REVIEW - Yulong Audio Sabre DA8 Reference DAC
Oct 18, 2013 at 6:47 AM Post #466 of 1,613
DAC's i've used in the past that were not prone to any audio issues, Audioengine D1, Audioquest Dragonfly, Wooaudio WA7, Concero HP.
DAC's i've used that have caused me nothing but headaches, Violectrics USB optional card(Tenor 7022), ODAC(Tenor 7022).

Setting JRiver to WASAPI pretty much stops all issues i have with the DA8 which seems to be the preferred method of setting it up anyway, i do prefer direct sound mode though, because i get to listen to sounds from any location.

The "lock on signal" is probably the case we're experiencing with sounds cutting off, it seems a the DA8 is a lot slower to respond than the Tenor.
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 11:58 AM Post #467 of 1,613
DAC's i've used in the past that were not prone to any audio issues, Audioengine D1, Audioquest Dragonfly, Wooaudio WA7, Concero HP.
DAC's i've used that have caused me nothing but headaches, Violectrics USB optional card(Tenor 7022), ODAC(Tenor 7022).

Setting JRiver to WASAPI pretty much stops all issues i have with the DA8 which seems to be the preferred method of setting it up anyway, i do prefer direct sound mode though, because i get to listen to sounds from any location.

The "lock on signal" is probably the case we're experiencing with sounds cutting off, it seems a the DA8 is a lot slower to respond than the Tenor.
No, actually the da8 is the speediest USB I've come across
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 12:21 PM Post #468 of 1,613
As a windows user, i also experience short length sounds to be cut off half way, a easy way to test this is to left click the speaker icon on the bottom right and left click the volume slider every 3 seconds, you will notice cut off, but if you spam click it, you should receive the full sound, appears to be some kind of delay, happens with Tenor too(first experienced this with ODAC).

 

 
Yea, I'm experiencing the same thing on my iMac running OSX 10.8.  Though it seems like when I have a steady stream of music, the sound effect problem is remedied but as soon as the music stops, I get cut offs or serious lag with sound effects (e.g. skype IM's. dropping items into trash bin ect.).  Perhaps, it might be harder to fix on a mac due to the lack of downloadable drivers?
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 12:26 PM Post #469 of 1,613
Yea, I'm experiencing the same thing on my iMac running OSX 10.8.  Though it seems like when I have a steady stream of music, the sound effect problem is remedied but as soon as the music stops, I get cut offs or serious lag with sound effects (e.g. skype IM's. dropping items into trash bin ect.).  Perhaps, it might be harder to fix on a mac due to the lack of downloadable drivers?


As I said in the previous page this delay is caused by the signal clock having to re-lock to the signal after the audio stream has been off for a bit. This is not driver related as it is a delay in the physical clock on the DAC and it is also not a problem unique to the DA8.

The intermittent stutter/pop during playback should not be happening on OS X though as the DPC system of device drivers is a Windows specific feature.
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 12:34 PM Post #470 of 1,613
As I said in the previous page this delay is caused by the signal clock having to re-lock to the signal after the audio stream has been off for a bit. This is not driver related as it is a delay in the physical clock on the DAC and it is also not a problem unique to the DA8.

The intermittent stutter/pop during playback should not be happening on OS X though as the DPC system of device drivers is a Windows specific feature.

 
Thanks, I completely missed that part, sorry.  So if the DPC system of drivers is specific to windows, what other issue can be causing the latency on OSX?  Do you know if there's a way to keep a constant stream of signal on a Mac?
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 12:49 PM Post #471 of 1,613
The delay when you are just starting to play something can not be fixed by software as it is time taken by the DAC to lock on to the signal clock. This is not related/caused by DPC latency and should only happen when resuming audio playback after the stream has been off for a bit. As far as I know there is no workaround to this.

The DPC latency issue is intermittent stutter/skip DURING continuous playback, and is a more annoying problem that only happens on Windows caused by some poor implemented device drivers on the system. Isolating the bad device and disabling it will fix this, though it is hard to pinpoint the culprit driver and sometimes it's an essential device that cannot be disabled. This is one of the reasons that Macs or Linux systems are preferred for audio playback, especially over USB.

