Stellar GAIN DAC / ROCK - DAC Standby / Track Skips

Hi All,

I recently installed a SGD attached to my NUC7i5BNH via USB (StraightWire USB / AQ Jitterbug). All at latest builds.

During short term listening everything seems great, sounds excellent. Wanting to speed up break-in, I have a 7 hour playlist on repeat (have also tried WXPN radio stream).

Few hours in the SGD goes into standby, leaving ROON just skipping from one song to the next, plays maybe 1 second, then skips on).

Turning the unit back on from standby (just blue PS Audio logo lit), display comes up as normal but no change in Roon (skipping) and no sound. Off and on from remote, no change. Turn SGD off at main switch on rear, wait 30 seconds and turn back on and ROON transport stops skipping and is in Pause state as if nothing happened. You can press play and listen away.

Seems strange, and connected to long play times, and I can’t find any reference to a standby mode on the web?

Am I unlucky enough to have a duff SGD? Or some kind of incompatibility? If use my little AQ Dragonfly in place of the SGD with everything else being equal, no problems.

Today I’m gonna swap in my MacBook and Audirvana, leave the rest of the setup the same and see what goes!

Cheers

Sean

Did you end up replacing the Stellar? I’m debating maybe getting one myself, so I was searching and found this old thread…

No, but the SGD also worked flawlessly with the Mac setup…so seemed to be something between the ROCK and SGD specifically via any USB connection.

Listening to one of the Paul McGowan podcasts I picked up that they used some kind of USB regeneration at PSAudio to clean up the connx between their ‘computer’ and DAC’s.

I had an UpTone regen on my upstairs system, installing that between the Rock and SGD has fixed it, no issues at all after I installed it. In fact, even if you didn’t have issues, I’d thoroughly recommend it -

5 months in I couldn’t be happier, SQ is fabulous, musicality up there with the best.

Cheers

Good to know, thanks! I’m eyeing the Stellar to go with the new Elac Argos (powered speakers) when they come out in the fall. PS’s seems pretty well regarded, I’m very tempted to get that thing…

Just as a point of reference: I got the SGD (together with the Stellar S300 amp) today. So far, no issues at all playing music through the USB input from a Raspberry Pi 3B+. Works great and sounds awesome!

Glad your enjoying it Robert, I see you bought the amp too, decided against an active solution for now?

Thanks! It’s a bit of a weird journey, but this is how got here: I got the PS Audio Sprout 100 for my library and figured I’d try it in my living room with the floor standers just to see if it would work – and it was amazing! The little Sprout drove them amazingly well. So then I started to think about the SGD+S300 combo and since I had some stuff to trade in, it was basically an offer I couldn’t refuse. The S300 is pretty awesome too, barely even gets warm after hours of playing music. I’m fully bought into Class D at this point, way more efficient and tons of power through the entire range.