Ethernet streaming and occasional white noise on Windows

[Confused]

I think Alex is right. I can get the white noise with every PC media player I've tried, including iTunes, which was what AIR was designed for in the first place. However, I can get large variations in "clean" running time depending on sound card /AIR GUI settings and whether or not I'm playing 24 bit material. As Alex wrote, WASAPI is not the culprit, but yes it definitely exacerbates the issue. Now this evidence would Also appear consistent with Alex's memory leak theory, but for me, I'm thinking that if Devialet, that is the guys who are the authors of AIR, have spent several months now unable to solve the issue, what chance do us mortals stand? In fact it's been so long now, I'm wondering if the issue is so intrinsic with how AIR operates that maybe Devialet can't solve it, and maybe never will, at least without doing something fundamentally different with AIR, which of course may have implications for sound quality. After all, WASAPI with 24bit sounds best to me (for good technical reasons) but it also happens to be worst for white noise (I'm feeling pessimistic today)

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic, and the new rock solid ultra high quality AIR will appear in time for Christmas.

[Morten]

Just for reference I also use foobar, Air is set to bit perfect and 50ms buffer. Output in Foobar is wasapi event, and bit depth 24, buffer standard 1000ms

Have a nice Sunday evening

Morten

[AlexS]

Just for reference I also use foobar, Air is set to bit perfect and 50ms buffer. Output in Foobar is wasapi event, and bit depth 24, buffer standard 1000ms

Morten, if the issue occurs to you on a regular basis, and if you have any interest in experimenting, switching from "wasapi event" to "wasapi push" may be an interesting thing to try.

[Morten]

Hi AlexS

I will give it a go, but as stated in the thread, I don't have the issue that often, only 3 times in the 3 months I have been using the Devialet.

Kind regards Morten

[Sylvain27]

Just for reference I also use foobar, Air is set to bit perfect and 50ms buffer. Output in Foobar is wasapi event, and bit depth 24, buffer standard 1000ms

Morten, if the issue occurs to you on a regular basis, and if you have any interest in experimenting, switching from "wasapi event" to "wasapi push" may be an interesting thing to try.

Hello,
I have tried "Wasapi push" also, but white noise was heard too.
Best regards,
Sylvain

[Antoine]

Wow, I must be the luckiest Devialet owner using AIR (ethernet). Never heard the white noise and it's my primary source.

I remember reading someone using Windows Server 2012 with AO also has this white noise issue and I was thinking; did the Windows users here try fix the issue by disabling the power saving options for the network interface? At least for this other AO user this could be the only difference (besides the hardware used) between my and his setup.

Perhaps I and someone who experiences the white noise issue should open the Devialet and see what type of AIR card is installed. If I remember correctly the card or components on it changed over time and I have a very early version of the AIR card if it wasn't exchanged for a new one during the upgrade from D-Premier -> D250.

[LBameule]

Antoine, I have a 120 and stream via AIR/Ethernet from an old MacBook Pro 2008 using OS X 10.7 straight into the Dev. I've had no problem either so far... So that's two of us. Maybe it's just a Windoze thing...

[Confused]

did the Windows users here try fix the issue by disabling the power saving options for the network interface?

I would try this, if I knew how! (I'm a reasonably competent user of a PC, but a long way off being an IT expert....)

Is this a reasonably straightforward thing to try?

[Antoine]

@LBameule, nope, I am using Windoze as well.

@Confused: yep, very straightforward. Lazy as I am I Googled for the instructions to copy-paste those here.


Press Windows Logo Key+R to open the Run window.
Enter compmgmt.msc in the Open field.
Click OK to open the Computer Management window.
Click Device Manager.
Double-click Network Adapters.
Double-click your Network Interface Card to open the [Network Interface Card] Connection Properties window.
Click the Power Management.
Click to uncheck all boxes.
Click OK to close the [Network Interface Card] Connection Properties window.
Click X to close the Computer Management window.

[Confused]

@Confused: yep, very straightforward. Lazy as I am I Googled for the instructions to copy-paste those here.

That's not lazy, it's efficient! Good work, thanks. I'll give this a try at the weekend, now with my system, given sufficient time, I can get the white noise very consistently. So if it works for me, then you are definitely on to something. I'm not overly optimistic to be honest, but I'll definitely give it a try and report back.