Berkeley CA audiophile is desperate need of help

Hi from up the way in Davis. I had similar problems in the past and maybe/maybe not this will help. Poor bandwidth was the culprit (and the odd bout of fixing something that wasn’t broken as that’s my working definition of some audiophile upgrades).

1.) After the crash do you shut down and restart and then is your gear working again? If the crash is total with out the music resuming then that’s unfortunate. If it’s a "stall" then it’s likely bandwidth. Assuming you are using a streaming service and not sourcing from a NAS?

2.) Do you have a fast robust internet connection? Are you wired in or are you using wifi? Is ethernet hardware good stuff? Does speed test give you a good report?

3.142) Power good/great.(asked above)?

4.) Have you taken the DAC out of the chain and gone directly into your pre or integrated amp? Doubt this is it.

5.) Well vented? Gear run hot? Doubt this is it too.

5.5) Did you have an old system where this did/did not happen?

6.) Occam’s razor.

If I had a DAC you would be welcome to plug in here but my streamer has an internal DAC.

Hello...I live in Berkeley and work in Oakland. I have a spare DAC I'd be happy to lend you. It's currently at my office. You could come by and pick it up or if you wanted to, you could bring something of yours and attempt to connect it. I have a secondary system of leftover gear I pieced together that is fully functional but currently not in use.

Bandy, I have an Innuos Streamer and have good luck with the very responsive

Innuos team. I realize you tried that. Retailers these days are very understaffed

so for a dealer to turn down work on something they don’t carry seems logical

to me or did I miss something?

Easiest and cheapest solution, go to the SFAS website, join and attend a Friday Happy hour. Explain your problem. Someone there will know what to do.

I joined and I don’t live in the state.

Best of luck!!

Have you tried the DAC with other digital sources, such as a CD player?  If so, and it seems to work, then your problem is either: 1) Internet; 2) The server; 3) the hand off from server to DAC.

  Servers are networking computers that are gussied up to look like audio components.  They are subject to the same foibles that computers are.  Have you ever had a computer that was working fine and suddenly doesn’t “see” something, such as a printer?  The first step is to power everything down and then restart them.  If that doesn’t work after a few tries, then it may be that a software update in the server, or the DAC, may have “bricked” these two components 

Ime, most every problem with streaming I in the network.. Fwiw I just did get my streamer dad working consistently this past weekend after 6-8 month of problem after problem. I knew it was network related but I am weak on network issues. But I learned a lot over the weekend.

The problem for me was that i had not turned on the media streaming setting in Windows 10.