[phheld]

All, thanks for reading this. I need some hardcore technical help/ideas to solve an issue.

My brother in law and I gave our other brother in law a fully baked server system for his 40th birthday. I've been doing this stuff for a number of years (currently on Mac gear but cut my teeth on XP and Vista for years before that).

In short, I gave him an almost-new Acer Vista (32, home premium) based pc with iTunes and a large ALAC library preconfigured (we share musical taste, so I was able to give him ALAC of everything he already owned as I own it on CD as well). I did the legwork. My BIL bought the new DAC, a Fubar USB DAC that many of you know and seem to love (with the upgraded power supply).

That particilar Vista PC was surplus at my place, and had never been used running a music server and had not been really tested; I had no reason to think it wouldn't be fine but nonetheless.

The complete config is the Acer Vista PC running iTunes 9+, ALAC (mostly) library on the internal HD, Fubar DAC with ps upgrade, analog out to his audio gear (preamp, amp, etc.). Totally conventional and done a million times.

Here is what's happening. After a period of time, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes all afternoon, the system will dissolve into "white noise". Itunes is still playing but all you hear is something that sounds like white noise. Stopping and starting the song sometimes cleans it up, but not always. Usually, he has to either quit and restart iTunes or off/on the DAC to get the system rebooted.

I took over my Keces USB DAC as a control, and the same thing happened, so it's not the Fubar (at least, not on it's own).

I disabled other audio options, altered/disabled power down options, etc. - everything I could think off. It's still happening.

Folks - any ideas that could help us solve this mystery? thanks in advance, Paul

 

[phheld]

Bump -lots of looks but no ideas. Thanks for looking - ideas please?

 

[gbacic]

Have you tried using a different media player such as Foobar 2000 or Winamp, etc? The Windows iTunes is inferior to the Mac OS X versions so it may be that.

 

[phheld]

Yes, I installed and configured F2K for him and that is on the list to test as well.

While iTunes Vista may not sound the same as Foo, it certainly never offered me this type of technical challenge.

But we'll see if that might be it.

Other ideas folks?

 

[swmtnbiker]

What output device are you using in F2K? WASAPI? DirectSound?

Does the problem also affect the analog output to his preamp/stereo system or is it restricted to USB?

Have you made sure that any CPU power management has been disabled in the system BIOS?

 

[andrewmorio]

USB voltage (sharing with other devices)issue. Unplug all usb devices except dac. And/or reboot. Then plugin and try dac.Way to avoid this is with dac own PW(ac adapter).

 

[swmtnbiker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewmorio /img/forum/go_quote.gif USB voltage (sharing with other devices)issue. Unplug all usb devices except dac. And/or reboot. Then plugin and try dac.Way to avoid this is with dac own PW(ac adapter).

The Fubar DAC uses an external power supply, not USB power.

 

[gbacic]

driver issues?

This is a bizarre problem

 

[phheld]

Agreed bizarre problem. Fubar DAC as related above has external power supply so that's not it. He moved the USB port used around, so that isn't it.

Please keep ideas coming........!

 

[phheld]

We did NOT hear this testing with straight analog out from the MOBO - but we weren't focusing on it either.

Screen saver?

 

[swmtnbiker]

Did you check to see if any CPU power management is enabled in the system BIOS? Not in Windows. I've heard of a number of quirky USB audio issues that have been traced to this. Worth a look.

Also, what about the output device you're using in Foobar2K?

 

[phheld]

It WAS the screen saver. For some reason, this broke the audio chain and the Fubar lost the clock. My BIL has run the system successfully for a number of days with no disruption after turning off the ss.

thank you all!