Help with setup of Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB

[thumb5]

what sample rate are you using?  can you try lower, e.g. 44.1 or 48 kHz?

•    I was using 48K but it gave me an error msg and told me to use 44.1, which I tried
  
•    Also I tried to play sound outside of JRiver, via Win Direct Sound plus the Tidal app
  

is the AES/EBU cable particularly long (more than a couple of metres)?

• 1 ft
  

That all sounds fine.  (I wondered whether there might be signal integrity problems, but it sounds unlikely.)

can you try a different cable?

• I ordered a BNC to SPDIF, will get it in on Thursday
  

That will be a good test.

[*]can you verify that the Alpha is producing output on the AES/EBU (e.g. by connecting to a different amp or pre-amp, if you have one)?

• I have an xtra amp, but it has 2 XLR connectors  L+R, whereas the Devialet has only 1, how does this work, I thought I had to hook it to a Pre-amp / Dac to process the signal?
  

[*]
Sounds like your other amp might have balanced analog (stereo) inputs, rather than a digital input.