MCintosh MA7900 USB Driver causing Windows10/11 Crash

I have a MA12000 with internal DAC 2. I was streaming from an iFi Zen Stream via USB. One day it stopped working. The McIntosh guy that handles this stuff basically told me that the DAC 2 never breaks down and it must be a driver problem. So, why did it work in the first place? In the end and after no help from McIntosh my dealer replaced the board. So lesson one would be that the manufacturer won’t help. I streamed via a MacBook Pro, but that was sonically inferior to Zen Stream with iFi’s top power supply. So, streaming from a computer is not ideal. Second, it took so long to resolve that I purchased a Holo Zen Stream KTE and that was a major improvement. Lastly, I upgraded to an Aurender N20 and this, along with proper cabling brought my digital more in line with analog. So, upgrade streamer first. Buy with a solid return policy. I think that you need to spend $1000-$1500 and more to upgrade the DAC. Unfortunately, both upgrading streamer and DAC are important upgrades. I didn’t sense that you wanted to improve the sound, but we’re only looking for reliability. If that is the case then you are stuck with upgrading the DAC.

Thanks for your input Vonh. I agree with you that the MFG does not provide much help with this matter. It looks like, I might be the only person in the planet using a Windows PC connected to the MA7900 USB to play music. You are correct, my primary goal is reliability when using the MA7900 internal DAC over the USB port. As it is right now, the USB port is useless unless the user has an Apple PC which does not require a driver and pray that it works fine. Your feedback is great and it helps me narrow the price range for an external DAC upgrade.

@jmiqui - I created an account just to respond to this thread. You are not alone, I too (am one of the "crazies") that hook up a McIntosh to their PC. This exact same issue happens for me using my MHA100 connected to my Windows 11 PC. same issue existed when I had windows 10. It happens randomly and is most definitely driver related. My PC will ALWAYS crash at some random point once the mcintosh is turned on. if the mcintosh is off and connected via usb, i get random "USB unrecognized errors" that pop up once in a while. 

I found this thread just googling DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. I also have a Mcintosh c2600 that i had connected to the same PC via usb and never had any issues. It's specifically only when my MHA100 is connected. It drives me insane each time it crashes. 

I spoke to a guy named Chuck at McIntosh and they are aware of the issue. No fixes. Not sure if they will update the driver ever, unfortunately. Good luck. 

@awpsome 

Tahnks for confirming that you are also experiencing the same problem DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION timeout  with your McIntosh equipment connected to a Windows 10/11 system.

I experience that same problem for over tow years with a MC7900 connected to two different laptops or a desktop PC running Windows 10/11. I talked to the McIntosh suppor team for over three weeks doing things and nothing fixed the problem. I am convinced that this is a driver caused problen in Windows. I believe that the driver developer is no longer working with McIntosh. As a result, I gave up and decided to live with the intermittent problem as is.

Fortunately, I decided to upgrade the desktop PC with a MSI Z170A Gaming 5 motherboard, Intel i7-6700 3.4 Ghz and a Samsung SSD980 boot drive. Also, upgraded to Windows 11 Pro Build 22621. The goal was to use the PSDIF digital channel connected to the MC7900 instead of the USB channel.

I performed a test to compare the sound quality of the SPDIF digital to the USB channel. The USB sound was better than the SPDIF digital. As a result, I decided to continue using the USB channel to play music with Spotify or music video with Youtube.

I was suprised to notice that the system only failed once in 30 days or so where before it was failing every day. The system is now running fine for about two months.

I don't have time to go back and reproduce the problem using any of the two different laptops. Also, I found a Microsoft article indicating that the new Windows 11 supports using the USB to play music without the need of the OEM USB driver as required with Windows 10 and they provided instructions to enable this feature using the device manager. app. However, I don't have the time to test this feature.

Summary:

It seems that the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION timeout problem is a driver or Windows timing issue which went away after doing the motherboard, SSD boot drive and Windows upgrades with the same old McIntosh USB driver installed.

@jmiqui - Interesting info, thanks for sharing about USB over SPDIF. As of last night I tried uninstalling the drivers for it and having it re-recognize itself but instead use the ’windows’ drivers over the mcintosh.

To my surprise, the PC did NOT BSOD with the watchdog error at all. I’ll continue testing today and we’ll see if any changes come about.

Interesting point about upgrading your PC, I also upgraded recently, MB, CPU, GPU, all while keeping the same SSD. I still get the error.

It is what it is, ive considering getting a bluesound node if it ever drives me to the point. The only missing key feature is that if I get a streamer, it only takes care of my music and i lose the ability to hear any PC noise, browser, youtube, movies, etc.

It is what it is.