No windows volume with Beresford DAC

[pumpkineater23]

Hello.

I have my PC (Win7) to Beresford 7520 DAC - variable output to Quad 606 power amp to Neutron 5 speakers.

As soon as I connected the DAC I was unable to adjust the volume with windows, so I can't use remote or volume on keyboard. If I open the volume mixer and adjust the main device slide for DAC (USB audio CODEC) the volume is still unaffected. I can however adjust volume using the mouse with the media player slide (not media center) and also with the Beresford volume knob. I asked Stan at Beresford but it is not something he has ever heard of before.. he recommended changing from media center to media monkey but still I have the same problem.

I should add that I am very happy indeed with the sound, the Beresford DAC is excellent. It's just that it would be great to use the remote for everything.

I wonder if anyone had any ideas?

Many thanks

Peter

[Krisbee]

Not an answer to your question as such, but just to say many would regard the use of software volume controls as detrimental to sound quality. Hence the advice to set all software volume controls to max, and use the “volume knob” on the Beresford DAC, which is what I do. But then mine is within finger tip reach on my desktop.

It's aslo why a lot of folks would love Stan's DACs to have proper remote control.

[Vincent Kars]

Disabling volume control is a common practice to assure bit perfect output to the DAC.
However, this not what Win USB audio does.
With the DAC connected to the USB go to
Control Panel > Device Manager, expand Sound
Check if there are other drivers for USB audio than the standard Win.

Also in Control Panel: are there other audio interfaces than standard Win Sound like RealTec etc?

[Werner Berghofer]

Peter,


As soon as I connected the DAC I was unable to adjust the volume with windows

I can’t talk about Windows, but I can assure you that digital output on a Macintosh behaves exactly in the same way. The moment either Toslink or USB is selected as audio output, changing the computer’s volume is disabled.

And as you can read from the replies you already received, there a certain and wise reasons for doing so.

Werner.

[pumpkineater23]

Hi and thanks. So sorry this is already starting to feel above my head. I went to control panel > device manager there is no expand sound but there is Sound, video and game controller. Under this there is AMD high def audio device, ASUSTek tiger capture device, USB Audio CODEC, USB audio device and VIA high def audio. Should any of these be uninstalled or disabled?

[Marco]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to AoS :)

Could you please pop into the Welcome area and say 'hello' (as outlined in the registration procedure when you joined)?

Much appreciated, Peter - cheers! :cool:

Marco.

[pumpkineater23]

Ok it's done. My apologies for not introducing myself before, my forum experience has been extremely limited and I was too focused on my question.

[Marco]

No worries, Peter - it's natural! Thanks for popping in and saying 'hello'. Others will be along to greet you shortly :)

Marco.

[Krisbee]

Hi and thanks. So sorry this is already starting to feel above my head. I went to control panel > device manager there is no expand sound but there is Sound, video and game controller. Under this there is AMD high def audio device, ASUSTek tiger capture device, USB Audio CODEC, USB audio device and VIA high def audio. Should any of these be uninstalled or disabled?

No, it's too soon to think about disabling or uninstalling audio devices.

One simple check is to right click on the "speaker icon" on your Win7 taskbar (bottom right). First select "Sounds" and make sure "USB audio codec" is the default device. Then highlight "USB audio codec" and press the properties button. Using the "levels" tab you can set volume to 100%. Use the enchancement tab to turn off unwanted Windows sound effects. Use the "Advanced" tab to turn on both the exclusive mode options.

Then go back and select "Volume Control Options" and make sure "USB audio codec" is default device and everything else is deselected.

[Welder]

I’m not sure what it is exactly you’re trying to achieve here Peter.

From memory (I don’t use Win7 any more) if you want to be able to control volume through the Windows audio (volume control icon on taskbar) stack then you need to route all audio through the stack.

