Hello again Erwin - Thanks for this all !


But there it goes wrong. At least to begin with.

XXHighEnd is that because of its ultra low footprint for the Sound Engine (you can hardly detect CPU cycles when it plays - even during upsampling to 705.6/768.

There is a reason that I don't allow streaming - this is because it won't sound good at all; you can read about that everywhere, although nobody guesses that this is abou that footprint again.

You have your good reasons to have that UPnP control point, but avoiding a (stupid) user interface for the work involved on my side with only negative (SQ !) result is really not worth the trouble.
Btw, you can use XXHighEnd's "control point" on your phone just as well - just set the proper scaling. Well workable, still not the nicest, and if you reall want to search for music and select it, a tablet still is the best (totally nothing wrong with that).

But whatever can be complained about the user interface, I wouldn't care less once I am used to it (and you are too) if it only brings the better SQ.

N.b.: To picture better what it all is about (about not streaming and such) : XXHighEnd is a pure memory player. So all music you play (e.g. an album) goes into memory first. Some people have applications to even pull the network cable during playback (then no control possible, unless on the renderer machine with a keyboard connect or other tweaks which tweaks are always very audible (SQ gets worse)), so everything matters.

Ever thought of how a USB cable (I don't know whether your have a configurable Lush^2 or ^3) so (more than) vastly can influence SQ ? officially it can't. But everything, really everything matters.

But I sincerely thank you for the contribution !
Peter

Hi again David,

Then you'd have a dysfunctional NOS1. Everything is possible, but it would be the very first time. The person you got it from should know about it, right ? 

Regards,
Peter

Hi Peter,

No those were set correctly and I checked them many times.

David

Right channel : You have the Driver settings wrong in the NOS Control Panel (should be Multi Channel 4.0) and/or you have Switch #5 in the wrong position (should be down).

Unfortunately, I was not able to get the driver working and switched to a backup RAM OS in order to get things running again.

As far as the pop and channel loss, I was able to try another NOS1 G3 and the pop when switching sample rates became tolerable but most importantly, the right channel did not go out. Everything now is working great with this other DAC.

I still haven't been able to test the DAC with the channel trouble on a different system to see how it behaves.

David

Hi Peter, no worries at all. There is no rush

Now, this will probably be a long post, so bear with me.

The UPnP i'm talking about is the 'network audio protocol' one, often referred to as UPnP AV. Here is a good read about how it works, at least from a user perspective.

Now, in my use case, i only use a Control Point, and a Media Renderer. The control point is where you select what to play, and when you hit the play button, it tells the renderer to play it. Like a remote if you will.

Control Point
This is my Android phone. On this phone i run an app called BubbleUPnP. There are other similar apps, like MConnect. This app lets you map music which is available on your network, but, and this is what this post is really about, also lets you log on to Tidal or Qobuz, so you can access that as well. The UI is not that of Tidal, but that of BubbleUPnP, but the functionality is almost the same. There is a search function, track radio (which i use a lot!) and so on. All your playlists in Tidal are available, and you can create playlists in BubbleUPnP just the same, and they show up in tidal too, so it works both ways so to say.
Now, when i decided what to listen to and press play, commands are sent to the UPnP renderer according to the 'AV Transport Service'.
actions like Play, Pause, Stop, Seek, Volume, Mute, etc are all part of this service.

Media Renderer
In my case the media renderer is the PC where the NOS1 is connected to. There is software which provides the UPnP functionality. I juse JRiver Media center.
When the renderer recieved the information what to play (file location,  volume etc..) it will load the file into memory (i believe), and play it. This works the same with Tidal. I have not looked into whether the file is downloaded first or it is only loaded into memory, but shortly after playing commences the network activity drops very low. At least up to 24bit 192khz is supported(i'm talking about the tidal bit depth), no idea what the limits are, i believe this is the highest available on Tidal?

JRiver provides the UPnP functionality and is also the player. It lets me use Kernel Streaming to the NOS1, and i let JRiver upsample everything to 352khz, there are 2 upsampling engines to choose from.

So, all in all, it feels basicly the same as a phone/tablet with a chromecast, etc.

Getting to the point
Now, what if, XXhighend would be the UPnP Renderer instead? Remote Desktop will no longer be necesary anymore, but UPnP AV services will come in its place offcourse, and i have no idea what that will mean. Also, i'm not 100% sure how the files are brought in, and if Unattended playing would still be possible that way. I would only bother if it is still posible to get 100% out of XXhighend so to say.
As for UI, the possiblity's are endless, but another instance of XXhighend could also be made to function as a Control Point. JRiver has the possiblity to function as a control point, media server, or the renderer

Will this way maybe be an easier way to use Tidal with XXhighend? Both for the user, and you. From the way i see it most of the programming is not seen by the user, requiring no UI related stuff in XXhighend. And maybe the continuous changes Tidal make, gives less of a headache, if at all?

looking forward to your thoughts about this

Erwin

David (I assume you are up and running again) - all you describe is perfectly normal. But your required attenuation is not (at all). So it is anticipated that this matches or else you have poor sound to begin with (you would loose too many bits).
It is also true that prior to the latest NOS Driver, things were different - the hardware was also different. So it matches the hardware.

The fact that your channel stopped working, tells us (me, but also you) that you push through a too large current. This is again thee attenuation thing, but merely : your power amp is too much over powered (you could say that your speakers are too sensitive, but this would be non-sensical).

I have never ever given the advice to use a pre-amp, but it would solve your problem. But don't do that ... try an other power amp instead.

Best regards,
Peter

PS: The faint sound from one channel came from even the DC Offset went "off" because of it. Or maybe I should say that you *always* need to check that (also please look what Ramesh wrote).

PPS: Ask (more) if needed.

Hello Tore,

Great thanks for that. But looking at the past communication with Tidal (which was ever so strange) it looked like they are on to me/us and just forbid me to develop anything with Tidal. For example, I asked what to do, how I can proceed / start all over, and it just was not possible.

So it seems a waste of time.

Also, I was on the good track (on) myself again, but the last thing I did was last December. That looked promising and I can use it myself, sort of.
It seems beating around the bush, but you have no idea how much time I wasted on this. Thus, whatever solution, it should be future proof.

Best regards for now,
Peter

Hi there Erwin !

With apologies for the late response, let's say that I finally digested this and now wonder how you do it, assumed you see possibilities for a. XXHighEnd (this seems clear ;-) and b. with the use of the NOS1.
I should add that 24/768 should be possible or else I think I "know" SQ will be more poor (because of aliasing).

So, let's have it ?


Kind regards,
Peter

Thank you, Rudolf !