Topic by brickZA

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  • brickZA
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Topic: Digital silence and clicks with USB DAC

I recently got hold of a FiiO E10 USB DAC/headphone amp, so finally I can get realistic volume and dynamic range when using earphones. However, this DAC (and others, google indicates) turns itself 'off' when it encounters 2 or 3 seconds of digital silence (i.e. all zeros getting sent). It then takes about half a second to get going again when it receives signal. See http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/fiio-e10-dac.html

This is very annying with pianoteq, since you loose that first half second of sound, and you get an annyoing click. Is there some option in pianoteq to work around this problem by, e.g. always sending an inaudibly soft signal to the DAC?

Last edited by brickZA (08-11-2012 21:07)

Reply by Luc Henrion

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  • Luc Henrion
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Re: Digital silence and clicks with USB DAC

if you are using PT as VST in a DAW, try using a vst plug-in like MDA dither, maybe it will be enough to avoid this "gate system" and you won't hear it: dithering is just adding "a touch" of noise to mask quantization artefacts.
And it's free:
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/effects.htm

Last edited by Luc Henrion (08-11-2012 21:46)

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Reply by brickZA

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Re: Digital silence and clicks with USB DAC

Luc: Thanks for the feeback. Unfortunately I use Pianoteq straight 'to the metal'. I have a fairly low-powered computer, so I don't want to introduce any extra processing. Also, I have never managed to get Jack working properly, which is what I assume I'd need to run to do something like this under Linux...