[tomscat]

I've been trying to figure out why I'm getting audio crackles / pops with my Mayflower ODAC.

Places I can replicate it easily:

• Clicking through the menu in some games
• When song changes on Spotify
• When starting or stopping videos on YouTube
• Has been happening with Windows 10 1903, 1909, 2004
• There are no crackles / pops when going through onboard audio with or without an Obective2 amp.

I'm guessing pretty much anywhere where audio starts then stops.

Things I've tried:

• Reached out to Mayflower and they replaced a bad opamp and bad solder joints.
• Tried multiple mini-USB cables
• Bought new mini-USB cables with a ferrite core
• Tried on multiple Windows desktops (9700K + Gigabyte Aorus Ultra / 3900X + ASUS Crosshair VI HERO / 10900K + ASUS XII Hero)
• Changed the settings to run at 24/96khz
• Tried different power outlets throughout the house with different surge protectors
• Sent it BACK to Mayflower and was told that everything was looking perfect and they could not see any issue with it.
• Tried connecting different headphones / speakers and all made the same crackle (DT 177X, Bose QC35 II)

I'm absolutely out of ideas at this point. I would love to not have to replace these. I like the form factor and I don't think I need anything nicer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I don't know but I suspect lousy drivers could snap crackle and pop on sample rate changes or other events. One way to check might be to uninstall the Mayflower driver and see if the same thing happens on Windows audio using default USB drivers.

Usually, Windows audio should be avoided and the ASIO or WASAPI drivers from the device manufacturer should be used, in exclusive mode. If you can't avoid Windows audio set it to 16/44.1 to avoid Windows up-sampling which will probably just make things worse.

 

[tomscat]

I don't know but I suspect lousy drivers could snap crackle and pop on sample rate changes or other events. One way to check might be to uninstall the Mayflower driver and see if the same thing happens on Windows audio using default USB drivers.

Usually, Windows audio should be avoided and the ASIO or WASAPI drivers from the device manufacturer should be used, in exclusive mode. If you can't avoid Windows audio set it to 16/44.1 to avoid Windows up-sampling which will probably just make things worse.

Thanks for the help.

1. I went ahead and uninstalled the default drivers and installed the drivers listed on the website which where on this site: http://www.yoyodyneconsulting.ca/pages/ODAC.html
2. I tried to direct device manager to install drivers through the SaviAudioBravoX folder but no nothing was found
3. I proceed to restart the computer
4. Now it's back to the old default "ODAC RevB USB DAC" driver

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Hi, I'm not sure if I understand the end result. I was suggesting we could rule out flaky drivers from the manufacturer by uninstalling them. After that maybe you have to reboot but then we should see that Windows sees the device and uses the Windows default USB drivers. If that stops the popping and cracking it suggests the factory drivers are buggy.

If there is no change I will not know what to suggest. In that case you should reinstall the factory drivers and set Windows to 16/44.1

I am not sure why the DAC offers bit rate settings, it looks from the screen shot it should have ASIO drivers and those should be using whatever the app sends. And I also am surprised they expect you to set latency. There should be a default setting and you should not have to pick one.

Hopefully people with the same DAC can jump in and help.

 

[GREQ]

I've had popping and clicking problems with other DACs, and for me it was always remedied by simply plugging it into other USB ports until it found one it worked well with.

Obviously if you're using a laptop, you won't have this as a troubleshooting option, but it has helped others with desktop PCs in the past.
Sometimes the DACs respond differently to USB2 and USB3 sockets, and even the same type on the front and back of a desktop machine are not all equal.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

BTW if you go to the search at the upper right, click on it, and then click Advanced search on the bottom right of the popup, you can search threads by title and in date order. Hopefully you can find discussion on your DAC. I just tried it and there are a lot of hits but I didn't find a specific odac thread yet. There are very often megathreads for many devices.

 

[tomscat]

Hi, I'm not sure if I understand the end result. I was suggesting we could rule out flaky drivers from the manufacturer by uninstalling them. After that maybe you have to reboot but then we should see that Windows sees the device and uses the Windows default USB drivers. If that stops the popping and cracking it suggests the factory drivers are buggy.

If there is no change I will not know what to suggest. In that case you should reinstall the factory drivers and set Windows to 16/44.1

I am not sure why the DAC offers bit rate settings, it looks from the screen shot it should have ASIO drivers and those should be using whatever the app sends. And I also am surprised they expect you to set latency. There should be a default setting and you should not have to pick one.

Hopefully people with the same DAC can jump in and help.

I should have clarified that these are the Windows default drivers for the DAC. I uninstalled the drivers off Device Manager, rebooted then it installs the same driver written by Microsoft.

I only went to the ASIO option when reading through the product page on Mayflower and it suggested them as optional.

I've had popping and clicking problems with other DACs, and for me it was always remedied by simply plugging it into other USB ports until it found one it worked well with.

Obviously if you're using a laptop, you won't have this as a troubleshooting option, but it has helped others with desktop PCs in the past.
Sometimes the DACs respond differently to USB2 and USB3 sockets, and even the same type on the front and back of a desktop machine are not all equal.

I'll give it a shot with some other ports. My old Gigabyte Aorus Ultra motherboard had a specific port for DACs and that didn't seem to fix the issue either.

BTW if you go to the search at the upper right, click on it, and then click Advanced search on the bottom right of the popup, you can search threads by title and in date order. Hopefully you can find discussion on your DAC. I just tried it and there are a lot of hits but I didn't find a specific odac thread yet. There are very often megathreads for many devices.

Will do.

I want to assume it's just a driver issue but if it were, I'd expect to see more threads about this than the 2 or 3 I've found.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

You should definitely be using ASIO drivers if they work. That's the low latency option and it bypasses Windows audio. It will be the best possible sound quality. But not every app can take advantage of that.

 

[NA Blur]

Try these first. #3 is probably your best bet.

1.) Turn off Power Management for all of your USB HUB devices ( device manager )
2.) Try using an optical cable instead of USB ( if the clicks go away then it is probably a bad USB / interface on the PC )
3.) Try disabling your graphics drivers. This can cause all sorts of latency issues adding noise, signal drops, and other unwanted side effects. The PC shares the power resources and disabling the graphics driver and retesting will clue you in on the problem.

 

[NA Blur]

Any luck?