[Chadwick852]

I found the Stereophile review very interesting and quite revealing, and also that the reviewer mistakenly called the WiFi antenna a Bluetooth one.

 

[iFi audio]

I found the Stereophile review very interesting and quite revealing, and also that the reviewer mistakenly called the WiFi antenna a Bluetooth one.

Yes, very enjoyable review!

Also, the iFi plan in 2019 is as follows:

 

[Currawong]

Would be great if iFi R&D can shed some light on JA's comments.

I can shed some light: NOS DACs measure awfully. Thus, Bit Perfect mode has lousy measurements. As do short, leaky filters, such as the GTO one. Most of these issues are eliminated if you play back high-res material, as it pushes all the distortion (far, depending) out of the audible band.

 

[KrankorUK]

Hi Folks,

I'm a newbie to the Head-fi forums, but a regular viewer. Thought it was time to actually register

Got a iFi iDSD Pro for Christmas which was a wonderful surprise.

I've been thoroughly enjoying the experience paired with my Focal Clear's and occasionally my Sennheiser HD660's.

The streaming experience through the Pro iDSD (Spotify, Tidal) is a joy to use, it's simple to use and more importantly sounds terrific.
USB from my laptop with HiRes, FLAC and MP3 has also been spectacular.
In summary what ever I've put through the DAC/Amp has put a smile on my face.

I do have a few questions though and hoped some of the more seasoned owners may be able to help.

My firmware is v1.6, so I presume I need to request the v2.0 beta firmware from iFi to allow for MQA?
Is there any other advantage to requesting the newer firmware level?

The only other question I had is about using a SD card.
After some trial and error (mainly not understanding why the Muzo app would not see the SD card) and finally working out that the card needed to be
formatted to NTFS I find that the Muzo app displays the SD card content as one huge list!
No album, artist, separation etc.
Is this a Muzo app related issue or is it the iFi Pro?
Are there plans to address this?

Anyway, thanks for taking time to read my post and "Happy New Year" to you all.

 

[iFi audio]

My firmware is v1.6, so I presume I need to request the v2.0 beta firmware from iFi to allow for MQA?

Yes.

Is there any other advantage to requesting the newer firmware level?

Some bugs squashed, but it's a beta still, not the final release, so some things might be off.

Is this a Muzo app related issue or is it the iFi Pro?

MUZO app.

Are there plans to address this?

We hope so!

 

[bluesaint]

you can use other apps besides Muzo. Personally I like BubbleUPNP app better.

 

[iFi audio]

you can use other apps besides Muzo. Personally I like BubbleUPNP app better.

 

[flyte3333]

I can shed some light: NOS DACs measure awfully. Thus, Bit Perfect mode has lousy measurements.

Agreed. I'm personally not interested in the NOS (or any NOS mode) measurements in this review... so put aside the Bit Perfect mode results for a moment...

As do short, leaky filters, such as the GTO one. Most of these issues are eliminated if you play back high-res material, as it pushes all the distortion (far, depending) out of the audible band.

"these results were not significantly affected by upsampling to DSD512. However, as expected from its relatively poor ultrasonic rejection, the Gibbs Transient Optimized filter's behavior in this test resulted in the aliased images of the fundamental tones lying at quite high levels, and some higher-order aliased images appeared in the audioband, even though I'd reduced the signal level by 3dB (fig.19). "

The theory says this noise should be pushed out of the audible band when up-sampling to DSD512 and with the 3rd order fixed analogue filter starting at 80kHz...

Appreciate you trying to shed light but we really need iFi to shed light... specifically the poor ultrasonic rejection (JA's words).

I'm sure there's a simple explanation to be honest.

All of the positive subjective reviews (including my own) suggest this is a really top tier DAC, musically.

As I've mentioned before, because we are talking about noise well well WELL beyond human hearing, this is more of a general interest thing to me, than a problem personally.

 

[peterjgross]

Regarding "app/network" playback with Pro iDSD: I have found some issues (ticket with iFi audio is open) but wonder what other's experiences are.
Issue: when trying to play 96 or 192 FLAC files from a SD card or hard disk (both connected to the iDSD), or via network, is see that the iDSD recognizes the file format (it displays the correct rate) and starts to play for a very short time but then it starts stuttering and eventually it completely stops. Not only that but i cannot reach the iDSD anymore until i powercycle.
Moreover, if i play the same file from my UPnP media server (AssetUPnP running on a Dell tower) to a Marantz receiver (which is connected to the same LAN switch as the Pro iDSD) everything works fine.

Some users in this forum have reported good success with Audirvana. So i installed a trial version on my Windows 10 PC and tried that. That worked well - both when using a USB connection and network.
Last i tried the Tidal desktop app on the same PC with USB connection. Both PCM and MQA played fine.

Note: i have not seen any issue with playing 44kHz files (local disk, network, USB).

My speculation is that Audirvana does some smart "conditioning" of the media stream. Also i speculate that the way the software on the Pro iDSD is implemented it is unforgiving versus any variation (jitter) in the media stream that arrives. But what puzzles me is that it does not only stop playing, it completely hangs.

Does anyone else experience at least instabilities with network (or also local disk) playback?
Is there any UPnP media server that does similar things Audirvana does to optimize media playback? Of course i could stick with Audirvana but granted i could get the same quality when playing back from a media server i would prefer that.

