Computer Audio Design 1543 DAC Windows Recommended Playback Software Installation Version 1.4 December 2013 Playback Software This is the second update for using JRiver Version 19.x and I am now using Windows 8.1. If you are using JRiver Version 18.x please use Version 1.2 of this document. We strongly believe that third-party audiophile playback software should be used rather than Windowssupplied playback software such as Windows Media Player. Using audiophile playback software greatly simplifies computer setup because the software performs much of the computer optimization for you. What we use at CAD is JRiver Media Centre (JRiver) to manage your music collection and JPLAY for playback software. In our opinion, JRiver combined with JPLAY offers the best combination of convenience and sound quality for Windows. Computer Audio Design Page 1
In this example I will use JRiver Media Centre V19.0.54 in conjunction with JPLAY V5.1 on a Windows 8.1 64 bit computer. You can also use JRiver s built-in player, but in our opinion, JPLAY improves sound quality. Please read our update on the last page below for more information on this. Please complete the installation in the order as described in this manual. If you do not, you will have problems! You must first install JPLAY and after that, install JRiver. If you are currently using Windows 7 or earlier versions we have found that Windows 8 (or 8.1) offers a superior sound quality and believe it is worth the effort to upgrade to Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. Please use a computer using a 64bit operating system. We feel that a 64 bit operating system sounds significantly superior to 32 bit. CAD 1543 DAC Driver Installation The 1543 DAC requires a driver to be installed on your computer for the DAC to operate. Please do this first. You can download the Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 Driver from here: Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 1543 DAC Driver There is also a manual with instructions on installing the driver: Windows Driver Installation Instructions This is also located on the CAD website under "Downloads". You must install the CAD driver before continuing on to the next step. JPLAY Installation Once you have installed the driver, JPLAY can be purchased here from: http://jplay.eu/ Once you have purchased and downloaded the JPLAY installation file, right click on the file and choose "Run as Administrator" to Install the program. This is essential. You must reboot the computer after installation. JPLAY provides direct integration with JRiver Media Centre. We will setup JPLAY later in this manual. JRiver Installation JRiver can be purchased and downloaded from here: http://www.jriver.com During installation of JRiver I recommend to use the Custom option for setup: Computer Audio Design Page 2
Choose Normal install to a computer in the next window. If you have a fresh install of Windows you may see this screen asking you to install.net Framework: I have found that if you are just using your computer just as an audio source (as you should be!) that.net Framework is not needed. I have found that the fewer processes running on the computer, generally the better the sound quality..net is basically a programming library and runtime environment that is required for certain applications - for audio use JRiver seems to run fine without it. We at CAD skip this installation and do not install.net Framework. In the next window you must choose files that you want JRiver to use. CAD recommends AIFF format for all your music files. This option is NOT checked by default. Please ensure you check the AIF Audio (aif, aifc, aiff) box as show here: Computer Audio Design Page 3
Since you are not going to use JRiver for movies or pictures (this is an Audio Computer, remember!) you can uncheck Image, Video and Other. Leave Playlists checked. The very first thing you need to do is to stop JRiver from automatically updating. CAD recommends you NEVER to upgrade JRiver unless you are having a specific problem. You can make sure JRiver does not automatically upgrade by clicking on: Help --> Update Channels --> Disable Automatic Update (not recommended.). We at CAD recommend that you do this. This is shown here: Computer Audio Design Page 4
You now need to integrate JPLAY with JRiver so JPLAY handles the playback of your music and not JRiver: Open Tools ---> Options as shown here: You will now see this window: Under Audio Device---> Ensure that it says: JPLAY Driver (ASIO) Under Audio Device ---> Device Settings... double click and you should see this screen: Computer Audio Design Page 5
Under Buffering choose: Minimum hardware size Under Volume choose: (Automatically try to choose at playback time) Ensure that Use large hardware buffers is NOT checked Click on OK to close this window. Now change Prebuffering to the minimum of 2 seconds as show here: Now check Play files from memory instead of disk (not zone specific) as shown here: Computer Audio Design Page 6
Volume control 1) If you are using a preamplifier that you use to adjust volume then go to Volume --> Volume mode: and set that to Disabled Volume. If you are new to computer audio we suggest this is what you do. Please do it to start with... It should look like this: Even if you are using a preamplifier to adjust volume you can change this setting to Internal Volume. This will then let you adjust the volume from a remote device such as an ipad or Android. 2) The 1543 DAC can be connected directly to your amplifier and you can control the volume through JRiver and/or JPLAY. To do this you must take great care! If you put the maximum volume of the 1543 DAC directly into your power amplifier you will most likely blow up your amplifier and/or speakers. CAD cannot be held responsible! In JRiver you want to use: Internal Volume setting. They key thing is Computer Audio Design Page 7
