PCM Upsampling to DSD in JRiver on Mac Mini

[EdmontonCanuck]

Hi all

 

When I try upsampling PCM to DSD64 I get horrible stuttering. I would have thought that my new dual-core Haswell Mac Mini (late 2014) boot camped with Win 8.1 would have enough horsepower to do this, but alas, that isn't what I'm seeing.

 

When I run JRiver 20's benchmark tool I get a JRMark score of 3882. The specs of the Mac Mini are:

 

• 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz)

• 16GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM

• 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

 

I've got an exaSound DAC and originally I thought I'd go for a homerun with trying to upsample to DSD512 but when that didn't work well I tried upsampling only to DSD64. Still, horrible stuttering, which suggests to me that I don't have enough oomph with the Mac Mini to do this. Still, with that 3000+ JRMark score, I would have thought it would be possible.

 

Anyone have any ideas as to why this isn't working?

 

Kind regards,

 

Dave

[Paul R]

The Mini has plenty of horsepower to do that upsampling. Upsampling to DSD512 on an i5 Mini doesn't work all that well, as the music sounds "stressed."

 

It does DSD128 sampling under MacOS without breaking a sweat too.

 

I would suspect there is some kind of driver mismatch problem, or you are getting interference from Bluetooth keyboards, mice, or something else like that.

 

Yours,

-Paul

 

 

Hi all

 

When I try upsampling PCM to DSD64 I get horrible stuttering. I would have thought that my new dual-core Haswell Mac Mini (late 2014) boot camped with Win 8.1 would have enough horsepower to do this, but alas, that isn't what I'm seeing.

 

When I run JRiver 20's benchmark tool I get a JRMark score of 3882. The specs of the Mac Mini are:

 

• 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz)

• 16GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM

• 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

 

I've got an exaSound DAC and originally I thought I'd go for a homerun with trying to upsample to DSD512 but when that didn't work well I tried upsampling only to DSD64. Still, horrible stuttering, which suggests to me that I don't have enough oomph with the Mac Mini to do this. Still, with that 3000+ JRMark score, I would have thought it would be possible.

 

Anyone have any ideas as to why this isn't working?

 

Kind regards,

 

Dave

[EdmontonCanuck]

Thanks Paul. Bluetooth interference may possibly be the culprit. I will double check when I get home and make sure all wireless functions are disabled. If not I'll report back here to pick your brain for additional ideas.

 

Kind regards.

 

Dave

[Knuck]

Hi Dave,

 

I have the same computer you have with the exception of the PCI-e drive. I run Windows Server 2012 R2 and have no problems with stutter. Your computer is certainly not the culprit and I don't think 8.1 is the problem either. I assume you are running a single PC setup and don't have stuttering issues during PCM playback. Have you tried setting bitstreaming under settings to DSD from none. Also you may want to play around with your buffer settings although I think Paul is probably correct that it is a driver or interference issue.

 

Good luck,

 

Brian

[EdmontonCanuck]

@Paul, @Knuck

 

My wireless radios were enabled, so of course I disabled them (BlueTooth and 802.11ac). That didn't work....still horrible stuttering. So then I thought I should re-install the boot camp Win8.1 drivers, still no joy. I went into device manager to see if anything was reporting a problem, but it all looked cool. I then went and disabled any other devices that I didn't need, and STILL no joy. So as far as my boot camped installation is concerned, I have no idea.

 

I guess the next easiest thing to try is JRMC 20 Mac version (I have a license) and see if that works. If not, I guess I can possibly try going the Server 2012R2 with AO route, but I'll leave that as the last thing to attempt.

 

Wish I understood why this isn't working. I've got DSD bitstreaming turned on for all my DSD files, and those play fine. Regular PCM plays fine too (as long as I'm not trying to upsample them).

 

The particular files I'm attempting to upsample are 24-96 PCM files (not regular 16-44 redbook). Might that be an issue?

[Paul R]

@Paul, @Knuck

 

My wireless radios were enabled, so of course I disabled them (BlueTooth and 802.11ac). That didn't work....still horrible stuttering. So then I thought I should re-install the boot camp Win8.1 drivers, still no joy. I went into device manager to see if anything was reporting a problem, but it all looked cool. I then went and disabled any other devices that I didn't need, and STILL no joy. So as far as my boot camped installation is concerned, I have no idea.

 

I guess the next easiest thing to try is JRMC 20 Mac version (I have a license) and see if that works. If not, I guess I can possibly try going the Server 2012R2 with AO route, but I'll leave that as the last thing to attempt.

 

Wish I understood why this isn't working. I've got DSD bitstreaming turned on for all my DSD files, and those play fine. Regular PCM plays fine too (as long as I'm not trying to upsample them).

