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legend

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  1. legend

    HQ Player

    I recently heard a Chord M-Scaler connected to my Qutest DAC and was smitten - but the magic improvement seemed to occur mainly when it was running at 705k though dual BNC SPDIF. However AU$7.5k foth M-Scaler is not pocket-money and so it has been suggested that I try HQplayer set on sinc-M with x16 705k upsampling that should give similar results. Which it does up to a point - similar superb resolution and imaging though not quite the same body and lack of digital glare. I am not sure the Qutest is receiving the magic 705k sample rate from HQplayer even though I am pretty sure I have gotten its settings right (checked by another experienced HQplayer user) - and the Qutest can accept 705k via its USB input. The internal light inside the Qutest window is red suggesting it is only receiving 352k (though this is not very clear). Also when I go to the sound setting in MS Windows it seems to allow choice of up to only 384k even though I am using the Chord 44-768 driver. Am I missing something?
  2. Hi Keith After the lack of success with the mini PCIe-USB3 route as above, I contacted M2Tech's Australian distributor, Wicked Digital, and have just gotten the following reply: "We are not aware of any exchange program at all, the (Computer Audiophile) forum may well have been right in their market two years ago, but they would not be swapping gear two years down the track. We have a few of the original HiFaces left which are much later models than what you would have and we have them on sale right now, I am happy to do one of $100 even for you to get you out of the problem you are having. Let me know if that suits..." Perhaps Australia is too small a market to bother informing them. Anyway it will be cheaper to send the unit back to M2Tech as suggested by Pietro for a firmware upgrade - & hope they are not all on European summer holidays! Cheers Rod
  3. Hi Joco The mini PCIe-USB3 interface that I ordered 2 weeks ago (before your post) arrived on late on Friday from England & I installed it yesterday - easily removed the TV tuner card to create a spare slot but took some metal work changes to get it out of the back of the HP310. And it operated succesfully recognising both my USB3 3Tb Seagate drive and the Hiface. However, you were right - it did not solve the problem and in fact made things worse! It would not play at all thorugh the Hiface driver and changing to the Young driver now caused fatal crashes all the time. So it is back to plan B. I will contact the Australian distributor to see if they will swap it as Keith suggested - or if that fails return it to M2Tech as Pietro suggested. And at least now I have 2 USB3 outlets which may be useful in the future. Thanks for your contribution. Cheers Rod
  4. Hi Keith Again thanks. But how am I expected to know this? There is nothing on Hiface's web-site and I have had no contact with their Australian distributor since I bought it around 2 years ago. So I did what I thought the only thing possible about a month ago when I first had problems with the new PC (having had great success previously with a XP lap-top & Mac Mini) and wrote to M2Tech through their contact page which seemingly included technical support. Having worked for Linn Products for 4 years as their loudspeaker designer (Keltik, Kaber, Nexus, Index 2 etc) and since running my own small loudspeaker company I am used to dealing with other companies directly. And when I got no reply I asked for help here at Computer Audio - which has been very useful. The Hiface is a great product (especially when combined with the AQVOX power supply that has seen off all competitors I have tried under $1000) but is spoilt by issues like poor service. Cheers Rod
  5. Hi Keith Apologies, I somehow missed your post - probably trying to catch up on lost time! Many thanks for the offer but I had already gone with Joco's suggestion - now perhaps also wasted. Cheers Rod
  6. Thanks again Joco. I did pluck up courage to open the 310 (HP provide some very good instructions on-line) and if I remove the TV tuner card that I don't need on this machine (dedicted to audio playback) then there will be a PCIe slot free. Because I have already ordered the Mini-PCIe to USB3 cards (there are 2 connected by a cable) & have no other use for them I will at least try them when they arrive next week - but from your latest post now don' t hold much hope. Anyway I will post the results so that others might learn. Cheers Rod
  7. I have at long last receive a reply from Pietro at M2Tech: "The reported malfunctions involved the first release of the hiFace that essentially caused BSoD when was being connected to PC/Laptop AMD based. To fix the bug a firmware updating is necessary. The customer could send the hiFace to us (at his own charge), we will update and send it back (at our charge)." It is a pity they don't put this information up on their website - it might have saved me a week's wasted valuable time spent trying to solve the problem. In the meantime I have ordered as suggestsed by Joco a Mini PCIe to USB3 converter (the only one that will fit, with some difficulty, into my HP Touchsmart 310) from England that hopefully arrive next week and will try this first. Cheers Rod
  8. Hi Frederic Yes, it works fine with a Windows XP laptop - also with a Mac Mini. Cheers Rod
  9. Also many thanks Joco. This could well be the problem - however, although my motherboard has 2 PCI slots, I am not sure how I am going to implement the solution with my HP Touchsmart 310 which is an iMac clone and so does not have normal I/O flexibility - I thought I would not need it for a dedicated music playing computer and liked the Touchsmart's ease of use for WAF etc. I will need to investigate further. Bleeding computers! When they generally don't sound as good as the digital out from a moderately priced CD or DVD player and there are these sorts of problems due to non-standardisation, there is still some way to go for computer audio despite its convenience of downloading the music files, particularly hires etc. Cheers Rod
