[raoultrifan]

Hello,

I would very much love to give Play a spin and see how it sounds on my audio-rig.

I live in IASI, Romania.
Part of my audio-rig in the attached photo.



DAC, combo, amplifier:

• ASUS Essence One MKii
• ROLAND Mobile UA-M10
• ODAC
• MATRIX M-Stage HPA-3B
• Objective 2

Headphones:

• FOSTEX T50-RP MK3
• AKG K550
• AKG K701
• BEYERDYNAMIC DT880-600ohms
• GRADO SR60i (L-cushion big cups)

Powered studio monitors:

• 2 x Mackie MR6mk3
• 1 x Mackie MR10Smk3

Audio servers:

• MinimServer (installed on dedicated mITX machine: Windows 10, Intel Apollo Lake J3455, 16 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD, 4 x 2 TB Storage Spaces with parity)
• miniDLNA/ReadyMedia (installed on Raspberry Pi2 with Raspbian)

Audio players:

• Foobar
• jRiver Media Center

Testing machines:

• Windows 10 desktop (i7 4470/120 GB SSD/2 x 2 TB HDD)
• Windows 10 Think PadT430 & T440 (i5/8 GB RAM/250 GB SSD)
• High Sierra iMac (i5 4570/ 16 GB RAM/250 GB SSD)
• High Sierra MacBook Pro (i5/8 GB RAM/128 SSD)

Thank you!

 

[Oscar-HiFi]

My Play is back (got upgraded to the retail version).

Now it is happily at work, with my HifiMan HE-500's using the V6 Classic op-amps.

 

[Asahi Templar]

Finally got my Burson Play after some delays due to a defective unit and it sounds absolutely amazing. I was impressed by how good the basic 299.99 version sounded, you could honestly get that and not even worry about rolling the OP amps. This being said installing the Vivid v6 in it made me a believer in OP AMP rolling because my god doesnt it change the sound.The vivid makes Dr compressed music sound insanely good. Ironically I think its not as good with High DR music as it kind of comes off as makes it sound overly processed. I also found the basic version sounded better with the HD 660s as it had more of a tubish sound.

Unfortunately I am having serious issues with my new play though and wonder if anyone else here with it can say if they have the same issues. Specifically there is a seriously bad latency to the sound at times, I get a 2-4 second delay before sound starts. It causes audio and video to become massively unsynced in games and it happens often. It makes it unusable for games. it generally happens when a cut scene starts.

This is a shame because the Vivided out play is the best unit I have heard for games...when the delay is not there. Everything is crisp and clear at a level I didnt know was possible.

I also cant get 384khz to work properly. If I select it I get massive noise and distortion in everything.

I am thinking that I got a bum XMOS card but would like to know if anyone else has this issues.

if I can get it working this is definitely end game material.

 

[ostewart]

Finally got my Burson Play after some delays due to a defective unit and it sounds absolutely amazing. I was impressed by how good the basic 299.99 version sounded, you could honestly get that and not even worry about rolling the OP amps. This being said installing the Vivid v6 in it made me a believer in OP AMP rolling because my god doesnt it change the sound.The vivid makes Dr compressed music sound insanely good. Ironically I think its not as good with High DR music as it kind of comes off as makes it sound overly processed. I also found the basic version sounded better with the HD 660s as it had more of a tubish sound.

Unfortunately I am having serious issues with my new play though and wonder if anyone else here with it can say if they have the same issues. Specifically there is a seriously bad latency to the sound at times, I get a 2-4 second delay before sound starts. It causes audio and video to become massively unsynced in games and it happens often. It makes it unusable for games. it generally happens when a cut scene starts.

This is a shame because the Vivided out play is the best unit I have heard for games...when the delay is not there. Everything is crisp and clear at a level I didnt know was possible.

I also cant get 384khz to work properly. If I select it I get massive noise and distortion in everything.

I am thinking that I got a bum XMOS card but would like to know if anyone else has this issues.

if I can get it working this is definitely end game material.

Very odd, I've not had these issues and have been using it for watching videos etc... Also high res 192khz works fine, not tried higher.

What I can say is the Play is incredible for full size headphones, I actually prefer the slightly more neutral V6 classic op-amps over the more fun V6 vivid.

I don't have any time for gaming anymore so I can't test with games, have you tried seeing if burson have a driver for it you could use? (I didn't need one with Windows 10)

 

[Asahi Templar]

Very odd, I've not had these issues and have been using it for watching videos etc... Also high res 192khz works fine, not tried higher.

What I can say is the Play is incredible for full size headphones, I actually prefer the slightly more neutral V6 classic op-amps over the more fun V6 vivid.

I don't have any time for gaming anymore so I can't test with games, have you tried seeing if burson have a driver for it you could use? (I didn't need one with Windows 10)

Thanks for the response! They do have an xmos driver which I tried and is giving me the issues. The included ASIO driver doesnt work at all either.

The latency seems to happen whenever a sound from a new source plays, it even shows up when I first play a song in Foobar or windows error noises, the sound plays around 1-2 seconds after it starts.
For me it was not plug and play, if I plug it in without the xmos drivers Windows 10 sees it as a USB Audio device but wont allow any bit rates above 16 bit, 48khz. I tried USB 2.0,3.0 and 3.1 ports too all act the same. 2 different cables as well.

