XX to USB DAC

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

Thanks for the latest XX-version R2.07. I had R2.04 but skipped R2.06 and installed R2.07 and again, I don't know how you do it, SQ has improved. Great!

I have a question. I replaced my head-amp with a Mojo from Chord. It is a huge improvement and I'm really happy with it and in addition to that... it also has a superb DAC (check the internet).
It plays DSDs and goes up to 768kHz/32-bit on its micro USB input.

You will understand what I'm up to . I would like XX to provide the music data to this DAC. I was looking on the forums to find parameters I need to set in XX to be able to use the DAC in the Mojo, but it is difficult to find something.
My question is, are there any guidelines somewhere on the fora to setup XX for a USB DAC, in this case the Mojo? One of the things I need to do is exclude the chord windows USB-drivers for being stopped by XX in minimised mode, but there may be other things to set.

Could you help me out?

Thanks in advance,
Bert

[nik.d]

Hi Bert,

Peter will provide better answer fur sure but what I see, Chord Mojo uses ASIO drivers only and XXHE is built/intended for KS (Kernel Streaming) or
WASAPI (Windows 7-8-10 native audio protocol). Think you will not be able to use XXHE with Chord Mojo. In minOS, even WASAPI service is stopped.

Brgds,
George
 

[PeterSt]

Thank you George.
Allow me to put forward one small correction :

In minOS, even WASAPI service is stopped

True, but only when you tell the system to. So in Settings there a special button "Stop WASAPI Services". Leave that inactive and WASAPI will stay.

Otherwise I am afraid you are correct; no ASIO in here.
Whether the Chord does not have drivers for WDM (WASAPI) or Kernel Streaming, I did not check. So Bert, maybe you can confirm (or hopefully debunk) that yourself ?

Kind regards,
Peter

[BvdW]

Thanks, George, Peter,

Ok, this button "Stop WASAPI Services".
I switched back to Normal mode and made it inactive and after restarting XX two new Mojo drivers appeared in the XX settings list: a Chord KS-driver and a Digital Output driver. Strange, they are not the Direct Sound, ASIO or Wasapi drivers that come with the Mojo. Does XX show/translate them differently?
Nevertheless, when I selected the Chord KS driver and pressed play all worked in one go! No additional settings to set. Amazing!
It means I can now easily switch between original and Mojo driver. Great.

Selecting Digital Output didn't work, btw (black screen, no sound).

Before I start listening seriously I have two questions:
1 - If the Chord KS driver is actually using the Wasapi driver, then as I understand it uses engine3, isn't it? Wasn't that one a bit inferior to Engine 4?
2 - I would have thought that I now could upsample more than the four times I did with the original driver (Mojo supports higher input frequencies), but 4 seems the maximum setting. I can go to 2 and 1 but not to 8 or 16. Also switching on/off the fx button doesn't make a difference. I use setting Custom, but ArcPredict or AntiImage don't make a difference. 4 is the max . Any idea why?

regards,
Bert

[PeterSt]

Bert, a question first : Did you select a driver prefixed with KS: ? if yes, you will just be using Kernel Streaming. Well, that is what I suppse. You could switch on logging (bottom in Settings), play a few seconds (Attendedly), and attach the newest XX, X3 and X3PB logfiles (one of each) to a post in here (forum).

Regards,
Peter

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

Attached are the log files.
Hope you see what is going on and why I cannot raise the upsample rate.

regards,
Bert

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

Over the days since my last mail, and a few PC and XX restarts later the list of drivers that I see has changed and is now only showing KS drivers (excluding the primary sound driver), see attached. I don't what happened. Also I added new logfiles based on these new list of drivers. Hope this helps with you investigations

Bert

[PeterSt]

Hi Bert,

Somehow I missed your one but last post. Sorry for that !
Now I am gong to look into your last post.

Can't it be that you're now in MinOS while previously you were not ?
Or otherwise that now WASAPI is shut off again (in XXHighEnd Settings) which previously resulted in nothing in the list (IIRC) ? Or that you changed active devices (you can disable them) ? Anyway, no need to answer if you feel the current state of matters is no problem (outside the upsample rate of course).

Regards,
Peter

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

yes, that must be the case. Returned to Normal mode a few times as requested by you to get the logfiles needed, but moved back to minimised mode with Wasapi off, now showing only the non-wasapi drivers.
I'm quite Ok actually with the current KS mode drivers and it is easy to switch between the two. So, for me what is left now is the question why I can't go to a higher upsampling rate.

Bert

[PeterSt]

Hey Bert,

but 4 seems the maximum setting. I can go to 2 and 1 but not to 8 or 16.