Note these are two separate things we are talking about. The former is due to the way the DAC hardware and firmware is implemented (many other DACs are like this, especially ones that have dedicated clocks for separate sampling rates) and I don't think there is a workaround (please let us know if you know of one). While the latter (a bigger problem IMO as it actually affects normal music playback) is a Windows specific issue that should not affect Macs.
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 1:32 PM Post #473 of 1,613
The delay when you are just starting to play something can not be fixed by software as it is time taken by the DAC to lock on to the signal clock. This is not related/caused by DPC latency and should only happen when resuming audio playback after the stream has been off for a bit. As far as I know there is no workaround to this.

The DPC latency issue is intermittent stutter/skip DURING continuous playback, and is a more annoying problem that only happens on Windows caused by some poor implemented device drivers on the system. Isolating the bad device and disabling it will fix this, though it is hard to pinpoint the culprit driver and sometimes it's an essential device that cannot be disabled. This is one of the reasons that Macs or Linux systems are preferred for audio playback, especially over USB.

Note these are two separate things we are talking about. The former is due to the way the DAC hardware and firmware is implemented (many other DACs are like this, especially ones that have dedicated clocks for separate sampling rates) and I don't think there is a workaround (please let us know if you know of one). While the latter (a bigger problem IMO as it actually affects normal music playback) is a Windows specific issue that should not affect Macs.

 
Ok, that clarifies things a lot, thanks Jd007!  Yea, my problem seems to be the first one.  It's definitely a nuisance, but the latter problem sounds much worse.
 
 
My mac plays back fine. Using audirvana.
Maybe they are network(wifi) delays if you are using an iphone or ipad to control the music?


Music playback is fine for me, it's the sound effects that experience latency and cutoff.
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 2:08 PM Post #474 of 1,613
My mac plays back fine. Using audirvana.
Maybe they are network(wifi) delays if you are using an iphone or ipad to control the music?

yeah that's fine. the delay only happens if your computer has not been outputing sound for a bit, which is why it is usually noticed with system sounds as they sometimes play without any other sound playing (emptying trash for example). it happens when the audio stream from usb stops (because nothing is playing), then when the computer starts to play some new sound the usb receiver on the dac needs to re-lock on to the signal clock.
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 3:17 PM Post #476 of 1,613
  A player like Audivana where the file is stored in RAM

 
Thanks, but it disables all other sounds so I don't think it will work.
 
 
*Update*:  So I updated my OSX on my macbook pro (now 10.6.8) and it doesn't seem to have that problem anymore.  I think the issue might be the OSX version on my iMac, I'm running 10.8.5., anyone else with that version having any problems?
 
Oct 18, 2013 at 4:01 PM Post #477 of 1,613
 
  A player like Audivana where the file is stored in RAM

 
Thanks, but it disables all other sounds so I don't think it will work.
 
 
*Update*:  So I updated my OSX on my macbook pro (now 10.6.8) and it doesn't seem to have that problem anymore.  I think the issue might be the OSX version on my iMac, I'm running 10.8.5., anyone else with that version having any problems?

OSX updates should always be done as soon as its released. It seems like osx based products can be quite glitchy and problematic when things are up to date.
 
Oct 21, 2013 at 6:07 AM Post #478 of 1,613
Does anyone else notice significant change with up-sampling to 352.8/384 in SQ?
I've never used this before as i had no faith in this.
It seems to me it does make a noticeable difference to PCM files up to 96kHz (included).
 
Oct 21, 2013 at 9:21 AM Post #480 of 1,613
In case of DA8 i don't know how to use hardware up-sampling. Is it possible via some driver conf? 
I meant software up-sampling. Isn't software up-s as good as best hardware options?
 
Sound is comparatively more open and less grainy with up-sampling to me. Nyquist error moves out of audible range is one thing, but is there something else?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top