I believe this is possible for SPDIF physical connection through whichever audio driver package you have on your machine but it will mean hog mode sound quality benefits of bypassing the up-sampling process 44.1> 48 are lost.
I’m not sure if this can be achieved using USB output. There are so many driver packages that sit on top of the base Windows drivers one would have to experiment to find out.

Part of the problem here is Windows itself has very limited user control. What most set ups have is the Windows kernel base set up with various proprietary drivers (RealTek for example) for more sophisticated control placed on top. The degree of control you can have regarding what talks to what in the stack depends on these proprietary drivers.

As a general comment and if you have the patience and time, it is worth experimenting with disabling the various drivers in the audio stack.

I must confess, I’ve not tried to use the volume control on the keyboard for any OS or output method, if this is what you’re after.

If you want to remotely control volume and other functions with a remote control handset, then that is media player dependent. You can do this with J River for example.

Just to add that Chris is right in writing that disabling or removing drivers is something to be considered only after you have a better understanding of exactly how your audio is set up on your machine.

[pumpkineater23]

The USB audio CODEC is the default device and I disabled the others except USB audio codec and USB audio device which must be for the Beresford. Still the same unfortunately. Thank you, the J River media player looks interesting, especially the remote kit:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_Remote

"The cable attaches to the other devices. By doing this, you can use the Media Center remote to adjust the volume of your amplifier"

Perhaps this would do it, I would connect to the DAC? Not really sure, I will try to find out.

[Welder]

Hi again Peter

If you’re relatively new to file based audio this is an excellent site for how to get things set up properly.
http://www.ayre.com/usb.htm

While the site concentrates on Ayre products in the set up pages its generic enough to get you heading off in the right direction.

For an excellent overview of computer based audio in general, I have to recommend Vincent’s site,

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/

It’s worth taking the time to read as much as you can here to get an overview of what can be an extremely confusing and involved subject.

Once you’ve waded through that lot and if you haven’t gone completely braking mad by then and become interested in “fine tuning” then this site is an excellent read.

http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/

There is a lot of information here on AoS but finding it can be a bit of a nightmare.

[Vincent Kars]

A very simple solution might be to download the J River Media Center.
It has a 30 day trial.

You can control the volume with a keyboard.
You can choose 3 different types of volume control.
If the Win volume doesn’t work, use internal.
This works always even if you use WASAPI (bypassing the mixer so Win volume doesn't work by design)
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Players/JRMC16/Volume.htm

As JRMC does all the DSP in 64 float, it is probably a better implemented volume control then 32 bit Win. (Watch out, fan boy alert)
Best practice is probably to set the analog volume control just a notch louder than appreciated.
Use the digital volume control to attenuate.
Moderate digital volume control won’t degrade the sound.

[Vincent Kars]

For an excellent overview of computer based audio in general, I have to recommend Vincent’s site,


Thanks

[pumpkineater23]

Thank you all so much for the help, there seems so much to learn.

Welder:
Those links are just what I needed, thanks.

Vincent:
Thank you! J River is amazing, I love it.. so much better than windows media center. It has resolved the volume problem, I just use internal volume setting. I downloaded a HD album from HDtracks but when I open the volume mixer > Device > USB CODEC (default device Beresford 7520 DAC) > Advanced. I only have the option of 16 bit cd or dvd quality. I hope you don't mind me asking, there is no option to set to 24 bit studio quality on the USB codec (There is the option with VIA high def audio) .. have you any idea why? The DAC is supposed to be 24 bit, it's been driving me mental all week, looked online for hours on end looking for an answer.

[StanleyB]

The DAC is supposed to be 24 bit, it's been driving me mental all week, looked online for hours on end looking for an answer.
Are you using USB? If you are, the the audio would be limited to 16 bit/48KHz max.

[Werner Berghofer]

Peter,


The DAC is supposed to be 24 bit, it's been driving me mental all week, looked online for hours on end looking for an answer.

why spend so much time and energy on a feature which most certainly would not affect your listening experience?

