Hiccups with DSD

Apologies, i realise i came across as dismissive of your suggestion. That was not my intent @wizardofoz!
I just tried Jriver as playback engine, upsampling to DSD128 on the Mac Mini -11 that normally acts as Roon Endpoint.
The Chord displays the same kind of hickups as before, but both DACs now suffer from smaller pops and ticks… :confused:
And, what struck me immediately is why i have selected Roon!!! JRiver sounded awful, particularly on the Mojo, less so on the Black Dragon.
Nevertheless, going back to Roon really left my jaw at floorlevel! It’s all bits, right? Yeah, right… :wink:

Yeah, I’m not sure it will be the NAS. My spanking new 7i5 to sotm to 2qute is still hiccuping with any dsd conversion, with processor speed at x6 (for dsd 64) and X 3.3 (for dsd 128). I wouldn’t have thought these numbers are low enough to indicate core processor is lacking, although maybe someone can enlighten me! The chord sample rate light is not switching at all in my case.

I do not think it is his qnap any NAS is fast enough to stream 16bit 44Kh which Roon reads from the NAS before upsampling.
I usually use a RPI 2 as a RoonBridge and have my NUC in another room everything wired ethernet and have the occasional dropouts when steaming DSD64 .dsf files and upsampling to DSD64 or DSD128 to my Chord Hugo.

But today I moved my NUC (i5 gen 4 with ROCK) + music library on USB 3 drive to the same room and connected it directly to my Chord Hugo.

Guess what dropouts, so I think everything points to the Chord DAC being the problem.
So my advice is to forget about DSD and enjoy upsampling to PCM instead :slight_smile:

I think we can rule out processor speed and upsampling being the cause.
Chord DAC’s does not like DSD.

I also experience dropouts with DSD64 .dsf files.

Thanks Rune. PCM sounding great, very happy new member of Roon community!

Hey guys – we’re going to schedule some time in our QA lab to look at this, and we’ll let you know what we find.

If you haven’t already provided us this information, please make sure to let us know:

  • Do these dropouts happen with the exact same setup, but a different DAC?
  • Do these dropouts happen with software other than Roon?

Finally, if you haven’t already, please make sure we have the full details of your setup, as described here. Thanks all!

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My point was that the CORE is running on the NAS and this can be a reason that upsampling is not able to be used at higher rates…no NAS should have issues streaming the data to an adequately spec’d core machine.

Anyway as mentioned this looks to be an issue specific to Chord DSD processing as the common issue.

Same setup, different DAC - No dropouts/hiccups
Other software (JRiver locally on Mac Mini -11, reading from same NAS storage as Roon, software upsampling to DSD128, 2xDSD over DoP) - After increasing Software Buffer to 250ms no pops or clicks but a few dropouts or hickups. :confused:


Edit: After a few hours the hickups with JRiver and Mojo are back!

Back to Roon Bridge on the Mac Mini, fine until a few minutes into first song then a couple of dropouts with Mojo.
(Yes, i chose another Peter Gabriel album here… Same source format though)
When using the Audiobyte Black Dragon i have NEVER heard a dropout or any form of distorsion with Roon. Not this time either, at least three songs into the album, all goes very smoothly.

My topology if thats interesting:


PS. I can output DSD128 from my Pioneer XDP-100R into the Mojo without glitches, dropouts or such too. All from internal media though.

Thanks Mike! Great news the drop outs are quite annoying.

Do these dropouts happen with the exact same setup, but a different DAC?

I don’t have any non-chord DAC that can take DSD.

Do these dropouts happen with software other than Roon?
No if I use other software I have not had any drop-outs. But I have only tested using windows, on Linux/ROCK and Raspberry PI I have only used Roon (-bridge).

Hi Mike.

Running Core (Rock) on NUC 7i5BNK with music on Synology 212j NAS. These are attached via cat5 to Netgear unmanaged switch, to which is also attached the router (virgin superhub) and SOTM sms200. SOTM outputs via USB directly to Chord 2qute.
Dropouts/hiccups occur with any dsd upsampling (64 or 128) but never with pcm.

No other dsd dacs I can try.
No other software which upsamples to dsd I can try and no native dsd in my collection!

Thanks for looking into this.

You can find some native DSD test tracks here

Hi @mike,

Any updates on the progress on this issue.in your lab-tests. Have you, for example, been able to reproduce the drop-outs in-house?

If you wonder why the bump it is because I had a annoying number of drop-outs yesterday trying to listen to a set DSD-albums…

Thanks!

We have some theories that are working their way through our QA process, and we will reach out to Chord if needed once we’ve reached some conclusions.

This process never goes as fast as we might like, but we are working on this and will let everyone know as things progress.

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if you can… please also test s/pdif: Chord 2Qute is one of the very few DACs to also accept up to DSD 128 DoP on coaxial and… things are “slightly” worse than on USB, there :frowning:

(would really love to put back my Audiophilleo SE in the chain :wink: )

Thanks for the update, sounds like good news!.

These drop-outs are a bit like water torture, in the begining you don’t think they are so bad but after a while you are constantly waiting for the next “drop”. :wink:

+1 for help on this. Hiccups with DSD using 2Qute (USB) via NUC running ROCK. No issues upsampling max PCM.

Summary: I’ve had similar problems with Mac & QNAP NAS.

FWIW - In an earlier incarnation of my system, I had a QNAP HS-210 (admittedly a slow, but silent (with SSDs) NAS) connected via an Ethernet switch to my Mac Mini running Roon core, and from there via USB to my Oppo-105D. Trying to play DXD (352.8/24) didn’t work until I moved the files to the Mac’s local hard drive. Yeah, the data rate is low (by the standards of any computer built in this decade), but it didn’t work.

I’ve since moved the Mac upstairs (get spinning HDDs out of the listening room!), and am running DietPi on a RPi3 as a Roon endpoint (attached to the same Oppo). After DietPi upgraded its Linux kernel, the RPi’s known limitations of sharing bandwidth between its Ethernet and USB became a thing of the past. HQ Player, however, still glitched, suggesting that RoonBridge did more buffering. There is a new HQPlayer NAA in DietPi, but I’ve been lazy and haven’t tried it.

Good luck to all!

Hmm… Your summary confuses somewhat. I too have Mac and QNAP NAS in my evironment, but they are not causing any issues until i add Chord DAC to the equation!
Which is what this thread is all about imo…

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… plus I’m using a Qnap HS-251 and I’ve never seen Roon reading at more than 20-25/Mbs whilst Audirvana reads at at least the double when preloading tracks in RAM but the HS-251 has no issue with this

… any progress on this issue?

today, while listening to a playlist composed of mixed quality materials, had three or four hiccups and… yes: all on a DSD-64 track :frowning:

Audiophilleo back in the chain as, obviously, it’s not the culprit :slight_smile: