EVGA Nu Audio

[the_bat]

Hi Miska

 

Which version of the firmware are you running?  I haven't been able to get it running on Linux.

 

Alan

[Miska]

2 hours ago, the_bat said:

Which version of the firmware are you running?  I haven't been able to get it running on Linux.

 

I can't remember, but what ever was latest at the time I installed it. (~ a week before I posted measurement results on this thread)

 

352.8/384k PCM and DSD256 works fine, which is enough for me since I run the card always at DSD256, nothing else.

 

[Triplefun]

see the review on audio science review by Amirm ...

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-evga-nu-audio-pc-card.9137/

 

The mention of Audio Note implies high-end audio performance which EVGA NU Audio fails to achieve. All is not lost though. The hardware implementation of DAC, headphone output and ADC are very good. You can do better at lower price on the DAC side. But it is impossible to get all three at this price using desktop hardware based on testing I have done so far.

The main issue is software drivers and hassles of PC. If you can get past that, I can recommend the EVGA NU Audio at its new price.

Something tells me this card is not selling well and hence the $60 discount. The PC market is very price sensitive. So if you want it, you may want to buy it now before it goes out of production.

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

I picked up one of these and I have to say it sounds amazing for the price.  I used this acquisition as an excuse to finally purchase an update to HQplayer 4.  I'm playing Redbook as DSD256 into a pair of DT1990s right out of the headphone jack on the card.  Might be the best $150 I ever spent for audio.

[EVGA_Lee]

On 11/7/2019 at 12:19 PM, Triplefun said:

see the review on audio science review by Amirm ...

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-evga-nu-audio-pc-card.9137/

 

The mention of Audio Note implies high-end audio performance which EVGA NU Audio fails to achieve. All is not lost though. The hardware implementation of DAC, headphone output and ADC are very good. You can do better at lower price on the DAC side. But it is impossible to get all three at this price using desktop hardware based on testing I have done so far.

The main issue is software drivers and hassles of PC. If you can get past that, I can recommend the EVGA NU Audio at its new price.

Something tells me this card is not selling well and hence the $60 discount. The PC market is very price sensitive. So if you want it, you may want to buy it now before it goes out of production.

 

 

I can confirm that there are no plans to end production of the NU Audio Card at this time. 

[Miska]

P.S. I have not noticed price changes in the EU store...

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

6 minutes ago, Miska said:

P.S. I have not noticed price changes in the EU store...

 

 

I bought it from Amazon last week for $149.99.  Today it's $179.99.

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

Some feedback on hardware "issues":

 

The EVGA Nu Audio GUI lets you adjust not only volume, but sample rate and EQ.  Beware fiddling with EQ when sending DSD to this device.  First of all, the EQ is silently disabled when the card is receiving DSD (my previous experience with HQPlayer and DSD should have been enough to persuade me leave the EQ alone :).  Secondly, when the stream stops (in this case using HQPlayer), the card disables itself.  Neither HQPlayer nor the EVGA Nu Audio app can communicate with the card at this point and a reboot is required to move on.  After a reboot, the card works but the symptom just described (works first time, but when stream stops, card becomes unresponsive) is back again.  Even when the EQ section was set to be flat.  There is no (obvious to me) way to disable EQ in the GUI.

 

The corrective action I found was to exit the EVGA app, hunt around for the config file (I think %APPDATA%\LocalLow\EVGA\user.config) and delete it, then reboot and all is well.  If you're planing to use HQPlayer, never fiddle with the EQ. 🙂

[EVGA_Lee]

25 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

Some feedback on hardware "issues":

 

The EVGA Nu Audio GUI lets you adjust not only volume, but sample rate and EQ.  Beware fiddling with EQ when sending DSD to this device.  First of all, the EQ is silently disabled when the card is receiving DSD (my previous experience with HQPlayer and DSD should have been enough to persuade me leave the EQ alone :).  Secondly, when the stream stops (in this case using HQPlayer), the card disables itself.  Neither HQPlayer nor the EVGA Nu Audio app can communicate with the card at this point and a reboot is required to move on.  After a reboot, the card works but the symptom just described (works first time, but when stream stops, card becomes unresponsive) is back again.  Even when the EQ section was set to be flat.  There is no (obvious to me) way to disable EQ in the GUI.

 

The corrective action I found was to exit the EVGA app, hunt around for the config file (I think %APPDATA%\LocalLow\EVGA\user.config) and delete it, then reboot and all is well.  If you're planing to use HQPlayer, never fiddle with the EQ. 🙂

Thanks for the feedback.  We're actively working on this to tweak the firmware for this issue right now.  Initial testing looks good, so it just needs to finish full testing.  We have a new driver planned for Friday, but I'm not sure if this update will make it.

[EVGA_Lee]

@Samuel T Cogley One other thing to note is that we have +(positive) EQ mostly disabled if the master volume is set to 100% to avoid overvolume situations.  If you haven't tried, drop the master volume a few % (~97% or ~95%) and see if the EQ issues still occur.  If so, then our next driver should help with the issue.

[Miska]

4 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

Some feedback on hardware "issues":

 

The EVGA Nu Audio GUI lets you adjust not only volume, but sample rate and EQ.  Beware fiddling with EQ when sending DSD to this device.  First of all, the EQ is silently disabled when the card is receiving DSD (my previous experience with HQPlayer and DSD should have been enough to persuade me leave the EQ alone :).  Secondly, when the stream stops (in this case using HQPlayer), the card disables itself.  Neither HQPlayer nor the EVGA Nu Audio app can communicate with the card at this point and a reboot is required to move on.  After a reboot, the card works but the symptom just described (works first time, but when stream stops, card becomes unresponsive) is back again.  Even when the EQ section was set to be flat.  There is no (obvious to me) way to disable EQ in the GUI.

