 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
98.226.131.190
Hi All,
"Money is tight and nothing is free" - SRV
OK, having said that, here I sit with two digital source's that are not delivering the goods.
Source One - 500gb drive loaded with about 500 CDs/albums directly connected to a Logitech Touch feeding directly into my preamp. Works great and sounds okay. Love the approach with the "Touch". I do not need to have a PC running and just select what I want to hear and go. All of the "technical" aspects work great. No clicks, no drop outs and it plays my 24/96 wav files with no audible issues. The only "hiccup" on the technical side is that it reports the time length wrong but that is a minor hiccup that I can easily live with. So where does it come up short... sonics from the analogue ports are not "good enough" for me.
Source Two - 1tb hard drive with the same listening material as the drive connected to the Touch, just bigger =) hooked to an older Dell Laptop running JRiver Media Center feeding a Presonus Firebox via Firewire. The Firebox is connected to my pre using the same interconnect cables... Sonics are great. Soooo where does it come up short? Latency issues with the laptop cause pops and clicks and the connection to the Firebox just quits when it feels like it. I can hear the hard drive seeking thru my speakers way to frequently. Many efforts have been made to reduce the Latency issues of the Laptop but it is still there... damn thing pops/clicks/makes noise whenever it feels like it. Yes... I have even selected the option in JRiver to play from memory... turned off the wireless... turned off the CD/DVD drive... I would just give up on the thing but when it works right the thing sounds great!
Options as I see them are:
One - Modify the analogue outputs of the Touch to improve performance (DIY project that voids the warranty)
Two - Buy a great sounding DAC and cable to send the digital output of the to. I'd use the Presonus but then I'd have to have a PC running the driver for it...
Three - Buy a newer PC running windows7, cross my fingers and pray that everything works "right"... no latency... silent... It needs a firewire connection to drive the Presonus so that really kicks up the price.
Four - Buy a Mac Mini with monitor and keyboard and hope it works
Five - Buy a Macbook Pro
Options three, four and five are pricey to me but I might not have any other alternative to have something that just works. Ponder my predicament if you would and offer me some suggestions... I am a cheap skate but willing to spend a few bucks... don't want to spend them badly...
Brian
Follow Ups:
I'm going to come at this from a very different approach than others and give you some options for optimizing the Touch. You can get quite a bit better sonics than what you are getting right now.
First off is to use an external server. I know you like the drive plugged into the Touch, but it is not the best configuration for sonics. It severely stresses that little processor to have both the server and the player going on at the same time. There are quite a few inexpensive options for a "server box", you don't need a full blown normal "computer" with screen and all.
To try it out to see if you hear an improvement you can temporarily load SBS on your existing computer, plug your external drive into it and point SBS at that drive. To get best results from this you should be wired to the Touch, not wifi. The usual way is to wire the server to a router as well as the Touch. Its best if they are NOT in the same room. (thats one of the advantages of the SB system, the server can be off some where else out of the listening environment)
Once you get it running, set the file types so that any compressed types such as FLAC are converted to PCM before streaming to the Touch. Wavs are fine since they are already PCM.
The purpose of all this is to cut down on the work the Touch processor has to do.
There are other configuration tweaks that can be done on the Touch. Soundchekk has a list of them on his website. (it also includes what I have listed here). Do these first, then go after the others.
Another improvement for many people is to replace the switching supply with a good linear supply. I have posted a design here on AA which can significantly improve the performance of a system. Contrary to popular opinion most of the advantage of the linear supply is not making the Touch work better, but decreasing the noise that gets fed back into the powerline. The design I mentioned feeds back almost nothing in the mains. Many other pieces of gear are fairly susceptible to the noise range that a switcher produces, thus getting rid of the switcher can improve the rest of your system. Some gear is not sensitive to this noise and the linera supply does not give nearly as big an improvement as it does in other systems.
There ARE two hardware tweaks which can improve it, one is to get rid of the output caps, there are completely unnecessary, the DAC already produces a ground referenced signal. The other is to unplug the screen. Of course then you need to use some other form of running the system (of which there are MANY).
If you try running with an external server and you like the improvement there are a number of possible "server boxes", what you get depends on your priorities. The easiest to use and setup is a vortexbox appliance. Plug it in, copy files over to its disk, log into it from another computer and run a scan and you are ready to go. It does take twenty watts so some people don't like it. A FitPC2 running vortexbox software can do the same thing, but it uses 5 watts and is extremely small and quiet. You do have to install vortexbox software though, which takes about 10 minutes.
Once you get the SB system going it tends to multiply. The server can send music to many players and virtual players. You can control them from many different devices, not just the players themselves. Its easy to get hooked on the system.
