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Post by rocky500 on Dec 3, 2014 21:38:21 GMT -5
I have turned off Driver signing with the method laid out and the drivers now installed into Windows 8.1. I have all the latest patches from Microsoft. I get a different wording for my XMC-1 in sound and devices. Have I missed something or is it correct? In Foobar I have options only for "WASAPI (event) SPDIF Out (XMC-1)" and same for push  |
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Post by DellaDog on Dec 3, 2014 22:06:09 GMT -5
That's how mine looks.
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Post by wizardofoz on Dec 3, 2014 22:20:34 GMT -5
I must say I have eliminated windows from my house for all but the UMC-1/200 updates and this USB firmware and I still use a JRiver install to RIP but other than that I almost windows free...and it feels great.
I don't think Ill go anywhere near windows for the XMC-1 from here on in. Call me old fashioned but the whole plug and pray in windows never really cut it.
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Post by rocky500 on Dec 3, 2014 22:24:02 GMT -5
Its just in the Emotiva documentation for setting up Foobar it mentions it may look like this "WASAPI (push): Speakers (x-USB2.0 High-Speed True HD Audio)." Instead of what I am getting is this option "WASAPI (push) SPDIF Out (XMC-1)" So just want to clarify if I need to try re-installing again or something or if it is ok. |
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Post by rocky500 on Dec 4, 2014 0:32:40 GMT -5
Now that I have uninstalled it and tried to reinstall the driver, I keep getting the Microsoft driver. It mentions signed by microsoft each time and the version number now is
8.1.12.4 instead on the one in my screenshot.
I notice you have to hard reset the XMC-1 each time to get the sound to work when re-installing these drivers. Also it sort of locked up once.
I am sure I will get there again. :-)
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Post by rogersch on Dec 4, 2014 2:01:40 GMT -5
Now that I have uninstalled it and tried to reinstall the driver, I keep getting the Microsoft driver. It mentions signed by microsoft each time and the version number now is 8.1.12.4 instead on the one in my screenshot. I notice you have to hard reset the XMC-1 each time to get the sound to work when re-installing these drivers. Also it sort of locked up once. I am sure I will get there again. :-) When you use the windows driver, does the XMC-1 plays 192 Khz encoded audio files correctly? |
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Post by romotiva on Dec 4, 2014 5:17:27 GMT -5
Its just in the Emotiva documentation for setting up Foobar it mentions it may look like this "WASAPI (push): Speakers (x-USB2.0 High-Speed True HD Audio)." Instead of what I am getting is this option "WASAPI (push) SPDIF Out (XMC-1)" So just want to clarify if I need to try re-installing again or something or if it is ok. I had the same, It's fine, Foobar then plays through USB. You can also rename the option if you like |
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Post by rocky500 on Dec 4, 2014 6:01:03 GMT -5
Now that I have uninstalled it and tried to reinstall the driver, I keep getting the Microsoft driver. It mentions signed by microsoft each time and the version number now is 8.1.12.4 instead on the one in my screenshot. I notice you have to hard reset the XMC-1 each time to get the sound to work when re-installing these drivers. Also it sort of locked up once. I am sure I will get there again. :-) When you use the windows driver, does the XMC-1 plays 192 Khz encoded audio files correctly? Just tried and Yes it shows 192KHz 24bit in the popup display on the xmc-1 when playing these files. |
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Post by rocky500 on Dec 4, 2014 6:03:10 GMT -5
Its just in the Emotiva documentation for setting up Foobar it mentions it may look like this "WASAPI (push): Speakers (x-USB2.0 High-Speed True HD Audio)." Instead of what I am getting is this option "WASAPI (push) SPDIF Out (XMC-1)" So just want to clarify if I need to try re-installing again or something or if it is ok. I had the same, It's fine, Foobar then plays through USB. You can also rename the option if you like Yes seems to work but just wanted to check that this is ok, otherwise I was planning on going to a backup before all the drivers and see how it might go then. My backups are a little old and would mean a lot of setting up again. ADDED: Ok got it back so that the driver installed now shows 8.1.12.15 and is not digitally signed. Wether it makes any difference, I am not sure but now I think it is the correct one from Emotiva. I had to uninstall and then power down the XMC-1. Just before installing again after disabling driver signing then I turned on the XMC-1. |
