The one driven by the CPU is usually the most stable one.
Good point ! I did check on my PC and only 4 of the back USB ports are driven by CPU (and Gryphon is not connected to any of those), all the rest go through the chipset.
And yes, at the point I was writing about the MQA dropouts, the device was connected to the USB-C port in the back (and still is).
I want to confirm these dropouts have disappeared when Deafult Mode is set to 32bit, 384kHz.
May change the port at a later date, for me the actual one seems to work just fine and the rest are already full anyway, I need to reconfigure them to do this.
The dropouts only appeared on Tidal Masters (MQA) and nothing else: any other audio streamed from the Internet, local files, games would all play just fine.
I also have an update about the volume jump: the problem goes away when Volume Sync is set of to OFF in device's menu. It is set to on after a Factory Reset or
firmware update, so pay attention. This was also the problem in older firmware versions, as this setting did not exist in the menu and was always on.
From an audio quality point of view, syncing the volume with the device doesn't help, cause you will loose resolution if the digital volume is not at 100%.
So what I do is use the volume on the Gryphon (which controls an internal analog attenuator) and keep the source at 100% anyway.