Trouble Playing DSD128 on Melco N1Z > USB > PS Audio DirectStream

[GreenMtnGringo]

Hi Simon. I tried NickD's suggestion of experimenting with the "preBuffer" setting. I tried 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 seconds and nothing helped. I did some additional Googling and happened upon this post of yours from about two years ago in response to a MinimServer user who was having a similar buffering issue with a DXD file:

https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread...5#pid19595

It occurred to me that my DSD128 DSF files might be suffering the same 'over-compression' fate. But unlike the DXD file under discussion in the above-linked thread, I did not have an option to reduce the compression level of the DSD128 DSF files while maintaining their DSD integrity. At that moment, I remembered the free Sonore utility called dsd2flac:

http://www.sonore.us/dsd2flac.html

This utility has an optional DoPFLAC output mode that is intended for "a player that supports FLAC and a DAC that supports DoP input."

I transcoded my DSD128 files to DoPFLAC with the sampling rate set to 352.8KHz and the bit depth set to 24. The resulting files had a ".flac" extension and they were virtually the same size as the original DSD128 DSF files.

Long story shorter, the Melco can feed these DoPFLAC files to my PS Audio DirectStream DAC successfully and the DAC's display shows that the files are playing as DSD128.

(Any ideas on why a Melco running MinimServer can serve the transcoded 24/352.8 DoPFLAC versions but not the original DSD128 DSF versions?)

Thanks very much and happy holidays.