[Marius]

so finally got to the test: playing the Chandos USB stick of Elgar oratorios through a HDD/BDP1. Exactly the same problem. Mixes them up the same way:



I made a playlist by selecting every track manually, and in the end it works for now, but this is of course not as it should be.

James, hope you work it out soon. Sounds very nice you know......
Like to have it permanently in da house. Already got a budget agreement... but need a more intuitive way of letting it ring and sing.

And, boy, does it ring right now, never heard the organ pedals sound so definite and sublte. And its not even a hires recording.

Btw, don't know if you can see, but in the statusline in the Max interface it keeps loading items. right 2650 of 2755...what's that all about? the to items to be retreived is getting bigger all the time also....keeps growing apparently.

Marius

[Marius]

this also did the trick on the "faulty" usb-thumbdrive. reformatted it, loaded the same music on it, and playing like a charm right now.

thanks for your hints,
This did the trick on the Mac though: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=375750 no hassle, thought it might be of interest to all other Mac-users, and for James to let them know when applicable....

Marius

[terrycym]

this also did the trick on the "faulty" usb-thumbdrive. reformatted it, loaded the same music on it, and playing like a charm right now.

Did you test the thumb drive using the utility I mentioned earlier in the week?

[Marius]

Hi Terry,

No I did not,because it was a windows utility, and I have not been able to find a Mac-port of it.

Did you test the thumb drive using the utility I mentioned earlier in the week?

[mikemalter]

James,

Can you please help me with this question.

I have a hard drive with a USB out, but I don't know what version that USB is.  On the hard drive end, the connector is square, not thin with a bump.  Am I using a USB version that has good audio quality on the BDA-1?  I hear a little fuzziness and I am wondering if maybe that connector is what the issue is.  I can get another HDD if that is the issue.

Thank you.

Mike Malter

[srb]

Most USB peripherals such as hard drives, printers, USB DACs, etc. have a Type B (square) port and are connected to the Host with a Type A (flat) plug, just like your hard drive.  An exception would be USB thumb drives which have a Type A plug that plugs directly into the Host Type A port.
 
All four ports on the BDP-1 are USB 2.0 which are backward compatible with USB 1.0 and USB 1.1.  The front pair of ports are for thumb drives or USB hard drives which have their own power supplies and the rear pair of ports can supply additional power for bus-powered USB hard drives.
 
USB 2.0 has a higher data transfer rate of 480 Mb/s compared with USB 1.1 transfer rate of 12 Mb/s.  You generally can't tell which USB version your hard drive is by looking at the cable as they have the same cable ends.
 
Uncompressed .aiff or .wav stereo files have a bit rate of 1411 Kb/s for 16/44.1 files and 9216 Kb/s for 24/192 files, so even USB 1.1 should have sufficient bandwith to play those files.
 
There are some bus-powered drives that do exceed the current supply limits of the rear USB ports.  If you tell us what brand and model of USB drive you have, perhaps someone has used the same model with the BDP-1 and can report if they have encountered any problems.  I am assuming that you are playing back uncompressed or lossless compressed files of 16/44.1 minimum (because anything less often sounds a little fuzzy to me).
 
Steve

[James Tanner]

James,

Can you please help me with this question.

I have a hard drive with a USB out, but I don't know what version that USB is.  On the hard drive end, the connector is square, not thin with a bump.  Am I using a USB version that has good audio quality on the BDA-1?  I hear a little fuzziness and I am wondering if maybe that connector is what the issue is.  I can get another HDD if that is the issue.

Thank you.

Mike Malter

Hi Mike,

The cable should not have much influence as we handle the signal differently than most USB type products. 

In the BDP-1 the signal remains as DIGITAL DATA (not music file) right up untill it hits the internal soundcard output in the BDP-1.  So my guess is something is up with the drive.  How does the Bryston thumbdrive sound that came with the unit?  If all is OK then it appears the drive is the issue. Also as srb says I find some of the older USB drives take a lot more power than the more current drives so that may also be a problem if your drive is not self powered.

By the way I have had very good luck with Seagate 2.5 inch 500G USB powered drives (they are dead quiet) if you get a chance to try one. With Thumbdrives almost everyone I have tried works great

james

[mikemalter]

Hi Mike,

The cable should not have much influence as we handle the signal differently than most USB type products. 

In the BDP-1 the signal remains as DIGITAL DATA (not music file) right up untill it hits the internal soundcard output in the BDP-1.  So my guess is something is up with the drive.  How does the Bryston thumbdrive sound that came with the unit?  If all is OK then it appears the drive is the issue. Also as srb says I find some of the older USB drives take a lot more power than the more current drives so that may also be a problem if your drive is not self powered.

By the way I have had very good luck with Seagate 2.5 inch 500G USB powered drives (they are dead quiet) if you get a chance to try one. With Thumbdrives almost everyone I have tried works great

james

SRB & James,

Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns.

I understand now that the sound card is looking at the data coming to it in the context of a file.

I'm going to try an experiment with a Cruzer 16gb thumb drive I have and load a few of the 24/96 and 24/192 uncompressed wav files I have on my USB hard drive and compare the two.  I'll also factor in the USB drive that came with the unit.

My current USB drive is an Antec container with a Western Digital 2 terabyte drive in it.  It originally had a 750 gig drive in there that I replaced with the current Western Digital.  It is powered externally.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks,

Mike