[Digitalis]

  Has anyone experienced and issue when having another USB audio device hooked to the computer with the X7? 
 
I recently got some Bose Companion 5s for my birthday and ever since they also got hooked up my X7 has been acting weird. The X7 now only controls my system volume but not the volume of everything all at once like it used too. It's pretty annoying because now I have to go into the mixer menu to adjust the optical in when playing games vs just adjusting the over all system volume. Also it seems like the X7 is stuck at a certain percentage now and I cant get it too go lower or higher even when adjusting the mixer sliders. It will go higher only for any media played via the computer however, but nothing else.

 
I have two USB audio sources connected to my primary PC. I switch between them constantly, I haven't had any issues with hiss from my X7 - perhaps the USB ports are inherently noisy. I switch between USB audio devices in the windows 7 sound control panel, I set the primary audio device to the one I wish to use, and I have no conflicts when switching. certainly no hiss, I have a pair of very sensitive speakers connected to my X7 [ 96dB @ 1watt ] with the  volume maxed out I can't hear any hiss at all. The primary device is what windows volume control will affect - any device that isn't the primary device will have to be manually adjusted. For this, I suggest using the knob on the front of the X7.

 

[Yethal]

  Depends on what they mean by "ground loop isolation" and how they achieve that.  Ive seen what are supposed to be "Isloation transformers" but the third prong ground goes across the isolation barrier as a piece of wire.  To me - that aint really isolated. Some may just put a large choke in that ground, and claim some type of high frequency or RF isolation and ground loop breaking, but again that isnt really what we are trying to do here.  Dont get me started on the evils of that third prong ground.  Ha.  

Do you know what they do to achieve this "built in ground loop isolation" ?

No idea, I've found a power strip labeled as noise and transients suppressor, made by a company I can't find any info on. No idea whether it actually does anything but I may run some tests on it out of curiosity.

 

[tox1c90]

Hi!
 
I have recently bought an X7 and have noticed a strange thing regarding sampling rate. As per default, bit depth and sampling rate is set to 16 bit 48 khz by the driver for the common mode in Windows sound panel. Usually the first thing I do is to set sampling rate to 44.1 khz matching most of my music.
However, with the X7 I noticed that whenever the sampling rate is set to something else than 48 Khz there, I get some clicking noises whenever I start playing something or skip to the next track, for example in Windows Media Player which relies on the common mode sampling rate.
​​I know this kind of noise from my former Asus sound card when using WASAPI so that the card always switches its internal sampling rate to the one of the incoming signal. Or when I directly change sampling rate in Xonar Audio Center, it gave me a little *click* when the first thing is actually played with that rate.
 
​For the X7 it looks like there is no possibility to change the hardware sampling rate, so it seems that it's always reverting back to the default 48 Khz when nothing is played, which is why I get this small *click* everytime I start playing something in 44.1 Khz or skip to next track.
 
​When I set 48 Khz in windows sound panel, everything is fine. Can someone of you confirm this behavior or is it a problem with my unit?

 

[Yethal]

  Hi!
 
I have recently bought an X7 and have noticed a strange thing regarding sampling rate. As per default, bit depth and sampling rate is set to 16 bit 48 khz by the driver for the common mode in Windows sound panel. Usually the first thing I do is to set sampling rate to 44.1 khz matching most of my music.
However, with the X7 I noticed that whenever the sampling rate is set to something else than 48 Khz there, I get some clicking noises whenever I start playing something or skip to the next track, for example in Windows Media Player which relies on the common mode sampling rate.
​​I know this kind of noise from my former Asus sound card when using WASAPI so that the card always switches its internal sampling rate to the one of the incoming signal. Or when I directly change sampling rate in Xonar Audio Center, it gave me a little *click* when the first thing is actually played with that rate.
 
​For the X7 it looks like there is no possibility to change the hardware sampling rate, so it seems that it's always reverting back to the default 48 Khz when nothing is played, which is why I get this small *click* everytime I start playing something in 44.1 Khz or skip to next track.
 
​When I set 48 Khz in windows sound panel, everything is fine. Can someone of you confirm this behavior or is it a problem with my unit?

It seems that You haven't installed the Creative drivers. Install them and see if the issue occurs again. If it does, change the Direct Mode setting and check again.

 

[tox1c90]

 
It seems that You haven't installed the Creative drivers. Install them and see if the issue occurs again. If it does, change the Direct Mode setting and check again.

​Latest drivers and firmware were installed. But I checked it with Direct Mode now, and there it is not happening. Could it be that the DSP chip always switches back to 48 khz when there is no 44.1 khz audio coming from the PC?
 
That would explain everything. Start playback in WMP  -> DSP goes from 48 to 44.1 *click*, skip to next track -> DSP goes back to 48 *click* and then again to 44.1 when the next track starts playing *click*

 

[Yethal]

 
​Latest drivers and firmware were installed. But I checked it with Direct Mode now, and there it is not happening. Could it be that the DSP chip always switches back to 48 khz when there is no 44.1 khz audio coming from the PC?
 
