[somestranger26]

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yes I have tried the isolator, doesn't fix the problem.

 
I was asking gilst, not you.
 
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The DI has its flaw but it is a good design given its price. Through it I got better sound from my Yamaha DVD-S1800 player so I am satisfied. I once was tempted to buy the Audiophilleo 2, but just kind of hard to justify the 3 x cost, for the the possible level of further improvement. That is after I have improved the DI's sound by using the 74AHC04 chip.

Yeah, the Audiophilleo's price is pretty outrageous when I've only seen people describe it as a "slight improvement" from the digital interface. I wish someone would compare them using the isolator and hex inverter on the digital interface, since I bet they're nearly identical in performance. For less money than the AP2 I got DI+PSU+Isolator+74VHC04+Furutech GT2+Black Cat Veloce and I can sell the cables for a good chunk of change if I upgrade.

 

[borrego]

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I have tried five computers and no drop out problem al all.

I have tried the DI on 6 different notebooks and the best sound come out from the 2 old IBM Thinkpads (model T43 and X61). The worst come from the Dell D520 and with many dropouts. I think the IBM/Lenovo business class notebook really does something right on the USB bus management. Too bad my T43's hard drive broke and I can't find PATA replacement, and the X61 is my company notebook.

 

[svyr]

yes I have tried the isolator, doesn't fix the problem.
@haxlot you don't work for AGD do you?

I mean I get no dropouts when using direct sound, but that's not something I want to do.  
My colleague gets no dropouts when using the NFB-10 inbuilt adaptive USB interface (and probably the same te7022 chip.)  There are 3 of us all who bought the DI at around the same time who are having this problem, and collectively have still not found any computer system that works with out AGD DI without dropouts (with bitperfect streaming.)  Upsampling does mask the problem but we should not have to use such workarounds, esp. as I prefer the sound without upsampling.
As for my NFB-10 - it makes noise with low impedance phones even with no digital input plugged in, and when run through a PS-Audio style power regenerator, and tracks with the volume pot.  My colleague had the same problem, sent it back to AGD with a set of headphones for testing and they magically couldn't reproduce the problem and tried to blame it on wall power (which clearly is not the case.)  Either they don't know how to design a power supply, or have pretty bad QC and testing.
Needless to say if isolated factors were to blame for the dropouts would 3 of us (with completely different systems, different OS, different countries etc.) be having the same problems, spend months trying to fix it and still no results?  Either way I will test with my laptop this weekend but this is quite a lot of trouble I have gone to so far for what is supposedly a finished product.
 
or maybe AGD needs some schooling on how to design a USB interface (from John Kenny)

Yea I'm still pretty pissed off about audio-gd screwing with me for nearly 6months and still managing to screw me over...
The low impedance HP issue is plain appalling. I even sent my HP for audio-gd to test the issue with. Considering I was getting problems with noise on low impedance HP on some vol pot settings(well most of them) with nothing connected to it (usb/or outs), with things connected in various combinations, with different usb/power cables/sockets (and at work), with 4 sets of different HP/IEMs, and drez is having the same problem with 2 different isolators and a power regen unit (I'm not even going into the issues with the DI and the amount of time he spent trying to get it to work, or audio-gd screwing with me and other people's orders, misquoting delivery times and straight up lying)...I'd really like to say our experience was less than satisfactory. and no amount of refund can fix it (Edwin still managed to not refund me $30 of the fees and I lost > $100 shipping it back)

So yes, Kingwa, let's blame it on the Australian power, not design, QC and testing and screwing with customers for months instead of admitting issues and fixing them. Mmm, let's see, could it be an issue with filtered power as well or gremlins, or would we like to, saaay, look into you screwing up your new and amazing relay/resistor based mcu assisted vol pot you brag about on the 10WM/ES pages?



> Dell D520 and with many dropouts

back in the days I had a D630... It had an array of DPC related issues. I wouldn't ever get a dell laptop for audio without running a DPC test and reading up on other problems with it online .... extensively

 

[borrego]

 
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Yea I'm still pretty pissed off about audio-gd screwing with me for nearly 6months and still managing to screw me over...
The low impedance HP issue is plain appalling. I even sent my HP for audio-gd to test the issue with. Considering I was getting problems with noise on low impedance HP on some vol pot settings(well most of them) with nothing connected to it (usb/or outs), with things connected, with different usb/power cables/sockets (and at work), with 3 sets of different HP, and drez is having the same problem with 2 different isolators and a power regen unit (I'm not even going into the issues with the DI and the amount of time he spent trying to get it to work, or audio-gd screwing with me and other people's orders, misquoting delivery times and straight up lying), I'd really like to say our experience was less than satisfactory.

So yes, Kingwa, let's blame it on the Australian power, not design QC and testing and screwing with customers for months instead of admitting issues and fixing them. Mmm, let's see, could it be an issue with filtered power as well or gremlins, or would we like to say look into you screwing up your new and amazing relay/resistor based mcu assisted vol pot?

 

That really sucks... I "guess" there was a difficult period on product QC earlier this year when audio-gd hired a batch of new production staff and had difficulty fulfilling orders.
 
 
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back in the days I had a D630... It had an array of DPC related issues. I wouldn't ever get a dell laptop for audio without running a DPC test and reading up on other problems with it online

.... extensively
 

 
You know, My main notebook for audio is now a HP Probook 4310s (purchased believing in "business" class notebooks would sound better). The HP Probook does give the same level of sound quality as with the old IBM Thinkpads, except there would be exactly 4 dropouts through the DI over every certain period. I mean every time there are exactly 4 dropouts in sequence, just like an hourly alarm! It remains there no matter what Windows 7 power management setting I use.

