Hi,

I've used my Buffalo II for a couple of years and love the sound.

I use a mux and I2S out of the mux into the Buff. I use a shigaclone transport I made and have been very happy with the sound and the lack of dropouts most of the time. It will drop the signal only once in a while.

Later I got a juli@24/196 sound card for the computer. It works well to record vinyl and use the spdif out to the Buff. It will dropout more than the shigaclone. But not so much that its a big problem.

Then I got a teradac x2 link usb to spdif converter. Thinking async usb would be an upgrade over the juli@. Then the dropouts became a big problem.

Spdif out of the teradac into the mux is almost constant dropouts. Swapped usb cables, usb ports and still no good. Got the wide dpll fireware thinking that would fix the issue but no! Still dropouts! Not as bad but still not acceptable. So I am thinking about this and decided to use my netbook with the teradac usb instead of the pc. Not one dropout in an hour of listening!

Is the signal out of my pc that noisey? I dont want to use the netbook as the music server, hd isnt big enough and its too slow.

Any ideas how to clean up the pc to make it work with the teradac or should I just use the juli@ and be happy. The teradac does sound better than the juli@ but the dropouts are very distracting.

I need to switch to spdif out of the mux instead of using the I2S and see if that will help but havent done that yet. Every time I've switched to spdif out of the mux into the Buff instead of I2S seems to be a step down in sound quality.

Any ideas that will help are appreciated.

Thanks.

Edited by user Wednesday, August 10, 2011 8:46:49 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried all the diffeent usb ports. Still drops the signal. I am going to make a shielded cable to connect the teradac spdif to the mux. I dont think it will help but I will try it anyway. After that I guess I will switch to spdif out of the mux.

I did use the I2S out of the teradac to the Buff II, not using the mux and the dropouts were the most frequent of all. I havent tried spdif out of the teredac to the buff II without the mux. Maybe I can switch to spdif today and see what happens. I am going to email the seller of the teredac and see if he has anything to suggest. I am using an amd cpu in the pc and have read they dont play well with some audio drivers. More questions and few answers so far.

I was using the wide bandwith dpll firmware the last week. Thanks Brian and Russ. I use mediamonkey and added the directsound output plugin and now no dropouts so far using the best or narrow dpll firmware back in the Buff II. But that is only with the juli@ card. Now I can get the teradac to work but if I select a different song it will not produce sound again. I tried an asio plugin but that works and then locked with a song change. I need to find the bug because the teradac does sound better. The 24/192 rips of Captain Beefheart-Safe as Milk do sound good even using the juli@. There is a beta mediamonkey 4 available so I may try it and see if other plugins are available. Wasapi is something I should be able to use since I use windows 7. But I am still learning this computer audio stuff.

I'm able to use the Teralink x2 finally. I hadn't selected exclusive mode in the wasapi configuration panel. Now it plays without dropouts and sounds very good. I didnt have much time to listen this am but I'm happy it works now. I dont know why it will pass 192khz files. It is suppose to do 96khz and lower. I found The well tempered computer web site and learned a lot. Great source of computer audio. Now I can pipe the sound out of the dac via SE output to the house amp and have the the teralink x2 supply sound to the whole house. I use the balanced out to the main system. I hope to listen more this evening and see if the dropouts are history!

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/index.html