LH Labs Geek Out 720

franz159

Just tested playing with my newly arrived LH Labs Geek Out 720 on USB.

Still some config to do to have the volume control working from the UI (working from "alsamixer" control via ssh)

ACX

Are you using 0.3-alpha version? Please post here via Pastebin your debug info, so we can include your soundcard string in our database in the future.

franz159

http://pastebin.com/Vnu2Yph4

ACX

franz159 wrotehttp://pastebin.com/Vnu2Yph4

Thank you.

franz159

I've been doing a long session tonight using the Geek Out.
While I can say that overall "it works" , I experienced a couple of issues that I cannot really understand:

1) occasionally when playing 16 bit / 48 Khz flac, I was not getting any sound
The same flac was sounding correctly when connecting the dac to a usb port on my macbook air and using Audirvana as a player

2) when streaming via wifi from Spotify on the iPad, I got a completely distorted sound.
Switcching to the IQ-Audio i2s Dac, the sound was correct.

Any ideas?
Thanks

ACX

Hi franz159, does your DAC use a XMOS chip as USB receiver? I gave a quick look on the LH Labs website but I couldn't find any specs about it.
The problem might occur when switching between different sample rates, like in this case reported by user will. This could depend on custom firmwares that sometimes don't play well with some kernel versions. USB audio world is everything but exact science

We had a similiar problem with some C-Media implementations too, and we developed a dirty workaround for it. You can enable it under the Settings screen and see if it helps in your case.

franz159

Hi, thanks for the suggestion.
However, even the "CMedia fix" does not seem to work.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but the activation of the "CMedia fix" does not stay put.
I move the slider to "ON" and I click "APPLY FIXES".
If I then change from the "Setting" menu to any other menu choice and then back to "Setting" the "CMedia fix" is back in the "OFF" position.

franz159

I'm getting confused... the problem with this dac is some sort of difficulty in switching between the two clock "families".

I've prepared a playlist with the following sample size/frequencies:

Family "44"

16/44.1
24/88.2

Family "48"

16/48
24/48
24/96
24/192

When I switch from a file of family "44" to a file of family "48", sometime there is no sound output, and vice versa!
But I'm struggling to figure out a regular pattern of when it works and when it does not work...

cmh714

have you tried turning off the crossfeed on the DAC as a test? its just a thought...

franz159

cmh714 wrotehave you tried turning off the crossfeed on the DAC as a test? its just a thought...

Could you explain better what you mean?
Thanks

ACX

franz159 wroteI'm getting confused... the problem with this dac is some sort of difficulty in switching between the two clock "families".

Yes, I was referring to that. I have a M2Tech hiFace Two that also uses two different quartz precision oscillators for 44.1 and 48 families, but fortunatly I never experienced such problem. I suppose it could depend on firmware implementation.
Sadly I'm currently not aware about a quick and simple way to fix it.

cmh714

See the second paragraph in this link, but its a setting on the DAC. You hold the vol buttons down. Give it a try as it cant hurt any

http://www.audiostream.com/content/lh-labs-geek-out-1000-dacheadphone-amplifier

franz159

I'm afraid the problem is in the dac itself.... I tried using it on my Mac with Audirvana, and it was systematic: no audio output when in a playlist I switch from "44.1" to "48" and vice-versa.
I ended up forcing Audirvana to always downsample to 16/44.1, which is not clearly a solution.
I opened a ticket with LH labs support.

cmh714

Thats a shame. It looks like a nice device. Hopefully they work it out for you.

franz159

This is not a solution for my dad issue, but for "casual" listening, is there a way to configure Rune to force a downsample (say to 16/44.1) on output?
I know this "denies" the whole point of having hir-es playback, but as a temporary measure it would allow me to experiment with the "global random play" rune option.

cmh714

yes, in /etc/mpd.conf you can set the sample at something "static"
link for man page: http://linux.die.net/man/5/mpd.conf

audio_output_format <sample_rate:bits:channels>
This specifies the sample rate, bits per sample, and number of channels of audio that is sent to each audio output. Note that audio outputs may specify their own audio format which will be used for actual output to the audio device. An example is "44100:16:2" for 44100Hz, 16 bits, and 2 channels. The default is to use the audio format of the input file. Any of the three attributes may be an asterisk to specify that this attribute should not be enforced