Keeping CD Playback Digital as long as possible PC/Motu/DA7

[Snarl 12/8]

Hey People,

I'm kindof flummoxed by all the variables and lack of manuals in my situation. Normally, now, in my life music playback is almost exclusively MP3s. I put in some shelves in my music room and put out all my CDs and I try to listen to CD's in my music room to "open my ears" to "full" fidelity audio on a semi regular basis. I've got a pretty decent Sony CD player from the 80's and I run its analog outs through my Ashly submixer into my digital Panasonic DA7 and then out of that into my amp->speakers. I think it sounds pretty good. Warm, punchy, blah, blah, blah.

But it really bothers me that I'm doing and unneeded AD/DA conversion in the process. If I'm opening my ears, I'd like the playback to be as pristine as possible. My amp and monitors are old/vintagey things, so I know I'm getting some "coloration" there, but I'd like see what skipping unnecessary DA/AD would sound like.

So, yesterday I realized that I could stick CD's into my computer, play them through the motu 2408's s/pdif out into the DA7 and voila digital all the way from CD to mixer outputs.

But it sounded like total, anemic shit. There were even little digital shmutzy, spitty, fizzy sounds that were audible during the quieter passages.

Now what has me flummoxed is all the variables. There's settings on the mixer, motu and computer software. There's the windows audio control panel (win2k, btw), etc. Could the problem be that CD's are 16bit and I'm running the DA7 and Motu at 24 bit? Do I need to upsample it somewhere? The fizzy sound reminds me of some clocking issues I had a while back.

I'd love to hear ideas for troubleshooting this. How would you set it up? What CD player software would you use, settings on the Motu, etc. Anyone try this, have the same problem and figure out the solution? I could maybe accept the premise that CD's sound like shit without some sort of "character" analog stage, except for the digital shmutz that I'm getting tells me something is more amiss than that.

Thanks so much,

[Snarl 12/8]

I would also appreciate any advice about how I could have asked that question better. I know I can be long winded. (Been accused many times.) But I was also trying to describe the problem and things I'd tried as completely as possible.

[farview]

That's just a really odd situation.

What happens when you rip the CD to wav files and play them back through the DAW? Do they still sound bad? If they don't, it might be some setting in your media player or some other goofy thing.

[The Scum]

What application are you using to play the CD? Windows native handling of 24-bit interfaces is a bit clumsy. Properly interfaced, there should be some stage that pads the 16 bit data with 8 empty bits to make 24.

Farview's question makes a good starting point...a real DAW will be more savvy regarding the 24/16 translation than WMP. If you hear spitty crud, clocking and interfacing are suspect.

If you had some other device with a SPDIF input, I'd see what it thinks of the MOTU output.

An alternate option would be to make the path as simple and short as possible. I take the analog outs from my CD player to a Coleman routing switch/volume control, to amp/speakers. It lets me reference a mix through neutral gear, without running the CD player through anything in my (possibly colored) mix path.

[Front End Audio]

This seems like it could be a clocking issue. Have you tried hooking it up with the DA7 as the clock master?

-Damian

[Bro Shark]

Where is your DAC? In the digital mixer? (I'm not familiar with how digital mixers work) You may have too much digital daisy-chaining going on, and too many ITB settings at each point.

Would the HagUSB possibly clean things up for you? I have one and I love it.

[Snarl 12/8]

I've been doing playback from the DAW, mp3's, etc. etc. via this S/PDIF from the motu into the DA7 for months with no anemia or artifacts. I guess that eliminates a lot of variables. I don't feel like I need to do Farview's experiment to isolate that, but I will anyway.