 

[bluesaint]

Yeah, there's something wonky with network (wifi) play. The larger the file size, the more likely it'll stutter due to data. I feel maybe IFI need to allow for larger pre-buffer for wifi.

Regarding "app/network" playback with Pro iDSD: I have found some issues (ticket with iFi audio is open) but wonder what other's experiences are.
Issue: when trying to play 96 or 192 FLAC files from a SD card or hard disk (both connected to the iDSD), or via network, is see that the iDSD recognizes the file format (it displays the correct rate) and starts to play for a very short time but then it starts stuttering and eventually it completely stops. Not only that but i cannot reach the iDSD anymore until i powercycle.
Moreover, if i play the same file from my UPnP media server (AssetUPnP running on a Dell tower) to a Marantz receiver (which is connected to the same LAN switch as the Pro iDSD) everything works fine.

Some users in this forum have reported good success with Audirvana. So i installed a trial version on my Windows 10 PC and tried that. That worked well - both when using a USB connection and network.
Last i tried the Tidal desktop app on the same PC with USB connection. Both PCM and MQA played fine.

Note: i have not seen any issue with playing 44kHz files (local disk, network, USB).

My speculation is that Audirvana does some smart "conditioning" of the media stream. Also i speculate that the way the software on the Pro iDSD is implemented it is unforgiving versus any variation (jitter) in the media stream that arrives. But what puzzles me is that it does not only stop playing, it completely hangs.

Does anyone else experience at least instabilities with network (or also local disk) playback?
Is there any UPnP media server that does similar things Audirvana does to optimize media playback? Of course i could stick with Audirvana but granted i could get the same quality when playing back from a media server i would prefer that.

 

[iFi audio]

Appreciate you trying to shed light but we really need iFi to shed light... specifically the poor ultrasonic rejection (JA's words).

We already did in the past, somewhere in this thread. JA and other EISA judges got pre-production machines and beta stage FW. Later firmware fixed oddities like these.

 

[flyte3333]

We already did in the past, somewhere in this thread. JA and other EISA judges got pre-production machines and beta stage FW. Later firmware fixed oddities like these.

Thanks.

In this post you did say Stereophile had beta firmware but didn’t say these issues were fixed for production units.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/ifi-audio-pro-idsd-the-official-thread.869144/page-56#post-14663931

Good to know.

Friendly suggestion that you contact Stereophile so they can add a “manufacturer’s comment”, like they’ve done in the past with other measurements.

 

[flyte3333]

For @iFi audio :

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/dac-issues-with-xmos-usb-chipset-and-roon-on-linux/52911/15

A now known XMOS bug which causes this burst of static a few of us have reported.

@iFi audio has this been fixed? Or still in progress?

An update from Kii Audio (who discovered the XMOS bug and provided the fix):

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/dac-issues-with-xmos-usb-chipset-and-roon-on-linux/52911/95

"My biggest concern is for the people who have bought products from companies that implemented the XMOS technology in a me-too product that lack the desire or ability to fix this simple issue in the field. Some of them might even rely on a third party to fix that for them.
To anyone who encounters this issue, contact your product vendor. If your vendor states its device is not supporting Linux, they are hiding and hoping for the storm to pass. Good riddance to manufacturers who do not stand behind their product, especially when the (not so easy to find) solution is spoon fed to them. In case one of these vendors is willing but incapable of implementing this fix, they can contact me to see If I can help them out."

 

[Reggy]

iFi audio Pro iDSD - The Official Thread
Yup, it's high time to start one...


If anyone might be wondering why, well, we have some major news to share.

Looks like a real contender for the sub $2500 range.

Does the ifi-audio-pro-idsd DAC use off the shelf DAC chips, or do you use the one in delta-sigma D/As?

Thanks,

Reggy.

 

[peterjgross]

@iFi audio has this been fixed? Or still in progress?

An update from Kii Audio (who discovered the XMOS bug and provided the fix):

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/dac-issues-with-xmos-usb-chipset-and-roon-on-linux/52911/95

"My biggest concern is for the people who have bought products from companies that implemented the XMOS technology in a me-too product that lack the desire or ability to fix this simple issue in the field. Some of them might even rely on a third party to fix that for them.
To anyone who encounters this issue, contact your product vendor. If your vendor states its device is not supporting Linux, they are hiding and hoping for the storm to pass. Good riddance to manufacturers who do not stand behind their product, especially when the (not so easy to find) solution is spoon fed to them. In case one of these vendors is willing but incapable of implementing this fix, they can contact me to see If I can help them out."

After reading some of the discussion you referenced above i wonder if the issue that i have reported in the below could be associated with the XMOS bug. It appears the symptoms are the same ("Every indication here is that the bug is on the DAC side–that is fairly easy to see from the failure mode. The DAC plays invalid sounds, ends up hung, and the entire relationship between the DAC and OS is broken from that point until the DAC is power cycled."
I do experience this behavior when playing via network to the Pro iDSD. However, the issue only occurs with 192/24 files (sometimes but less frequently with 96/24). I have not yet encountered an issue with 44/16 files (my ripped CD's, also no issue when playing from Tidal).
I mostly play via network but have used the USB port with Audirvana playing all sorts of material and have not seen any issue. It is not clear to me if the XMOS issue affects only network play or also play via USB.

Regarding "app/network" playback with Pro iDSD: [\QUOTE]