  10. Thanks Frederic. I followed your procedure though the Young driver did not come up when I tried to change the Hiface driver as prescribed but I located it in the System32 folder of Windows and got the Hiface to accept it. It the worked well in JRiver - in fact I think it perhaps sounded a bit better than the Hiface driver - and I could change tracks etc. However I get the same problem when I close down JRivers and try to reopen it - the system hangs. The problem could well be as Joco says above - a basic mismatch between the AMD processsors, the USB implementation and M2Tech drivers that are not, as I understand it, Windows standard. Cheers Rod
  11. Previously with Mac Mini and Windows XP PC I have had no problems with this original Hiface. I agree it sounds excellent mainly because of its low jitter - and even better with an external AQVOX power supply when I thought it beat all sub-$1000 devices I tried. However, it has come to grief with my new Windows 7 PC that I bought especially to dedicate to music file playing to try to get my computer audio system to a new level - because having the best front-end I can afford is needed for developing world-class speakers such as the Tikandi and its successors. In the absence of any reply/help from M2Tech I have therefore spent much of the past week trying to overcome the problem with partial success as recounted above. From the way it crashes I still think it is probably a driver problem interacting for some reason badly with the operating system of my new Windows 7 PC but am not absolutely sure and am unclear why. Thirty odd years ago I was an early uptaker of the Apple 2 and could even program it in assembler code to run experiments - but nowadays I am well behind the pace in understanding the internal workings of current computers, hence the cries for help! Thanks Rod
  12. Yes it is a dedicated PC with NO other software running. I have turned off power hibernating but am not sure where to turn off USB hibernating &/or HDD hibernating? Thanks Rod
  13. Again thanks. I read the article but before I started to delete/disable things I checked the current CPU & memory usage in one of the Control Panel options and found they were well below maximum; around less than 10% average for CPU, with peaks under 50%, and only 1 Gb out od 8 Gb of RAM. I have been rumaging about hoping the penny will drop - a bit like one of those murder mysteries. I had been playing Alison Krauss, mainly because she is near the top of my playlist when in Artist view of JRivers, and noticed that the first of her albums I had gotten to play successfully in WASAPI Event with seemingly the correct combinations of settings in the Output menu was 44.1/16 and the next album, when it hung/froze, was 96/24. So after going through all the ritual of shutting down the computer by turning off the power (the only way it do so and rebooting in safe mode, then normal mode) I tried playing successive albums with 44.1/16 and it worked! However, when I tried to play any 96/24 it hung/froze JRivers and the computer again. Same problem if I started with 96/24 files and then changed to 44.1/16 bit files. All these files are flac so I thought then I would try some wav files I had stored on a thumb drive. It played 96/24 wav file OK and then when I changed to a 88.2/24 wav file a message popped up from somewhere - not sure whether from JRivers or Window 7 - saying did I want automatic bit rate change? Said yes and the 88.1/24 file worked OK. So then went back to the flac files and now they seem to be changing bit and playing as well. No idea why this occured now - nor why I was not asked before. I can't find anything in JRivers setup/menus that asks for automatic bit-rate change - nor do I remember seeing anything in Chris' excellent article on JRivers - but I may have missed it? I assumed that J Rivers would automatically change bit-rates as did Pure Music with Itunes - though I have not bought the similar Jplay. Do I need to? Only one or two problems now. When I exit JRivers Media Centre and then relaunch it hangs/freezes - and I now have to disconnect the Hiface before the PC will log on properly, but the JRiver will then work again OK, changing albums with different frequencies. And I still do not know why the Hiface did not work with Foobar or MediaMonkey. Today's problems to solve - then hopefully back to speaker development after a week's diversion! Cheers Rod
  14. Thanks Robert. I bought the new PC to dedicate to music only, having previously used the Hiface successfully with a general purpose laptop with Windows XP and a Mac Mini with OSX10.5 - so I don't think the Hiface is faulty per se, just somehow a driver problem with the new PC. I downloaded the Young handbook and thence the WASAPI patch for Foobar and again Foobar works fine for the new PC's internal sound system but freezes/hangs when I change the Foobar output to the Hiface. With Foobar I can't even play a single track with the HiFace unlike JRivers where I can play a track but it hangs/freezes when changing albums. It could be a problem with my PC, rather than the Hiface, but the PC seems to work fine in all other respects. Or it might be just some peculiar interaction between the two but I can't think what? Cheers Rod
  15. Thanks. Yes I guess I have become inordinately frustrated, having spent some time considering the purchase of the new PC and then much of the past week trying to overcome this problem, valuable time & money. And now being so close but so far. I can play a single album, only through JRivers Media Centre with WASAPI Event, but when I try to change albums Jrivers hangs saying it is "buffering". Even after closing Jrivers through the Task Manager if I then try to run JRivers again it says it is still open - and shutting down hangs/freezes the computer so I have to turn the power off & start up again in Safe Mode. I have tried changing all the buffering options - even just read Chris' excellent article on Jrivers at Computer Audiophile - JRiver Media Center 17 In Detail - but to no avail. And the Hiface still won't work at all with Foobar, MediaMonkey etc. But patience was never a strong point! Cheers Rod
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