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Review and Measurements of WesionTEK Khadas Tone Board DAC
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Got the Khadas board in a week ago or so. Looked around the house for a case, found an old Water Testing Kit that came in a clear plastic box. Couple of notches and some 3M mounting squares later.. the board is no longer naked!
No probs using spdif from allo digione. I powered the board with an allo 5V ps which worked great. Then I plugged board into a free pi3b usb port and setup MPD to output to both digione and usb. Idea was some A/B testing against my tda1543x4 dac. Anyways, 16 bit unprocessed via usb was fine. Higher bits (32) I was getting pops and crackles. Also the pi3b usb dumps processing noise unlike the 5v ps.
Few days later I setup the board on a win7 box with Thesycon drivers. I saw the board is using the same idents as the xmos dj kit. This means finding v4 licensed drivers are out. Latest I found was v3.34 (2016). The win7 box usb was much cleaner than the pi, similar to direct 5v. However the popping issues remained when playing 16 bit with DSP processing on fb2k (Sonarworks). fb2k does internal 32bit. Setting output to 24bit improves the clicking.. I installed a dsp called smart dither and got decent results limiting the stream to 21 bits. I will have to experiment some more to determine the max rate. As you window the rate down. the clicking/popping volume drops.
Suffice to say I’m running into issues with usb, both via linux in pi, and windows with drivers. I tried a different usb-c cable with similar results. DSD via usb is perfect (DoP, DSD64 and DSD128). Unprocessed 16bits perfect. Higher, issues appear. Same results too with the v2.24 (2014) Khadas linked drivers btw.
As for sound - biggest takeaway I found is how “right” my tda1543 is. No big differences in tonality against Khadas. Though I felt I “enjoyed” the tda more.
mcgo
No probs using spdif from allo digione. I powered the board with an allo 5V ps which worked great. Then I plugged board into a free pi3b usb port and setup MPD to output to both digione and usb. Idea was some A/B testing against my tda1543x4 dac. Anyways, 16 bit unprocessed via usb was fine. Higher bits (32) I was getting pops and crackles. Also the pi3b usb dumps processing noise unlike the 5v ps.
Few days later I setup the board on a win7 box with Thesycon drivers. I saw the board is using the same idents as the xmos dj kit. This means finding v4 licensed drivers are out. Latest I found was v3.34 (2016). The win7 box usb was much cleaner than the pi, similar to direct 5v. However the popping issues remained when playing 16 bit with DSP processing on fb2k (Sonarworks). fb2k does internal 32bit. Setting output to 24bit improves the clicking.. I installed a dsp called smart dither and got decent results limiting the stream to 21 bits. I will have to experiment some more to determine the max rate. As you window the rate down. the clicking/popping volume drops.
Suffice to say I’m running into issues with usb, both via linux in pi, and windows with drivers. I tried a different usb-c cable with similar results. DSD via usb is perfect (DoP, DSD64 and DSD128). Unprocessed 16bits perfect. Higher, issues appear. Same results too with the v2.24 (2014) Khadas linked drivers btw.
As for sound - biggest takeaway I found is how “right” my tda1543 is. No big differences in tonality against Khadas. Though I felt I “enjoyed” the tda more.
mcgo
Anyone else having problems with the Khadas DAC on Mac? Sometimes I get static noise that increases. It also happens when switching resolution. I'll try other cables tomorrow, so I'm hoping for the best.
By the way, anyone out there who could give any pointers on upgrading the firmware? I have the .bin files, but not the upload application.
By the way, anyone out there who could give any pointers on upgrading the firmware? I have the .bin files, but not the upload application.
Re: my usb high-bitrate issues -- I was hoping someone with a Khadas board and using usb would throw some 32bit stuff at their unit and see if they can duplicate. For example, some 32bit Vinyl rips or what have you. I'm playing with it now, and at 32bit the unit pops pretty frequently, multiple times in the first 10 seconds, so it should be immediately noticeable to you. At 24bit it is not as frequent. I suggested 21bit in my previous post as the level which clears things up -- it may actually be 20bit. At 21bit I can hear the odd click or pop every now and then. If confirmed, this may be an xmos firmware issue fixable via an update so it would be nice to check while it is still being worked on.
I had to turn off the driver signature protection in Windows 10 to install. Here's how to do it. You should reenable it after installing. You need to reboot windows after doing the disable command: https://windowsreport.com/driver-signature-enforcement-windows-10/
BTW: I am still using the older driver "Thesycon-Stereo-USB-Audio-Driver-v224" what added benefits/corrections does the new driver "XMOS-Driver-V2.26.0-for-Normal-Use" bring us? I was hesitant to update as it was new and maybe rightly so as per @helloworld bug report.
Thanks for the confirmation. It gave me the impetus to disconnect everything, uninstall the driver, reboot, ensure all the tusb*.* files were actually "deleted", then reinstall v2.24 and connect when prompted. Guess what? The gremlins are gone! No problems now with 32bit stuff. Why isn't everything this easy? 
Will using the device linked below give me the performance measured for the coax input? (I only have toslink output from the motherboard)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Au...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Au...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649
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