Perocat

I wrote to exaSound asking them if the DAC needs the USB power to playback and this is the answer. The 5 Volt from the USB cable are required for USB playback. So it is impossible to use the corning cable with the exaSound DAC without powering it at the other end (something like câble adaptateur usb-b pour alimentation externe usb-a Am I missing something? ednaz told some posts above he could use the Corning cable with the exaSound without powering it externally... Thank you

This morning I was able to play flawless from 9am to 1pm. After that playback stopped and restarting the computer doesn't solve the problem. The DAC is not recognized by Windows, nor the Corning hub displays on device manager.

This morning I was able to play flawless from 9am to 1pm. After that playback stopped and restarting the computer doesn't solve the problem. The DAC is not recognized by Windows, nor the Corning hub displays on device manager.

In addition: - on laptop same story but after more time (5/6 hours) - I connected the corning cable to my powered USB hub I use for other devices and it was working 50% of the time with continuos connection/disconnection (I was listening to the sounds Windows plays when you connect or disconnect a device). This made me think that the problem is not the power but something else, maybe the cable itself? Thank you

Yesterday I got the USB Optical Corning cable. I started immediately to test it and got following results: - on desktop only 2 of the 8 USB3.0 recognise the DAC with the Corning cable. On those 2 ports flawless playback for 2-3 hours. After this time foobar freeze, the sample rate disappear on the DAC but the dashboard continues to show the play icon. When I stop the playback on foobar and restart it I get this error "Unrecoverable playback error: Sample rate of 384000 Hz not supported by this device." or "Unrecoverable playback error: Could not start ASIO playback". I have to plug out and in the DAC to be able to use it again or restart the computer. - on laptop same story but after more time (5/6 hours) I think the current provided by the USB ports is not sufficent to power the optical to USB converter. What do you think? Thank you.

Thank you tgb. The exaSound DAC has an external PSU so I think it does not require USB power. Other users use the Corning Cable without problems with exaSound DACs http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/exasound-e18-e20-e28-info-and-experiences-post-all-here-17190/index39.html

Hello everybody, Yesterday I got my 10m Corning USB Cable. I use it to connect my desktop PC to an exaSound e28 DAC. I experienced the following issues: - on the desktop computer only 2 of the 10 USB 3.0 ports recognize the exaSound DAC when plugged in with the corning cable. On the device manager nothing change when I plug the corning cable on the other 8 ports. - on the 2 ports which are working, after a couple of hours the device stop to work, and I have to restart the PC to make it appear again. Also pluggin out and in the cable doesn't solve the problem. I think this is an USB power issue (does the Corning require more power?) - now I'm testing it with the only USB3.0 port on my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. Please let me know what can I do, any help is much appreciated. I could also think to buy a PCI-Ex. to USB3.0 card or something like this to have the appropriate power on the Corning cable. Thank you.

Today it happened: the Oehlbach 10m cable made the DAC crazy also with my laptop. I'm now sure that the problem doesn't occour only on my desktop. Now I'll wait for the Corning cable and test it hoping it will definitively solve the problem. I wrote exaSound an email telling them that I'm ready to pay and send them the cable if they'll test it and search for a solution to prevent further problems with long cables to other buyers (e.g. updating the DAC’s ROM to prevent the white noise in such situations. Instead it would be nice if a checksum reports an error and the DAC stops playing music?). I'm now waiting for an answer. As this happened also with another 5,8m cable I built with some extension cables, it seems that the problem occours in any situation if the cable is to long. I think it could be fine if exaSound take advantage of my experience to prevent such situations in the future. I also wrote to Oehlbach and send a copy to the store where I bought the cable and to exaSound. I bought this converter to connect the DAC to the Corning optical cable, is it ok? Delock USB 2 0 A Male USB A Male Adapter Converter FOR Printer Scanner Switch | eBay Thank you everybody for the help, I'll report back after some tests with the corning cable.

Some further testing: - with the long cable on laptop nothing happened after 5h playback 32bit/384kHz (on desktop happens after less than 10 mins). - long cable on the laptop USB2: "unknown device" - long cable on desktop USB2 happens as for USB3 - I built up a 5.7m USB2 cable connecting some extension cables (5.8m, so +10cm, I get "unknown device"): with this cable I got the white noise on the desktop after 10 min. So first time with another "long" cable. Now testing with this cable on the laptop: nothing happened until yet. Are you still sure that the cable is the problem? Thank you

Thanks everybody for the replies. I ordered the cable you suggested me: EET Europarts CH: Corning USB A to USB A REC Optical cab Now I am searching for an adapter USB A male to B male: do you have any suggestions? I don't want to buy a 0.5$ chinese adapter on ebay after a buying a >100$ cable! Something is still unclear to me: why does the long cable work well with my laptop? Now it's playing music since 6 hours without problems! We assume that the cable is the problem because it's 10m long and my desktop PC worked well within a week with a shorter cable but I'd really like to have a confirm experiencing the problem also with my laptop. Is there something more stressful than playing 32bit/384kHz 8ch FLACs? Thank you

