Issue with Upsampling

[Jph1309]

Hello,

Audrivana user for years I recently discovered updsampling (r8brain and DSD). Started to test it on my previous 7 years old windows i5/8gb ram system. Gave me bad noise after a few mn, sometimes was even stopping to work. I decided to purchase a brabd new windows i5/16gb ram laptop. Seems better, however I can’t go more than DSD64, the above upsampling will stop playing after a few mn.
I have a Chord Qutest. Same behavior with both Asio 1.05 driver or Wasapi. Settings are DSD over 1.0. I have the same with r8brain, can go to x2, when using x2, x4, x8 it would stop working after a few. Memory and CPU usage are fine. No other app running. I feel like I can’t get the best to AS with these limitations. Can anyone help?

[Djm1960]

Post your debug information. Audirvana, settings, my account, debug info button. It will copy the information to the clipboard and just paste into a new post below this one. Someone in the community should then have some suggestions to try and solve.

[Jud]

Audirvāna should be allowing native DSD to the DAC rather than DoP 1.0 - you shouldn’t even be seeing that option. It appears there may be a bug involving DSD input to certain Chord DACs and Audirvāna, about which @Antoine was contacting Chord:

Chord devices ASIO native DSD512

Hi @TheSpidyFlash, I need to contact Chord regarding this, it seems something is odd with their ASIO driver when we look at it with a Chord device in our development environment.

[Agoldnear]

From Qutest user guide:

[Jud]

Yes, native DSD via ASIO, but instead Audirvāna shows the DOP options, which happens with ASIO and some Chord DACs.

[Agoldnear]

Seems we need to wait and hear from @Jph1309 regarding how the Qutest is connected, as this makes a difference in DSD transmission and sample-rate capabilities…

[Ddude003]

Some interesting presentations by Rob Watts regarding the Quest at Chord Electronics Qutest DAC - Official Thread | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

Notice that the Cutest and Hugo 2 share a similar architecture…

Chord Electronics Qutest DAC - Official Thread

Watts Up...?

As a long time user of a Chord Qutest DAC I don’t see much upside to upsample DSD here… And I do love this DAC…

For Hugo 2/Qutest the signal path is:

1FS to 8FS input > 16FS WTA1 filter (49,152 taps) > 256FS WTA 2 filter > 3rd order 2048 FS filter > pulse array noise shaper at 104 MHz > analogue

[Jph1309]

Hello all,

Thanks for your valuable comments.
I have made a step foward and I have now purchased a audiowise src-dx connected to audirvana in usb and to the chord qutest with two coaxial cables so that I can upsample to 768khz (like if I had an expansive M-scaler. The src-dx asio driver does not work well for me and I use wasapi instead. I have some audio cuts and currently unable to find wich device is causing this. I am considering using fidelizer to try solve this. Finger cross. Happy to get comments on the above. Thanks!

[Agoldnear]

If you would like to get the best possible help from folks here in the Community, please paste your Debug Info here…
Settings → My Account → Help → Debug Info

Note: The Audiowise SRC-DX does not support DSD or DOP (DSD over PCM) and it looks like it only supports the WASAPI driver

[Jud]

Fidelizer and other similar software stop various Windows services from operating. These are sometimes services that Audirvana expects to see, and thus you can get errors. So this may make things worse rather than better.

The first thing I would try is upsampling to 384kHz rather than 768 and check whether you continue to get errors at that speed.

[Jph1309]

Hello,

I have done some further testing.
Summary:

With Chord direct USB connection:
Asio works fine with No upsampling and r8brain x2. Won’t start playing with upsampling to max.
Wasapi works fine with r8brain upsampling and DSD over PCM1.0 up to DSD 256

With SRC-DX: cuts with either no upsampling or any upsampling.
Debug info below.