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Post by rogersch on Dec 4, 2014 7:01:16 GMT -5
When you use the windows driver, does the XMC-1 plays 192 Khz encoded audio files correctly? Just tried and Yes it shows 192KHz 24bit in the popup display on the xmc-1 when playing these files. Why would you not use the default Windows driver? I did not go through the hassle of an unsigned driver on my windows 8.1 laptop/tablet and just used the default windows driver. It works okay. |
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Post by rocky500 on Dec 4, 2014 7:22:16 GMT -5
Just tried and Yes it shows 192KHz 24bit in the popup display on the xmc-1 when playing these files. Why would you not use the default Windows driver? I did not go through the hassle of an unsigned driver on my windows 8.1 laptop/tablet and just used the default windows driver. It works okay. I think there was talk about this early on in this thread or another. The recommendation was to try not use the microsoft one I think. I am not sure why though. With the Microsoft one can you use both Event and Push modes with WASAPI? Also I have an Steath DC-1 Dac and want to compare it to the XMC-1. I want to give the XMC-1 the best chance to compete and if they are close will most probably sell the DC-1. Also I don't think KeithL would have gone to all that trouble to document the driver unsigning if the microsoft driver was just as good.  |
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Post by rogersch on Dec 4, 2014 8:24:20 GMT -5
Why would you not use the default Windows driver? I did not go through the hassle of an unsigned driver on my windows 8.1 laptop/tablet and just used the default windows driver. It works okay. I think there was talk about this early on in this thread or another. The recommendation was to try not use the microsoft one I think. I am not sure why though. With the Microsoft one can you use both Event and Push modes with WASAPI? Also I have an Steath DC-1 Dac and want to compare it to the XMC-1. I want to give the XMC-1 the best chance to compete and if they are close will most probably sell the DC-1. Also I don't think KeithL would have gone to all that trouble to document the driver unsigning if the microsoft driver was just as good. If somebody can explain why the default windows 8.1 driver is inferior to specific C-Media driver I would be willing to do the hassle of installing an unsigned driver. |
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Post by michaelhifi on Dec 4, 2014 11:20:19 GMT -5
In my case, I do not pass 24/192 or any hi-rez file with the XMC-1 SPDIF wasabi driver. Hi-rez just gets downsampled.
Last night after giving up trying to install the "correct" driver, my wife and I gave the XMC a listen through our CAPs server running Jriver 20. We experimented with many configurations some concerning power. It was not good through the motherboards USB port using a simple USB cable. I tried the SoTM USB reclocker output and fed it to the iFi Gemini combo and this introduced greater space, a darker background and a very solid central image, so better. But not nearly as good as just using the Anti-Mode as the pre. I really want to make this work.
I don't want to delve too deeply into the sound quality as the setup might be bastardized with running possibly the wrong driver, but we definitely have some concerns with our 2 channel sound through the XMC. Wife was not happy.
Tonight I'll revisit the setup on the XMC, maybe user error :/ and do some cable swapping as well. Haven't tried streaming from our Oppo BDP105 yet so that may tell me something.
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Post by michaelhifi on Dec 7, 2014 11:26:32 GMT -5
Just an update. I gave up on Windows 8 and installing the Emotiva driver. Instead, having a new Solid State hard drive, I installed Windows 10. I got the same results as with Windows 8, it simply refuses to install Emotiva's USB driver. So I tried the Schiit driver and whoa it installed. Now it wasn't easy, I had to jump through many processes, but it's installed in Windows 10 beta!
Windows 10 beta is buggy as you'd expect. But it's working. The driver that shows up is the XMC-SPDIF not the XMC-USB. However, it is the C-Media driver. I renamed the driver to XMC-USB and tested as well, making sure it will pass hi-rez. This is where it gets complicated (as if it isn't already). I can play DSD but it downsamples to 176/16. That so far is the best I can achieve. Trying to play 192/24, it still downsamples to 176/16. This is through Jriver 20. By the end of the day I got the SoTM driver installed and working. I added the iFi device and was able to stream USB from my CAPs server to the XMC-1 with very high quality sound except with one serious hiccup.