Very strange issue, if others arent having it that supports my bad XMOS card theory.


Yeah I kind of want to try the classics, the Vivid sounds unnatural at times, that YouTube video recommended putting V6 classics in the AMp portion with the 3 dual vivids in the dac potion to help with it. heck I might just put the basic NRJ Op amps back in the amplifier portion and see if that helps. Might also grab some Muses03 which came out earlier this year, haven't seen many impressions of them though.

 

[john57]

First get rid of all the xmos drivers you manually installed. Your USB Audio Device is just for the microphone driver. In addition you also should have Xcore USB Audio 2.0 driver. If that does not show up in Device manger, it is a problem. It takes a while for windows 10 to install that driver and you may need a working internet connection. Try scan for hardware changes. You must show Xcore USB Audio 2.0 driver. Windows 10 was the first windows version that supports USB Audio 2.0 natively.

 

[john57]

I can confirmed that 384khz PCM and DSD 2x works just fine on my setup.

 

[Asahi Templar]

Thank you for checking!

It seems it was using the windows update driver even though I had XMOS drivers manually installed, so guess the ones off bursons site just dont work.

It does show XMOS Core Driver and that is what I am using to get sound.

It also has the USB audio driver in both playback and recording.

Just removed all drivers and reinstalled using the plug and play method which came up faster this time...still has the same issues though.

Guess its not driver related then. Probably a bad XMOS card.

 

[john57]

If all playback like YouTube sound is delayed? I am a sound designer and composer and any latency issues would have been very serious. I have a huge investment in virtual sound libraries, some are Kontakt,UVI and EastWest play libraries. Since there is no working ASIO I use just the WASAPI driver and it works for the most part without causing dropouts or pops. Working with virtual sounds libraries special with orchestral will tax the audio system far greater than any game. I wound try or borrow another PC/Laptop if possible before saying that the play unit is bad.

 

[Asahi Templar]

Yeah all sounds are delayed but its random when it happens. Even the windows error sounds get delayed at times. For instance if I drag the windows volume bar it makes a dinging sound when I set the volume,if no other sounds are playing that ding has a 1-2 second delay.If I am watching a netflix video when I drag and drop the volume slider the ding happens instantly.

It seems to occur randomly whenever a sound from a new source plays or when the bitrate changes. If the sound plays properly it keeps playing properly. It was noticeable most in games when a cutscene would play, I assume because the bitrate changes from the game to the cutscene. Even then sometimes a cutscene plays fine, sometimes it would have as much as a 4 second delay. Games which have in game cut-scenes work fine.

Even when I start playing a song it sometimes doesnt actually play sound from it for a few seconds.

Dont have any other PCs I can use to see if it happens elsewhere, but I do have a Schiit Stack which still works fine. First time I have encountered this kind of issue.

 

[john57]

Since you do not have another machine available I would try a clean boot and see if it makes a difference and take it from there.

1. 
   Press the "Windows + R" key to open a Run box.
   
   
2. Type msconfig and click OK.
   
   
3. On the General tab, click Selective startup.
   
   
4. Clear the Load startup items check box.
   
   
5. Click the Services tab.
   
   
6. Select the Hide all Microsoft services check box (at the bottom).
   
   
7. Click Disable all.
   
   
8. Click the Startup tab.
   
   
9. Click Open Task Manager.
   
   
10. On the Startup tab, right-click each enabled startup item and select Disable.
    
    
11. Click OK.
    
    
12. Click Restart.
    

After completing your troubleshooting, restore your system by doing the following:

1. Press the "Windows + R" key to open a Run box.
   
   
2. Type msconfig and click OK.
   
   
3. On the General tab, select Normal startup.
   
   
4. Click the Services tab.
   
   
5. Clear the Hide all Microsoft services check box.
   
   
6. Click Enable all.
   
   
7. Click the Startup tab.
   
   
8. Click Open Task Manager and enable all of your startup programs.
   
   
9. Click OK.
   
   
10. Click Restart.

 

[Asahi Templar]

Still no dice sadly, same issues at least as much as I could test.

Have an email out to Burson to see if they have any ideas about what to try.

Thanks for your help John.

 

[Wiljen]

@Burson Audio Hey I was also reached out to listen to this, but I've not heard anything back for shipping? Please do reach out soon as I'd love to hear this!

Non the less, loving the activity in this thread guys, excellent impressions so far!

Same here, this just seemed to vanish into the ether after a promising start. I haven't heard any details on times or shipping dates in quite awhile now.

 

[Oscar-HiFi]

Same here, this just seemed to vanish into the ether after a promising start. I haven't heard any details on times or shipping dates in quite awhile now.

I don't think they are going to proceed with a tour due to lack of participants

The Play is awesome though, my nice little work DAC/Amp now taken over from my Topping D30/A30 setup. The D30/A30 work better with sensitive IEM's and headphones, but the play is just so engaging and fun to listen to. It has soooo much power too, listening with my German Maestro GMP 8.35d I have the volume on 3 out of 99.

With IEM's there is background noise, but the iFi Earbuddy fixed this

 

[Makiah S]

Same here, this just seemed to vanish into the ether after a promising start. I haven't heard any details on times or shipping dates in quite awhile now.

I got another PM from them with talks of shipment but no tracking... we will see what happens though!