 

The corrective action I found was to exit the EVGA app, hunt around for the config file (I think %APPDATA%\LocalLow\EVGA\user.config) and delete it, then reboot and all is well.  If you're planing to use HQPlayer, never fiddle with the EQ. 🙂

 

If you use the card under Linux, you don't need to worry about EQ, since there's no EQ...

 

With PCM inputs, the DAC chip volume control is there, but it can be just set to 0 dBFS and left there.

 

[EVGA_Lee]

@Samuel T Cogley Looks like the fix made it in our driver update.  Please let me know how it works - Link

[Samuel T Cogley]

40 minutes ago, EVGA_Lee said:

@Samuel T Cogley Looks like the fix made it in our driver update.  Please let me know how it works - Link

 

Thanks so much!!!!

 

I'll have a look over the weekend.

 

[Miska]

I notice there's also familiar sounding firmware crash issue fixed. Sounds like some exercise of moving the card between Windows and Linux machines coming...

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

30 minutes ago, Miska said:

I notice there's also familiar sounding firmware crash issue fixed. Sounds like some exercise of moving the card between Windows and Linux machines coming...

 

 

I'd be curious to read your results.

[rickca]

Doh!  EVGA just announced Nu Audio Pro.

https://www.evga.com/articles/01376/evga-nu-audio-pro/

[EVGA_Lee]

7 minutes ago, rickca said:

Doh!  EVGA just announced Nu Audio Pro.

https://www.evga.com/articles/01376/evga-nu-audio-pro/

Yes, yes we did.

 

As I noted in another thread, we will continue to sell the original NU Audio Card along with the newer Pro card.  They have different audio signatures to my ear, and I can certainly see that some might prefer the more analytical profile of the original card, comparatively. After all, we each have our own preferences.

 

More to the point, that also means that we are not ending support for the original NU Audio Card, either. 

[Rugby]

How about an upgrade path like for the video cards.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just wanted to update the thread with my experiences with the new firmware/driver:

 

Overall, much better.  No more card crashes after using HQPlayer.  The sound quality seems a smidgen better, but that might be confirmation bias on my part.

 

I do have a specific issue with in-game audio, but the circumstances are so specific to a particular game that I'm going to ignore it.  Thanks EVGA!

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

I take back what I said re: no more card crashes

 

I can consistently make the card crash by trying different noise shapers in HQPlayer.

 

• play a track in HQPlayer that outputs DSD
• stop playback
• change the noise shaper
• play.... crash

I still had fun trying some of the new "EC" shapers, though I'm now of the opinion that the quality of sound out of this card can only be improved so much.  Still a great value for $150 and makes game audio come alive!

[Miska]

Interesting, for me it is only crashing (with the previous firmware) when switching to lower PCM rates. If I stick to 352.8/384/DSD256 on Linux, I have not experienced any crashes. Going from DSD256 to 44.1/32 PCM locks up the card hard and it needs to be powered down before it recovers.

 

Since updating the firmware is so much trouble (taking computer out of the rack, taking the card out, installing it in a windows machine, installing drivers, etc), I have not yet updated the firmware to latest version. So I don't know yet if it fixes this behavior.

 

[Musistring]

Hi there,

 

today my card came and I´m looking forward to test my new sound device, btw. it´s going to replace my DMX USB 6 Fire 24/192 audio card. I looked for the latest driver right away, but there´re only updated Win 10 drivers. Is there no Win 8/8.1 support anymore?

 

My second question: is it possible to run this card properly with Linux? Is there a manual how to install this device correctly under Linux?

 

Best regards

 

[rickca]

@Samuel T Cogley and @Miska what do you mean by crashing/lock up?

 

I tried playing some DSD256 output (converted from PCM) but after stopping playback mid-track, the device just disappears and I have to reboot.  Is this what you mean?  I don't see anything in event manager to indicate the driver crashed.

 

I'm using the latest firmware and driver.  It sure seems like this card has not been rigorously tested with DSD using ASIO.  I guess I will need to open a ticket with EVGA.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

@Samuel T Cogley and @Miska what do you mean by crashing/lock up?

 

I tried playing some DSD256 output (converted from PCM) but after stopping playback mid-track, the device just disappears and I have to reboot.  Is this what you mean?  I don't see anything in event manager to indicate the driver crashed.

 

I'm using the latest firmware and driver.  It sure seems like this card has not been rigorously tested with DSD using ASIO.  I guess I will need to open a ticket with EVGA.

 

Device disappears probably due to firmware crash. On Linux it looks like it stops responding.

 

I use it primarily on Linux, on Windows I've been just updating firmware.

 

It could be that the Windows driver is trying to switch it back to the default Windows audio format after stopping DSD256 playback, which seems to trigger firmware crash on Linux. On Linux, if I keep sticking to 352.8/384k PCM and DSD256, I'm not experiencing crashes. Only when switching between these high rate modes and the lower ones. But on Linux the driver doesn't attempt to change the output format unless specifically asked to. So there are no switches back to lower PCM rate modes unless specifically asked to.

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

On 11/29/2019 at 2:59 PM, rickca said:

@Samuel T Cogley and @Miska what do you mean by crashing/lock up?

 

I tried playing some DSD256 output (converted from PCM) but after stopping playback mid-track, the device just disappears and I have to reboot.  Is this what you mean?  I don't see anything in event manager to indicate the driver crashed.

 

I'm using the latest firmware and driver.  It sure seems like this card has not been rigorously tested with DSD using ASIO.  I guess I will need to open a ticket with EVGA.

 

Yes, "device disappears" is what I'm calling a card crash.