See Head-Fi’s thread 24 bit vs 16 bit, the myth exploded! (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded) for more information and disillusion.

Werner.

[Vincent Kars]

USB audio comes in 2 flavors:
USB Audio Class 1 standard (1998)
This standard allows for 24 bits / 96 kHz max.
The standard itself doesn't impose any limitation on sample rate.
Class 1 is tied to USB 1 Full Speed = 12 MHz
It is available in Win, OSX and Linux as a native mode driver.

USB Audio Class 2 (2009) additionally supports 24 and 32 bit and all common sample rates.
Class 2 uses High Speed (480 MHz). This requires USB 2.
It is available in OSX and Linux, not in Win.

There are many DACs using a simple USB receiver from TI, Cmedia, etc.
These implementations are limited to 16/48.
What ever the properties of the DAC (chipset) are, the USB is limited to 16/48.

A bit more detail can be found on my website: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/USB.html

If your PC happens to have a Toslink or coax (spdif) out, you can use this to play highres.

As you are using JRMC, you might try WASAPI.
This of course won't alter the 16/48 limitation of the USB but by bypassing the Win mixer, you might get a slight improvement in transparency.
http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Players/MC14/MC_Wasapi.htm

[Welder]

Hmm, reading the above it all comes across as a bit confusing :eyebrows:

The simplest way to look at this perhaps is bear in mind that the bit rate and sampling frequency isn’t determined by the Operating system as such but by the drivers that are natively (what comes with the operating system) supplied and the particular chip in the USB Dac you use.

You can indeed get Windows to play 24/96 and above through USB but you have to use proprietary drivers and have a Dac with a USB receiver capable of handling it.

With your Dac and Windows Operating System Adrian (Basic Windows drivers and Beresford Dac using USB data transfer) you will indeed be limited to 16/48 via USB.
But other 24/96 and above Dacs come with their own drivers and once these drivers are installed you can play 24/96 and higher bit and frequency rates with Windows OS.

Linux distributions (various Linux based operating systems) come with drivers capable of 24/192 data transfer over USB out of the box so to speak, so do Apple computers.

(makes you wonder how computer audio ever got the reputation as a simple, convenient method of sound reproduction doesn’t it :scratch: )

[dave2010]

Peter,

why spend so much time and energy on a feature which most certainly would not affect your listening experience?

See Head-Fi’s thread 24 bit vs 16 bit, the myth exploded! (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded) for more information and disillusion.

Werner.Up to a point, Lord Copper. (Reference to Evelyn Waugh's Scoop)

I believe it's possible that some people may be able to hear the difference between 16 bit encoded material and 24 bit. Maybe I'm misguided. It is also likely to depend on whether the recorded material has been made using the full possible dynamic range. Recording engineers may not want to record at a high level, as digital overload is well known to be nasty.

Most modern recordings are made using high resolution equipment, typically up to 24 bits. Some of those bits may simply be there to largely reduce the need to ever adjust the levels, thus one might expect the high order bits to normally be set to zero, though this will depend on the recording engineer.

Another reason for using 24 bit recording is that with multiple inputs and many input mixers, using 24 bit digital processing (either integer or floating point) any errors due to signal processing which creep in will be well down.

The end result might be a master recording which is nominally 24 bit, but with only say 20 bits actually doing anything. This can be sorted using a normalisation process. To map this now 20 bit normalised recording to 16 bits for CD the 16 most significant bits from each sample are taken, and in order to make it sound nice * some low level dithering might be added in **, so the final recording doesn't even have 16 bit detail!

The results should be good, but nevertheless it is possible that a system capable of playing back the full set of recorded bits could sound better. It's of course difficult to be sure, but some people do prefer SACD, which is capable of delivering higher resolution. Is this because of the extra resolution, or is SACD better engineered, either in the recordings or the playback equipment? Even then, some SACD devices may sound inferior to some CD kit for some people - so what exactly are the differences?