I actualy may wonder what you mean with "but not to" ...
It wouldn't be so that you forgot to set in Settings that "Dac Is" is 24/768", right ? (or 32/768)

And if you did that all right, how do you determine that it can't work ? (messages etc.)

Peter

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

Yes, that was the missing link. Missed that setting. After I set it to 32/768 I could set the upsample rate to 16 times. Great.
So, that is solved, but what I noted was that the filter setting was still on 176400 instead of 705600 and it worked, see screendump. So, does XX not check on this Filter setting? Well, yes, it seems it does because if I set it to 705600 and then go back to original driver settings (176400) I get an Q5 sample rate mismatch and this makes sense. So what happens if I select this new Chord driver with 32/768 setting and 16* upsample rate but leave the filter on 176? I don't get this Q5 message.

I was clever ( I think :-)) and saved the new Mojo settings and loaded settings for the original driver. I noticed it sets everything except... the driver. So, to test it I set it to the chord driver and loaded original settings. All settings were set except... the driver. Is this OK?

One final note. When loading original settings, so presetloader.xxsi, the XX screen shrinks to a small size. It didn't do that when loading the Mojo settings. A little bug?

Bert

[PeterSt]

Hi Bert,

Great that you managed.

The setting of a "too low" filter is allowed, but a kind of a waste because you won't be utikizing the upsampled headroom for the Custom Filter. So, not advised but allowed (the other way around is not allowed because we can't filter beyond the Nyquist freqency (in this case after upsampling)).

I was clever ( I think :-)) and saved the new Mojo settings and loaded settings for the original driver. I noticed it sets everything except... the driver.

This depends a bit on the environment of the Save. Notice this goes by "sequence number" of the Drivers listed, and when you meanwhile eliminated a Driver, the sequence number of the one you originally used will have changed. So I think this will already happen when you go from Normal OS to Minimized OS. Well, not sure because it never bugged me and this can be coincidence (number can stay the same). Anyway I think this is explainable.
Btw do notice that I am not even sure whether you really mean Driver or possibly something else like Filter setting (it just reads like you may mean something else).

One final note. When loading original settings, so presetloader.xxsi, the XX screen shrinks to a small size.

Not intended but very well can be (a bug); dealing with the "scaling" is relatively difficult and the moment of saving happens under the hood in "normal" Scale Factor and the scaling is restored at start up. So I guess something like this last step is forgotton now.
Thanks for mentioning this.

Best regards,
Peter

[BvdW]

Hi, Peter,

Understood about the filtering.

With respect to saving and loading settings I would say that what is stored should be able to be loaded including the device drivers (yes, I meant these KS drivers. So, in my case Chord and Envy).  IMO XX can save the list of drivers and mark the current active one. When loading the settings XX can check on which drivers are available and verify this with the (marked) one. If its there then make it current. If not then still load drivers, take the top one, make it the current one and produce a message and let us decide what to do.
Idea? It is a bit strange that you can load all setting except the device driver which you still have to set manually.

Btw, after a weekend of listening the SQ is great now with these high settings.
No.
Even better, ha!
And, I'm already looking for the next step. My mojo DAC is now connected with my PC with the short cable (10 cm) that comes with the Mojo. When I'm reading about this Intona isolator I was wondering, is the issue with the Intona all about galvanic isolation which does the SQ improvent, rather than the length of the cable. IOW, would I profit from the Intona knowing that I will need two usb cables instead of one (and of more length) and a box, all replacing this 10cm cable? What do you think?

Bert

[PeterSt]

Hi Bert,

I was wondering, is the issue with the Intona all about galvanic isolation which does the SQ improvent, rather than the length of the cable. IOW, would I profit from the Intona knowing that I will need two usb cables instead of one (and of more length) and a box, all replacing this 10cm cable? What do you think?

Well, to me myself it is obvious that the additional cable plus box sound better than one cable and no box, because, well, it sounds better. But the proof for me is merely in the fact that countless number of people ordered the 2nd (short) Clairixa USB cable, what they would not have done when first something else (like Clairixa - Intona - Random USB cable) would not have sounded better to them than without box and one Clairixa USBB cable only.

YMMV though and as often it is also related to other environmental things. So personally (and this of course includes the further gear I use) I did not like the Intona any more since 14393.0 is the Operating System I like best (over 10586.0). From there, however, I developed the Phisolator and this now *is* working (very well) for 14393.0. One small issue at this moment : Today the Phisolator only works inside of the Phasure NOS1a DAC and this in itself is only because of a lack of time to make a nice outboard one (say like the Intona).

I hope that answered your question somewhat, regarding this "isolator" matter.
Regards,
Peter