- Jun 20, 2009
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Summary at the bottom, but if you're in for the full ride you're welcome to read it in paragraph form 
. I've done a lot of troubleshooting already. There were many people asking this question on various other forums and yahoo answers among other places. I only found possible answers when I fished through many pages of google results. Hopefully you guys can give your opinion on this and my troubleshooting process will be here for others searching.
Now this is a little iffy. About a month ago I ordered my very first USB DAC/ Amp, the UDAC-2HP. It is a great little unit and I must say I find myself being pushy about others getting something so they can actually hear their music for the first time (yes, it is that much of a difference ). The second I plugged it into my Gaming Rig (specs below in sig) and started playing some MUSE, I noticed... well... nothing. iTunes instantly froze at 0.00 seconds.
You see, the USB cable off the back of the UDAC-2HP is very short, so I had it plugged into an extension cable. So I swapped out the extension cable with a USB 3.0 one and BAM, problem solved, right? The first couple songs were quite loud and making full use of my Sennheiser HD555s. Then I decided to put on some Pink Floyd. It sounded great until there was a crescendo and right smack dab in the middle of an awesome dynamic shift with the introduction of a lot of other instruments I hear "Pop, crackle, noisy pop!" I thought it was the sampling at first (iTunes Lossless Encoder is what I normally use) so I switched it to 320KB/S .AAC, .IFF, and .WAV. All of which had the pops and cracks in identical spots. So then I figured it was the source material. I looked at the disc (Echoes: The Best Of Pink Floyd) which seemed to have seen better days. I remember bringing it with me on the school bus way back in middle school and of course, cheap CD Players would eat disks whole back in the day if there were lots of bumps in the road. So I bought another set of disks (7 Pink Floyd albums in total, all 2011 remasters ).
These disks had the same songs and I STILL noticed the same crackling and popping at the same parts of the songs. So then I thought it was my media server. Maybe it didn't provide the bandwidth needed, or between it and the computer and the device there might be too much latency. So I pulled the music onto my local drive. I also played it in many different media players. WMP Classic, WMP 11 (or is it 12 now?), VLC, and again in iTunes. The problem persisted. I thought it might be iTunes sampling again. So I sampled it through WMP. The sound still presented pops and crackling.
So I thought back. I had listened on my Netbook without any crackling, but I didn't have the extender. So I tried moving it to different USB ports on the same machine, reinstalled the drivers once for each port I plugged it into, still no luck. I also had the idea that I had changed EQ settings in iTunes. I turned the Equalizer off and it made the popping more subtle, but it was still present.
I resumed troubleshooting by plugging it into multiple machines. I tried my workstation, and my netbook, and my Macbook Pro. They all played the songs fine.
I then began googling around in more detail. I couldn't find much, but there were a few posts that eventually said that the issue was USB Power.
I have a pretty poor quality powered USB splitter I originally got with Rock Band. It seems to have remedied the problem. Do you guys think this was the problem? Is it possible I can change out my power supply to provide more power to the USB ports? I'd prefer to have this running without the externally powered USB ports. I currently have an Antec 430BP in my rig. I have been considering getting a second 6850 soon when I get a 1080p monitor for up here. This would of course require a PSU upgrade anyway, so it's not something I'd be put out of my way for.
Summary
1. Searched Google briefly with little results.
2. Fixed issue of the music not playing with a different USB Extender. Encountered crackling.
3. Tried playing the files off a local drive. Didn't work.
4. Tried different source for sampling. Didn't work.
5. Tried re-encoding with a variety of codecs and softwares. Didn't work.
6. Tried Different computer. Worked.
7. Tried many different ports and re-installing drivers. Didn't work.
8. Googled in more detail. Found that it might be a USB power issue.
9. Tried cruddy powered USB port from Rock Band. Seems like it might work?
Do you guys think this was the problem? Is it possible I can change out my power supply to provide more power to the USB ports? I'd prefer to have this running without the externally powered USB ports. I currently have an Antec 430BP in my rig. I have been considering getting a second 6850 soon when I get a 1080p monitor for up here. This would of course require a PSU upgrade anyway, so it's not something I'd be put out of my way for.
Thank you for any and all help guys. I might put in an order for a nicer USB splitter if that's even a fix for the problem, but it would be really great to power it direct from my PC.