So I guess for now the issue seems to be related to src-dx, a 250$ product…

Debug info:

Audirvana Studio 2.6.6 (20606)

Windows 11 (22621) with 16GB physical RAM

Connected account of : Jean-Pierre Hennion

NETWORK
Status: available
Available network interfaces:
Box4g ({9fb80309-ae16-47fc-bf67-f271a9d5077f}) is PUBLIC
Windows Defender Firewall status for this instance of Audirvana Studio
Active profile types: all
Private profile:
Firewall: enabled
Inbound: blocked
Outbound: allowed
Notifications: enabled
Public profile:
Firewall: enabled
Inbound: allowed
Outbound: allowed
Notifications: enabled

SIGNAL PROCESSING:

Polarity Inversion:
	Globally: OFF
	Per track: ON
Effects plugins NOT ACTIVE

UPSAMPLING:
r8brain with device max frequency upsampling
r8brain filter parameters
Bandwidth = 99.5%
Stop band attenuation 110.816dB
Phase linear

AUDIO VOLUME:
Max allowed volume: 100
Replay Gain: None
SW volume control: OFF

LIBRARY SETTINGS:
Sync list: 1 folders
AUTO: C:\Users\jphen\Music
Library database path: C:\Users\jphen\AppData\Local\Packages\Audirvana.Audirvana-4118-9684-d80dbb7827cd_q3nymrkmej12j\LocalCache\Local\Audirvana\Audirvana\AudirvanaDatabase.sqlite

Local audio files fingerprinting
Tracks with no MBID: 467

Remote Control server:
Listening on 192.168.68.109 on port 54516

ACTIVE STREAMING SERVICES
Qobuz: Connected as Qobuz Studio

=================== AUDIO DEVICE ========================

Active method: Local

Max. memory for audio buffers: 8192MB

Local Audio Engine: WASAPI
Use max I/O buffer size: ON

Preferred device:
Haut-parleurs (SRC-DX)
Model UID:USB\VID_2FC6&PID_6013&REV_0201&MI_00
UID:\?\SWD#MMDEVAPI#{0.0.0.00000000}.{3e3f411c-63d9-45cd-8573-e866580f5f49}#{e6327cad-dcec-4949-ae8a-991e976a79d2}

Currently playing in Integer Mode:
Device: 2ch 32bits Integer, 8 bytes per frame 768kHz

Active Sample Rate: 768kHz

Bridge settings:
Sample rate limitation: none
Sample rate switching latency: none
Limit bitdepth to 24bit: ON
Mute during sample rate change: OFF

Selected device:Haut-parleurs (SRC-DX)
Manufacturer: AUDIOWISE
Model name: SRC-DX
Model UID: USB\VID_2FC6&PID_6013&REV_0201&MI_00
UID: \?\SWD#MMDEVAPI#{0.0.0.00000000}.{3e3f411c-63d9-45cd-8573-e866580f5f49}#{e6327cad-dcec-4949-ae8a-991e976a79d2}
USB Vendor ID: 0x2fc6
USB Product ID: 0x6013

10 available sample rates up to 768000Hz
44100
48000
88200
96000
176400
192000
352800
384000
705600
768000

Volume Control
Physical: Yes
Virtual: No
Max volume alert: Disabled

MQA capability
Auto-detect MQA devices: No
Not a MQA device, user set to not MQA

DSD capability
DSD via PCM 1.0

Device audio channels
Preferred stereo channels L:0 R:1
Channel bitmap: Ox3, layout:
Channel 0 mapped to 0
Channel 1 mapped to 1

Audio channels in use
Number of channels: 2
Use as stereo device only: No
Simple stereo device: No

1 output streams:
Number of active channels: 2, in 1 stream(s)
Channel #0 :Stream 0 channel 0
Channel #1 :Stream 0 channel 1
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 44.1kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 44.1kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 44.1kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 48kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 48kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 48kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 88.2kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 88.2kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 88.2kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 96kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 96kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 96kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 176.4kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 176.4kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 176.4kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 192kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 192kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 192kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 352.8kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 352.8kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 352.8kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 384kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 384kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 384kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 705.6kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 705.6kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 705.6kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 16bit little endian 768kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 24bit little endian 768kHz
2 ch Integer PCM 32bit little endian 768kHz