to set Maximum Volume to 20 to start with. Then slowly increase that value to see what works with your amplifier. You should also check the volume protection box. This stops any sudden increase in the volume level. You can also use JPLAY to adjust volume level. In JPLAY you cannot adjust volume while listening to music. JPLAY has "bit perfect" steps that you can change the volume by. You can try these in the JPLAY settings screen. Now click on General and you should see this screen: Set the Video Card --> Hardware accelerated graphics to --> low quality (budget or mobile hardware) Now open up Features at the bottom of the screen. Uncheck all boxes except for Media Network (Library Server. DNLA., etc.). It should look like this: Now click on Services in the left hand pane and you should see this screen: Computer Audio Design Page 8
Uncheck everything under Stores to show in the Tree Configure your music collection You need to connect your music collection to your computer before you start this next step. There are many options, some of which are: external hard drive connected via esata, Thunderbolt, Firewire or USB Ethernet connected Network Attached Storage (NAS) Internally connected SATA drive - In our opinion this gives the best sound quality Note: We have found that sound quality can be improved by storing your music on a different drive other than the one your operating system is stored on. If possible use a different interface than your DAC uses and the fastest interface your computer has. You do not have to have all your music in one location or one drive, you can use multiple drives if you wish. We will now configure JRiver to import and manage your music collection. To configure your music collection go to: Tools ---> Import: Computer Audio Design Page 9
Click on Configure Auto-Import and hit NEXT. If you see any directories that do not contain your music delete them from the list. Now click on the Add... button and you should see the following 2 windows: From here you can pick the location(s) of your music by clicking on the Browse button on the Folder Settings window. Once you find your music location click on the OK button. This will then close the Folder Settings window. If you have another location you want to add then click on the Add... button on the Media Import window once again and repeat. If you see some locations in your Media Import window that do not contain your music, highlight it and click on Remove. Once you are done click on the Finish button. JRiver will now import your music collection. It is very fast, a 500GB collection will take under 10 minutes. You will not have to do this again unless you change your music location or add an additional drive. There are various options to add new music. Typically, I just paste my new music into any location specified above and JRiver will automatically import it and search for metadata. This is very easy if your music collection is on your local area network. Computer Audio Design Page 10
You are now able to play music using the JRiver interface on your computer at the highest quality. One of the benefits of computer audio is you do not have to actually get up and down and go to your computer for music playback - you can use an ipad or Android device as a remote control. The ipad will control JRiver using your wi-fi network. Later in this manual is a explanation on how to do this. JPLAY Settings Please also look at the JPLAY manual for instructions: http://jplay.eu/manual/ In this example I will be using JPLAY Version 5.1. Plug the 1543 DAC into your computer before starting this section. In Windows 8 go to Search and type in: JPLAY. You should see this: To make life easier right click on JPLAYSettings and in the bottom left hand corner of the screen click on Pin to Start and on Pin to taskbar. Now you have easy access to the JPLAY settings no matter where you are in Windows 8. Double click on JPLAYSettings and you will see this screen: Computer Audio Design Page 11
You can choose between Kernel Streaming (KS) and WASAPI by clicking on the Playing Via button. CAD recommends KS, but try both and decide for yourself. You can change the Engine between ULTRAstream, Xtream, River or Beach. ULTRAstream only works with Windows 8. They all have a slightly different sound quality. We like ULTRAstream, but you may not! Audio PC can be used if you use the 2 computer setup - To start with we recommend using just one computer. If you would like to experiment visit the JPLAY forums. Bitperfect Volume allows you to attenuate the output voltage of your DAC by bit perfect steps. The different Buffer settings allow you to set the latency for different sampling frequencies. DirectLink has the lowest latency and we feel gives the best sound quality. This is computer dependent and typically a faster computer with low latency memory will allow a lower latency setting. Start with Directlink and if the music drop outs increase the number of samples. I will not go into Hibernate mode in this article, see JPLAY Forums. Leave Throttle set to ON. If you use ULTRAstream, (which we like) there is one other crucial setting that you need to change. It is in the registry so you have to use the registry editor. You only need to do this once and the improvement in sound quality is worth it. To start the registry editor go to Search and type in: regedit You should see this: Double click on regedit and you will see something similar to this: Computer Audio Design Page 12
