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MDAC first listen (part XIV)

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This weekend I've been listening to some Ligeti & Feldman pieces, XTC, Queen, King Crimson, Oscar Peterson (We Get Requests, great recording!), Sonny Rollins, a bit of bluegrass, some brazilian folk music, Charles Mingus, a few Zappa records and I ended it today with Miles Davis' Big Fun. Yowza! I would like to mention that although all the MPAX/MAMP/etc talk is very interesting (and tempting) to read, I couldn't wish for anything more at the moment. The M-DAC makes all the music in my collection sound so wonderfully deep and rich, with so much detail and no preference to style at all. Amazing. Every record I choose surprises me.

So thanks, John. :)
 
This weekend I've been listening to some Ligeti & Feldman pieces, XTC, Queen, King Crimson, Oscar Peterson (We Get Requests, great recording!), Sonny Rollins, a bit of bluegrass, some brazilian folk music, Charles Mingus, a few Zappa records and I ended it today with Miles Davis' Big Fun. Yowza! I would like to mention that although all the MPAX/MAMP/etc talk is very interesting (and tempting) to read, I couldn't wish for anything more at the moment. The M-DAC makes all the music in my collection sound so wonderfully deep and rich, with so much detail and no preference to style at all. Amazing. Every record I choose surprises me.
I listened to Haydn, Gluck, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Grieg, Verdi, Mozart, and Bach, and had the same experience. Yes: Thanks.
 
What's a fast filter?
I only have these filters:

Optimal Spectrum
Optimal Transient
Optimal Transient XD
Optimal Transient DD
Sharp Rolloff
Slow Rolloff
Minimum Phase

Should I start the music before 1.) ?

Playing Music will have no effect on the issue of retaining the Memory, so it does not matter.

Sorry, the Fast Filter + Sharp, so I corrected the instructions:-

To help me better understand the issue, Pls. follow these steps:

1. Select Sharp Filter

2. Set Level to say -40dB

2. Power Off

3. Wait 10 seconds

4. Power On

Is the Level still "-40dB" upon power-up?

Is the "Sharp Filter" Selected upon power up?

Do you still have the issue?

If the MDAC has not recalled the Volume level set before power off (in this case -40dB as requested in Step 2) and / or the selected "Sharp" Filter then I'm sorry YOUR UNIT HAS A HARDWARE ISSUE - I cannot stress this in any other way.

Hopefully this will not be the case and the MDAC will correctly recall the selected Fast Filter and recall the Volume level set before power-off.

An instantaneous "Buffer-Flush" message on first enumeration of the USB port is normal while the buffer's correctly align themselves...

John
 
This weekend I've been listening to some Ligeti & Feldman pieces, XTC, Queen, King Crimson, Oscar Peterson (We Get Requests, great recording!), Sonny Rollins, a bit of bluegrass, some brazilian folk music, Charles Mingus, a few Zappa records and I ended it today with Miles Davis' Big Fun. Yowza! I would like to mention that although all the MPAX/MAMP/etc talk is very interesting (and tempting) to read, I couldn't wish for anything more at the moment. The M-DAC makes all the music in my collection sound so wonderfully deep and rich, with so much detail and no preference to style at all. Amazing. Every record I choose surprises me.

So thanks, John. :)

I listened to Haydn, Gluck, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Grieg, Verdi, Mozart, and Bach, and had the same experience. Yes: Thanks.

I'm happy to hear - thank you both for the feedback,

John
 
Playing Music will have no effect on the issue of retaining the Memory, so it does not matter.

Sorry, the Fast Filter + Sharp, so I corrected the instructions:-

To help me better understand the issue, Pls. follow these steps:

1. Select Sharp Filter

2. Set Level to say -40dB

2. Power Off

3. Wait 10 seconds

4. Power On

Is the Level still "-40dB" upon power-up?

Is the "Sharp Filter" Selected upon power up?

Do you still have the issue?

If the MDAC has not recalled the Volume level set before power off (in this case -40dB as requested in Step 2) and / or the selected "Sharp" Filter then I'm sorry YOUR UNIT HAS A HARDWARE ISSUE - I cannot stress this in any other way.

Hopefully this will not be the case and the MDAC will correctly recall the selected Fast Filter and recall the Volume level set before power-off.

An instantaneous "Buffer-Flush" message on first enumeration of the USB port is normal while the buffer's correctly align themselves...

John

My M-DAC has recalled both the volume and the filter selected before shutting the device down.
The problem went away by turning on the M-DAC while playing music if the Sharp filter was selected before turning the device off.

I can now turn on the M-DAC with any filter selected even if music is playing. Why is that?

Thank you!
 
My M-DAC has recalled both the volume and the filter selected before shutting the device down.
The problem went away by turning on the M-DAC while playing music if the Sharp filter was selected before turning the device off.

I can now turn on the M-DAC with any filter selected even if music is playing. Why is that?

Thank you!

Well good news that your MDAC recalls its setting, but I strongly suspect you will still have filter load issues (if any other filter apart from Sharp or Slow) is selected during power-up... Test more and let us know.

The best work around ATM is not to have Music playing over the USB as you power-up... as Arthur points out, seems strange to play music before the DAC itself is powered on...

John
 
Well good news that your MDAC recalls its setting, but I strongly suspect you will still have filter load issues (if any other filter apart from Sharp or Slow) is selected during power-up... Test more and let us know.

The best work around ATM is not to have Music playing over the USB as you power-up... as Arthur points out, seems strange to play music before the DAC itself is powered on...