I noted that the XMC experiences dropouts. These dropouts last from between ~5 seconds to beyond 20 seconds. This has happened with both the streaming from the CAPs server and the Oppo BDP-105 using USB. I don't think this was an issue with the HDMI connection.
More testing today.
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Post by aud on Dec 7, 2014 20:46:08 GMT -5
Just an update. I gave up on Windows 8 and installing the Emotiva driver. Instead, having a new Solid State hard drive, I installed Windows 10. I got the same results as with Windows 8, it simply refuses to install Emotiva's USB driver. So I tried the Schiit driver and whoa it installed. Now it wasn't easy, I had to jump through many processes, but it's installed in Windows 10 beta! Windows 10 beta is buggy as you'd expect. But it's working. The driver that shows up is the XMC-SPDIF not the XMC-USB. However, it is the C-Media driver. I renamed the driver to XMC-USB and tested as well, making sure it will pass hi-rez. This is where it gets complicated (as if it isn't already). I can play DSD but it downsamples to 176/16. That so far is the best I can achieve. Trying to play 192/24, it still downsamples to 176/16. This is through Jriver 20. By the end of the day I got the SoTM driver installed and working. I added the iFi device and was able to stream USB from my CAPs server to the XMC-1 with very high quality sound except with one serious hiccup. I noted that the XMC experiences dropouts. These dropouts last from between ~5 seconds to beyond 20 seconds. This has happened with both the streaming from the CAPs server and the Oppo BDP-105 using USB. I don't think this was an issue with the HDMI connection. More testing today. Just read your post. Which iFi device did you add? |
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Post by michaelhifi on Dec 8, 2014 15:44:00 GMT -5
It is the iFi power along with the Gemini cable.
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Post by aud on Dec 8, 2014 18:42:06 GMT -5
It is the iFi power along with the Gemini cable. Sorry had to go to work today. I think you said on another thread that you own a sotm board. Is this the USB 3 board? With your Jriver MC 20 did you check in DSP to make sure all up sampling is unchanged? |
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Post by michaelhifi on Dec 9, 2014 10:57:02 GMT -5
It is the iFi power along with the Gemini cable. Sorry had to go to work today. I think you said on another thread that you own a sotm board. Is this the USB 3 board? With your Jriver MC 20 did you check in DSP to make sure all up sampling is unchanged? I believe it is the USB3 board donated by the blue connector. I'm at work so I'm not able to confirm.
All DSP fields in JRiver are marked unchanged. I don't believe it's possible to output DSD over USB, I could be wrong. I don't have HDMI output on my motherboard so I thought I would try using my Oppo BDP-105. I don't like the music streaming interface of the Oppo so I doggedly try to make my server perform most musical tasks through JRiver.
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Post by aud on Dec 9, 2014 14:27:20 GMT -5
Sorry had to go to work today. I think you said on another thread that you own a sotm board. Is this the USB 3 board? With your Jriver MC 20 did you check in DSP to make sure all up sampling is unchanged? I believe it is the USB3 board donated by the blue connector. I'm at work so I'm not able to confirm.
All DSP fields in JRiver are marked unchanged. I don't believe it's possible to output DSD over USB, I could be wrong. I don't have HDMI output on my motherboard so I thought I would try using my Oppo BDP-105. I don't like the music streaming interface of the Oppo so I doggedly try to make my server perform most musical tasks through JRiver.
It sounds like the USB board. The only reason I asked is because it does the same thing as the iFi. Maybe hook up the XMC direct to the sotm board and see if that helps. |
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Post by michaelhifi on Dec 10, 2014 16:46:51 GMT -5
The SoTM is a relocker and works on power supply too. In fact, in my system, it's redundant in that my outboard power supply is the Core which supplies power to the CAPs server, then there's the outboard 5 volt supply that redundantly powers the SoTM card, then of course the iFi supplies its own USB power driving the USB cable but dropping the ground and separating the power and data lines in the USB cable (thus the name Gemini cable). If this sounds confusing, it is. So is this an extreme USB setup? Maybe too extreme.
Last night using an HDMI cable from the Oppo to the XMC streaming network, I was stunned.
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