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Flac Attack

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  1. Somebody asks about two DACs on 11/25, you join the forum on 11/26 and post a fabulous review about one of them. Hmmmmmm.......
  2. You should be using WASAPI exclusive mode or ASIO in your music player software settings, so the Windows settings will be bypassed and the DAC will receive the same bitrate the source files contain. Most MP3s are 44.1/16 (when uncompressed), so if you're seeing 192/16 when playing MP3s it probably means your music player software or Windows is converting them to that and your DAC is not getting the clean unaltered audio stream.
  3. What's your operating system, and which software are you using to play audio through the Toslink cable? Your operating system and/or software may be mucking with the audio (such as changing the sampling rate or applying digital volume control) before it even reaches the cable.
  4. Modern USB DACs don't need driver installation to handle CD-quality bitrates (16-bit/44.1kHz) on Windows 7 or later. But if you want to exceed 24-bit/96kHz on Windows you will need to install drivers.
  5. Since you're ripping CD music which is 16-bit/44.1kHz and using Windows Media Player to play it, for best sound quality you should configure Windows to output the same audio bitrate. Then set the volume in Windows to 100% and use your audio equipment to change the volume rather than changing it in Windows. Bring up the Control Panel, then Sound, then select your DAC and click Properties. Go the to Advanced tab, and you should see something like the picture below. Choose 16-bit, 44100 Hz. If you eventually switch to one of the other music players I mentioned above, they have good algorithms for upsampling the CD-based music to higher-rate formats like 24-bit/192KHz or DSD, but with those players you should be using WASAPI exclusive or ASIO for audio output which bypasses the Windows settings, so having 16/44.1 in the Windows settings won't affect them.
  6. Try upsampling to 6.1MHz from 48kHz content, that may work better as it's the same integral ratio as going 44kHz to 5.6Mhz.
  7. USB audio in Windows is plug-and-play if you only need 24-bit/96kHz or less. Given what you've described, you probably don't care about higher bitrates than that anyway (people concerned with higher bitrates would use more sophisticated music player software, like Foobar2000 or HQplayer or JRiver, which are more complicated for beginners).
  8. If I buy a DAC in the $1000 price range it better have DXD capability! And shortly after getting a nice DAC, I figure I'll build a powerful dedicated system to put right beside the audio components. I've seen some barebones machines with modern Intel I7 or AMD 6000-series CPUs selling for under $400 ... I could get one of those and throw in some other spare hardware (optical drive, SSD etc.) to complete the build, and that should be able to handle anything audiowise that I throw at it. But I'll take it one step at a time. First let me get HQPlayer working with my existing hardware for upsampling to 24/192.
  9. After reading through large pieces of this thread over several days, I was able to answer my own question. It looks like my old 8-core 2.4Ghz system will be good enough for upsampling redbook to 24/192 and DSD128, provided that I don't use the most CPU-intensive settings of HQPlayer. Now I just have to decide on a DSD-capable DAC to make the most of HQPlayer (after getting things to work with 24/192). The TEAC UD-503 looks sweeeeeeet! I hope it's readily available in the US later this year when I'm ready to buy one.
  10. I'm interested in using HQPlayer for its ability to upsample 16-bit/44.1kHz files to 24-bit/192kHz (and in the future to DSD, once I get a DSD DAC). Before I install the trial version I want to make sure my hardware is up to the task, otherwise if it doesn't work as well as I hoped I won't know if the problem is the software itself or my inadequate hardware. The desktop PC on which I plan to run the main HQPlayer module has two old Xeon quad-core processors at 2.4GHz (model E5530 to be exact), and 16GB of RAM. It is currently running Linux Mint, but I plan to switch to Xubuntu or Ubunto GNOME soon. Then I have a 9-year-old PC to be used as an NAA, which has a dual-core AMD Athlon capable of outputting 24/192 via its HDMI video card (but not 24/88.1 or 24/176.4). That feeds an Onkyo 876 receiver which has 24/192 Burr-Brown DACs, which in turn feeds a pair of JBL LSR308. Is that hardware good enough to manage upsampling from 16/44.1 to 24/192 with HQPlayer, and eventually to DSD128? Although the main PC has 8 cores which is plenty of power in aggregate, the individual cores aren't very powerful given the age of the CPUs, and on skimming through this thread I've read that many cores may not help very much because some important tasks of HQPlayer aren't parallelized. How much network bandwidth is needed for a main+NAA configuration? I'm getting 40-50 Mbits/sec with powerline networking, but I can expend the effort to run gigabit ethernet wires if that's what it takes.
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