White noise and tweeters

[Xpersephone]

I am about to take delivery of a D200 and a Qnap TVS 871 NAS.   I am going to experiment with directly driving the Devialet from a Windows 10 virtual machine running AIR and Roon,  for starters.   Reading this forum it seems at some point I will run into the 'white noise'  issue,  possibly unpredictability and after some long period of operation - and what I am worried about is if that happens with the volume cranked up am I going to fry my tweeters? 

It seems to me this is a significant risk - if the noise really is white,  then it contains uniform power across any given frequency band,  and with a powerful amp more than enough to fry a tweeter. 

Or am I being thick?   Quite prepared for that answer!

[Zappydev]

I am about to take delivery of a D200 and a Qnap TVS 871 NAS.   I am going to experiment with directly driving the Devialet from a Windows 10 virtual machine running AIR and Roon,  for starters.   Reading this forum it seems at some point I will run into the 'white noise'  issue,  possibly unpredictability and after some long period of operation - and what I am worried about is if that happens with the volume cranked up am I going to fry my tweeters? 

It seems to me this is a significant risk - if the noise really is white,  then it contains uniform power across any given frequency band,  and with a powerful amp more than enough to fry a tweeter. 

Or am I being thick?   Quite prepared for that answer!

I'm not sure if it is technically 'White Noise' but based on my all-too-frequent experience the real question is probably whether your hearing or your tweeters will get destroyed first.

I think there is a very real risk of tweeter damage, especially if you can't grab the volume control quickly.

If I could wind the clock back, I would avoid AIR at all costs.

Good luck (you will need it )

[Womaz]

You may be one of the lucky ones who does not get the AIR issues. There are many users who never have a problem with AIR. .......unfortunately I was not one of them. I listen to my music fairly loud at times and the white noise never damaged my tweeters.

[NickB]

Just set up a Qnap 453 Mini today with exactly the set up you are going to try - works perfectly and no white noise at all. To be fair I have had the white noise problem before when I was running a mac system and with windows 7. Both times it happened when I was out and the noise had gone on for some time before I got back, never any problem with tweeter damage, I think it sounds a lot worse than it actually is (damage wise that is)

[El_Duderino]

Just set up a Qnap 453 Mini today with exactly the set up you are going to try - works perfectly and no white noise at all. To be fair I have had the white noise problem before when I was running a mac system and with windows 7. Both times it happened when I was out and the noise had gone on for some time before I got back, never any problem with tweeter damage, I think it sounds a lot worse than it actually is (damage wise that is)

Interesting.  I had a similar setup on a 453-Pro with 16GB RAM running a Win10 virtual machine, ROON, and Devialet Air.  I thought all was good for about 2 weeks...until I started playing high resolution files more regularly.  Redbook resolution would play just fine indefinitely, but higher resolution FLAC files and DSD would result in a much higher frequency of dropouts and white noise.  I ended up getting an Intel NUC to run Win10 natively instead of as a virtual machine and this has resolved all issues.  I hope it works out better for you!

[ledesc]

You may be one of the lucky ones who does not get the AIR issues. There are many users who never have a problem with AIR. .......unfortunately I was not one of them. I listen to my music fairly loud at times and the white noise never damaged my tweeters.

+1
Also, based on my experiments, here are my findings if you want to mitigate the risks:

AIR-ETH + Laptop eth-wired (not direct eth link) : never had any issues

AIR-ETH + Laptop wifi : could happen playing DSD files, especially after switching AIR-ETH/AIR-WIFI and also switching from foobar to Qobuz player, but to be honest if I startup my PC and play files, and do not test settings/applications, no issue. Really low risk.

AIR-WIFI + Laptop Wifi : could happen playing DSD, really dependent on the uptime of my router and wifi activities... unpredictable.

Playing 16/44 is not an issue for me with AIR.
My default AIR format on my laptop is always 24/192, you can also lower this settings, but for me I can really hear the impact on SQ if I do so.

Hope you'll be also a lucky AIR guy

[Xpersephone]

I have a completely wired network, and never intended to use Wifi; I have three Squeezeboxes in the house and never got them reliable until I made that step. I also don't have much high res music, I'm not sure I believe in it given how good Red Book CD can sound (is all you are really hearing the effects of different mastering?), and I have a large CD collection which I ripped myself years ago with dbPoweramp to FLAC.

It therefore seems to me that I have a good chance of getting Air stable - do I need Windows 10? I ask because I currently have Windows 7 Enterprise (legally) on various systems, which does not qualify for an upgrade to 10 and I will have to buy it.

[ledesc]

For your info I'm running AIR 2.1.3 on a window 7 64bits x250 Lenovo (8Go of ram and 256Go SSD).

[Confused]

I have a completely wired network, and never intended to use Wifi; I have three Squeezeboxes in the house and never got them reliable until I made that step.  I also don't have much high res music, I'm not sure I believe in it given how good Red Book CD can sound (is all you are really hearing the effects of different mastering?), and I have a large CD collection which I ripped myself years ago with dbPoweramp to FLAC.

It therefore seems to me that I have a good chance of getting Air stable - do I need Windows 10?  I ask because I currently have Windows 7 Enterprise (legally) on various systems, which does not qualify for an upgrade to 10 and I will have to buy it.

I used to run AIR on a Windows Vista PC and it worked absolutely perfectly.  With Windows 8 / 8.1 I had all sorts of issues with AIR, Windows 10 is better, but not perfect.  So I would say try with Windows 7, you have a very good chance that this will work fine.

[jmorrell]

I stream using foobar using the kernal service. I have quite a few 24bit 96khz high res albums, but none @ 24bit 192khz. I haven't suffered the white noise problem since changing the Devialet-eth bitrate from 24bit 192khz to 24bit 96khz. Ymmv.