. I've done a lot of troubleshooting already. There were many people asking this question on various other forums and yahoo answers among other places. I only found possible answers when I fished through many pages of google results. Hopefully you guys can give your opinion on this and my troubleshooting process will be here for others searching.Now this is a little iffy. About a month ago I ordered my very first USB DAC/ Amp, the UDAC-2HP. It is a great little unit and I must say I find myself being pushy about others getting something so they can actually hear their music for the first time (yes, it is that much of a difference
). The second I plugged it into my Gaming Rig (specs below in sig) and started playing some MUSE, I noticed... well... nothing. iTunes instantly froze at 0.00 seconds. You see, the USB cable off the back of the UDAC-2HP is very short, so I had it plugged into an extension cable. So I swapped out the extension cable with a USB 3.0 one and BAM, problem solved, right? The first couple songs were quite loud and making full use of my Sennheiser HD555s. Then I decided to put on some Pink Floyd. It sounded great until there was a crescendo and right smack dab in the middle of an awesome dynamic shift with the introduction of a lot of other instruments I hear "Pop, crackle, noisy pop!" I thought it was the sampling at first (iTunes Lossless Encoder is what I normally use) so I switched it to 320KB/S .AAC, .IFF, and .WAV. All of which had the pops and cracks in identical spots. So then I figured it was the source material. I looked at the disc (Echoes: The Best Of Pink Floyd) which seemed to have seen better days. I remember bringing it with me on the school bus way back in middle school and of course, cheap CD Players would eat disks whole back in the day if there were lots of bumps in the road. So I bought another set of disks (7 Pink Floyd albums in total, all 2011 remasters
). These disks had the same songs and I STILL noticed the same crackling and popping at the same parts of the songs. So then I thought it was my media server. Maybe it didn't provide the bandwidth needed, or between it and the computer and the device there might be too much latency. So I pulled the music onto my local drive. I also played it in many different media players. WMP Classic, WMP 11 (or is it 12 now?), VLC, and again in iTunes. The problem persisted. I thought it might be iTunes sampling again. So I sampled it through WMP. The sound still presented pops and crackling.
So I thought back. I had listened on my Netbook without any crackling, but I didn't have the extender. So I tried moving it to different USB ports on the same machine, reinstalled the drivers once for each port I plugged it into, still no luck. I also had the idea that I had changed EQ settings in iTunes. I turned the Equalizer off and it made the popping more subtle, but it was still present.
I resumed troubleshooting by plugging it into multiple machines. I tried my workstation, and my netbook, and my Macbook Pro. They all played the songs fine.
I then began googling around in more detail. I couldn't find much, but there were a few posts that eventually said that the issue was USB Power.
I have a pretty poor quality powered USB splitter I originally got with Rock Band. It seems to have remedied the problem. Do you guys think this was the problem? Is it possible I can change out my power supply to provide more power to the USB ports? I'd prefer to have this running without the externally powered USB ports. I currently have an Antec 430BP in my rig. I have been considering getting a second 6850 soon when I get a 1080p monitor for up here. This would of course require a PSU upgrade anyway, so it's not something I'd be put out of my way for.
Summary
1. Searched Google briefly with little results.
2. Fixed issue of the music not playing with a different USB Extender. Encountered crackling.
3. Tried playing the files off a local drive. Didn't work.
4. Tried different source for sampling. Didn't work.
5. Tried re-encoding with a variety of codecs and softwares. Didn't work.
6. Tried Different computer. Worked.
7. Tried many different ports and re-installing drivers. Didn't work.
8. Googled in more detail. Found that it might be a USB power issue.
9. Tried cruddy powered USB port from Rock Band. Seems like it might work?
Do you guys think this was the problem? Is it possible I can change out my power supply to provide more power to the USB ports? I'd prefer to have this running without the externally powered USB ports. I currently have an Antec 430BP in my rig. I have been considering getting a second 6850 soon when I get a 1080p monitor for up here. This would of course require a PSU upgrade anyway, so it's not something I'd be put out of my way for.
Thank you for any and all help guys. I might put in an order for a nicer USB splitter if that's even a fix for the problem, but it would be really great to power it direct from my PC.
Last edited:
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