TOPIC: Cracking noise over AES :-(

Just tried spdif->AES. Same crackling noise.

earik wrote:
Out of interest, are you getting nothing but 'cracking noise', or are you getting music with this noise occasionally? If so, when does the noise occur?

The music comes through, but there's a veil of constant crackling noises over the top. It's especially obvious through the tweeter. Sort of like static on TV, back when TV's had antennas.

The amp guys say that their AES input is pretty strict, and if I don't feed it a pro-spec 110ohm input, especially at higher sampling rates (like the 96khz that the SHD uses), then there will be issues. Given that the SHD's spdif outputs basically sound identical to the AES ones with the crackling, that theory makes sense, as I know the spdif is definitely going to be running under spec.

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to post a follow-up to this thread to tie it all off...

Rather than purchasing a DAC (which I would never use other than to test), I ended up setting up a Dante network. The speakers have a Dante input, so I ended up getting an AES->Dante adapter for the SHD Studio, and patched it into the network. Everything runs just fine, and the crackling noise is gone. This is really pointing at an issue with the speaker inputs having an issue with the 96khz sample rate, or (maybe) some weird clocking mismatch.

I didn't intend to set up a Dante network to run these speakers, but now that I'm here and it's all working, I have to say, it's sort of cool. Anyway, this issue isn't exactly solved, but I've got a workaround in place that I'm perfectly happy with. Now I can FINALLY get to working with Dirac!

Thanks to everyone who offered help. I really appreciate the effort.

Thanks for the update.