12-Jul-2014, 09:34
An update. This morning I wound the buffer up to the full 5000ms. Then, mid tune, (this did make me cringe a bit) I pulled the Ethernet cable out of the computer. The Devialet kept playing happily for the full five seconds, then cut out. So now, I can confirm that yes, the buffer is in the Devialet, nice top quality Parisian memory, rather than the nasty cheap stuff in my PC.
I did learn something else when trying this. With Jriver / WASAPI the Devialet / AIR worked fine with the 5000ms buffer, much as you would expect. (with 16/44.1 material) Later I switched to iTunes, and with the 5000ms buffer still in place, AIR would cut out in about 3 seconds, the same issue I have experience with 24/192 tracks played with Jriver WASAPI, as mentioned earlier in this thread. The windows "playback devices" GUI on my PC is set to 24/192 and "exclusive mode" enabled. ITunes is set with "windows audio session" enabled. However, with iTunes this clearly is NOT running bit-perfect. As somewhere in the PC the 1's and 0's from iTunes must be being up sampled to 24/192 somewhere. The Dev's display also shows "192khz" when fed 16/44.1 from iTunes. I tried all of this from a cold start with iTunes, and got the same result, so it is not an exclusive mode conflict with Jriver.
It's interesting, because I happily thought that iTunes was running bit perfect, but clearly it isn't, there must be a few other setting or something to change. Jriver is though, if I try different files types via Jriver, the Devialet displays 44,1, 96, 192 or whatever as appropriate. However, I did think Jriver sounded slightly better, so it would appear that there is probably a good technical reason for this, not just the placebo effect tricking the link between my ears and brain. Has anyone else got their "playback devices" GUI set to 24/192, and iTunes running "bit perfect", windows audio session, with the appropriate 44.1 on the Devialet's display? I must be missing something somewhere.
One point to note, I'd give a vote to Jriver following all of this, easy to set up, seams to work exactly as it should and most importantly, sound quality to me seams top notch. Compare this to iTunes, easy to set up and think you've got it right, but the reality is, iTunes is very easy to set up incorrectly whilst kidding you all is well. Does anyone know where I am going wrong with iTunes?
(for those who suggest I simply abandon iTunes, I don't have too much of an argument! However, I have many years worth of track rating, playlists etc., so it is hard for me to divorce iTunes completely. Perhaps the answer to this is to work out how to get all the iTunes metadata, ratings in particular, into Jriver, but this is one for another thread sometime.)
I did learn something else when trying this. With Jriver / WASAPI the Devialet / AIR worked fine with the 5000ms buffer, much as you would expect. (with 16/44.1 material) Later I switched to iTunes, and with the 5000ms buffer still in place, AIR would cut out in about 3 seconds, the same issue I have experience with 24/192 tracks played with Jriver WASAPI, as mentioned earlier in this thread. The windows "playback devices" GUI on my PC is set to 24/192 and "exclusive mode" enabled. ITunes is set with "windows audio session" enabled. However, with iTunes this clearly is NOT running bit-perfect. As somewhere in the PC the 1's and 0's from iTunes must be being up sampled to 24/192 somewhere. The Dev's display also shows "192khz" when fed 16/44.1 from iTunes. I tried all of this from a cold start with iTunes, and got the same result, so it is not an exclusive mode conflict with Jriver.
It's interesting, because I happily thought that iTunes was running bit perfect, but clearly it isn't, there must be a few other setting or something to change. Jriver is though, if I try different files types via Jriver, the Devialet displays 44,1, 96, 192 or whatever as appropriate. However, I did think Jriver sounded slightly better, so it would appear that there is probably a good technical reason for this, not just the placebo effect tricking the link between my ears and brain. Has anyone else got their "playback devices" GUI set to 24/192, and iTunes running "bit perfect", windows audio session, with the appropriate 44.1 on the Devialet's display? I must be missing something somewhere.
One point to note, I'd give a vote to Jriver following all of this, easy to set up, seams to work exactly as it should and most importantly, sound quality to me seams top notch. Compare this to iTunes, easy to set up and think you've got it right, but the reality is, iTunes is very easy to set up incorrectly whilst kidding you all is well. Does anyone know where I am going wrong with iTunes?
(for those who suggest I simply abandon iTunes, I don't have too much of an argument! However, I have many years worth of track rating, playlists etc., so it is hard for me to divorce iTunes completely. Perhaps the answer to this is to work out how to get all the iTunes metadata, ratings in particular, into Jriver, but this is one for another thread sometime.)
