[Lucabeer]

It is said that the SuperPro 707 USB DAC can work without specific drivers. And it is true, as Windows recognizes it as a generic USB Audio peripheral and drives it with the usbaudio.sys driver.

Too bad that the Microsoft driver leaves much to be desired:

- no configuration options
- no hardware buffering in ASIO4ALL (if you enable it, the sound will be garbage: distorted and skipping)
- no support for Foobar's or Winamp's Kernel Streaming plugins (you get no sound at all with Foobar, and Winamp hangs up)


Yesterday night I made a very nice discovery... Since the SuperPro uses a C-Media 108 chip for USB interface, why not trying a specific driver for this chip?

Trouble is that C-Media don't offer drivers for USB peripherals on their page (they only provide them to OEMs who use their chips).

After a long search, I found the drivers anyway:

Technician Spot: C-Media Headset Drivers

and another URL which seems to have a more recent version too:

Download C-Media CM-108 Driver v.6.0.07.0720 | Catalog - X-DRIVERS.COM: eXtremly full software portal


I tried both versions of the driver on my XP system, and they seem to work wonderfully.

You get a nice control panel to set various things, including a DSP feature which is similar to that of other C-Media soundcards (not that I want to use it, as I aim for bitperfect playback). Most importantly, the driver allows you to force the output frequency in real time (44.1 or 48 Khz) to avoid unwanted upsampling/domsampling.

Probably this nice feature of the output frequency would already be enough to guarantee bitperfect playback (of course taking care to set the Kmixer volume at 100% and disabling all DSP effects), but there's more.

With these drivers (both versions I have linked), hardware buffering finally works with ASIO4ALL. Not only that, but the Kernel Streaming plugins work great too (and CPU usage seems to benefit to it compared to using ASIO4ALL): I am enjoying Nick Cave's "Dig Lazarus dig" right now in KS.

I hope that my discovery will be useful to other users of the SuperPro and of other DACs based on the same C-Media USB chipset... it was truly hard finding these drivers, so I wanted to share the info with you and save you all the effort and time that I spent.

 

[warrior05]

I don't know what chip is in my MiniDAC, but if it is a C-Media 108, I wonder if this would resolve the problem I have with constantly losing the USB signal.

 

[Lucabeer]

It might help to try! I have just listened to my system for approximately 2 hours after installing these drivers... and, knocking on wood, so far I haven't had glitches/dropouts anymore!

 

[JaymzN]

Anyone know what USB chip the Headroom Ultra MicroDAC uses? I'd really like to try this because I currently can't use ASIO4ALL with foobar

 

[hassassin]

Just got this dac yesterday. Plugged it to my laptop and was detected as a generic usb audio device. Using Foobar2k with ASIO4ALL. Seemed to work fine until it started skipping at regular intervals.

I installed this driver and whoa! Problem solved! Amazing little gadget. Real value for money!

Lucabeer, thanks very much for sharing this driver!

 

[ridder]

Lucabeer

Followed your advice on the CM 108 driver update for the usb pro dac and it solved the audio dropouts problem. Great thanks for sharing.

 

[doubleij]

Lucabeer

I bought the SuperPro 707 4 months ago and ran into the same problems with KS/Asio. I couldn't figure out the solution and was forced to use the usbaudio.sys driver. Saw your post and downloaded the updated version of the CM 108 chipset driver. It works beautifully with the KS output plugin for MediaMonkey. It feels like I got my music back!

Many thanks!

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Works on my Macbook with no drivers, and I thought when I bought mine last year that it was the same chips as the Mini DAC, but thought the USB receiver chip was a Cirrus Logic. (like a CS8416 from memory) Hmmm...

 

[leeperry]

the STX runs a C-Media 8788 chip, I'll see if there's generic drivers available..thanks for tip

 

[HeatFan12]

Great find Lucabeer...THANKS......

Finally, KS with Winamp and Foobar via usb. It works perfectly with my PC LinkII (USB to SPDIF)-->Musiland MD10....The gapless playback on Winamp with KS is perfect too.

Outstanding.....

 

[RenIsInvincible]

i need your help. i have a superpro dac 707 and an msi laptop. i was quite excited to read that you had found the specific driver for it. but i am having trouble installing the driver. i have downloaded and redownloaded both versions. and each time i launch the installer i get an error message.

"please plug in "USB UPnP Sound Device" and install driver again"

or

"please plug in "C Media 108 USB Sound" and install driver again"

depending on which driver version i install, those are the error prompts i get. it seems to indicate the same problem.

how should the installation happen? i have the 707 connected via usb cable to my msi laptop with winXP 32-bit with Service Pack2.

hope you could help me out.

i have already connected the 707 to all of my usb ports, and switched usb cables. to no avail.

Thanks!!!

 

[HeatFan12]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RenIsInvincible /img/forum/go_quote.gif i need your help. i have a superpro dac 707 and an msi laptop. i was quite excited to read that you had found the specific driver for it. but i am having trouble installing the driver. i have downloaded and redownloaded both versions. and each time i launch the installer i get an error message. "please plug in "USB UPnP Sound Device" and install driver again" or "please plug in "C Media 108 USB Sound" and install driver again" depending on which driver version i install, those are the error prompts i get. it seems to indicate the same problem. how should the installation happen? i have the 707 connected via usb cable to my msi laptop with winXP 32-bit with Service Pack2. hope you could help me out. i have already connected the 707 to all of my usb ports, and switched usb cables. to no avail. Thanks!!!

I'm sure it's not the OS. I have installed it on XP SP3, Vistax32 and Vistax64 with no problems.

I used the second link (10-12-08).

The installation was- plug-in device (707), download drivers, un-zip to folder (once you un-zip to folder, click on main folder and you'll have two other folders (XP or Vista), click the corresponding one for your OS and double click Setup.exe....Everything will auto install and you'll have an icon in your taskbar (PnP)...It will then show up in Foobar etc.. as an output device.

 

[RenIsInvincible]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HeatFan12 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm sure it's not the OS. I have installed it on XP SP3, Vistax32 and Vistax64 with no problems. I used the second link (10-12-08). The installation was- plug-in device (707), download drivers, un-zip to folder (once you un-zip to folder, click on main folder and you'll have two other folders (XP or Vista), click the corresponding one for your OS and double click Setup.exe....Everything will auto install and you'll have an icon in your taskbar (PnP)...It will then show up in Foobar etc.. as an output device.

this is exactly how i attempted the install. but in my case the error keeps popping up. i'll try to update my laptop's drivers (and possibly the bios), and try again.

 

[Bloodoath]

I was eventually able to get these to load on Windows 7 64 bit to use with a Nuforce Icon Mobile DAC. I can use WASAPI and ASIO4ALL. Have not tried KS yet. The Hardware support works in ASIO and this has helped CPU usage as well. Make sure to scan the ZIPs people. Going to give this a real run through this week. Getting the DacMagic and I hope this will be useful for that as well.

 

[matt1039lp]

Lucabeer, thanks for this!! This was just what I needed. I'm now using USB for the superpro 707 instead of the toslink, and it's all thanks to you!