If it is inconsistent, with the same chain and at the same listening level, as you now say it is, then it’s not clipping.
As @antdroid and @generic said, it is likely a driver or USB stack issue with your DAC (be it an iFi specific driver or the generic UAC2 one). Drivers can get into odd states, which can include not meeting the interrupt request response times … that’ll lead to corrupt data and/or dropped or incomplete packets*, which leads to crackling.
Fixing that usually first involves a reboot (a full power down is even better). It can also occur if too much else is happening on the computer while playing audio (which can be at the IRQ level, and won’t necessarily show up as a high CPU or memory load).
*The USB stack will typically send full packets on schedule in this scenario, however the buffers used to build the packet contents may not have been fully populated by the driver/player chain, in which case whatever data was in the memory the buffer was allocated in is what will get sent to the USB port, and thus the DAC. That’ll either be all zeros, all ones or effectively random, all of which will causes glitches.
Hey y’all ~ big thanks to y’all for providing support to @HeadphoneNoob, and @antdroid who sent me here. The team here already provided pretty much the suggestions I’d recommend on this topic off the top of my head.
To get the process started, I’d recommend opening a support ticket with us here and sending us the legwork you’ve already done (which is great, and the exact testing we’d do to start things off) with the team here: AMR & iFi-Audio Support Ticket System
I was able to debug a nasty issue with a USB docker station by using the LatencyMon tool. E.g.: in DELL computers, that DELL Control vault is a well known enemy for audio listeners.
In other words, if it’s software related, it may help you.
Yea it’s definitely not consistent, which is good. I don’t think it has to do with a system overload, my pc is basically a super computer. I have the fastest memory on the market and I’m running an I9-9900k. My mother board is one the top of the line mother boards for my cpu chip set. All my lanes are open and it’s made to be pushed to crazy limits, which is not being done.
Driver issues I wouldnt doubt, I never installed the drivers for the Nano. It says on ifi if it is working fine not to install those drivers. So far my PC is picking up units I install[connect] with no drivers installed, it may already be installing the drivers.
@SebastienChiu this unit is old and is no longer under warranty I believe. It is not my unit either, it’s something I am borrowing cause I do not own a dac or amp, just got my first amp last week.
I’m probably getting bad performance because this ifi product only has 3.5 out, so I’m using 3.5 to rca to my flux amp. Probably not a good idea, but it was happening when using only the Nano by itself with my Elegia. Which isn’t a hard to drive headphone.
Not sure what help Ifi can provide, as we are unable to figure out the precise cause
My Geshelli just shipped, says it’s arriving Wednesday. I am not trying to dig too deep into this, we will see how the Geshelli performs and should hopefully resolve all the issues.
I tried to lower the bit rate on the Nano via my pc yesterday and nothing happened, not sure if that would do anything anyway. I have it on the highest output available on sound properties. I switched to cd quality as well on Quboz and the issue was still going on. Just to test if that plays any role.
Correct 3.5 to y split rca, when I’m using the he6se, but I am actually getting the issue when using the Nano by itself while using my Elegia as well.
Like I mentioned only while using Quboz.
Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. So far the song that caused distortion on my HE6 was that daft punk rinzler and yesterday I used the Elegia and it did it on that as well.
Yes, nothing plugged into it. See photos, I think what @frkasper said could be the issue, cause I recall that being an issue with AVR’s that use an external amp to power speakers but also have internal amp too. Using the AVR as I guess a pre amp or processor has some type of vrm issue.
Got the JNOG, just sat down to start listening and I am hearing this random ticking sound coming one tick at a time on the left and right channel randomly. Everything balanced.
Hello, i can confirm that some songs on qobuz do indeed clip. I downloaded some of the songs and loaded them in audacity and they where clearly being clipped. Changing the gain won’t fix this as it’s the original file that’s already clipping.
This is a screenshot of the song don’t know why by norah jones in audacity. You can clearly see it bottoming out. It doesn’t look like much but it’s very noticeable.
Thank you for this info, I posted on another thread on here that my ifi unit was clipping as well. Figured it was the unit itself, glad it is not.
I find it odd because some songs always clip, and others would clip sometimes. Seems fairly random
I’m not sure if it’s a network issue or not, and it only for me has occurred on ifi equipment. The Nano BL portable and Neo iDSD. Fortunately I do not own either of those dacs and they were just loaned to me.
My question would be do you think internal reconstruction filter would fix this error? Not even sure if that’s possible or if that is the purpose of the reconstruction filter. I ask cause this has not occurred on any of my other dacs.
One song that would almost always clip was Tron Legacy soundtrack, song Rinzler. It was on the movie film playlist. It would get super bad clipping.
Also on the hateful 8 sound track it would clip consistently.
I’ve experienced intermittent distortion with Qobuz recently. It’s only when playing through my iMac => DAC/Pre/Amp. If I’m using my DAP, it doesn’t happen, so it’s not my headphones or cable. And when I play Apple music through my desktop rig, it doesn’t happen. Baffling. Trying to close all other programs and windows besides Chrome and Qobuz. Don’t use EQ of any kind. Bit of a bummer, as I think Qobuz sounds better than Apple Music.
I think your point may actually point out the possible issue which is the computer as the issue. Can not be 100% certain but after reading your post I realize the only difference now vs before is I was using my pc and now that I have a Pi2AES on my main system and volumio on my secondary I have not experienced any clipping on speakers.
But also as mentioned I was only really experiencing this with my ifi products, whether it was using the amp or stand alone to a external amp.
On my TA10R no issues, same with the original JNOG, and my meridian aio.
Prior to volumio I was using an airport express 2nd Gen to stream music to my secondary setup, even that junk didn’t clip. Which again why I felt it’s ifi, but clearly you guys are experiencing the same problem with other dacs
Also now for a while I have been using roon as my player with Quboz as the only feed and I am not sure if any corrections are happening there. But I did have a solid year of just pure Quboz player.
No way to test if it is ifi as I no longer have either of those units to check
