D150 - PC won’t boot up with it plugged in

[damacman]

It's a generic cord, 6ft or so. Plugged into a 2.0 port on the motherboard.

I am in the market for a better cable, but it sounds just sublime as is.

[IM3CPO]

Originally Posted by damacman

It's a generic cord, 6ft or so. Plugged into a 2.0 port on the motherboard.

I am in the market for a better cable, but it sounds just sublime as is.

I can say with about 99.9% certainty that its your generic USB cable. While 6 feet is within spec, the USB power output on motherboards is not very powerful and is magnified by cables that have poor shielding (too much interference) so it could have trouble getting a link established.

You dont have to spend tons more on a fancy cable necessarily; if one works, then it works.... But the standards on USB cables is so poorly enforced that its really luck of the draw if you get one that works 100% of the time. Of course this is much less of an issue if you spend money on an audio grade one as they are simply manufactured to or above spec (like all of them really should be).

[W9TR]

I’ve had a Shunyata Venom 1.5m and it is a great cable for Benjamin.

[damacman]

Thanks again for the input guys. Like I said, I am in fact shopping for an upgraded USB cable - the one I'm using was a freebie with a printer I think! In the meantime, I set the D150 to not auto turn-off and have made sure it's powered up before waking up my PC. This has resulted in no crashes.

[crwilli]

Originally Posted by damacman

Thanks again for the input guys. Like I said, I am in fact shopping for an upgraded USB cable - the one I'm using was a freebie with a printer I think! In the meantime, I set the D150 to not auto turn-off and have made sure it's powered up before waking up my PC. This has resulted in no crashes.

Glad you figured this out. One of the early-on frustrations for me in my digital journey was the PC-DAC connections and how finicky they were. There always seemed to be something that needed to be reset/rebooted etc. Getting the system to work 100% of the time with no actions other than a power-on step was a big step. The right PC & software configurations, DAC and USB cable were all apart of the solution.

As for USB cables, it depends on your budget but a used WW Platinum Starlight 1.5 meters would work very well. I used one for a number of years. I got the itch and moved up to a Shunyata Alpha USB and it is better. But I could live with the WW and not regret it.

[IM3CPO]

Originally Posted by damacman

Thanks again for the input guys. Like I said, I am in fact shopping for an upgraded USB cable - the one I'm using was a freebie with a printer I think! In the meantime, I set the D150 to not auto turn-off and have made sure it's powered up before waking up my PC. This has resulted in no crashes.

For reference sake, I have USB cables from Transparent, Anti-Cable, and WireWorld. I have not tried the Shunyata yet, but everyone seems to rave about it. I have tried generic USB cables just for the heck of it, and I do get the type of weird issues you describe. I have had ZERO issues with any of the name brand previously mentioned cables and I literally use my USB DAC's 99% of the time I listen to music. One of my daily use setups also happens to be my main computer where I do 100% of my actual day to day work on and the USB DAC (and Wilson speakers) are my sound for the computer, so I have literally thousands of hours speaking here..

[Macuser]

Have you tried the rca connection? My D100 doesn't work either with my printer usb cable and I've not investigated why since the rca connection works so well with my windows 10 computer.

[damacman]

RCA? Are you referring to the Coax inputs? I use one of those with my Yamaha CD-S300 CDP and it works perfectly. No more USB related crashes since I posted about it.

Man am I loving this unit. I just have to give McIntosh props for it's smoothness - very easy to listen to. I do have an Oppo BDP-103 kicking about. I may also connect it up so that I can play HDCDs and SACDs as well. Of course, I think I may have to set it up to convert DSD to PCM bitstream to do that.

[damacman]

Update. Still crashing the PC . . .

The PC is one that I built a few years ago. Here are the specifics:

Intel I3 @ 3.30GHz
32GB RAM
64-bit OS
Windows 7 Professional

I’ve tried two different USB cables – the generic one discussed earlier and a Kimber USB-CU. Both are 3m. I have Windows Updates set to manual as otherwise it consumes all of my processing power when it’s doing it’s thing. Usually, when I show updates available and I download them, the D150 connection is more stable. I did download the 2.0 driver from the web site (and uninstalled the other first) yesterday. I do show some Windows updates available today that I have not downloaded as of yet. From experience, this would undoubtedly improve stability but that doesn’t seem right . . .

I don’t use this PC as any kind of a music server so to speak. The D150 is simply my audio device – no JRiver, just WMA player and iTunes. My motherboard does also have a Toslink output, but the USB connection has a much better noise floor so that is preferred. I also use the D150 with a Yamaha CDP and Oppo BDP-103 (for HDCD CDs mainly) – works flawlessly with both.

Suggestions?

[IM3CPO]

3 meters is still at the max of the USB spec. First thing I would try is a shorter cable.

And can you explain a little bit clearer as to what you are actually experiencing and the lead up to it? Please include as much detail as possible... For example:

You leave the I3 computer on all the time but let it go into sleep/suspend mode. When you want to listen to music, you wake the machine and turn on the D150. As soon as the D150 turns on, the computer blue screens and reboots itself. When the machine is back into Windows 10, I no longer have sound.... etc....

There are lots of variables here so need to try to eliminate as many as possible so we know what we are dealing with.