New owner here so appreciate your patience. Have gone through the 100+ page manual a dozen times but its clear, experience will add dramatically to my knowledge of how to use and appreciate all its flexibility.

My setup
A raspberry pi, usb output to the ADI2. I use jriver as my player. Within jriver i am running the parametric equalizer to smooth out room modes (measured with umik & REW). I run the output from the ADI2 to feed my desktop active/sub speakers.  Additionally, at times, i will also the aes output to feed my family room active/subs. My source is a large local file library and using jriver to stream amazon music.

Performance is supurb and works flawlessly playing, flac, hires , dsf, mp3 and wav music files. Never had an issue with any format or sample rate.

I purchased a matrix element s (streamer with digi output). Inserting the matrix for the raspberry pi and keeping everything else the same I am having problems playing any file that has a sr above 48k.

Here is what is strange
- at times the matrix/rme duo barf at a hi res song yet other times it plays that same song without issue
- it typically only barfs (stutters, drops out, stops etc) at 192k but once it barfs and until i reboot the rme, all other lower res songs that have played fine, now get the barfing action.
- I tried optical output (instead of usb) out from the matrix with no change.
- Clearly its a defective matrix, right?  no, not really becauase if i insert the matrix in another setup (matrix usb output to emotiva pre/pro) i have, all songs play flawlessly without problem ... even those that would not play with the matrix rme combo.

I have a file of 20secs of a 24/192k lou reed song i played on the rme/maxtrix combo and recorded on my phone. If i can attach it to my post i will so it will be clear what is happening.

I initially thought it was the matrix but it playing everything flawlessly in my other system says the matrix is likely not the problem. Then, I thought it was my setup of the rme that was at fault but if it plays perfectly through the pi, then that is likely not the problem.  Next i went to jriver and played around with the settings and found some definitions of my dlna servers were definitely capable of causing problems but once i fixed all those potential issues, i still have a matrix rme problem

The manual speaks of never enough dsp power which, at hires sample rates could be the cause is the only other thing i could think may be the cause. Other than that, i am out of ideas

The only reason for the matrix instead of the pi is i like its ability to show album art (my pi wont with jriver). While i would like that, its not critical so i am ready to send the matrix back and just use the pi. But hoping someone who is much smarter and knowledgeable of the rme might have some ideas on what i might be experiencing.

Thanks, in advance