[austinpop]

I will.

Since you mention optical, I'm assuming you're hearing it on PCM when the next track is a different sample rate? Since you can't do DSD over the optical input.

I can't say I've heard any pops on PCM - only DSD - but I may just not have noticed.

 

[cygnusx]

I just did some more listening with the Oppo via optical and I heard the popping sounds again (with headphones). At this point I don't think it's DSD related. It seem more pronounced when moving from higher rates 192 down to 44 and then back up. I continue to hear the crackling between songs (loudness seems to vary). Now that I'm keep looking to hear the noise, I keep hearing it. It's actually annoying me now. Will test with speakers tomorrow. I don't recall hearing the pop and crackle while listening through the speakers. This maybe only with the headphone amp.

 

[austinpop]

I did hear back from Alex, who said he'd passed it on to the dev team. He promised to get back with an update when he has one.

 

[music_man]

no! I am was getting pops at 44.1/16 redbook! I introduced what i would just call a power supply that happens to be from ifi and it stopped. very strange. something with the cable apparently. i wonder if just a $10 usb hub would fix the issue but of course it probably would not sound as good as the ifi, regen or any other thing tailored to power supply.
 
also it depends heavily on your source. i had to run the tusb through foo asio in jriver to completely alleviate the issue. this is very odd. i never had a dac pop like this. not even a $300 one. i wonder if there is an engineering flaw in their design. for $1,800 if that is the case they should offer to fix them. i bet they would too as ayre is a very reputable usa based company. of course i have no idea what they would do to remedy it but i am just guessing they are good people.
 
i fixed it entirely but there is some issue apparently and this is a bummer. sure i have the diamond dac v and it is much more expensive but i do not consider $1,800 a cheap dac either.
 
it figures there would be a fly in the ointment with this. since it is so good, shooting way higher than it's price tag. it is a real shame but you can work around it. if you are using an aurender or something i am not sure you can though. you can provide power to the cable which may fix it but you cannot chose your asio driver.
 
i would go try a $10 usb hub and see what happens. i would be very interested in that. of course it would not sound as good but it would explain some issue with powering the cable. since the codex does not use +5v usb. that might in fact be the whole problem. there is no voltage reference. of course higher end dacs can pull that off but maybe not the codex. to tell the truth i am not sure what the issue is but it seems to be with powering the cable.
 
on another note their drivers are for windows vista.. they really need to update them and perhaps that alone fixes the issue. in windows 10 you must use compatibility mode to install the drivers. if you are using something above windows vista the kernal is not designed for it. i am just pulling straws here because there is an issue but i am not sure what it is.
 
this just figures.

 

[cygnusx]

@music_man , I'm starting to think that this is a design flaw since it's happening with both the USB and Optical inputs (Oppo + Aurender).  I'm going to rise the issue with Ayre.  I've heard $500 DACs that don't make this type of pop and crackle sound.  To your point and in my view a $1800 DAC should behavior better.  

 

[cygnusx]

Tested the Codex with my stereo and speakers.  Although, I hear some noise between songs while I was flipping, I did not hear the type of popping or crackling that I heard using the headphones.  In fact, when I changed the Aurender setting to delay 1 second for the DAC to adjust to new sampling rates, I didn't anything and it was absolutely clean while flipping through songs.   When I tried the same delay setting using headphones, although the music would delay and start 1 second later matching the delay setting, the popping and crackling was still there, making a sound immediately after I click on a new song.  I reached out to Ayre, let's see what they say.  

 

[music_man]

this is very unfortunate. i did not realize it happens with the optical as well. so then my idea about the usb cable must be wrong. i sincerely hope ayre stands behind it. i bet they will though. otherwise it is a very nice dac for the money.

 

[BlackstoneJD]

Did you power cycle the dac? Unplug power cord for like 30 seconds and then plug back in? If the issue is hardware related I am sure they will address it. I am wondering if when you added the power supply thing what really resolved it was power cycling the unit. Even the most expensive devices probably need a reboot from time to time.
 
The driver they use is the Streamlength Driver which is used by a bunch of async USB devices and there is no newer version of that driver that I am aware of. I think Windows 10 handles it very well and considering how complicated my system is (two video cards, six core cpu, the works) and considering I run games that push the CPU and GPU into high utilization and feed the dac from the machine at the same time (both game audio sometimes and wasapi music audio over the game), I would say the driver is remarkably stable on Windows 10.
 
Another source of potential issues is DPC latency on your computer if you are streaming in realtime via async USB or optical. It could be another driver causing DPC latency on your computer. That will certainly cause crackles and pops.  You can measure it. That is a computer side issue caused by drivers. I had DPC latency pop up once when I got a new video card setup. Pops and crackling. Then I got the DPC latency measuring tool and found out my computer was having serious latency issues and I was able to address it although I can't for the life of me remember how I tamed the latency. Disable anything you don't really use on your PC.
 
There is an issue right now with NVIDIA's latest GTX 1080 graphics cards that cause DPC latency and they are addressing it. If you are feeding with a PC I would look into updating or rolling back or reinstalling video card drivers.
 
Edit: Disregard everything I just said if you are not using a PC as source.

 

[cygnusx]

  Did you power cycle the dac? Unplug power cord for like 30 seconds and then plug back in? If the issue is hardware related I am sure they will address it. I am wondering if when you added the power supply thing what really resolved it was power cycling the unit. Even the most expensive devices probably need a reboot from time to time.
 
