audio-talk

It's H5 in particular I'm interested in. The photos in the gallery on the JLsounds website are of a previous board and it doesn't exist, at least not where it is now anyway. The interface board might cover H5.

H5 contains J1 to J4 and needs setting along with B1 to B5 on the underside - the documentation doesn't say what these settings should be for the Soekris dac. It doesn't look like the pervious version of this board had either J1 to J4 or B1 to B5.

simon wrote: ↑Tue Oct 25, 2022 9:15 am The interface board might cover H5.

It wont.

That's good. I'm struggling a bit to see how it will work, I need to have the board in my hand really.

H5 is highlighted yellow below - it's adjacent to H1 (green) so I can't quite picture how it will be available. I guess I can solder links in place rather than a header? I've contacted JLsounds for connection info for the Soekris but no reply yet.

Would it help if I told you the Soekris interface connects to H3?



If you check the documentation you'll see that the headers are backward compatible.

Thanks Ray, yep I understand that. What I can't get my head around from the slightly basic (for my needs anyway) user manual is that H5 needs configuring too - J1 to J4. It doesn't look like H5 was on the earlier board, but it's adjacent to H3 and hidden by the interface board.

Or do I not need to touch the jumpers at all?

No, H5 is next to H1 and won't be covered by the interface board. The interface board will plug onto H3, pins 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19. (Note that in the picture I posted, my JLSounds board doesn't have USB socket on the board, instead I unstalled header pins to connect a USB cable.)

I'll have a look at the manual regarding jumper settings.

simon wrote: ↑Wed Oct 26, 2022 9:35 pm Thanks Ray, yep I understand that.

Obviously I don't! D'oh! I can see it now, no idea why I'd misunderstood.

Just need to understand J1-J4 and B1-B5 now. Hopefully JLsounds will shed some light on it.

It took me surprising effort to track down all the different headers and sockets I needed. The 2mm pitch sockets were quite tricky, but ebay came to the rescue.

It's all hooked up now (I think) but I'm struggling to get the NUC to output USB audio. I've downloaded and installed the XMOS USB Audio driver for Windows from this page http://jlsounds.com/drivers.html but the output device isn't listed as an option. The troubleshooter doesn't find it either.

Windows Config tells me the there's a driver error for the JLsounds Hi-Rez Audio 2.0 driver, so I'm guessing it isn't installed correctly, though it installed itself. I also presume the JLsounds Hi-Rez driver is the XMOS USB Audio driver, but it's not clear. I'm a bit lost and haven't had much luck Googling, can anyone at least confirm I've done the right thing?

Can it see the USB device when its plugged in? It used to be in the devices (I think) page of the control panel where you can see all the USB devices in use.

No, no reference to it that I can find, apart from the driver error. I would have thought I should be able to see the device at least, which makes me suspect it hasn't been installed correctly. The JLsounds instructions are unfortunately brief...

But I would at least expect the os to see the device even if it has no driver for it.

Yep, it's puzzling

Some progress. The JLsounds website says to install the XMOS driver but if I do then I get no sound. Uninstall it and install the Thesycon driver on their website which isn't really discussed at all and I have sound!

Only at 16/44.1k though so some work still needed.

I must say I really don't like DACs! The manuals are a secret code, it's almost as if you have to prove your worth. And one of the trafos' secondary has gone short circuit . Not sure if I've the patience to unwind the wrapping to see if it's a simple flying lead issue.

Onwards!

Whatever I tried I couldn't get anything more than 16/44.1k from the combo with the Thesycon driver. As a test I tried installing the XMOS driver on the laptop, also Win10, and it worked with the DAC at HD first time no problem. I didn't listen as I was just trying to prove something but HD (UltraHD in this case) did seem to sound noticeably better than red book from the few seconds I heard.

So I had another go with the NUC - I uninstalled the JLsounds driver (Thesycon) and restarted Windows, which recognised the device and automatically set up the JLsounds hi-rez device. The JLsounds board could then be found in Sound devices but there's no sound and Config said there was no driver. Then I installed the XMOS driver but Windows then no longer saw the device and reports a driver error.

Curious, I really don't know why the NUC won't play with the JLsounds board.

That's weird Simon, I have never had a problem with getting Windows to 'see' a JLSounds board and it's always worked straight out of the box. Did you get the jumper config from Lyuben? I would contact him and see if he can offer any advice.