John

Yeah, I selected "Optimal Spectrum" filter and turned the device off.
After some minutes with music playing I switched it back on and the problem was there.

Filter load issues correlate to the Firmware of the M-DAC? So it can be fixed?

What exactly does the Sharp / Slow filter do all the other filters don't?

Thank you for helping, John!
 
Yeah, I selected "Optimal Spectrum" filter and turned the device off.
After some minutes with music playing I switched it back on and the problem was there.

Filter load issues correlate to the Firmware of the M-DAC? So it can be fixed?

What exactly does the Sharp / Slow filter do all the other filters don't?

Thank you for helping!

The Sharp and Slow filters are ESS internal filters, so they are not really loaded - rather they are selected.

The ESS DAC has a REALLY stupid design fault (design Bug) - its Clock must be continues and uninterrupted during the filter load process and to make matters worst there is no method to read-back the Memory to confirm they have been correctly loaded.

At a guess it would appear that your MAC is cycling the sampling frequency as the MDAC USB port as its enumerated - thus corrupting the ESS Filter load process.

The work-around is not to play music until the MDAC has been powered up.

The ESS DAC is so full of design bugs, sometimes I get so pissed off as we take a hit because of design issues outside of our control...

We live with this status quo as IMO the ESS DAC's are the very best, however at times like this I just wish ESS would get there house in order...

John
 
looks like the problem i've experienced once with my mdac. I shut it down for 1 hour then it works again...
John tells me that it doesnt sound good. In fact he was true.
Few days after it fails again sometimes somehow randomly. Now it's in john hands for servicing (and sovereigning ;) )

Anyways you can try firmware A.07 which is available for osx on the wiki or settle a windows os on a virtualmachine using virtualbox to flash another one.

Here exactly the same issue. Playing music over USB, the meters were working, but there was no sound coming from the line out. When restarting the mdac, volume was set back to -80db. Restarting didn't fix the issue. Only leaving it switched of for half an hour did the trick. Had this happening about 3 or 4 times. Not hoping it's a hardware issue :(
 
Unit was fine for about 2 months.
My issue is, that there are failures (no music for about 0,1 seconds) - happens every several minutes.
After rebooting, this failuere did not occure again for some hours.
(i should mention, that the mdac is turned on 24/7 all the time).

Also not hoping it's a hardware issue (temperatur problem). (FW 0.90)
 
The work-around is not to play music until the MDAC has been powered up.

Hey John,

so there is no change to "fix" this bug by software? Maybe it would help to automatically select the Sharp filter when turning on the device. As soon as it has booted the filter is switched back to the previously selected. :confused:
 
I've had my M-DAC for some time now, and I'd performed a bit perfect test via my laptop when I first got it, however my normal mode of listening is via an SBTouch, playing FLAC from a QNAP server...

I thought I'd test out the 'Bit Perfect' test using the entire setup, and in the way I normally listen...

So I created a mini album 'M-DAC Bit Perfect Test' with a nice little M-DAC album cover, with the following tracks (FYI I created the FLAC versions using dBpoweramp);

1. 16*44.1 WAV test.wav
2. 24*96 WAV test.wav
3. 16*44.1 FLAC test.flac
4. 24*96 FLAC test.flac

And then rebuild my SB catalogue...

FYI I'm using A0.5 on the M-DAC, EDO 7 on the SBTouch (connected via USB/USB hub/USB galvanic isolator), and LMS 7.7.2 on a QNAP TS-119

And hurrah! it passed each time :)

Interestingly enough the CPU on my server went through the roof (about 50% cpu) when I was testing the WAV, presumably it must be transcoding on the server, whereas when playing the FLAC tests it was back down to its normal 5%, with the transcoding occurring at the Touch end.

So there's a couple of urban myths dispelled, if FLAC from an SB server transmitted by wi-fi to an SBTouch can produce a 'bit perfect' test at the M-DAC for both 16*44.1 & 24*96 there can't be much (or anything for that matter) wrong with that architecture.

Therefore not much wrong with FLAC and Wi-Fi then, less bandwidth, less storage, less cables, and 'bit perfect'...cue smug face! :)

By default, LMS is configured to transcode WAV to FLAC on the server side. You can disable this and have LMS to stream PCM native for WAV files. The transcoding is done to preserve network bandwidth. I too have disable the transcoding and am streaming my WAV's natively. All my SB's are wireless and work fine this way. No bandwidth issues whatsoever.
 
By default, LMS is configured to transcode WAV to FLAC on the server side. You can disable this and have LMS to stream PCM native for WAV files. The transcoding is done to preserve network bandwidth. I too have disable the transcoding and am streaming my WAV's natively. All my SB's are wireless and work fine this way. No bandwidth issues whatsoever.

That would explain the additional CPU...

But given that FLAC via an SBTouch delivers 'Bit Perfect' data to the M-DAC why bother streaming/transcoding to/or storing WAV?
 
That would explain the additional CPU...

But given that FLAC via an SBTouch delivers 'Bit Perfect' data to the M-DAC why bother streaming/transcoding to/or storing WAV?

FLAC is not an option for me as I own several digital media players who do not support FLAC. Since I want an uncompressed format that is supported by all my media players I had to opt for WAV. That format allows me to play my music on all my players through only one single music library.
 
FLAC is not an option for me as I own several digital media players who do not support FLAC. Since I want an uncompressed format that is supported by all my media players I had to opt for WAV. That format allows me to play my music on all my players through only one single music library.

Ah I see...that's why I stick to Android ;)
 
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