Now go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/JPLAY Double click on UltraSize that is located in the right hand screen. A window called Edit String will open. The value data will say 250. Change that number to 285 and then click on OK. Then click on the red x close button in the top right hand corner of the regedit window. Note: In previous versions I have suggested to use 170. I now feel 285 gives a bit warmer fuller sound wit the 1543 DAC. This is my opinion! Try other values. With the 1543 DAC the lowest number that I find that works is 170. If you go lower than that you will get dropouts while music is playing. What this has done is set the latency setting to an amount we have found works consistently with the 1543 DAC and our computers. If you have problems with music stopping or not starting increase this value. Reboot, listen and enjoy! Remote Control of JRiver Computer Audio Design Page 13
There are many options for controlling JRiver. You can of course control it directly on the computer and do not need to use a wifi connected device (e.g., ipad) at all. In this example I will show how to set up an ipad to control JRiver. There are several ipad applications out there that will control JRiver. With an ipad we have had good results with JRemote. For an Android device Gizmo is very good. You can purchase JRemote here: http://www.jremote.net/ To allow JRiver to connect to JRemote on your ipad do the following: In JRiver go to: Tools --> Options --> Media Network. Click on Use Media Network to share this library and enable DLNA. You should see this screen: Click on the next button and you should see something similar to this: Computer Audio Design Page 14
Allow Windows Firewall to allow connections. You will then be presented with this screen below that gives you your access key. You need to write this key down. You will enter this key into JRemote on your ipad to allow JRemote to communicate with JRiver. To use the key in JRemote open up JRemote on your ipad. In the top left corner of the screen click on the icon, (it looks like a toothed sprocket). In the new window that opens click on: Add a new JRiver Media Center server. In the new window that opens up click on: Connect with access key. Then enter the access key and click on: Add and connect. That should do it. It is important to understand that JRiver has 2 independent software programs running. One is the Interface that you have just been working with. You can obviously play music using just this Interface. But there is another software program running in the background that you probably do not know about,. This is called the Media Server. If you are using an ipad or Android device over a wifi network to control JRiver you do not need nor do you want the Interface to be running on your computer. You can setup JRiver so that on boot up only the Media Server is running. Go to Tools --> Options --> Startup and you should see this screen: Computer Audio Design Page 15
Go to Windows Startup and put a check next to: Media Server (allows library sharing, television recording, etc.) Now when you reboot your computer you will not see the JRiver Interface on your computer screen, but the Media Server is running in the background. You can use JRemote on your ipad and you will have complete control of JRiver. If you need to get into JRiver just double click the icon on your desktop and the interface will open up. Give it a try. If you have a Android device you can get a free copy of an application similar to JRemote that controls JRiver. You can read about it here: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/gizmo My suggestion it to use the computer this way for a while and get use to all the new software. Make sure you understand how it all works and you have all the functionality that you desire. Once you are comfortable you may want to move on to the next manual which shows some advanced (but not difficult!) software modifications to improve sound quality even further. UPDATE You may have noticed that occasionally a window pops up telling you the JPLAY is a Hoax. This is coming from the people at JRiver. JRiver does not want people using JPLAY with their software. CAD disagrees with JRiver on this matter. This pop up window does no harm, but if this annoys you half as much as it annoys me you may want to stop it from happening. There is a chance that this could cause "unforeseen issues" so unless you feel comfortable doing the following I would suggest maybe living with the pop up screen. But, here is how to stop that pop up from happening: 1) Close JRiver 2) Go to: C:/Program Files (x86)/j River/Media Center 19/Plugins 3) Copy the following file from that directory: out_main.dll Computer Audio Design Page 16
4) Paste that file to your desktop. 5) Go to this forum: http://jplay.eu/forum/jplay/howto-permanently-removing-the-jriver-jplay-message Read the first post. 6) Download the correct out_main.dll for your version of JRiver. 7) Unzip the file. 8) Copy and paste the downloaded version of the out_main.dll file to: C:/Program Files (x86)/j River/Media Center 19/Plugins If you are asked to replace the current file say yes. 9) Reboot your computer. 10) If you have any issues with JRiver you can copy the original version of out_main.dll that you put on your desktop back to the Plugins directory and you will be back were you started. Computer Audio Design Page 17