Baffled and Frustrated: Streaming/DAC Sound Issues


Hoping to find some guidance here regarding a significant noise issue. Running Quboz through Roon. Relevant Gear is an Auralic Aries G2.1 > Morrow USB cable >Aavik D280 DAC > Wywires Platinum RCA >Anthem STR.  

Previously had some issues with the Aries but that’s hammered out and sounding great.  Now, when running many songs through the DAC, I’m hearing terrible “crunching” distortion.  There’s very little consistency in the problem (loud Pink Floyd sounds great, loud Motley Crue sounds like garbage) except most hard rock/metal, which i started putting on per Morrow Audio’s recommendation for burning in their USB cable, is always terrible.  Volume is irrelevant, I’m getting the noise at sub-30db. The 4 DAC settings: upsampling/ non upsampling/fast/slow don’t change anything. USB cable isn’t likely the problem, it sounds great from streamer to amp without the DAC.   I’m running out of settings to change around.  Anyone have an educated guess or experience with either the output settings from the Aries or D280 setup that can provide any guidance?  Dealer wasn’t very helpful.

 

Thanks much,

Peter

brewerslaw

Showing 1 response by asctim

I’ve just been reading about "intersample overs" and how they can cause some dacs to "spaz out" on certain tracks. I vaguely understand that if there is a sample that corresponds to minus zero dB in the digital signal, or close to it, the resulting analog waveform can actually exceed minus zero dB, which can cause the output stage to go into clipping or compression. Some dacs have headroom to handle it, some don’t. This matches my experiences, where I’ve had to digitally attenuate some tracks by as much as 6dB to avoid clipping lights coming on.

The dacs that spaz on these overly compressed or too loudly recorded tracks can be called "revealing." One argument is that this is all the fault of the recording because anybody who actually knows what they are doing would never include samples approaching so closely to minus zero dB. We have lots of headroom in digital so there’s no need for it.