Tony L
Administrator
Just restarting this thread as I’ve accidentally deleted the last one. Pretty sure now there is a bug in XF2 as I know what I had selected (a couple of posts) and I ended up losing the whole bloody thread. Second time this has happened now. Annoying as there was some very good information there I was relying on. It has to be a bug as this result from what I actually did is not possible. Apologies anyway, it was one of the more interesting threads of recent years IMHO and I have to take ownership for losing it along with a lot of information I needed to refer back to.
Anyway, to briefly recap:
The big lump on the lower left is a rather wonderful decade or so old Chord DSX1000 (Chord) DLNA/UPnP network player/DAC. It has over the week or so since it landed had problems with my apparently not too great broadband and home network. It works most of the time, but drops out on high res content, and mostly in the evenings, maybe suggesting network contention from neighbours etc is a factor. It seems very critical of latency as I don’t think it has any real buffering ability. I’m also using it as a DAC for the Apollo R next to it which is connected to its coax input (its only other input aside from the cat5 ethernet port).
I found over the course of the last thread:
The DSX really does not like being plugged into a GigE cat 5 port (it‘s ethernet port is 100MBs). This is well documented on other forums from the time the DSX was current (e.g. Minimserver). I used an Apple A1264 Airport Express for a while as that has a 100MBs ethernet port. It was better than a direct connection to the Plusnet Smart Hub Two GigE port, but brought its own issues (the AE is known for latency). I’m amazed the AE worked to be honest, I’d never used it as a remote ethernet port before, and given it was designed just to enable network printing it did a very good job. It could get through an album of 24/48 without the DSX dropping on a good day!
There is very obvious measurable latency under load on my network when using the Smart Hub Two showing as ‘Grade C’ using this waveform.com ‘bufferbloat’ test. The preceding Hub One consistently gets ‘Grade A’ on the same test and seems to perform far more reliably with the DSX. This reinforces my suspicion latency is the underlying issue, or at least a key factor. The bandwidth as is, even if it is far below what I am paying for, should suffice with headroom to spare. I am currently using the Smart Hub One. The overall bandwidth and WiFi range (the latter none of the DSX’s business) are less good than the Hub Two, but it seems lower latency and more stable device in this context.
The network as it stands right now is; Plusnet Smart Hub One, cheap Amazon switch (so the DSX only sees a 100MB port), and from there direct connection with a 15 metre cat5e cable.
The source is Qobuz controlled via Mconnect Pro running on either an iPhone or iPad. This was tested and the stream continues until track end minutes later with the iPad in Airplane mode and MConnect closed, so the stream is not arriving at the DSX via the Apple device. Conversely pulling the cat5 lead makes the DSX drop immediately (it appears to have no buffer beyond a few network frames).
I wanted to understand this as I’m new to UPnP and DLNA and need to better understand the concepts of how a DLNA renderer interacts with a music source and control commands. This was my key question in the opening post of the last thread. I’d still like a lot more information here, but it certainly looks like MConnect passes an address and instruction to the DLNA renderer which then connects directly to the source and carries out that instruction, e.g. ‘go here, play this’. That is how I understand it anyway. Again please correct me if I have this wrong.
The broadband is booked for an upgrade to full fibre 140mbps with a guaranteed minimum of 80mbps in about a week and a half. The current situation is a fibre to box billed at 66mbps, but in reality around 35-40mbps, i.e. at least a doubling of bandwidth is on order. I also have a nice Cisco switch on the way thanks to a very kind pfm member, and I strongly suspect I will be going router shopping fairly shortly, maybe a Draytek.
As to the DSX itself; it is stunning! The best sound I have personally heard from a streaming solution. It has all the clarity, weight and scale of a really good DAC (it is basically QBD76 technology with a clock and DLNA player added) and it lacks that ’dead in the water’ thing so many streaming solutions have to my old-school flat-earth ears! It grooves! It is now very, very close to working. I suspect a couple more small incremental network upgrades will bring the stability it needs. Everything I did during the last lost thread moved it closer (figuring it hated the GigE port, adding a 100MBs switch/removing an Airport Express as substitute, and realising the Smart Hub Two was very poor under load). It is getting there…
The DSX1000 is running firmware version 17.0.4.12 with a date of 2015-08-13. I think this is pretty late for this device, it is certainly after certain comments on other forums regarding previous firmware improvements, e.g. the Minimserver thread linked earlier.
