Greetings!
My shiny new W4S DAC-2 has been hooked to my Squeezebox Touch (via S/PDIF coax) and burning in for the past 50+ hours. I wanted to take the USB connection for a spin to play FLAC from my PC, so I installed the W4S supplied Windows 7 driver, and re-booted the system. Once Windows came up, the driver was installed. I selected
W4S 24/192 USB Interface as my default playback device, started my MediaMonkey player, waited a second for the song to begin, and then... nothing, nada, zilch, except for the sound of silence. PC's can be "really" frustrating.
To make a long story short, if you use MediaMonkey (v3.n and older) as your player and want to connect your PC to the W4S DAC-2 via USB, see the following workaround below. I was hoping to post this on the Head Gear
Wyred4Sound DAC-2 product page. Unfortunately, the wiki Edit function doesn't seem to be working at the moment, so I'm posting this here for the time being.
BTW... I'm not an expert on this topic. I'm just sharing what I discovered when I searched for a solution to the problem.
Using MediaMonkey with the Wyred 4 Sound DAC-2
The Wyred 4 Sound Owner's manual provides general instructions for USB configuration. To support the USB connection, your media player must be configured for kernel or WASAPI support. Audio will not playback properly, that is no sound will be produced the via USB connection, when using MediaMonkey without WASAPI support. This mini guide provides additional instructions for configuring MediaMonkey for WASAPI support.
Note: For additional background on Windows 7 audio refer to
this article. Although the article was written for configuring the J River Media Center product, the Windows 7 audio background information still applies.
MediaMonkey WASAPI Support
MediaMonkey v3.n, and older, does not include WASAPI support required for USB connections. This limitation can be avoided by installing the latest v4 "alpha" build which includes native WASAPI support. See the
MediaMonkey Test Build Page for a link to the latest alpha build. Download and install the latest v4 build.
MediaMonkey Configurations Settings
After the v4 build has been installed, configure the WASAPI settings in MediaMonkey. The following screen shots and configuration settings are for alpha build v4.0.0.1459. In MediaMonkey, select Tools, Options, Player Output Plug-Ins, then click the MediaMonkey WASAPI output radio button. Next, click the Configure button.
The MediaMonkey WASAPI Output plug-in window will appear. Three typical base settings are Default device, Exclusive mode, and Automatic choice of format (per track). Values for other settings are based on personnel preferences. Click OK to exit the dialog.
Remember this is an "alpha" release, so some inconveniences may be encountered. But having said that, once these settings have been configured, you should be good to go for audio playback via USB at various rates up to 24bit/192kHz.