That would explain everything. Start playback in WMP  -> DSP goes from 48 to 44.1 *click*, skip to next track -> DSP goes back to 48 *click* and then again to 44.1 when the next track starts playing *click*

DSP chip switches to what You set in the Advanced tab of the Windows Sound Configuration. Set it 24/192 and it will upsample to that rate.

 

[tox1c90]

 
DSP chip switches to what You set in the Advanced tab of the Windows Sound Configuration. Set it 24/192 and it will upsample to that rate.

​There I have set it to 24/44.1, but obviously it's not staying there, which is why I hear it switching all the time when I start playing something.

 

[Yethal]

 
​There I have set it to 24/44.1, but obviously it's not staying there, which is why I hear it switching all the time when I start playing something.

Does it still occur when using Foobar with output set to WASAPI or ASIO? In theory it shouldn't.

 

[tox1c90]

 
Does it still occur when using Foobar with output set to WASAPI or ASIO? In theory it shouldn't.

​Again different behavior for WASAPI between DSP and direct mode.
 
Direct mode: Each time I play a file with a different sampling rate than before, I hear a clicking/switching sound coming directly out of the X7 device itself. But this occurs only if the sampling rate really changes. If I play 10 files with 44.1 after eachother there is no such sound.
 
DSP mode: There is no clicking/switching sound coming directly out of the X7​, but I hear the same click/pop in my headphones that I described before using WMP. Basically it behaves the same and occurs everytime I play a file with a different sampling rate than 48 Khz.

 

[Yethal]

 
​Again different behavior for WASAPI between DSP and direct mode.
 
Direct mode: Each time I play a file with a different sampling rate than before, I hear a clicking/switching sound coming directly out of the X7 device itself. But this occurs only if the sampling rate really changes. If I play 10 files with 44.1 after eachother there is no such sound.
 
DSP mode: There is no clicking/switching sound coming directly out of the X7​, but I hear the same click/pop in my headphones that I described before using WMP. Basically it behaves the same and occurs everytime I play a file with a different sampling rate than 48 Khz.

Makes sense, X7 has its own internal mixer in order to be able to play from all inputs at once and this mixer probably does resampling too. Direct Mode bypasses the DSP chip which contains both the mixer and the resampler so everything's all right.

 

[tox1c90]

There is another thing which is strange. I have set it up for 5.1 speakers to get SBX virtual surround through my headphones.
 
Try the following:
 
- Set it to DSP mode
- Set to 5.1 speakers in Windows sound panel
- Set to 24/44.1 in advanced settings
- Now on the screen in Windows sound panel where you configure the speaker system (stereo/5.1) there is a "Test" button (or you can directly click on each speaker). There I get heavily distorted audio when I click on the front center or the back surround speakers.
 
This distortion is also only there for 24/44.1, but NOT for 24/48. Fortunately it looks like a Windows thing, because in games/movies etc. the surround channels are played without distortion.

 

[Yethal]

  There is another thing which is strange. I have set it up for 5.1 speakers to get SBX virtual surround through my headphones.
 
Try the following:
 
- Set it to DSP mode
- Set to 5.1 speakers in Windows sound panel
- Set to 24/44.1 in advanced settings
- Now on the screen in Windows sound panel where you configure the speaker system (stereo/5.1) there is a "Test" button (or you can directly click on each speaker). There I get heavily distorted audio when I click on the front center or the back surround speakers.
 
This distortion is also only there for 24/44.1, but NOT for 24/48. Fortunately it looks like a Windows thing, because in games/movies etc. the surround channels are played without distortion.

I'm on Linux, 5.1 playback works without any issues.

 

[tox1c90]

Wow... looks like there is some serious Windows-bullsh*t happening...
 
I noticed that on my laptop it's working just fine, until I changed the configuration a few times via Windows sound panel. Then suddenly I got these popping sounds back. Now I connected the X7 back to my desktop computer and set it to 24/44.1 Khz.
And now it's fine, no clicking sound and no distortion in Windows speaker test in DSP mode. Seems like it was not applying the settings to the X7 correctly before. I don't have a clue why this happens
I think I will NEVER touch these settings again as long as it's working now...

 

[GarrHaal]

Got my set of sparkos duals. Your reviews about them is spot on. A whole new listening experience. All the new details and clarity is amazing. I higly recommend getting a full set of singles and duals from Sparkos. It makes the X7 complete.

 

[Digitalis]

  Wow... looks like there is some serious Windows-bullsh*t happening...
 
I noticed that on my laptop it's working just fine, until I changed the configuration a few times via Windows sound panel. Then suddenly I got these popping sounds back. Now I connected the X7 back to my desktop computer and set it to 24/44.1 Khz.
And now it's fine, no clicking sound and no distortion in Windows speaker test in DSP mode. Seems like it was not applying the settings to the X7 correctly before. I don't have a clue why this happens
I think I will NEVER touch these settings again as long as it's working now...

Have you checked your USB cable? there could be a broken or poorly soldered connector on one of the data lines - or the USB port itself could be faulty. I have my X7 permanently set to 24/96 on both my PC and laptop - 24/196 is a bit pointless..unless I want to listen to John Cage's sonata for bats.