Clicking/popping sound with DSD after V1.16 firmware upgrade on DAC-V1

Hi Tareq, 

Your post is really interesting as I have heard similar on my 272, playing DSD off a USB stick. I am running a Qnap NAS with Asset, which doesn't yet support DSD playback.

The first time I heard it it didn't register as it was on a track that I usually listen to on vinyl (I'm just used to hearing the pops and crackles that comes with the territory). Since then I've been conscious of it on a number of occasions.

I have also never heard it on any tracks from my NAS (whatever the resolution or original source - CD / Qubuz purchase etc) and or streaming from Tidal.

Ok, so I am not the only one ... Would be curious to see if this is a known issue with the DSD playback on Naim DAC-V1...

FWIW the clicks I've experienced on the 272 (with latest FW) has been during tracks.

I suppose DSD playback will be refined over time, hopefully firmware upgrades will continue to improve this.

Mine happen during track playback and not during track change.

I have not heard clicks during playback (Win 7/10 laptops/DAC-V1) - there were some click issues in beta with track changes (forced or natural) or end of a single play but these were resolved at least with J River to acceptable levels. I don't recall anyone with Roon in beta

You could have a look at your USB Status (in settings) and see if anything funny is happening eg how the buffer is doing (mine hovers around 62% DSD128 & 87% DSD64, no underuns/overflows)

As Brilliant says you may like to try setting the buffer settings in your software player. I have had no problems with pop/clicks with the default setting (100ms) in JRiver with the DAC V-1, but have had plenty of problems with other DACs.

To be honest, I've had better results converting DSD->PCM in JRiver rather than in the DAC V-1. Its not as if the DAC V-1 has a native DSD DAC in it, so you are just moving the conversion to the V-1's processor.

I would have thought that PCM was what we are trying to avoid with DSD... Tried changing the audio setting in Roon to encapsulate DSD into PCM and pass it to the DAC instead of Roon doing the conversion... the clicks and pops disappeared, however now I get an ever slight pause in the music, it isn't that playback stops but it appears to hesitate for a micro-second during playback at random track locations... I set the playback to loop and had listened to the same track over and over again, the hesitation appears at random points and never at the same track location.

I will try tomorrow with JRiver to see if I have better luck.

Check the Naim DAC-V1 status during playback and found the buffer size hovering around 20-50% for DSD64 and the CPU is around 35%-45% utilized.

My apologies, some variants of the PCM1791A chip are apparently capable of native DSD to analogue conversions, although as far as I can see Naim have not claimed that their DACs/streamers are native DSD DACs just that they "play" DSD. It would be good to know whether or not they are native DSD Dacs and what filtering they carry out on DSD inputs. One advantage of JRiver is that it allows variation of the filtering on DSD->PCM conversion.

Brilliant posted:

I have not heard clicks during playback (Win 7/10 laptops/DAC-V1) - there were some click issues in beta with track changes (forced or natural) or end of a single play but these were resolved at least with J River to acceptable levels. I don't recall anyone with Roon in beta

You could have a look at your USB Status (in settings) and see if anything funny is happening eg how the buffer is doing (mine hovers around 62% DSD128 & 87% DSD64, no underuns/overflows)

Agree that the beta testing of the V1 resolved this issue on Audirvana, too. Did not test Roon. Is there a Roon support site?

I have a case open with Roon on this, if I playback DSD via JRiver it works just fine, but via Roon I get the clicks/pops/hesitations during playback no matter what setting I chose for the DAC....

I am not sure if there is anything specific I should monitor at the DAC side, the buffer, CPU utilization, etc..... I couldn't find any guidance to these topics in the DAC-V1 manuals...

I don't think that the Roon issue you are experiencing with is to do with the V1.

Can't comment on JRiver settings as I do not use it. 

In Audirvana, DSD playback is based on applying the standard conversion of DSD to PCM and from it's support site, there are many DACs being used with Aditvana happily for either DACswith native DSD playback or with conversion as in the V1  or Naim DAC.

Jude

Interesting thought, the Roon support guys are not sure that the V1 supports DSD, I checked on the Naim pages, there is no mention of DSD on the DAC-V1 product pages.

thijazi posted:

I have a case open with Roon on this, if I playback DSD via JRiver it works just fine, but via Roon I get the clicks/pops/hesitations during playback no matter what setting I chose for the DAC....

I am not sure if there is anything specific I should monitor at the DAC side, the buffer, CPU utilization, etc..... I couldn't find any guidance to these topics in the DAC-V1 manuals...

 

thijazi posted:

I would have thought that PCM was what we are trying to avoid with DSD... Tried changing the audio setting in Roon to encapsulate DSD into PCM and pass it to the DAC instead of Roon doing the conversion... the clicks and pops disappeared, however now I get an ever slight pause in the music, it isn't that playback stops but it appears to hesitate for a micro-second during playback at random track locations... I set the playback to loop and had listened to the same track over and over again, the hesitation appears at random points and never at the same track location.

I will try tomorrow with JRiver to see if I have better luck.

Check the Naim DAC-V1 status during playback and found the buffer size hovering around 20-50% for DSD64 and the CPU is around 35%-45% utilized.

 

 

The buffer fluctuations seem large -especially 20-50%. Did you run the bit perfect checks? There probably is a background process competing for resource and affecting the output. I had a similar problem on a Win desktop I have. I went through task manager and closed them one by one, and it turned out to be some Canon scanner app. Of course in your case it could just be the Roon interface (since J River seems ok). You need to get Roon/Naim tech support talking!

ATB

B