They added that information recently.
"we got some questions about the USB INPUT, about a little pop "
Guess who asked them those questions lol. I asked them before receiving the r2r what was the best way to minimise this pop I had yet to hear and Kingwa sent me the 3 asio settings pictures, which are on the page of the r2r now. Also, after I got the r2r itself, I wrote to them asking if they knew of/could recommend any software or hardware solutions that would fully get rid od the pop. The day after I got Kingwa's reply, most of the things he told me in the email about the pop and the nature of the r2r were added to/expanded on the page of the r2r.
I am still adjusting. I don't know if you start paying less attention to the pop or it really gets quieter after time.
I am disappointed to hear this about the lack of DSD support of the Eitr, as I have one on the way. I tried a few dsd songs and I felt like the first time I listened to a lossless format.
Great job getting the pop issue into the open then! Many dacs have ‘issues’ with sample rate change, mainly due to their USB interfaces. As I mentioned my iDSD handles it slightly differently, and I actually prefer the faint pop of the R2R to the truncated audio from the ifi. Of course there are many dacs that’s don’t have this issue, so I have no idea where the real solution rests. Personally it doesn’t bother me, because I don’t listen to playlists with multiple sample rates and only listen to full albums.
Also, I haven’t tested what happens if you upsample all your playback to say 192 or 384, and of that stops the pop from happening because it’s getting a single sample rate feed all the time. I’ll test it and report back here.
As for the DSD issue, hopefully it’s just minor and Kingwa comes up with a workable solution. Who knows, maybe he’ll add it to the R2R page as well. Of course if you aren’t against converting your DSDs to PCM, then the problem goes away entirely, as PCM playback is flawless.
Lastly, I’m afraid you’re out of luck if you like your DSDs and want to use a Schitt device. They have a stupid policy against supporting DSD for some reason, and it’s cost them at least one customer I know of - me
For anyone reading this and thinking this little gem has too many flaws - don’t! It’s superb. It sounds better than dacs and amps that cost twice or three times the price, and even if you can hear differences in much ‘better’ gear, I honestly believe it’s more flavour differences and very subtle technicalities. Most importantly, the R2R dac renders digital audio in a different (and to me preferable) way to most delta sigma designs - even the TOTL expensive Sabres - and you may just end up preferring it just for this fact alone.
EDIT: I can confirm that upsampling your files in software to a single sample rate eliminates the pops when changing songs or albums. At least that's the case for me on my iMac with Audirvana+ 3.2.5. There is still a slight pop when switching from PCM to DSD and back, but nothing between PCM tracks - even flac, alac and mp3 tracks with different sample rates - when you upsample in software. I'm not sure if upsampling in software somehow negates the benefits of the NOS dac, so maybe someone else with more technical knowledge can answer that for us.