Topic: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

I have experienced very weird distortions. They sound like a lot of wine glasses rattling in a cupboard to the rhythm of the music. They start out minimal, then they become more pronounced and louder until the normal audio has faded away and there's only distortion left. All of this happens within a few minutes. I use the ADI-2 DAC with USB as an external soundcard and it doesn't matter whether the audio comes from a game, or youtube, or foobar. After pausing the audio and restarting the audio the situation improves for a short time. Then the distortion starts again.

I have found a way to get rid of the problem. I think it happens when the ADI-2 DAC is switched on before the PC is switched on. When I make sure that the PC is running before turning on the ADI-2 DAC there aren't any problems. The problem also appears when the PC wakes up after hybernation / sleep and the ADI-2 DAC was turned on while the PC was hyberating (making the ADI-2 DAC think that the PC was turned off).

In either case the ADI-2 DAC shows that it is using the internal clock. I don't know what else to tell you that might be helpful.

2

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Error counter in the Settings dialog.

SPDIF signal present when you switch it on?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

3 (edited by Wingonaut 2019-09-26 17:21:10)

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Do you mean the USB diagnosis? It reads:
USB Diagnosis - I 0 I - 0 crc5 / 3.3 min

The number before "min" is in the process of going upwards. In the time it took me to write the it went up to 4.1 min.

There is no SPDIF signal present. Firmware is 32.


Problem re-occurs intermittently. Music has a high-pitched rattling sound to it and speech sounds muffled but is still understandable.

4 (edited by Wingonaut 2019-09-28 08:43:01)

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Here is some more information that might help us to figure this out.

I have set the Smaple Rate to 384000 in the "MADlface Series Settings".
The sound settings of Windows 10 are: 2 channel, 24 bit, 384000 Hz

I use Foobar2000 for playing all kinds of music files (aac, mp3, flac) and I have an upsampling DSP installed (see screenshot). https://ibb.co/zfTrs0n It upsamples everything to 384000 Hz. I use WASAPI (shared) as the output device.

Do you think that listening to music with Foobar2000 and playing a game might cause trouble related to different sampling rates? Should I stop using the sox upsampler of Foobar and set everything to 441000 Hz so that everything works at its native sampling rate? (I am assuming that the game's audio is also 441000 Hz but I can't be sure.)

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

I am always gaming with my UFX+ and at the same time listening to Music with MusicBee which supports ASIO.
Everything happens at 44.1 kHz and there is no issue.
I would advice you not to complicate your setup with such an add-on tool and simply use it straight.
The upsampling will at the end bring no better quality. The quality is like it is and upsamling wont make it better.
Simply try.
RME setting dialig: create one WDM device, configure it as speaker.
Make it in Windows Sound setting to the default device for Win10 so that non-ASIO Applications like Windows and applications can make use of it.
Then you can use foobar with ASIO driver additional.
And you should be able to hear music and game at the same time without distortion.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

6

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Change your settings to 192 kHz to check if the error still shows up. This could be a performance issue, or a problem within WASAPI/Windows Audio, Foobar and USB. Many possibilities...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

7 (edited by Wingonaut 2019-10-06 11:50:28)

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Well, I have had about two weeks of no sign of the problem. I have set everything to 192 kHz in Windows and I have set the output of Foobar to DirectSound, just so that WASAPI is out of the equation.

Today I was playing Destiny2 for about two hours when the shrill hall effect in the highs reappeared. Because my character was having a vision in game I thought that this weird distortion might be intentional to highlight his state of mind. When I restarted the Adi-2-Dac while playing the game the distortion disappeared.

I'll keep montoring the situation but I am not happy with this.

Edit: I have deinstalled the drivers and started using the ADI-2 Dac as a class compliant USB device. Let's see if this improves the situation.

8 (edited by ronz 2019-10-09 08:31:43)

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

I just came here to register an account here to say I have exact same issue with my ADI-2 PRO FS. Distortion always appear when my computer woke up from sleep. Shrill hall effect will gets louder gradually music played through either ASIO or Directsound. Distortion isn't limited to particular programs, it appears whenever there's sound playing. I've tried Firefox, Chrome, Amazon Music , JRiver MC, MusicBee or Foobar. I have to power off and power it back on to fix the distortion issue. Sometimes restarting the ADI-2 using power button won't fix it either, I have to unplug power cord, wait a few seconds and then replug power cord to make the distortion go away for rest of the session until my computer goes to sleep or power off. I think it has something to do with the drivers rather than hardware.

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

Just had the same issue. Turned on the DAC before my PC was booted up and got this horrible distortion when playing out of the phones out. Latest firmware/software, using ASIO driver in Roon, USB Diagnosis reads - | 0 | - 0 crc5/16 err / 0.6 min

Re: Weird distortion when "on" before PC is "on"

This happened to me because of my Asus motherboard. In the BIOS there is something called "Super I/O Clock Skew". If I understand correctly what it does, it adjusts the timing to every I/O so they stay in sync with each other. When I disable it I get the weird distortion when the DAC is on before the PC. If I turn the DAC off and on or after the PC there is no weird distortion.
When "Super I/O Clock Skew" is enabled I never get distortions.