SamTheSham968

1. Sonore microRendu -- amazing how much this has improved the sound on my system. Easy setup, easy to use. Affordable. What more can you ask?!

Received this from Acoustic Sounds support (kudos to them for the quick reply): "The DSD download are transferred out of house, but are a completely different transfer. (A>D) conversion Mastered by Bernie Grundman 25 SEPT 2014" Sounds promising. Anyone heard these yet?

Yes, I have an inquiry out to them… Thanks.

Yes, and if anyone has any info on the provenance of the DSD files… would be very interested to know if these were converted from PCM (and if so, from a higher-res digital master than the 24/192 files available for retail download) or done as a separate analog tape to DSD transfer!

Thanks but no, no such box even exists under Device Settings. Not sure if they removed that with MC upgrade to 20 point something, or if it's just the way this particular DAC shows up in JRiver. I am using DoP, of course, but there is no checkbox to do so, just selecting bitstreaming ("Yes (DSD)") does the trick for DSD64 and 128.

Can someone who has gotten DSD256 to work with the iFi micro iDSD DAC and JRiver MC20 on the mac please walk me through the JRiver settings to get the DSD256 to stream to the DAC? I have JRiver set to bitstreaming and have no problem with DSD64 and DSD128 to show as playing with no DSP changes to the output. However, DSD256 keeps being converted to PCM 176.4K. I tried the JRiver output settings for sample rates greater than 384K to be "no change," but it keeps changing itself back to 176.4K whenever I play a DSD256 file. Thank you!

Matt, Thanks, will post at JRiver as well. Just for readers of this thread: I set the device settings software buffering to the maximum (500 ms), as recommended by iFi. I also tried maximum hardware buffering (as well as maximum power of two). This seems to have improved, maybe eliminated, the "pop" on startup from a stopped MC player. But the pop remains, loud and annoying, whenever a track is stopped (not paused), and whenever a track ends on segue to the next track, if and only if the next track is a change in file type (from DSD to PCM or vice versa).

I know this kind of question has been asked before, but I can't seem to find a clear answer reviewing this and other threads (here and over at J River): I am having terrible trouble with pops when playing DSD tracks (when switching DSD sample rates, or when full-stopping a playing track). There were minor clicks when I used the Schiit Loki DAC, but the pops with the iFI micro iDSD are much louder. The SQ is amazing, but… Anyone found any MC19 settings (for mac, thus no WASABI, no ASIO driver) that reduce or eliminate this problem? Many thanks.

Jesus, Fantastic! A GUI for these utilities is a godsend, thank you.

Took me a while to figure this one out. Make sure that the "album artist" field for each track is blank. Since the "artist" field will vary for each track, JRiver will then figure out that this is a multi-artist compilation and show it as one album. I also had a problem with albums by one artist, where some of the tracks were by that artist duetting with another artist. The issue was that I had labeled those tracks with the correct album artist, but left the album artist field blank for tracks where the artist was the single artist. In this case, JRiver requires that the album artist field be the same for all tracks, allowing it to see them all as part of the same album. Hope that helps.

I just want to say thank you to Ted for the great tutorial videos, and to all on this thread. Somehow I've just discovered this after months of using JRiver and JRemote; I love the apps but am still learning new, cool, and useful things about them. Cheers and happy thanksgiving to the US participants.

Push button on mine also is off-center, but that doesn't trouble me and the unit otherwise looks good. I have no other DSD DAC for comparison, but I very much like what I'm hearing! Incredible idea, to do DSD only and at this price, too.

Ted, thanks for the great review. What speakers do you use in your multichannel setup? Wasn't sure if the SP Techs listed in your profile are used for all channels.

Quick f/u to my USB flash drive experience with PS3 SACD ripping. Lexar Triton 16GB gives 2.6 MB/s rip speeds, has a blinking light to indicate operation (useful for those SACDs where the ripping software freezes the screen), and has really fast USB 3 speeds when transferring the files to my computer. Highly recommended.

Thanks, I'd missed that part of the "hang" posts. I saw posts about various USB flash drives and speed. I'm using a Kingston DataTraveler G3 I had lying around, and getting speeds just over 2 MB/s, which I gather is close to the max possible. Is there a consensus or recommendation about the fastest flash drive (for this application) that also has a status indicator light?