hearingaide

...well, if you have ultrasonic hearing like a bat, that might be relevant, but for humans 44khz is more than sufficient to meet nyquist frequency requirements for human hearing, and anything above that just creates problems that may create audible artifacts to humans without expensive and complex processing to eliminate those artifacts (in other words, lots of downside, no upside). If you've got peer-reviewed published research to refute what is known about human hearing and signal analysis, the world awaits your detailed results.

I am confused by Benchmark's description of what exactly they are doing to deal with intersample overs and why they think their approach is so groundbreaking. A detailed technical description devoid of marketing babble would be appreciated. A simple way for any DAC to minimize the occurrence of intersample overs is to simply lower the gain on the input signal, but at the cost of signal to noise ratio as a result of the gain reduction. Dealing with intersample overs is essentially "DAC 101", and methods have existed and been implemented for well over a decade to dynamically lower signal gain only when intersample overs are predicted so s/n reduction only occurs just before and after any intersample overs, so I can't determine if Benchmark found a novel way to make basic good DAC design sound innovative with new clever words, or if they are doing something never before discovered or implemented in DAC design.

If you are not specifically planning for this already, please take special care that the various DC power sinks and sources do not generate low level of noise as loads change with DC to DC converters. Not an uncommon occurrence to have such noise, but it seems to become a noticeable problem with very low noise environments. An example is being discussed here: Noise from "silent" PC - Hydrogenaudio Forums The problem seems subtle enough that just good component selection will not reliably prevent it - it will also take a fair amount of in situ observation with the actual components to ensure this doesn't raise its head.

Since you can't abide by it, what did things did you try and JRMC suggest when you followed up with them in detail on this? Even a cursory review of JRiver forums show no one else has ever reported such regular and frequent crashes for any version for unspecified reasons, much less across many versions.

For those of us who want to stream FLAC gaplessly from a large local NAS library, the options are few, especially at an affordable price point. The first media box/streamer that uses Sigma Design's 8910/8911 SoC, Popcorn Hour's A-400, is in customer beta testing now, shipping in November supposedly at $249 in the U.S. It looks most useful as a DLNA/upnp renderer for NAS/JRMC setups, provided it actually does what it claims to do. It would be great to see it reviewed here to evaluate its audio quality, performance, and ease of use. I expect other sites and publications to review this product because of the hype around the 8910/8911, but I don't expect any of them to focus on evaluating its lossless codec, gapless, bit transparent streaming capabilities (or lack thereof). Thanks for considering this! Edit - I have absolutely no financial or other ties to PCH, Sigma, or any other company in this space. I'm just a lover of high quality music who hates to make tradeoffs in quality, convenience and affordability - I want it all!

Great information. Any word from Banjo if they are planning on making a version for Android?

hmm....The Squeezebox Touch will be essentially useless to many current users if the LMS option is disabled or not maintained. Besides making poor business sense for Logitech to cripple a current product without a credible replacement, I would expect a vibrant market to develop where third parties continue to support and enhance LMS for users. I'm thinking something like what emerged for VAX/VMS after Compaq acquired DEC. After all, music IS mission-critical...

It's not an ad-hoc connection as currently defined. This is much more likely a response to WiFi Direct and DLNA's adoption of it: WiFi Direct and DLNA get friendly, make streaming media a little bit easier -- Engadget With the name, Apple didn't even try to hide what they are emulatiing/copying/infringing. I see rounded corners on Apple's logo for AirPlay in the Telegraph article. I sense another intellectual property lawsuit...

Wow! Thanks very much for taking the time to not only create this subforum, but pulling in relevant past threads - that was obviously very tedious to do. Looking forward to using this to find a bitperfect gapless wireless DLNA streamer with a competent built-in DAC that can handle many codecs, sample rates and bit depths automatically without lossy transcoding. Eventually. (Darn you Sigma for being slow with your 8910 chip).

I appreciate that you don't want to irritate any vendor and you live in the same town as the JRiver owner. But if JRiver was so capable, then how is it that a small company like JPlay can find so many claimed improvements to audio quality? I've read what JRiver and JPlay say about each other and their claims in how they work together and the need for the other. The claims are so far apart that "listener preference" doesn't explain the difference - one or the other isn't telling the truth even if each thinks they are. I choose to believe JPlay - why create something like JPlay that is rather difficult to use and so expensive if it isn't worth it? I'm not an engineer so I can't evaluate the technical details on anything either company states, so I have to go with my gut that companies won't create useless products and try to trick people into buying them.

If you're having problems with JPlay and JRiver, I'd dump JRiver and switch to a more compatible application. JPlay does all the important stuff - apps like JRiver are just glorified skins.

I have no delay or dropouts in using JRMC or any other audio or video player I've tried (foobar2000, WMP). I have a basic Windows 7 laptop connected via a cheap 802.11n router via wireless, which is connected via cat5 to a WD TV Live (gen3) using DLNA/upnp (WD TV Live is just used as a renderer). I use HDMI out from WD TV Live to my receiver. I previously used a NAS for streaming with the same performance but that was overkill for my setup so I gave it to a family member who had more need of it than me. My experience show me that any latency or dropout issues are a function of network configuration, avoiding player setting mistakes, and following sound wiring practices, as opposed to different players being inherently better or worse for network playback. In other words, any time I've had an issue with latency or dropouts, I had the issue with all players and found the problem elsewhere, or I found a problem with a player setting. Since we can probably eliminate the possibility that JRMC and other players were uniquely coded for my two setups, I suggest you check all your software settings and check for connectivity issues with wiring. If you think you have a wiring issue, you might have a poor connection that passes continuity checks but has high resistance. HDMI and USB connections are difficult to keep secure because std connections don't snap in or screw down in any way. Making sure signal wiring is routed in parallel with or near power cables can't hurt either. Good luck!

If you're experiencing audible "delays" using JRMC with a NAS, it's far more likely that you have improper settings or intermittent network connection issues, as opposed to an inherent limitation of JRMC working with NAS or any other storage medium. If you think you eliminated those as sources of any delays, did you report this as a bug or problem to JRiver? What did they say?

Sorry if this has been discussed before and I missed it, but I think it would be valuable and helpful to have a subforum on networking, streaming, and the distribution of music information. This seems to be an area of increasing importance as music options increase from the cloud and we try to figure out how to play it when and where we want. I find the considerations and limitations of DLNA, upnp, and proprietary networking methods difficult at times to understand, and staying on top of the many developments is both exciting and frustrating. Most of what I find on this topic on the web seems to have a non-audiophile audience in mind, so my specific concerns of data dropouts, bandwidth limits, bit-perfect transmission, resampling constraints, etc are rarely addressed. This area is typically my "weakest link" of knowledge, and I am acutely aware that all my hard work in building a system can be wasted by a poor choice in this area. Anyone else, and especially Chris, have any interest and see value in such a subforum at this time? Any thoughts or ideas on how to tweak this idea is appreciated.

As the writer notes, jitter is just one piece of the puzzle in audio quality, but comparing the chart below to the two charts in a few posts before this, I suspect the jitter is inaudible in both generations: