HQ Player white noise issue

[NTR (Noah Rogoff)]

Roon Core Machine

|Model Name:|Mac mini|
| Processor Name:|Dual-Core Intel Core i5|
| Processor Speed:|2.8 GHz|
Memory: 16 GB

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Ethernet, no VPN

Connected Audio Devices

iFi Zen Stream USB to Chord Hugo TT 2 via HQ Player

Number of Tracks in Library

14,000 tracks

Description of Issue

I am having the issue where the DAC apparently fails to lock and white noise is output, sometimes overlaid on the audio.

I was reading some documentation of this issue back from 2020 on another forum but couldn’t determine if there is a known solution at this point. Would someone point me in the right direction, please?

To elaborate, once the stream/lock is established, music can play for many hours without issue. When trying to establish the initial stream/lock, restarting HQ Player sometimes solves it but sometimes the problem is stubborn and will go away only after restarting each audio component (Roon Remote, iFi, Hugo TT 2).

When the problem occurs, I have noticed that the Hugo display sometimes shows “DSD” although HQ Player is set up (I believe) only to output PCM.

While this is annoying, it is also a safety issue as the white noise is usually at a very high volume, full signal I assume.

Thanks for any guidance.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

@NTR

While this is annoying, it is also a safety issue as the white noise is usually at a very high volume, full signal I assume

It’s a classic issue with Chord DACs with their USB input

Solution seems to get the USB to dual coax device by Audiowise.

I’ve seen users have reported this works well

SRC•DX USB to Dual-Coax Bridge

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

Using fixed 705.6k output rate may reduce occurrences of the issue. But best fix is to replace the USB interface with an external one as suggested by @dabassgoesboomboom