The driver they use is the Streamlength Driver which is used by a bunch of async USB devices and there is no newer version of that driver that I am aware of. I think Windows 10 handles it very well and considering how complicated my system is (two video cards, six core cpu, the works) and considering I run games that push the CPU and GPU into high utilization and feed the dac from the machine at the same time (both game audio sometimes and wasapi music audio over the game), I would say the driver is remarkably stable on Windows 10.
 
Another source of potential issues is DPC latency on your computer if you are streaming in realtime via async USB or optical. It could be another driver causing DPC latency on your computer. That will certainly cause crackles and pops.  You can measure it. That is a computer side issue caused by drivers. I had DPC latency pop up once when I got a new video card setup. Pops and crackling. Then I got the DPC latency measuring tool and found out my computer was having serious latency issues and I was able to address it although I can't for the life of me remember how I tamed the latency. Disable anything you don't really use on your PC.
 
There is an issue right now with NVIDIA's latest GTX 1080 graphics cards that cause DPC latency and they are addressing it. If you are feeding with a PC I would look into updating or rolling back or reinstalling video card drivers.
 
Edit: Disregard everything I just said if you are not using a PC as source.

Interesting point on the power cycle.  I'll try power cycling the DAC tonight (although, I think I already tried this....) and then I'll try putting back in the stock power cord.  Let's see how things goes.  I'll let you guys know.   

 

[cygnusx]

Power cycling does not help. I also tried changing the power cable to stock and that doesn't help either. Honestly, I'm a bit upset because I put nice a big old scratch on the face of the Aurender switching out power cables by accident. I still have not heard back from Ayre.

 

[music_man]

This is interesting. I am running an evo 950 ssd m2 and it takes longer to boot than my platter based system. i see nothing on startup or any odd services running. i have no idea what could cause this. obviously some drivers are loading and that may be the issue. i don't know. it could also very well be hardware on the ayre. there is a windows 10 streamlength driver. it is ver. 3.34 ayre has not apopted but i feel they should. windows 10 has been out a while. regardless of it it works. i just do not know what this is. i need to fire up the cd transport and see what happens.

 

[BlackstoneJD]

YOur m2 drive should not take longer to boot than your spinner. That 950 m2 is like one of the fastest drives on the market. The Samsung Magician Utility has a function called rapid mode that tremendously increases the performance of their drives. Also it has performance optimization utilities. I would definitely give it a shot.  Your drive might need to be optimized.
 
I am not sure if Music Man and Cygnusx are experiencing the same issue or not. If you can produce the issue with a disc player it logically is not a PC or driver related issue. It could be something that can be fixed with firmware or perhaps it is a hardware issue. For this type of thing you really need the support of your dealer and have them get it on their test bench.

 

[austinpop]

Hey y'all - sorry to hear your ongoing issues are unresolved. Can someone summarize succinctly the 2 issues - @music_man and @cygnusx - are experiencing?
 
My issue - pop/ticks at DSF/DFF track boundaries - is, I think, a different one, which has not been resolved, but there are strong indications that it's an artifact of extraction tools like sacd-ripper (sacd_extract), and not the HW.
 
I did a comparison of the same piece of music ripped from ISO vs purchased online (CDnow), and found no pops/ticks on the purchased version. See my post here: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/sacd-iso-dsf-no-clicks-23588/index3.html#post562682
 
It is still true that some DAC and/or streamers seem to handle this better than others. Still, Ayre's position, and I agree with them, is that they cannot devote resources to issues with the source, especially when it involves open-source tools used to extract content.
 
I've decided I can live with the slight ticks. I have relatively few albums where tracks flow into each other - in my case, mostly Mahler symphonies! - so for these, I can rip the entire disc as a single DFF file, and convert to DSF manually to tag.
 
Life on the bleeding edge, eh!

 

[KmanChu]

I doubt you are going to get much of a satisfactory answer from Ayre. It sounds like your noises may be a bit beyond what I am accustomed to hearing, but I think it may be related to the Streamlength USB driver software they are utilizing. I had a QB-9DSD and I got similar behavior with a slight click or skip sound when the dac changed sample rates.  They may require you to send it back for evaluation if you think it is beyond what is reasonable so perhaps it could be related to your particular unit. The clicks with my codex seems consistent with what I had with the QB-9DSD.
 
The first dac I encountered this with was the iFi micro iDSD. There was a big fuss on the iFi thread about it and I think they eventually managed to address the issue through driver and/or firmware upgrades.The thing is, iFi/AMR use their own USB driver that they developed in house, so they had complete control and access, I am not so sure Ayre has this capability. The fact it exists in both products I have owned makes me think it is something baked into the hardware/software implementation. It was never hugely a problem for me, but I do notice it and think that it really shouldn't be there in a such an otherwise stellar product.

 

[yage]

I tested my QB-9 DSD a few days ago for this problem and don't get a click / pop when switching sampling rates. I'm using a generic USB cable from Blue Jeans and a stock power cord. It could be dependent on the USB port on the computer. Maybe the machine is shutting down the port or putting it in a suspend state when no data is being transmitted (e.g. when 'switching' tracks) which creates the noise when it powers the port back up.