If you DO decide to go with an external DAC for the Touch, my favorite these days is the Audio-gd DAC1-9DSP. This is one amazing DAC. Even with an external DAC I still recommend an external server for the Touch. The TinySBS in the Touch has a lot of things turned off to make it fit. With an external server you get the full power of the system.
John S.
john,
can you post your design again? Have not been able to find it.
TIA,
Here is the schematic. The Hammond choke is the critical part of the design. Its designed to operate at line frequency (100 or 120Hz). Many people try and substitute the small "common mode" chokes which are readily available. Unfortunately they are designed to run at 50KHz and up, the design will not work well at all if you substitute one of these for the Hammond choke. The values and part types listed have been carefully chosen to work well together, significantly changing any of them can significantly degrade the performance of the supply.
John S.
John,
I used to think that it didn't really matter how much CPU use goes on in these devices. A recent experience changed my mind. I could hear differences in a Transporter feeding a Sonic Studio 304 via AES/EBU based on whether the server machine or the Transporter is doing the FLAC -> PCM decoding. It sounded a little better with the PC doing the decoding.
The sad thing though is that there was a bigger difference between the Transporter itself and going from MacBook Pro -> FW -> Model 304. The Transporter was clearly at a disadvantage. This possibly could be due to the Model 304 for whatever reason, but in my mind the digital outs on Squeezebox products aren't up to the level of FW or asynchronous USB. I tried word clock from the Transporter vs. word clock from the Model 304 and the difference was small enough that I didn't perceive any difference.
It was unfortunate for me, because I really like the Squeezebox web interface and the iPeng controls for iPod touch and iPad. It far exceeds the capabilities of the iTunes/Remote control system.
Hi John,
Many things to try with the Touch. I will start in on them when I get home on Monday. The server software is loaded on the music laptop so that will be easy to try.
Is it possible to hook the Touch to a PC without going thru a router?
I'll keep the server in mind... I did go to Soundchekk's website to "see what I could see" but there wasn't anything there to see.
...physically modifying the Touch is last on the list but if I have to go there I will.
Brian
Some people have had problems with Dell systems, so perhaps that's a factor in your case.
I've had problems in several Windows XP systems with two processes started by iTunes. The cure is to find the running processes and kill them. The permanent cure is to uninstall iTunes.
I've also had problems with anti-virus software. Depending on the make, model and version, disabling various features may not be sufficient. It may be necessary to completely uninstall the software.
One other thing you might try is to turn off the network adapter cards so that the various networking processes can't get too busy. This would be quick to do and can easily be undone.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Hi Tony,
When we went thru the Dell "dilemma" at the beginning of this year we came to that same conclusion. "it's a dell".
I'll wipe out iTunes... cannot hurt.
Oh! Never thought about the hardwire NIC card. I'll turn that off also.
Thanks!
Brian
...Just connect it to a DAC and you're good to go, and it sounds wonderful. I assembled my own DAC from about $300 worth of parts, but there are plenty of promising readymades available at reasonable cost.
4season,
Got any "names" for potential DAC's? Benchmark/PS Audio/Channel Island are what I have been looking at...
Brian
I like my PS Audio DLIII. The SB Touch is mighty fine all by itself though.
Can't help with Source One. Regarding the latency issues with Source Two, maybe this will help:
http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=pcaudio&n=79536
See the response from Ryelands, who saved the day for me.If this doesn't help: Is the problem worse or better at lower sampling rates? You can change this in JRiver 15, Options, Audio, Settings, DSP and Output format.
Also, try closing any controller for your Firewire DAC. The data for the display (from the Firebox to the laptop) may be interfering with the music data from the laptop to the Firebox. This was an issue when I recorded using my Prism Orpheus with the Orpheus software controller open.
Edits: 11/28/10 11/28/10
Hi JerryS,
I do not feel that anything changes with the sampling rate, but, you never know. It just tanks after so long.
I'll close the controller software and see what happens ;) after I read the thread that you linked.
I'll review the link that you posted.
Thanks!
Brian
> "Money is tight and nothing is free" - SRV
Do some troubleshooting before you spend money.
> Source Two - 1tb hard drive ... hooked to an older Dell Laptop running
> JRiver Media Center feeding a Presonus Firebox via Firewire.
> Latency issues with the laptop cause pops and clicks and the connection
> to the Firebox just quits when it feels like it.
First, rule out some garden variety problems.
1. Use Ctrl-Alt-del to bring up Task manager. Click on the performance Tab and watch CPU and memory activity as you play music. Note the level of CPU use. When you hear a glitch in the audio, note whether anything different happens. You can click on the Processes tab to see the amount of activity from different processes.
2. Check the settings for your antivirus s/w. Most A/W software does extra file I/O when you open a file. You can usually turn off that background scanning and leave the other A/V functions intact. Windows Update and Windows checkpointing can also can a burst of CPU and disk I/O activity that can cause glitches.