Does anyone know a program that does a good job upsampling CD's from 16 to 24 bit on playback? I've tried winamp and one other program (i forget the name) so far and they were both fairly identical sound/performance-wise.

~~~~~~~~~~~

About some of the other suggestions/questions.

I can't really afford to spend a penny on solving this problem right now. It was just an idea that led to a learning exercise (unfortunately). So, I can't invest in an analog switching solution (great, great idea though) or a USB converter thingy.

Yes, the DAC is in the mixer. There's also one in the CD player, which I'm trying to avoid using.

I think even if I had the USB/S/PDIF thingy I couldn't really use it because I'm out of spdif inputs on my mixer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your feedback has led me to strongly suspect the upsampling stage of the process, so that's what I'm going to try to solve. I bet there's a winamp plugin for that that does a good job. Now where did I leave that google?

Oh, and thanks so much people.

[farview]

Upsampling from 16 bit to 24 bit shouldn't even need to happen, and really can't as you are not changing the sample rate. It should just play the 16 bit file with zeros in the last 8 bits.

Something has to be goofing you up in the windows mixer thing.

[Snarl 12/8]

Upsampling from 16 bit to 24 bit shouldn't even need to happen, and really can't as you are not changing the sample rate. It should just play the 16 bit file with zeros in the last 8 bits.

Something has to be goofing you up in the windows mixer thing.

Yeah. I haven't had time to experiment, but I was thinking about this. 44.1KHz, 320Kbps mp3's play back fine through this setup, but not the cd's. And 16bit wavs, videos, etc., etc. So it actually doesn't seem like it could be the file type.

I was reading in a different, completely unrelated thread about someone talking about possible grounding problems playing back audio with a firewire drive attached. I'm wondering, because I hooked up an external USB cd drive for this little venture, because I keep the PC behind a section of wall for acoustic reasons, so I wanted the drive out on my desktop. I'm gonna try just disconnecting that. I tried the internal drive too, but I never detached the USB drive when I did that. I know that's a long shot.

[Snarl 12/8]

OK. I didn't want to resort to this, but I was at my wits end. Clocking the DA7 off the internal PCI 324 card of the Motu made all the little spits and crackles go away during the quiet passages. Before that I tried about 5 different cd player programs, every setting I could find in the control panels and the preferences in the player programs and nothing made it go away although I could swear a few settings seemed to help a little (probably all in my head.)

So, does anyone know how to get a Motu 2408 MkII to slave clock off of a Ramsa DA7? I'm supposed to get better results using the clock in the device where the conversion is actually happening, right?

I can't tell for sure, but I feel like it does sound clearer, aside from the digital shmutz when I'm using the DA7 clock. Things seem a little smeary and indistinct when using the Motu clock. I think it sounds better going analog in from the Sony CD player into the DA7, using the DA7 clock than it does to use the Motu clock.

So, does anyone know how to get a Motu 2408 MkII to buy its clock off of a Ramsa DA7? Just hooking the BNC out of the Ramsa WC jack (flipping the little switch on the Ramsa) doesn't seem to quite do it. I read in a technote about the Apogee Big Ben that using external WC termination on Motu units results in "overtermination". Should I try it anyway? If so, where in the world do you get a WC terminator plug?

Thanks.

[dynomike]

Best to avoid the MOTU clock, you're right. I'll get to the CD player in a second but this is how you should set up the DA7 and motu... no need for BNC terminator plugs. I've owned the same setup as you before (motu 2408 with ramsa da7)

DA7 clock source to internal, 44.1kHz

word clock out from the da7 to the word clock in on the motu

MOTU clock source set to word clock in


You've already got audio coming from your DAW glitch free, no? So that means there must be a problem with the playback program you're using for mp3s or wavs or whatever. Download foobar2000 and that aughta solve the problem.


As far as the CD player goes, I think you should have that hooked up too.

Two ways to hook up a CD player to the Panasonic Ramsa DA7 that don't involve extra AD/DA conversions:

1. Digital out (SP/DIF) from CD player into Aux Return 1-2 on the board. Select and solo this stereo track (in the 3rd fader bank) and the DA7 will use its onboard D/A (which is pretty fucking good!)

2. Analog outs from CD player into 2 Track B In on the board (TRS inputs, you'll need some adapters). Select '2 track b' in the monitoring section (as opposed to L/R, aux, etc) and the DA7 will pass that analog input straight to its analog monitoring section.


Hope this helps!

-Mike

[Snarl 12/8]

Best to avoid the MOTU clock, you're right. I'll get to the CD player in a second but this is how you should set up the DA7 and motu... no need for BNC terminator plugs. I've owned the same setup as you before (motu 2408 with ramsa da7)

DA7 clock source to internal, 44.1kHz

word clock out from the da7 to the word clock in on the motu

MOTU clock source set to word clock in


You've already got audio coming from your DAW glitch free, no? So that means there must be a problem with the playback program you're using for mp3s or wavs or whatever. Download foobar2000 and that aughta solve the problem.

Unfortunately, the only way to get glitch free audio anywhere, including Reaper is by using the internal PCI 324 clock. Someone on the DA7 forums said that using the clock on the receiving unit always results in clock instability. I guess the PCI clock is basically external to both the 2408 and the DA7. When I hook it up exactly as you've described I get glitches in the recording in Reaper and playback everywhere. Were you switching the clock source back and forth for tracking and mixing?

2. Analog outs from CD player into 2 Track B In on the board (TRS inputs, you'll need some adapters). Select '2 track b' in the monitoring section (as opposed to L/R, aux, etc) and the DA7 will pass that analog input straight to its analog monitoring section.
[/b]

Thank you so much for that. That's the answer to the cd hookup, I think. But not my clocking off the DA7 problem. I think I need to curl up with the DA7 manuals again. I kindof took a lull in recording and I think I've forgotten a lot of what I was trying to digest about the DA7 along the way.