I tested for a week with a USB cable of proper length on the same computer, and it didn't happen. Then I switched to the longer cable and after a day it happened. Since it possibly was a cable problem, I tested again with 32 bit/384kHz audio files in order to push it to the limits, with the long cable and it happens after only 5 minutes. Then I repeated the test several times restarting the DAC every time and it happens again always after only a few minutes. Then I played the same files with the shorter cable all night long and it didn't happen. Now I'm testing with this file since 2 hours using my laptop with the long cable and nothing happened yet. Do you have any further suggestion? At this point I think it could be the cable the problem, but with the laptop it hasn't happened yet. As I cannot move the DAC, do you any suggestion about a replacement for the long cable? Thank you

Thank you again! Did you hear the sounds I uploaded? What do you think? 1) I agree with you about the cable length (my cable only has a "swelling" at the beginning), but, as said, if the signal is corrupted, I should hear nothing, not the music at 2000% volume causing a completely clipping distortion (see my last post). 2) Same cable on laptop: 5 days 24h/24 music playback without noise. Why? 3) If it happens after the drivers: why moving the fader on the dashboard restore the normal situation and the music playback as expected?

I completely agree with you. But, as it appears to be, the problem isn't the DAC. It could be the driver or something in my environment.

It happened again (was playing FLAC, 6ch, 96kHz, 24bit) - same files as with the laptop on the last 5 days (see previous post), I tried some things: 1. connected headphones to the headphones exit on the DAC, the noise is present in the same way as with the analog outputs on the back. 2. I tried gradually lowering the volume on Foobar to the minimum level, I found out that when I get to ~5% you start to hear the music emerging from the noise, it sounds heavily distorted, and then at 1% level it's clearly audible but you can still hear some distortion (it sounds a bit like clipping). 3. I recorded the output signal of the headphones output, which you can hear at the bottom, corresponding to the three situations described: a) low white noise, music is distorted but audible (foobar volume 5%, DAC volume 0.0dB) b) low white noise (foobar volume 10%, DAC volume 0.0dB) c) strong noise (music inaudible) (foobar volume 100%, DAC volume 0.0dB) 0 4. I tried to move the volume on the DAC while this was happening, using the two buttons on the front face, the volume changed both on the display of the DAC and on the dashboard on Windows, and the noise continued but its volume changed along with the volume setting. Doing the same thing from the dashboard on windows (changing the volume with the cursor on the dashboard), immediately at the first step (-0.5 dB) the noise stopped immediately, and you could hear the music normally at the expected volume. A did this tests with an electronic engineer (friend of mine). He told me that it could be the USB hub that generates the problem, but, for sure, something is wrong in the firmware of the DAC or in the drivers, because of the different behaviour when changing volume from the DAC or from the dashboard. It seems that anywhere the software lacks of some checking? I really hope now to get an answer from exaSound. Thank you for any suggestion.... If you have any ideas for tests I can run the next time, please tell me.

The white noise doesn't appear on the driver's meters: when the white noise is playing moving slightly a driver's meter remove the white noise and restore che normal playing (it would be interesting to know from exaSound what is actually doing this action on the DAC? It could help to find out the problem). I think the two problems are related. The rips are certanly OK, I played it hundreds of times without white noise. Now I tested the DAC five days 24h/24h with amps off connected with the same USB cable to another computer (Lenovo Yoga3 Pro Netbook - foobar2000 - exaSound ASIO). Sometimes I turned the amps on to check if the white noise was there (the noise remains until user intervention on the PC), but nothing, perfect playing for five days. Since yesterday the DAC is playing again connected to my main PC: until now the playback is ok. To know if the data to the DAC is serial we need support from exaSound: I tried all USB 3.0 ports on my PC (on the back I have no USB 2.0 - could try with those on the front) and was considering to buy something such as this card SOtM - English | tX-USBexp to prevent any problem from the USB hub. I always used the same USB cable - 10m long from Oehlbach USB A/B | Cable | USB | Computer | Oehlbach A corrupted digital signal from the USB cable should produce silence because the DAC would be unable to decode it. If this produces a white noise, then the 0's are inverted with 1's from the DAC in the digital stream. To test the speakers misalignment I set the preamp volume down when turning amps on, at low levels I can hear the channel misalignment or the white noise without putting my speakers at risk. I use avast! free antivirus: are there some concrete experiences? Maybe exaSound can tell us if someone ever had problems with an antivirus software? PSU: as I said, when exaSound replaced my MKI DAC with a new MKII, the PSU remained the same. How does the DAC react if the PSU is outputting an variable voltage? Should I check the output voltage of the PSU with a DC voltmeter connected to the PSU output with alligator clips? Any other suggestion? Thank you