Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

2022-01-01 09:48:09

This problem started yesterday after I copied a new DSD album (DSD128 - 5.6448MHz sampling rate) I had purchased from NativeDSD Music. I have recently purchased a 1TB Samsung SSD, formatted it to NTFS and copied all the music files from a 256GB SSD because the remaining space on the smaller drive was getting low. PCM files don't seen to be affected, although I have to admit I haven't tried playing any 24 bit 192kHz ones since the problem began. Other DSD files (all DSD128) are also problematic. There are times when I can play a few minutes of such music without any problems and then severe crackling will begin with break up and - believe it or not - I can sometimes even notice the music slowing down while that is happening.

The version of Foobar I am using is 1.6.7, with  Windows 10 64bit Professional (version 21H2) and the DAC is a iFi Micro Black Label with the latest firmware installed and when everything is working properly the sound is superb, especially with DSD. The computer in use is an Acer notebook of, I guess, modest specifications (a friend gave it to me)  with an Intel Atom processor.

I cannot understand why simply inserting a larger SSD - which seemed to be working fine with DSD files before I copied that album to it - could cause such a dramatic difference. For the record, I have played around with the buffer size in Foobar and altered the latency time associated with the iFi ASIO driver but nothing seems to make any difference. I also have Foobar on my desktop and when that larger drive is plugged in there the sound output from those DSD files is normal, but I'm not sure if that actually has much bearing on the problem as I think everything might be converted to PCM. I've completely run out of ideas now so I hope someone can suggest something to help,

Many thanks

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #1 – 2022-01-02 08:04:20

I know I shouldn't be replying to my own topic, but I've realised that I made an error when describing the version of Windows in use on the Acer notebook. It is actually the 32-bit version because the notebook's Atom processor is only 32-bit.

I also have another Acer laptop that is 64 bit and that is also used exclusively for music listening on my main system and it also contains Foobar so I decided to see if that worked with the 1TB SSD and there were no issues whatsoever when playing DSD files through the iFi DAC. I then made a note of, firstly, all the various Windows settings in the SOUND settings area and then of those in Foobar on that laptop. I then compared each of them with those set up on the notebook and any differences I found in the latter's settings were changed (and there were one or two).

I then tried playing one of the DSD albums again using the notebook and almost immediately the problem occurred. As I write, I am now listening to a 16/44.1 PCM album and it's been fine so far. All very frustrating.

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #2 – 2022-01-02 11:45:07

Long shot, and I'd be surprised if that happens with an SSD with their access time, but:

I've had something similar when playing from an external HDD that goes idle after a while. Sometimes it would need to awake, and it would take so much time that it would glitch.

Is there some functionality that transmits larger portions of a file to a cache, so that the drive thinks it can sleep?

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #3 – 2022-01-03 08:38:36

Thanks for your comments, Porcus. I discovered something else last night when I played a DSD64 album without incident, so it would seem as if there might be sample rate limitation somehow but only with the larger SSD. I've since played a 24-bit 192kHz album and it was fine. I wonder how I could tell if the drive is going to sleep? Sorry, I'm not sure about a possible cache. I imagine there would be a small one in the notebook.

I was going to mention something else about the 1TB drive (SATA interface converted to USB2.0) but the fact that it worked fine with the laptop suggests to me that the problem isn't related directly to the drive.

This is probably a silly thing to say, but could it have anything to do with a drive that has a very fast read speed feeding high-speed sampled data into a relatively slow computer in the notebook? I might need to look at getting another, faster laptop.

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #4 – 2022-01-03 08:50:01

Have you had a look in task manager\resource manager to see if you pegging out your atom CPU when playing DSD128?

What is the Hard drive performance like with the SSD connected to the Atom laptop, maybe it's struggling to reach USB2.0 speeds?

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #5 – 2022-01-05 09:10:08

Thanks for your comments A_M_E_D. I presume you are referring to the notebook in your second paragraph when  you asked about "it's" struggling to reach USB 2.0 speeds. I'll be amazed if it's the SSD because I don't have any problems playing DSD128 files from it when that drive is connected to my desktop!!

Your first paragraph is certainly interesting. I'll check out Task Manager, but what would I actually be looking for in it to establish whether the Atom CPU isn't up to the task with DSD128 files? Having said that, I must reiterate that I can connect the smaller SSD I referred to in earlier messages to the notebook and all the DSD128 files from that drive will play without incident. I know it sounds crazy. Maybe I'm just missing something that should be obvious. I really don't know.

You can tell I'm getting desperate when I ask whether the file system the drives are formatted to could have any bearing on the issue? The smaller 512GB SSD that works fine with the notebook is formatted to exFAT, whereas the larger 1TB is formatted to NTFS.

Many thanks again.

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #6 – 2022-01-06 20:58:00

The following should not work, but if the problem is transfer speed, try it. Download Wavpack from https://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html
 , and:

* Drag and drop a DSD onto the Wavpack.exe . It will then - losslessly! - compress your DSD file.
* Try to play that file (from the troublesome drive) in foobar2000.
Does that solve the problem? Does it make it worse?

If you can do the command-line, give the command wavpack.exe -h  nameofyourdsdfile.DSD . It takes a bit more time to compress a bit harder. (Still lossless yes!)
Does that change anything?

(If your DSD files have ID3v2.3 tags, you can give a command to transfer them - otherwise, use MP3Tag and copy tags over. WavPack is good for you!)

Re: Crackling and break up only wih DSD files and only with a large SSD

Reply #7 – 2022-01-11 09:01:32

Thanks for your further suggestions, Porcus. However, I think I've solved the problem but I really have no idea why what I've done should have made such a difference. I have reformatted the 1TB drive to exFAT and copied the artists/composers' folders one at a time from the 512GB drive over to it. Previously I had formatted the larger drive to NTFS and copied the folders in batches of half a dozen or so at a time. Both formatting and copying each took many hours. The only slight disappointment is that the third DSD128 album I played - the first two had no issues whatsoever - had three very short 'dropouts' but was otherwise excellent. The only two areas I might experiment with further are the ASIO latency and the buffer size settings.

Thank you once again to those who took the time to offer suggestions. They were much appreciated.