't want them mucking with the computer settings for all of the obvious reasons. ATM it just works, and there is value in that. LOL

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, 4est said:

Thanks for the detailed reply! I was hoping that someone had experience with this IRL. In my situation, the HQP server is directly connected to my A/V system and then to an NAA for my main hifi.  The A/V kit is often used as background music and this card would allow me to also readily use SDM conversion there as well. Heck, the horse power is just sitting there, why not? At present I am using the TV analog out to avoid the latency issues, hence the interest in something better. Do you have a PCIexpress DSD solution that you might recommend? I'd like it to accept PCM and DSD/SDM and switch itself.

 

My card has been sitting in the box for two months, waiting for me to have time to do something about it...

 

I guess this is as far as you can get at the moment. Although you likely get just as good latency figures with something like RME ADI-2.

 

6 minutes ago, 4est said:

VLC? Is there a way to stream from Tidal or Qobuz using VLC as well as Netflix? That might be an option if possible. I am using TV analog out(could switch to optical I suppose) because this is dumbed down for house guests to use. I don't want them mucking with the computer settings for all of the obvious reasons. ATM it just works, and there is value in that. LOL

 

Why would it need to be same application? You can stream Tidal/Qobuz through Roon+HQPlayer or something else. And Netflix through Netflix application. For TV I would assume HDMI 2, either through normal copper or one of the new optical extenders (for projector).

 

For similar use case I've been using newest NUC's with HDMI 2.0 connected to 4K TV and then external DAC. Video playback goes through whatever (from files through VLC) and audio playback through HQPlayer. For audio-only playback latency doesn't matter and for video use cases it works fine. If you want, you can also put audio with video through HDMI and then you don't really have sync problems in practice. And YouTube won't give you DSD audio anyway, so that's not an issue.

 

Challenge is if you want YouTube and DSD upsampling together. That can be done with HQPlayer for example, but then you need something like VLC to deal with latency synchronization between the two.

 

[rickca]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

At least Thesycon driver control panel (from system tray) lets you adjust buffer settings and thus latency. If the EVGA drivers are based on Thesycon drivers, maybe they have the option too? There are practically two parameters, size of the buffer and number of buffers. I guess with Thesycon driver this translates to buffer size and "safety".

Here's a screenshot for you.  It says ASIO not active because I wasn't running any audio apps at the time of the screenshot.