J river Media Center 16 settings.....HELP

Sandstone,
Cool. That likely means the Ayre is a stellar product with good jitter rejection. Many of the entry level USB DACs sound better when fed an upsampled / 24 bit depth signal. Of course, you just have to listen and try as any rule one comes up with has exceptions in computer audio. For example, there are plenty of asynchronous DACs that have their pants beaten off by adaptive / isosynchronous ones - asynchronous connections do not guarantee quality. It is also not true that all DACs sound better when fed a signal that is the same bit depth / sample rate as the original file. The Benchmark DAC is one example. They explicitly walk through examples of software where this is the case on their support WIKI. It varies not only by DAC but also by operating system and the specific playback software used!

Sandstone - I believe Wasabi Event Style in J River is passed on the same code as the Ayre drivers, namely the Wavelength code. Clearly, if you are using an Ayre or Wavelength device the code they provide is probably the best. For other devices, Wasabi Event is a great alternative to ASIO or plain Wasabi, as long as your device works with it.

Pulsetsar, May be true in general, but definitely Not the case with Ayre QB-9. The dedicated, proprietary driver provided by Ayre and designed by Wavelength Audio(Ayre uses an implementation similar to Streamlength) and the Ayre onboard upsampling is far superior. Check out Ayre Acoustics and wavelength Audio website for info.

I wouldn't use ASIO in Windows 7 if you are running J River. The WASAPI event style is generally the best option, with WASAPI a close second.

As for whether to stream at the native resolution or at an up sampled one, it really depends on the USB implementation. The up sampling in J River is excellent - almost all USB DACs will sound better streamed 24 bit streams. Some sound better with up sampling done on the software side. A general rule is to do multiples (44 to 88 or 172; 48 to 96 or 192, etc). Try it out and see which sounds best. Check out Benchmark's site for info.

Ahhh... You have to indicate VLink in the ASIO app, not in JRiver, in JRiver just choose ASIO (if using ASIO4All). Interesting.

I'm a bit confused here too. First, though, I have to say that I don't think there is any info on how to configure JRiver for V-Link playback on the psaudio site, but I could be wrong.

I'm getting jumpy erratic playback at best... ASIO doens't do anything, I read somewhere that for WinXP you have to use Kernel Streaming and that is how I got the really bad choppy playback. Further, output at 24/96 doesn't seem to do anything, and forcing 48 at least gets noise out of the system. I sometimes in the kernel streaming menu get USB Device and sometimes VLink, so it doesn't always know what it is.

My laptop (D620) doesn't support 24/96 on its sigmatel audio device, with this pulling through USB it looks like it ignores the sigmatel device, so I should be able to do 24/96, no?

Anyhow if anyone knows the JRiver settings for use with the VLink for WinXP I'd appreciate it.

Oh - and to answer poster above my VLink in the instruction guide says "It will allow up to 96 kHz 24 bit sampled files (e.g. Flac files) to be converted to an SPDIF stream, for full high resolution proessing by the following DAC. This will give the best listening experience using the full capability fo the orginial 24 bit and high sample rate. Lower sample rate files, e.g. CD-originated music are simply passed through at their original sample rate" So I'm pretty sure there is no upsampling beyond whatever DSP settings one chooses in JRiver going on.

Hello Stereo5: Check out ps audio there are very good instructions on how to setup JRivers. Click on discussion forums. then click on frequently asked questions you will find it in there.

www.psaudio.com.

To configure JRiver 16 for outputting to the V-Link in your source file's native resolution:

- Set up for running in WASAPI-Event mode, and then set DSP Studio/Output Format/Bitdepth to "Source Bitdepth".

How that might effect SQ is an open question. As a counterexample, when running in ASIO mode , JRiver automatically sets output to the native bitdepth of the target hardware. ASIO is a preferred configuration for some systems.

Hope this helps, good luck.