Laptop & DAC Connection Question.

Jason36

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Jul 23, 2008
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I have recently purchased a NuForce Icon uDac2 to connect to my Laptop for iTunes, Spotify and Media Monkey, playing a combination of ALAC and HiRes FLAC files.

My question is regarding the DAC and whether it is just a case of plug it in, switch it on and connect your headphones? I have set the output settings under the DAC on the laptop to 24bit 96kHz, but not sure if I need to do anything else.

I have read a lot recently about requiring plugins like WASAPI and ASIO for the playback of HiRes music, but not sure what the do and whether I need to download one.
 
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Anonymous

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Dacs are plug and play. You may need to select 16bit/44khz if u switch to these files.Not sure about plugins.
 

CustomCable

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The uDAC2 is a great little piece of kit and tiny too, this unit is just plug and play so that should be fine. I would strongly suggest Foobar2k to play music and download as you say the wasapi.dll plugin. This in a nutshell bypasses the computers pre processing and effectively takes the audio more or less to the kernel for then sending straight out the USB or S/PDIF output. Once selected you will not need to manually select what file format you are playing within your laptop.

Regards

Phil
 

Jason36

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CustomCable said:
The uDAC2 is a great little piece of kit and tiny too, this unit is just plug and play so that should be fine. I would strongly suggest Foobar2k to play music and download as you say the wasapi.dll plugin. This in a nutshell bypasses the computers pre processing and effectively takes the audio more or less to the kernel for then sending straight out the USB or S/PDIF output. Once selected you will not need to manually select what file format you are playing within your laptop.

Regards

Phil

Cheers Phil,

I will give Foobar2K a look.

I have downloaded the ASIO.dll and added this to Media Monkey...however when I choose this I dont get any sound out of my headphones....but it shows up in the Output choices.

I like to keep my HiRes FLAC files and Apple Lossless files seperately....just find it easier to keep a track of them for choosing what I want to listen to.

The NuForce uDAC2 is a brilliant piece of kit you are right.....small and therefore easy to hide on the desk....its also a pretty decent Headphone amplifier....better than the direct out on the Latop :grin:
 

AnotherJoe

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For ASIO and MediaMonkey use the following steps...

1. Dowload and extract the asio_out plugin to mediamonkey/plugins directory (you may need 7-zip to extract it)

http://otachan.com/out_asio(dll).html

2. Download and install this driver

http://tippach.business.t-online.de/asio4all/downloads_1/ASIO4ALL_2_10_English.exe

3. In MediaMonkey select Tools->Options select the ASIO output plugin.

4. If there is still no sound, right click on the ASIO icon in the taskbar and make sure the correct sounddevice has the power icon selected.
 

Jason36

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And Frustration Sets in |( |(

So I have decided that I am going to use Foobar2K going forward......I have downloaded this and imported my music. I have then gone to the Foobar Components page and downloaded the WASAPI file, unzipped it and transferred it to the Components folder in Foobar2K.

I have then opened File > Preferences (checked the WASAPI DLL is there...it is) > Playback > Output (in my case WASAPI SPDIF Inteface (NuForce uDAC2) and then clicked on this and Applied. When I then try and play my FLAC files I get the following message:

"Unrecoverable playback error: Unsupported stream format: 88200 Hz / 16-bit / 2 channels"

The files I am using are a maximum of 96kHz / 24 bit FLAC files.

I have the PC sound out put set at the standard 44.1kHz / 16bit - as WASAPI is Supposed to bypass this anyway.

Under the Playback optons in Foobar (where you choose the WASAPI output) what are you supposed to set the Output Format as? (Leave it Blank??)

Anybody help with this......I have had to go back to the Windows 7 control for output.
 
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Anonymous

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I left it blank, without problems. What was the source when this error was produced? Could be that it assumes the uDAC does not accept this format.

BTW, I read somewhere that according to the foobar maker (Peter P.) WASAPI is not ideal for USB DACs. Kernel streaming to USB also works fine in foobar.
 

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