Simple Audio Roomplayer + Clicks / Pops Before Track

Posted by: endlessnessism on 05 June 2015

I have posted on this before but, although it was only recently, the topic appears to have been closed to further answers.  Hence I am posting once again.

 

My aim is a hi def / uncompressed / multi-room solution that will also give access to Qobuz.  One or two other requirements as well but that will do for now.  As far as I am aware, there is currently no product on the market that answers the above requirements.  I'm sure Naim will get there and the sooner the better but meanwhile I am working with stop-gap solutions.

 

For now, Sonos is a brilliant solution and, played into Naim DACs and amps, it is very close to what I want - but it will not play hi def files.

 

Simple Audio are sadly out of business.  On the plus side, the Simple Audio Roomplayer + is cheap on eBay and it generally sounds better Sonos and does everything that Sonos does plus hi def.  On the negative side, I am struggling with an annoying click / pop between tracks that I cannot resolve.

 

Some observations:

 

The Simple Audio help site acknowledges the existence of these clicks / pops but says it's not Simple Audio's fault and instead has to do with the choice of DAC.  (I use Naim DACs in all my locations).

 

I get the click / pop whenever I play something from my NAS that I have ripped myself.  This includes CD rips I have made on a Naim HDX that I used to own; vinyl rips made with Audacity; and CD rips made on my laptop with dBPoweramp.

 

Whatever Simple Audio themselves may say, the clicks / pops are not DAC-related.  I get them even in those locations where I use the in-built DAC and amp in Simple Audio, with no external DAC.

 

I do not get a click or pop on albums that I have downloaded.  It doesn't seem to matter whether I have downloaded from Naim, HD Tracks or Qobuz - in all these cases there is no click or pop.

 

Nor do I get a click or pop between tracks when streaming from Qobuz.

 

All this suggests to me that, whatever Simple Audio may say, the problem has nothing to do with my DAC.  I don't have the same problem with Sonos so it may well be peculiar to Simple Audio.  Nevertheless, the fact that I don't get it with downloads or tracks streamed from Qobuz suggests that it may well be curable - perhaps not for albums that I have already ripped but at least with new rips if I can do them in a particular way.

 

Anyone got any ideas? 

Posted on: 12 June 2015 by endlessnessism

I am experimenting with a possible solution to this problem.

 

I first went digital via an HDX and, following Naim's recommendation at the time, all my rips were done in .wav format.  This was before the HDX update that allowed you to rip in .flac format and convert from one format to another.

 

I have since sold my HDX and do my rips via dBPoweramp but I have stayed with .wav, if for no other reason than habit.

 

I have also got a lot of .wav rips from vinyl done via Audacity.

 

Well, it seems that if I take an album ripped in .wav and play it on Simple Audio, I get pops and clicks before each track, but if I convert the album to .flac the pops and clicks disappear.  I haven't yet done a comprehensive range of checks to see whether it's true of albums ripped via dBPoweramp rather than the HDX, or of vinyl rips via Audacity.

 

If this proves to be the answer, it looks like I may have to explore the "batch convert" facility in dBPoweramp.  Anyone got any special tips for using this to convert approximately 2,000 albums from .wav to .flac?  As far as I can see, the process creates the .flac files in parallel to the original .wav ones, so the most difficult (or time consuming) part may be going into each album folder to delete the .wav files.

 

I may have found a solution but I still have no understanding whatsoever as to why I should get clicks and pops with .wav and not .flac. 

Posted on: 12 June 2015 by Fernando Pereira
Originally Posted by endlessnessism:

 

I may have found a solution but I still have no understanding whatsoever as to why I should get clicks and pops with .wav and not .flac. 

I don't fully understand your setup, but I've experienced noise between tracks in some configurations of gapless UPnP/DLNA rendering, possibly related to different command sequences between the UPnP/DLNA control point and the renderer triggering bugs in the renderer.