 

[svyr]

check for dpc issues. i use 4520s without problems (w7 64b).
a few pages back there was a comprehensive series of posts on diagnosing driver, hard pagefault, high io and dpc related dropouts (if you havent done those already)

 

[borrego]

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check for dpc issues. i use 4520s without problems (w7 64b).
a few pages back there was a comprehensive series of posts on diagnosing driver, hard pagefault, high io and dpc related dropouts (if you havent done those already)

Yep. I ran the DPC checker and found nothing special. Guess I just live with it as the "4 drop-out" does not happen randomly which indicates a driver or setting problem.

 

[drez]

Well running upsampling seems to solve the problem (I guess it introduces some sort of buffer in the DI that corrects the dropouts.)  Ideally I would like a driver which solves the issue without resorting to using the DI in upsampling operation.
 
I ordered the whole range of BNC fixed attenuators, so I can find which works best.  This upsampling is really bothering me though - so bright.
 
BTW has anyone got the DI to work with ASIO4ALL?  I hesitate to get that thrid party driver in case it doesn't work and I waste another $50 on this thing.  Wise thing would be to just cut my losses and move one.

 

[haloxt]

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yes I have tried the isolator, doesn't fix the problem.
@haxlot you don't work for AGD do you?

I mean I get no dropouts when using direct sound, but that's not something I want to do.  
My colleague gets no dropouts when using the NFB-10 inbuilt adaptive USB interface (and probably the same te7022 chip.)  There are 3 of us all who bought the DI at around the same time who are having this problem, and collectively have still not found any computer system that works with out AGD DI without dropouts (with bitperfect streaming.)  Upsampling does mask the problem but we should not have to use such workarounds, esp. as I prefer the sound without upsampling.
As for my NFB-10 - it makes noise with low impedance phones even with no digital input plugged in, and when run through a PS-Audio style power regenerator, and tracks with the volume pot.  My colleague had the same problem, sent it back to AGD with a set of headphones for testing and they magically couldn't reproduce the problem and tried to blame it on wall power (which clearly is not the case.)  Either they don't know how to design a power supply, or have pretty bad QC and testing.
Needless to say if isolated factors were to blame for the dropouts would 3 of us (with completely different systems, different OS, different countries etc.) be having the same problems, spend months trying to fix it and still no results?  Either way I will test with my laptop this weekend but this is quite a lot of trouble I have gone to so far for what is supposedly a finished product.
 
or maybe AGD needs some schooling on how to design a USB interface (from John Kenny)

If you tested on multiple computers and still have the same problem, obviously you should send the products back to audio-gd. I don't see why you would buy power filters and bnc attenuators and such. One final thing you should try, cplay media player, which stores entire music files on ram. and also maybe cmp which can be used in conjunction, which reduces I/O's.

 

[svyr]

If you tested on multiple computers and still have the same problem, obviously you should send the products back to audio-gd. I don't see why you would buy power filters and bnc attenuators and such. One final thing you should try, cplay media player, which stores entire music files on ram. and also maybe cmp which can be used in conjunction, which reduces I/O's.

Don't really need to try a different player, just increase the buffer size. Say a 10-20mb buffer in foobar or aimp (you could even set it to 100mb if you wanted to and the player allows. Aimp does, but not sure if they mean input or output past-decoder buffer (or 16s for foobar))

Also not sure if he has a problem with I/O related drop outs, since drez didn't report back on xperf IO or prefview io graphs

 

[haloxt]

I noticed some programs can suspend usb devices, even with buffer.

 

[drez]

I forgot about running with upsampling, doesn't sound quite as natural but it fixes the dropouts.  I'm guessing an asynchronous USB interface would also avoid any such problem.
 
Seeing as the DI runs fine from direct sound I'm guessing its some kind of driver related issue.  Buffering really doesn't affect this dropout problem - also why changing players doesn't work.  Running Jriver on 'event style' WASAPI driver doesn't help either.  I'm out of my depth trying to guess what any of this means.
 
I went to the trouble of running my computer from a different circuit to the power regenerator but that didn't help either.  If the problem is related to grounding I have no Idea how to address this either.
 
I have looked at disk I/O metrics (from perfmon as well as task manager) and there doesn't appear to be any problems - I have pretty much the minimum of background tasks that is safe to run and the latest sata 3 SSD installed - and no hard pagefaults under normal operation.
 
The next dumb tweak I was going to do was run the motherboard and cpu from a separate PSU - but really my money would be better spent on a good asynchronous USB transport which will avoid all these problems.

 

[haloxt]

Try cplay. It works differently from other software players.

 

[drez]

meh think I'll just oversampling and give up for now...

 

[borrego]

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meh think I'll just oversampling and give up for now...

If you are using foobar or J. River MC, another thing you can try is to increase the loading of the player such that the computer spend more time on it. How? Install the VST plug-in component in foobar (or J. RIver MC) and load at least 1 VST DSP plug in. If you want to remain neutral, just pick an EQ plugin and set a flat EQ curve.
 
Although I experience dropout using foobar playing 16/44 audio using the DI, I have never, (repeat) NEVER experienced drop out ever once when using foorbar + DVD audio plug-in to play 24/96 DVD audio through the DI. And you should know playing high resolution DVD audio is supposedly more demanding on the computer and DI. In my case the DVD is a 4.7GB file virtually mounted as a drive using PowerISO shareware.
 
I think it is part of the fun using computer as source component.
 
 

 

[drez]

I tried prcoessor scheduling via batch files to run the players (Increasing the processor priority of the player) and that didn't really help with dropouts (even when running players at realtime) so I don't think its a matter of the player prioroty.
 
I might try moving the player process to a less busy processor core but I really think the problem isn't to do with the media player.