From digital domain data point of view, it makes difference. Whether that is audible, you can decide yourself.
However, track change shouldn’t cause any additional noises either.
Sounds like typical Chord DAC behavior. With Mojo I tend to get blast of white noise at some point, even if I play just 44.1/16 content from Spotify using iPhone and camera connection kit.
But I think you are on the edge of what your NAA can reliably do from hardware point of view. And when it flips over you get such behavior. RasPi4 should be better on that respect, compared to earlier RasPi models.
I ended up just going back to internal filter after I tried feeding with an optical cable with no upsampling.
I noticed when I used HQPlayer I wasn’t enjoying the vocals as much. Once I went back to optical everything sounded right. Perhaps is has to do RF noise or something but usb to Chord Hugo 2 just doesn’t sound as good even with HQPlayer. And no, I didn’t use HQPlayer with optical since that wouldn’t bypass internal since tops out at 192k.
Your are correct. RF noise is severely detrimental with USB vs optical. Even the proximity of your upsampling PC undermines the maximum SQ from your Hugo2. I have isolation solutions that are pretty near optimal (OPTO-DX + RF-STOP) for eliminating RF. My i5NUC to my Hugo2 via HQP is endgame.
At least I’m not getting such on Mojo (or other DACs) and my Linux workstation, so it could be related to the particular kernel here. Or the hardware. Or something else…
I was under the impression that I need to set the bits as high as the DAC can handle linearly and that, somehow, the shaper needs some bits available. I guess I misunderstood. Thank you for the clarification.
OK! I only own Mojo so I don’t have as much experience with the other models. But as far as I know they share mostly same USB implementation and I suspect that’s where the problem originates. Because for example cables make so much difference how frequently it occurs.
In the meantime I tried playing PCM768 through roon upsampling (not using hqplayer). Everything plays fine (no static). It’s the same hardware, the same kernel, the same music so the problem is somehow related to the way HQPLayer is handling the stream. Could you please look into this matter?
Really do respect what you do with your hard work and software, but it’s not that cool to make comments like this. I’ve owned the original Hugo since launch and a Dave for three years and never had any issues what so ever.
Which OS and HQPlayer version is this? So far I can play 768/32 for example to RME ADI-2 Pro and Holo Audio Spring 2 without problems. Also 1535/32 to Holo Spring 2 works fine here.
On Mojo too, until it eventually gives blast of white noise at full volume, just like when connected to iPhone using Camera Connection Kit and playing from Spotify (no Roon, HQPlayer or software upsampling involved).