3. Download the DPC latency checker tool and run it while audio is playing. Look for spikes in DPC latency when you hear a glitch.
4. While you are playing music, do something that requires screen refreshing. For example, scroll a long web page. Listen for glitches as you do things that cause screen updates. Older laptops may use AGP based graphics hardware that shares RAM with the CPU.
Report back on the outcome of these tests. I might be able to provide advice on a fix.
> I can hear the hard drive seeking thru my speakers way to frequently.
Do you mean that you hear noise caused by the hard disk activity? or do you mean that you hear glitches when there is hard disk activity.
---
Disclaimer: I do not use Firewire output on a PC at present so I'm passing on what I've read on other forums. (Mostly Pro-audio forums.)
You are using a Firewire DAC on a Windows laptop. Firewire has never been mainstream on Windows PCs so there can be special problems for audio I/O.
The usual advice given when someone reports glitches is to get a firewire card with a TI chip for the firewire interface. The firewire support in Windows is said to work better with the TI chip than with other firewire chips. You can't put a PCI card in your laptop but it might have a cardbus slot. if so you can buy a cardbus TI adapter with a TI chip like this one made by SIIG:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839150006
---
You said that your laptop is old but you didn't give details. Here are some things that would cause me to give up on the laptop.
1. Win 98 or ME - just too old. Nobody test with Win 98 or ME anymore.
2. less than 512 MB of RAM - For a laptop with shared RAM for graphics, more than 512 MB is better.
3. single core Intel P4 or signgle core AMD processor - more likely to have glitches
4. AGP graphics - this may hog memory access.
5. Doesn't have high speed USB 2.0 support. (Disk I/O is really slow with USB 1.1.)
Good luck.
Bill
Hi Old Listener!
> Do some troubleshooting before you spend money.
I went down that road last year and it ended where I am. Willing to give it another shot though 8^).
> 1. Use Ctrl-Alt-del to bring up Task manager. Click on the performance Tab
> and watch CPU and memory activity as you play music. Note the level of CPU
> use. When you hear a glitch in the audio, note whether anything different
> happens. You can click on the Processes tab to see the amount of activity
> from different processes.
A 5 minute seating the CPU never went over 15 percent. Three programs that showed the most when the bars were red were services.exe, s24evmon.exe and, of course MediaCenter.exe
> 2. Check the settings for your antivirus s/w. Most A/W software does extra
> file I/O when you open a file. You can usually turn off that background
> scanning and leave the other A/V functions intact. Windows Update and
> Windows check pointing can also can a burst of CPU and disk I/O activity
> that can cause glitches.
No AVSoftware on the box except for Spybot. The machine isn’t typically connected to the web. It’s primary purpose is hobby stuff so the only time that it is connected to the web is when software needs updated. That is up until this weekend, I put JRiver Media Center on the box and frigging fell for the sound!
> 3. Download the DPC latency checker tool and run it while audio is playing.
> Look for spikes in DPC latency when you hear a glitch.
Yup, DPC Latency is on the machine... clicks and pops correspond with nice tall red bars. Just did about a 5 minute watching session and saw a maximum of 6140 microseconds and heard one click.
> 4. While you are playing music, do something that requires screen
> refreshing. For example, scroll a long web page. Listen for glitches as
> you do things that cause screen updates. Older laptops may use AGP based
> graphics hardware that shares RAM with the CPU.
Well... I don’t really "use" the pc for other things while I am listening to music. Doing so is a sure recipe for rebooting... All that I want the Laptop to do is play and record music without a hitch. I have used the setup to record many albums, many frustrating sessions... record side one, move to side two and get a track or two from the end and the Presonus just stops and the PC must be rebooted to get everything talking again. Or you record what you think is an excellent rip, save it then go back to listen to it later and there is a veil of "white noise" over the recording so you getta do it again.... I digress, sorry ;^)
> Report back on the outcome of these tests. I might be able to provide
> advice on a fix.
Okay; See the above
> Do you mean that you hear noise caused by the hard disk activity? or do
> you mean that you hear glitches when there is hard disk activity.
I can hear the hard drive "working". By that I mean I can put my hand on the drive and feel it seeking something on the disk. What I hear thru my speakers "matches" what I hear, dang, I hope that one makes sense.
> Disclaimer: I do not use Firewire output on a PC at present so I'm passing
> on what I've read on other forums. (Mostly Pro-audio forums.)
Kool. I appreciate any and all help that I am given.
> You are using a Firewire DAC on a Windows laptop. Firewire has never been
> mainstream on Windows PCs so there can be special problems for audio I/O.