My gut feeling is that 20 bits are required to give really good quality audio for almost all people, but most people won't hear the difference between that and good 16 bit CD quality almost all of the time.

When dealing with very small differences issues of subtlety come into play. Some of the people who post here like analogue recordings and playback equipment. If they have good enough equipment I hope they enjoy it. For myself I'd say that there are definitely occasions when some CD equipment gives much better results on the same CD than other kit. Sometimes this is very obvious, and sometimes it takes a few playings to hear the difference.

"Better" quality equpment (whatever that means) is capable of showing up more in recordings than some lesser kit. Whether "better" is always associated with more bits/sample, or higher sampling frequencies I don't know. It may also depend on design and build quality, but those factors may also somehow be related to the sampling rates and number of bits/sample used. It might just be easier to design and build systems which sound good which use more bits and higher sampling frequencies, even if the recordings are no better.

* compare with image interpolation. Very large images made from small photos if upsampled badly show clear jaggies due to poor inerpolation. Better results can be obtained by cubic or other interpolation, and perhaps the best results can be obtained by more sophisticated methods - see Li and Orchard's work on edge interpolation.

** though dither could be added in selectively or progressively, as it would only really make much difference on quiet sounds. Too much dither would probably give a softer perceived sound, and actually an even quieter perceived sound level, as the ear/brain tends to measure sound levels against a noise floor. You might want to test this by adding in some very low level wide spectrum noise to a CD. The noise is quite likely not to be audible, but the CD will sound quieter.

[pumpkineater23]

OK. John Vincent Werner and Stanley thank you very much indeed for your help. I think perhaps 24 bit is something to be looked into at a later stage. In a year or two I may start thinking about a different DAC, the one I have is more than good enough for the time being. A basic service or upgrade to my Quad 606 might be a more suitable next step, I love the idea opening it up and trying to do it myself. What a great forum this is.. thanks again.

[synsei]

No, it's too soon to think about disabling or uninstalling audio devices.

One simple check is to right click on the "speaker icon" on your Win7 taskbar (bottom right). First select "Sounds" and make sure "USB audio codec" is the default device. Then highlight "USB audio codec" and press the properties button. Using the "levels" tab you can set volume to 100%. Use the enchancement tab to turn off unwanted Windows sound effects. Use the "Advanced" tab to turn on both the exclusive mode options.

Then go back and select "Volume Control Options" and make sure "USB audio codec" is default device and everything else is deselected.

Hi Chris. With apologies to Peter for butting in with my own query, I followed your instructions in the highlighted section of your quoted post and at the top of the dialogue box there is an option to set the sampling rate, should this be set to 48k DVD Quality?

[Vincent Kars]

As you have to choose a setting anyway I recommend to use the one equivalent to the sample rate of the majority of your audio. Most of the time this is 44.1

Of course you can try, play a 44.1 with the sample rate in the audio panel set to 44.1 and do the same this time with the sample rate set to 48.
In this case Win will do the upsampling from 44.1 to 48.
Like wise with a 48 source.
If you don’t hear a difference, the choice is arbitrary

An alternative is using a media player supporting the WASAPI interface.
Within the limitations of the DAC everything will be played at its native sample rate.

[synsei]

I performed a quick listening test earlier and when playing a Windoze lossless file and with the sampling rate set at 48k I did hear a slight improvement so I think I'll leave it there. Some of my files, especially some of the FLAC and Monkey Audio files actually came over a lot better. I'm not that clued up on digital audio but I'm guessing these files were sampled at the higher rate.

[Vincent Kars]

Sample rate conversion is not trivial especially when not done by a natural number e.g 44.1 to 48.
It often has impact on sound quality and I’m afraid often not a positive one.
A couple of examples can be found on my website: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/SRC.htm

[synsei]

I'm afraid that is way over my head Vincent. if you say 44.1k is best, I shall leave it at that ;)