Allow me to invoke an old saying… You don’t ever want to see how the sausage is made.
We discovered a very rare glitch in the DAC software late in the verification process and have been working to correct it. It’s so rare that not only is it hard to replicate, but we’ve only been able to observe the behavior consistently on one unit… mine. To make matters worse it takes a good 12 hours of constant playback to be confident that it’s not going to occur.
Our developers were able to locate the bug that caused the problem and we are now in the process of final testing and clean-up.
Trust me, if you were to experience this glitch first hand you’d be more than than happy to wait a little longer
This is why we spend so much time on verification. Some issues don’t readily present themselves and it takes a lot of time to go through all of the operational permutations to try and exercise all of the code.
As of yet I don’t have a timing update, but no one wants to see this update ship more than me. I should have a clearer picture next week and will try to update here when I know more.
I wouldn’t be too concerned. This is why we spend so much time on testing. To give you an idea, I’ve been running some version of this update since March and it’s been absolutely solid over hundreds of hours of playback. This was truly a corner case that no one would likely encounter in real life, but it was an issue nonetheless and needed to be corrected.
Absolutely. It’s just a matter of running the update from the old version. I don’t anticipate this being needed, though.
I’ll be in the UK next week and working with the engineering team on the final details. I’ll know more about timing as the week progresses.
It shouldn’t be as the update is coming as soon as verification is complete.
The verification process takes a long time between the automated testing that’s done and the extremely repetitive manual testing that’s done. Due to the number of possible settings and the test suite that gets run on each one the Upsampler takes about three weeks to go through engineering verification. If a problem is found then in many cases the process has to start over.
In this case the fix for the glitch mentioned above involved some changes to the DAC and upsampler. After analyzing the changes we elected to put both through the verification process again. The DAC is almost through engineering verification, but our production and support people still need some time to finish their tasks. The upsampler started this week and assuming no issues then it should emerge toward the end of the month.
If you’re considering Vivaldi then now is the time. We currently have a very full order backlog and lead times on new units have stretched a bit from our typical times. My guess is that a unit ordered today would either ship with the MQA code or have the code ready on the day of installation.
Thank you for the update and clarification. I have been waiting to see the MQA implementation via the ethernet port on the Upsampler. This would be my preferred option over using the Bridge.
Point of clarification please. This update for Vivaldi will be firmware only correct? No need for hardware modifications as with the 2.0 for the Upsampler
Functionally the MQA implementation is very similar to the bridge but we’ve refined the software considerably since then. Better overall performance and stability as well as better integration with Roon. These updates will make their way to all of the products in the coming months.
The real benefit of the upsampler is what it does with non-MQA content. The Bridge is excellent, but when compared to the Upsampler (with all other things being equal) the Upsampler has a clear edge. Add onto that all of the integration between the Upsampler and DAC (app control of DAC settings and functions) and the upsampler is a clear winner.
Correct. Hardware updates are rare for us as we can accomplish most things in software. The move from the Upsampler to the Upsampler Plus (2.0) required a hardware change as the new streaming platform required different hardware.