> The usual advice given when someone reports glitches is to get a firewire
> card with a TI chip for the firewire interface. The firewire support in
> Windows is said to work better with the TI chip than with other firewire
> chips. You can't put a PCI card in your laptop but it might have a cardbus
> slot. if so you can buy a cardbus TI adapter with a TI chip like this one
> made by SIIG:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839150006
For 54.00 I would buy one if the card would fit in the laptop. The card slot in the laptop is a "expresscard/34 or expresscard/5) so it does not accept a full width PCMCIA card like you linked. I'll go to egghead and see if they have one that fits.
> You said that your laptop is old but you didn't give details. Here are
> some things that would cause me to give up on the laptop.
Sorry. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron that I received on 1/23/08. It runs a WindowsXP pro operating system and has 2gb of ram. The graphics are supported with their own card; ATI Rateon. It has a dual core Intel Centrino processor. I do not know if it supports USB2.0; how can I tell?
Many thanks for your thoughts!
Brian
Thanks for taking the trouble to run the tests I described.
> > task manager
> A 5 minute seating the CPU never went over 15 percent.
> Three programs that showed the most when the bars were red
> were services.exe, s24evmon.exe and, of course MediaCenter.exe
The point of the test is to see what's going on at the scheduled process level WHEN A GLITCH OCCURS. The performance view shows a couple of measures. Once you have watched that display, you should switch to the process view. The process view can be customized to display CPU use, memory use (more than one measure) and various I/O measures.
If your mention of the red bars refers to the bars that DPC latency displays, that test shows you what's going on at a different point in the audio path. There are be a bottleneck at the scheduled process level independent of what the DPC latency tool shows.
> Yup, DPC Latency is on the machine...
> clicks and pops correspond with nice tall red bars.
> Just did about a 5 minute watching session and saw a
> maximum of 6140 microseconds and heard one click.
Ok. You may have a problem with some other device causing a bottleneck at the device driver level. The DPC Latency checker doesn't tell you what is causing the problem. You need to disable a likely offender and run the test again. Your wireless network device would be my first choice.
> > 4. While you are playing music, do something that requires screen
> > refreshing.
> Well... I don’t really "use" the pc for other things while I am
> listening to music.
I gave you a test to run to check for a specific cause of your problem. You graphics adapter might be hogging the PCI bus and causing long delays over the PCI bus.
> For 54.00 I would buy one if the card would fit in the laptop. The card
> slot in the laptop is a "expresscard/34 or expresscard/5)
Since you only said "old laptop", I suggested Cardbus since that is what old laptops would have. So look for an expresscard version with a TI chip. Here is SIIG's list of firewire cards
http://www.siig.com/ViewProductList.aspx?catid=244
> The laptop is a Dell Inspiron that I received on 1/23/08. It runs a
> WindowsXP pro operating system and has 2gb of ram.
That will be fine. It will have USB 2.0 ports.
---
Tony suggest disabling the network adapters. I think this is a good suggestion. Your wireless adapter is a more likely offender than the wired LAN device. Disable one or both and play audio with the DPC latency checker running. If the wireless driver is the problem, you should see lower DPC latency spikes.
Bill
Bill,
I plan on filing your email so that I can refer to it when I start recording my next 100lps! Turned off the wireless, blue tooth and the cd drive. Yes, I got carried away turning things off but I don't use the stuff. The latency numbers according to DPC latency checker are much smaller (less than 1000). I am kinda anxious to try some more recording to see how it holds up.
Many thanks.
Brian
I'm glad that you made progress. And you have some useful skills for troubleshooting in the future.
Bill
As it is a Dell, disabling all enhancements in the sound panel can help and as a minimum won’t do harm.
The Well Tempered Computer
Roseval,
Kool, easy to do and I'll add it to the list.
Brian
A few more ideas.Make sure that you have all of the latest versions of applications and drivers from Dell, Microsoft ATI, PreSonus, JRiver, et al.
For checking applications SUMO Lite (not the regular) does a decent job of identifying if your installed software has updates available.
For checking drivers I recommend Driver Max. When you are done checking, downloading and installing your driver updates, remember to delete it from the programs that start up when XP loads.
Check all of your other start up programs and delete anything that's not needed. CCleaner works well.
Run a registry cleaner. CCleaner does an OK job. Eusing Free Registry cleaner cleans deeper. Make sure you create restore points before running these.
Have you tried using a different application to play your tunes? If not try something like Media Player Classic or VLC player or one of the hundred other free ones just to see if the problem goes away.
Next to lastly serve up material from the local Dell hard drive to see if the problem goes away.
If all else fails you could potentially reload XP from scratch. XP is known to slow down over time. The only way to fix it is to start over.
Edits: 11/28/10 11/28/10
Post a Followup:
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
