It's not that I want to use WASAPI, but rather that I'd like to use Roon in my office. And in order to do this, I have to get HQP working with the NOS1a.

But you're right, no reason not to use 10586.0 for this purpose, which is exactly what I'll do. So a solution of sorts

Mani.

Peter, I just loaded the iFi driver and connected the iFi Nano DAC to the Mach II (W10-14393), and:

1. HQP/WASAPI works perfectly
2. XX/WASAPI works perfectly

So that leaves the NOS1a driver at fault, no?

Mani.

Yep, XX on Mach II and NOS1a (#5 up).

Everything in Normal OS (of course  )

Mani.

I couldn't be bothered to install Foobar, but I did try selecting the WDM device in XX. No matter what I tried, I kept getting the 'Unsupported Format' error.

So I suppose we can assume that HQP in W10-14393 is simply not going to work correctly. Having said this, HQP was working correctly with the Chord 2Qute I had here for a while. But IIRC, I only used ASIO, and not WASAPI - can't be sure though.

This has put a bummer on my desire to replace the microRendu in my office with a W10-14393 audio PC.

Mani.

Aha...

Just reading your next post now...

Mani.

[Highlight mine]

OK, so when USB errors occur, they are generally about noise. No problem.

But USB noise is still there even when there are no USB errors, right? And this noise can still affect the sound of the DAC, no? I mean, it is possible to change SFS from 1 to 120 and get zero USB errors in both cases, and yet still hear a change in sound from the DAC's analogue output between the two SFS settings, correct? Or are you saying that this change in sound must be accompanied by different USB error rates, as this is the only mechanism that can be at play here?

Mani.

Yeah sorry, my earlier post was a bit cryptic. What I actually did was set up two different chains:

1. Mach II -> USB-to-spdif -> Tascam spdif input
2. Mach II -> USB-to-spdif -> DAC spdif input -> DAC analogue output -> ADC analogue input -> ADC spdif output -> Tascam spdif input

In my earlier post, I referred to chain 1 as 'digital' and chain 2 as 'analogue'. What I found was that chain 1 seemed immune to SFS changes in XX. Chain 2 reacted to SFS changes in XX. And I was just trying to understand why this might be the case.

Does this now make sense?

Mani.

Hi [name], I've been using HQP with the NOS1a on and off for a number of years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The last time it was working perfectly for me was back in October. I was using the closed loop filter and NS5 in HQP and upsampling to 705.6 before feeding to the NOS1a.

Whenever it hasn't worked correctly, I've never really pursued things with Peter or Jussi because XXHE still sounds substantially better than HQP... to my ears. But I'm very keen to get this all sorted now because I'd like to use the NOS1a with Roon in my office, and the only way I'm going to achieve this is to use Roon->HQP.

It'll be a while before I can get my new office audio PC built, and I won't be able to try things until then. Meanwhile, have you tried contacting Jussi to see if he can help?

Mani.

Thanks Peter. I wasn't really talking about errors per se, but rather noise getting through to the DAC chips. I mean, this is the only mechanism through which sound can be affected, right?

I did a little test a few weeks ago. I recorded 4 takes of the same track:
1. (digital) USB-to-spdif -> Tascam with SFS=1
2. (digital) USB-to-spdif -> Tascam with SFS=120
3. (analogue) USB-to-spdif -> DAC -> Tascam with SFS=1
4. (analogue) USB-to-spdif -> DAC -> Tascam with SFS=120

1 and 2 sound identical to each other. 3 and 4 sound different to each other.

This just got me thinking about USB noise in general. Unfortunately, my USB-to-spdif converter is only 16/44.1 capable, so I couldn't play around with different data rates to see what difference this makes. I think there'd actually be too many variables to make any conclusions anyway (e.g. the DAC I used would no doubt process different rates differently).

Thankfully, it looks like 'we' are finally getting on top of USB audio finally.

Mani.

A quick question on USB noise...

Would the noise increase with increasing data rate?

What I mean is, would we expect the USB noise getting through to the DAC to be lower when playing a file at its native 1411200 bps (16/44.1) vs. 45158400 bps (upsampled to 32/705.6)? Or is a 32x data rate irrelevant when it comes to the amount of USB noise getting through to the DAC?

Mani.

Thanks Peter - that was really helpful and it's all working now. What I actually did was simply copy the 2.xx and XXData folders from the Mach II RAM-OS onto the RAM-OS HDD of my other audio PC.

Thanks again.

Mani.

Yep, nothing more to do tonight. But just to say that I deleted everything and created two separate folders, one for 2.07 and one for 2.06a...

Mani.

I'm using 14393 exclusively.

What I meant with the plural is that neither 2.06a or 2.07 now works. I tried 2.06a just before I loaded 2.07, and it worked perfectly. I did this specifically because I hadn't used this RAM-OS HDD for quite a while and just wanted to make sure everything was OK. So 2.06a used to work fine.

After launching 2.07 and getting the error messages, I thought I'd just try 2.06a. But it wouldn't start at all. I then messed around with UAC settings and managed to get both 2.06a and 2.07 to actually launch, but only up to the point of getting the error messages (attached in earlier post) - the error messages are identical for both 2.06a and 2.07.

I strongly suspect this has something to do with UAC.

Mani.

I decided to update my stand-alone RAM-OS HDD (not the one that came with the Mach II, but the one I purchased independently).

The RAM-OS HDD already had 2.06a installed, which was working perfectly. I installed the 2.07-over-2.06a files into the 2.xx folder. I tried starting 2.07 and got the first message attached below. I also got the second message at some point - I can't remember exactly when because I've tried so many other things since then that it's all become a bit of a blur.

Right now, no XX versions will work. As soon as I start them, I get the second message immediately.

Any ideas?

Mani.

OK Peter, here are a couple of really simple questions (for my simple mind!):

1. If an MQA file has been derived from a digital 24/192 master, can it sound even better than the master on replay?

2. Apart from DSD, is there such a thing as a non-ringing ADC?

Mani.