Again my apologies for losing so much good information and experience from so many people.
Anyway, to briefly recap:
The big lump on the lower left is a rather wonderful decade or so old Chord DSX1000 (Chord) DLNA/UPnP network player/DAC. It has over the week or so since it landed had problems with my apparently not too great broadband and home network. It works most of the time, but drops out on high res content, and mostly in the evenings, maybe suggesting network contention from neighbours etc is a factor. It seems very critical of latency as I don’t think it has any real buffering ability. I’m also using it as a DAC for the Apollo R next to it which is connected to its coax input (its only other input aside from the cat5 ethernet port).
I found over the course of the last thread:
The DSX really does not like being plugged into a GigE cat 5 port (it‘s ethernet port is 100MBs). This is well documented on other forums from the time the DSX was current (e.g. Minimserver). I used an Apple A1264 Airport Express for a while as that has a 100MBs ethernet port. It was better than a direct connection to the Plusnet Smart Hub Two GigE port, but brought its own issues (the AE is known for latency). I’m amazed the AE worked to be honest, I’d never used it as a remote ethernet port before, and given it was designed just to enable network printing it did a very good job. It could get through an album of 24/48 without the DSX dropping on a good day!
There is very obvious measurable latency under load on my network when using the Smart Hub Two showing as ‘Grade C’ using this waveform.com ‘bufferbloat’ test. The preceding Hub One consistently gets ‘Grade A’ on the same test and seems to perform far more reliably with the DSX. This reinforces my suspicion latency is the underlying issue, or at least a key factor. The bandwidth as is, even if it is far below what I am paying for, should suffice with headroom to spare. I am currently using the Smart Hub One. The overall bandwidth and WiFi range (the latter none of the DSX’s business) are less good than the Hub Two, but it seems lower latency and more stable device in this context.
The network as it stands right now is; Plusnet Smart Hub One, cheap Amazon switch (so the DSX only sees a 100MB port), and from there direct connection with a 15 metre cat5e cable.
The source is Qobuz controlled via Mconnect Pro running on either an iPhone or iPad. This was tested and the stream continues until track end minutes later with the iPad in Airplane mode and MConnect closed, so the stream is not arriving at the DSX via the Apple device. Conversely pulling the cat5 lead makes the DSX drop immediately (it appears to have no buffer beyond a few network frames).
I wanted to understand this as I’m new to UPnP and DLNA and need to better understand the concepts of how a DLNA renderer interacts with a music source and control commands. This was my key question in the opening post of the last thread. I’d still like a lot more information here, but it certainly looks like MConnect passes an address and instruction to the DLNA renderer which then connects directly to the source and carries out that instruction, e.g. ‘go here, play this’. That is how I understand it anyway. Again please correct me if I have this wrong.
The broadband is booked for an upgrade to full fibre 140mbps with a guaranteed minimum of 80mbps in about a week and a half. The current situation is a fibre to box billed at 66mbps, but in reality around 35-40mbps, i.e. at least a doubling of bandwidth is on order. I also have a nice Cisco switch on the way thanks to a very kind pfm member, and I strongly suspect I will be going router shopping fairly shortly, maybe a Draytek.
As to the DSX itself; it is stunning! The best sound I have personally heard from a streaming solution. It has all the clarity, weight and scale of a really good DAC (it is basically QBD76 technology with a clock and DLNA player added) and it lacks that ’dead in the water’ thing so many streaming solutions have to my old-school flat-earth ears! It grooves! It is now very, very close to working. I suspect a couple more small incremental network upgrades will bring the stability it needs. Everything I did during the last lost thread moved it closer (figuring it hated the GigE port, adding a 100MBs switch/removing an Airport Express as substitute, and realising the Smart Hub Two was very poor under load). It is getting there…
The DSX1000 is running firmware version 17.0.4.12 with a date of 2015-08-13. I think this is pretty late for this device, it is certainly after certain comments on other forums regarding previous firmware improvements, e.g. the Minimserver thread linked earlier.
Again my apologies for losing so much good information and experience from so many people.
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