 

The particular files I'm attempting to upsample are 24-96 PCM files (not regular 16-44 redbook). Might that be an issue?

 

No, I think it has to be something else. There has to be some contention or other issue going on.

 

It think you might want to run hardware diagnostics on the Mini at this point. Perhaps there drive or something is not working correctly. Something is just not right.

 

Are you using the ASIO drivers or WASPI? You might try the one or the other and see if the problem changes or goes away. That would tell us something, perhaps pointing to a driver setting in the Exasound.

 

-Paul

[EdmontonCanuck]

No, I think it has to be something else. There has to be some contention or other issue going on.

 

It think you might want to run hardware diagnostics on the Mini at this point. Perhaps there drive or something is not working correctly. Something is just not right.

 

Are you using the ASIO drivers or WASPI? You might try the one or the other and see if the problem changes or goes away. That would tell us something, perhaps pointing to a driver setting in the Exasound.

 

-Paul

 

I'm using the latest G3 ASIO drivers from Exasound. Of course, I had to install .NET3 for those to install properly. But everything plays fine as long as I'm not trying to upsample.

[Paul R]

I'm using the latest G3 ASIO drivers from Exasound. Of course, I had to install .NET3 for those to install properly. But everything plays fine as long as I'm not trying to upsample.

 

Can you try playing using a different driver? I am not saying the drivers are broken, just wanting to eliminate them as a possible cause.

 

If you still have a MacOS partition, you might try booting into that and playing to the Exasound, upsampling with JRMC, to eliminate any possible Windows issue as well. If by some odd chance it is a hardware issue, that would also confirm it.

 

-Paul

[EdmontonCanuck]

Can you try playing using a different driver? I am not saying the drivers are broken, just wanting to eliminate them as a possible cause.

 

If you still have a MacOS partition, you might try booting into that and playing to the Exasound, upsampling with JRMC, to eliminate any possible Windows issue as well. If by some odd chance it is a hardware issue, that would also confirm it.

 

 

-Paul

 

Don't think it can possibly be a driver issue, as it plays flawlessly otherwise.

 

Yup, that's the next thing I'm going to try....I'm going to boot into MacOS (Yosemite), install JRMC 20 there and see if it can handle it.

 

Just for grins, while it was playing under Win8.1, I brought up the performance tab under Task Manager and the CPU never got above 7%....network and disk were near zero.....so you're right....it's not that I don't have enough horsepower to do this.

 

Something else very odd is going on here.

 

Thanks for your help Paul.

 

Kind regards,

 

Dave

[audiventory]

Hi all

 

When I try upsampling PCM to DSD64 I get horrible stuttering. I would have thought that my new dual-core Haswell Mac Mini (late 2014) boot camped with Win 8.1 would have enough horsepower to do this, but alas, that isn't what I'm seeing.

 

Dave,

DSD64 files playback correctly on your system?

 

-Yuri

[EdmontonCanuck]

Dave,

DSD64 files playback correctly on your system?

 

-Yuri

 

Yes, sure. DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256 all play fine on my system (I've got DSD bitstreaming turned on in JRiver to bitstream them to my exaSound DAC). PCM all the way up to DXD plays fine too. I just can't get JRiver to upsample my PCM files without stuttering.

 

The exaSound DAC shows that it's receiving a DSD stream during upsampling.

 

-Dave

[EuroDriver]

Yes, sure. DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256 all play fine on my system (I've got DSD bitstreaming turned on in JRiver to bitstream them to my exaSound DAC). PCM all the way up to DXD plays fine too. I just can't get JRiver to upsample my PCM files without stuttering.

 

The exaSound DAC shows that it's receiving a DSD stream during upsampling.

 

-Dave

 

Seems like your installation of JRMC might be problematic. Suggest to install Foobar, and then the SACD plugin. The sound quality of foobar +SACD plugin doing PCM to DSD conversion is significantly better than JRMC. Even better is HQ Player, but you might have to stay away from using the "Polysinc" filter which is pretty CPU intensive

[Cebolla]

The OP is using a Mac Mini, so Foobar2000's out, unless Boot Camp or other Windows hosting method on the computer is used. Would actually make an interesting excercise to see how well decent Windows only audio software, like Foobar, runs using Boot Camp or similar on Macs.

[EuroDriver]

The OP is using a Mac Mini, so Foobar2000's out, unless Boot Camp or other Windows hosting method on the computer is used. Would actually make an interesting excercise to see how well decent Windows only audio software, like Foobar, runs using Boot Camp or similar on Macs.

 

OP has Win 8.1 installed :-)

 

HQ Player running under Win 8.1 sounds better than the Mac version of HQ Player. Don't know if it's the OS or the different Exasound ASIO drivers

[Cebolla]

Yep, sorry my bad - should read everthing properly, especially first post!