Local devices found : 2
Device #0: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio(SST))
Manufacturer: Realtek
Model UID: INTELAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0274&SUBSYS_10EC1284&REV_1000
UID: \?\SWD#MMDEVAPI#{0.0.0.00000000}.{0f652d97-669b-4cc3-8d3b-91de29d44e31}#{e6327cad-dcec-4949-ae8a-991e976a79d2}
Model name: Intel High Definition Audio
Device #1: Haut-parleurs (SRC-DX)
Manufacturer: AUDIOWISE
Model UID: USB\VID_2FC6&PID_6013&REV_0201&MI_00
UID: \?\SWD#MMDEVAPI#{0.0.0.00000000}.{3e3f411c-63d9-45cd-8573-e866580f5f49}#{e6327cad-dcec-4949-ae8a-991e976a79d2}
USB Vendor ID: 0x2fc6
USB Product ID: 0x6013
Model name: SRC-DX

UPnP

UPnP devices found : 0

Chromecast

Chromecast devices found : 1
Device #0: MiProjM05
ID: DnsSd#MiProjM05-c09c2e94b3065c5611743d02e8c5e236._googlecast._tcp.local#0
Model name: MiProjM05

[Agoldnear]

@Jph1309

Max. memory for audio buffers: 8192MB

Lower your playback pre-load memory allocation to 4GB

@Jph1309

Currently playing in Integer Mode:
Device: 2ch 32bits Integer, 8 bytes per frame 768kHz

Disable Integer Mode

@Jph1309

Audio channels in use
Number of channels: 2
Use as stereo device only: No
Simple stereo device: No

Set as a stereo device

Use ‘Power of Two’ up-sampling type

@Jph1309

Won’t start playing with upsampling to max.

What does this mean? What is being set to max?

[Jph1309]

Disable integer mode: did not find where to change this
Set as stereo device: same, did not find where to go
upsampling to max: max frequency of device
Thanks!

[Ddude003]

If you send your upsampled to 768kHz files via USB you will still bypass the 16FS WTA1 filter the same as if your are sending 768kHz via Dual-data COAX… Which is what the M-scaler does plus the 1,015,808 taps (16FS filter)… So, if you were to create a 768kHz file using software that does say 8 million taps and send it to the Qutest via USB your good to go…

Why mess with that USB to COAX thing?

It might be fun to look at the source for r8brain to see what’s going on under the covers…

[ChiliHot]

@Jph1309 FYI see the screenshot re Integer Mode access and Stereo.

My DAC just shows as Stereo as that is all the Channels it has. I assume that if you have more channels available, then an option to select how many becomes available, but happy to stand corrected if that is not the case

[Jph1309]

I don’t have these options available, guess this is the driver I use<;;

[Jph1309]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess the audiowise marketing convinced me that the Qutest USB is not great and their device is much better

[Ddude003]

Actually, the custom USB transceiver in the Qutest is quite good… And if you take a look at the specs you will find that the Qutest has some of the better all around specs… If you connect the Qutest directly via USB to a computer it is possible to get some noise from the computer… There are several solutions including USB > optical > USB… I use a purpose built, low noise, ethernet > Lumin U1 mini streamer > USB to the Qutest… And no matter how you get your 768kHz upscaled music files to the Qutest you are bypassing the 16FS WTA1 filter…

Good luck in whatever/however you choose to bang those bits into your Qutest…

[Agoldnear]

@Ddude003

If you connect the Qutest directly via USB to a computer it is possible to get some noise from the computer…

This needs elaboration so to not mislead the neophyte user of any DAC, regarding what this ‘noise’ is, in this context…

@Ddude003

There are several solutions including USB > optical > USB…

To add to the above recommendation from Ddude003 You will find some more USB connectivity insights here in this thread:

Cable USB

USB cable Hello, I’m aware that I may be revealing a sensitive subject, I’d like to know if any of you have tested a USB cable to a hifi DAC and what your feelings are and for you is there possibly a cable that would be more suitable than another. Thank you for your feedback. Nicolas GUILLOU

[Ddude003]

When I speak of computer noise I am generalizing electrical interference (noise) the result of Electromagnetic interferences (EMI) and/or radio frequency interferences (RFI) generated by general purpose computering including cellphones, laptops, desk-tops and desk-sides…

This computer noise can egress the computer and ingress the DAC via the open air and/or via cables and connectors effecting the various parts of the DAC and its performance…

BTY I use a Wireworld Red (starlight 8) USB cable between my streamer and DAC…