Baffled and Frustrated: Streaming/DAC Sound Issues

@audphile1  mentioned making sure sample rate in Roon settings match what your DAC is capable of, and this was a problem I had.  Better matching of those levels fixed it for me.  Worth a try.

@brewerslaw so…any updates?

Thank you all for the responses.  Hopefully I’m getting back to all your questions.  I’ve been traveling this past week so I’m a little behind on testing all suggestions/providing updates.

@tony1954 My original issue with the Aries G2.1 was twofold: crappy initial USB cable and settings on the Aries that caused a dirty vinyl-like popping noise.  Eventually found the secret-sauce to get good sound.  The Aavik was added just after (intended to bring it all to another level but that has not yet worked out). Also, yes, I would be concerned that my DAC was simply boycotting crappy music if the issue only came up playing 80s hair-metal. Unfortunately, there are problems with numerous genres so I will need to address it. 

@phastm3 I’ve tried running with and without ARC (room correction) and the issue is identical

@audioman58 Issue has been identical with two USB cables, only difference is one cable is much higher quality than the other. I’d be pretty surprised if this is a cable issue.

@audphile1 same problem w/ w/o Roon and ARC room correct. I’ve been traveling so I haven’t been able to test out your suggestions regarding upsampling etc.. on the Aries.  I’ll be testing that one I get back home this weekend.

@wlutke I suspect you’re on the right track checking V rms (a term I needed to google).  There might be a compatibility issue Aavik DAC to Anthem STR.  The noise sounds like it’s “overloaded” creating significant distortion on some, but not all, tracks.

@erik_squires thanks for the suggestion, I’ll try that out and report back

FYI, I owned a Aurlic Aries G2 for about a year. While I didn’t have this problem, I had problems and go tired of them. I moved to Aurender and now own two, and have even better sound quality and no problems, 

@clearthinker. The page that we are looking at here has been smashed into loads of tiny little packets of data and put back together again.

Also, there is an underlying implication in your posts that it is digital alone that has insurmountable problems. Two observations on that:

First - Digital audio has been massively improved over the decades and the issues you refer to such as clocking accuracy have been commensurately improved.

Secondly, it's not as if there aren't fundamental problems with vinyl reply including warped and off centre record pressings, noise of various kinds, limited channel separation of phono cartridges, tracking distortion etc. That is aside from the fact that many pressings are of poor quality and that audio quality declines progressively as pressing runs extend.

There is no perfect medium for audio recording and reproduction, but thanks to the efforts of scientists and engineers both digital and analogue are improving. In both cases, at the state of the art level incremental, improvements are very expensive.

Just for context, my vinyl system consists of a Clearaudio Innovation TT/Univeral Tonearm, VdH Crimson Cartridge and Passlabs XP27 phono stage - so I am not anti-analogue/vinyl.