optimum output settings for J-River using Chord Qute EX Dac

[MickyBlue]

I have finally got round to going digital and i have purchased j-river mc20, i have the chord qute ex dac and would like to know if anyone knows what would be the best output settings for this setup?

I have got all my files on an external hard drive and my macbook pro is conected via usb to the dac.

i have looked through countless pages and not many give a clear and definitive answer.

i have noticed that sometimes i get pops and it skips, i did contact chord who were under the impression it could be a driver issue, i have since re-installed the driver and have the same problem, chord are releasing an updated version soon so i hope this will be corrected within that update.

i would apprieciate it if someone in the know would be able to post a link or step by step idiots guide to setting this up so i know its not something i have done which is making it skip and pop.

 

[Vladimir]

I would like to help since I had lots of issues with various DACs and Audio Interfaces regarding pops, clicks and dropouts. However, I had those in Windows so my advice for solving them in Mac is a bit limited. But lets try.

1) Are the Chord drivers ASIO? And do you have set your JRiver Output for ASIO Chord DAC (not Direct Sound or Kernel or WASAPI). If your drivers are ASIO, they will only be stable with ASIO output.

2) Play with the JRiver latency settings. Increase or decrease them and see if that changes things.

3) How long is your USB cable? It should be no longer than 3m and 24AWG thick, not the thinner 28AWG.

4) Have you tried playing files on your internal hard drive and not the external one and see if the dropouts continue?

5) Do you have your Macbook Pro set for no battery savings? It must be Full Performance, no battery savings at all. When you have battery saving mode the CPU performance is reduced and cashing is slower, more congested. This creates dropouts with USB DACs running with drivers and not in native USB mode.

 

[MickyBlue]

thanks for your reply vlad, i have been through my settings and my output is set to CORE AUDIO via my chord dac.

my latancy setting are set to the recommended 50 millisecond default, i will play with these and see if this makes any difference.

My USB Cable is a chord USB Silver plus and is 3m in length.

i have tried the internal hard drive and this does seem to be part of the problem, i have therefore raised the prebuffer speed to 10 seconds instead of the default 6 seconds. (not sure if this will make any difference)

All my power settings are off giving my mac full power

I have increased the software buffering speed to 250 milliseconds and the hardware to maximum

i have also set my sample rate format on jriver to 192 for all outputs.

I would like to help since I had lots of issues with various DACs and Audio Interfaces regarding pops, clicks and dropouts. However, I had those in Windows so my advice for solving them in Mac is a bit limited. But lets try.

1) Are the Chord drivers ASIO? And do you have set your JRiver Output for ASIO Chord DAC (not Direct Sound or Kernel or WASAPI). If your drivers are ASIO, they will only be stable with ASIO output.

2) Play with the JRiver latency settings. Increase or decrease them and see if that changes things.

3) How long is your USB cable? It should be no longer than 3m and 24AWG thick, not the thinner 28AWG.

4) Have you tried playing files on your internal hard drive and not the external one and see if the dropouts continue?

5) Do you have your Macbook Pro set for no battery savings? It must be Full Performance, no battery savings at all. When you have battery saving mode the CPU performance is reduced and cashing is slower, more congested. This creates dropouts with USB DACs running with drivers and not in native USB mode.

 

[MickyBlue]

All sorted now (i hope), i have reset Jriver back to all defaults and uninstalled chords driver software and re-installed it, i appears it became corrupt during installation the first time round.

my audio is set to chord async [CORE AUDIO]

i have had to increase buffer speeds as it became unstable at the recommended settings, so far its holding out (fingers crossed)

thanks for your help vlad

 

[MickyBlue]

still happening, not as often but its still losing the plot a little... gotta be a driver issue!

i will wait until chord release an update *dash1*

 

[MickyBlue]

Bloody thing is still doing it

 

[cheeseboy]

couple of things to try...

Do you have any other computer sources, preferably windows based, you could try connecting up to the dac? That way it's trying to rule out if the problem is specific to the Macbook, or the Chord osx drivers?

also try a different cable, just in case. Just any el cheapo USB cable will do, preferably one with usb 2.0 standard if you are wanting to test the 192 setting.

Also, try some different playback software.

 

[Vladimir]

Definitely try between USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. Try a shorter generic cable as well.

Laptops are especially susceptible to these issues with external sound devices. There usually is a one or two processes hoarding the CPU cache resources unecessarily and this is manifested as dropouts in DACs and AIs. Normally you would not notice them doing this to your OS.

Is there an option to use the DAC without the driver installed, in its native USB mode no higher than 48kHz/16bit? If so try that. That would indicate if the drivers are the real issue or your OS or the external HDD. But my bet is on your settings, some CPU cache hoarding process in the background or just the drivers.

 

[SteveR750]

FWIW I found the qute sounded best using the optical cable, only because it was electrically isolated from my laptop. USB wasn't noticeably "worse", but there was some mains burble getting through.

 

[MickyBlue]

cheers guys, i have tried all the advise and have come to the conclusion its the chord drivers that are the problem, i have for the time being set all outputs to "no change" and i am using the native usb mode.

after speaking with chord they are aware of an issue with the driver and are close to updating it, apparently when using yosemite os the macbook works alot harder for some reason causing these issues, i have also increased hardware speed within jriver to counter act the problem.

fingers crossed for a software update.

 

[MickyBlue]

since changing from 192 to no change on the output settings i have had no issues at all, sound is amazing...