Transporter doesn't like 'Consolers Of The Lonely'

[technobear]

I got a new CD today, 'Consolers Of The Lonely' by The Raconteurs. I really enjoyed their last album, 'Broken Boy Soldier', despite the poor sound quality and this one is even better musically. The sound quality however is a lot worse, especially when played on the Transporter. Track 8 is the worst culprit, causing the Transporter to output alarming crunchy crackling noises. I thought I had blown a tweeter or my amp was malfunctioning but further listening to something else showed that all was OK with the kit. Track 8 wasn't the only offender either. The problem was independent of volume control on the Transporter or on the Amp.

I looked at the file in Roxio Sound Editor and was not surprised to see that this track is badly clipped. In fact all the tracks on the album have alarming amounts of clipping.

I played the CD on the CD player. It sounded OK, poor quality but no nasty noises. I routed the CD digital out through the Transporter. Again no nasty noises.

Same on the computer. Windows Media Player played the track OK from the CD and from the file.

So it seems that all these other replay devices have some way of dealing with clipping - muting perhaps? - which prevents nasty noises from escaping the speakers. The Transporter it seems does not.

Sadly this CD is not untypical of recent releases although it is the first one I have played on the Transporter that has actually caused this nasty crunchy crackling sound. Is this a known problem? Is there a fix?

[darrenyeats]

independent of volume control on the Transporter or on the Amp.

Just to be absolutely clear, does this happen even when reducing the digital volume on the Transporter?

Do you have replay gain or some such switched on? Was it ripped with a volume adjustment?
Darren

[technobear]

Just to be absolutely clear, does this happen even when reducing the digital volume on the Transporter?

Yes.

Do you have replay gain or some such switched on? Was it ripped with a volume adjustment?
Darren

It was ripped with Exact Audio Copy and no volume adjustments.

Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain is set to 'No volume adjustment'.

My best guess is that CD players (and Windows Media Player) must detect the clipping and mute it out.

This would explain why older CDs sound much better on the Transporter than on a comparable CD player but newer ones often sound much worse.

[SuperQ]

Would you mind posting a FLAC file that you find sounds bad? Maybe not the whole file, just a 10-20 second crop of the worst part. You can download Audacity (works on any computer). It supports edit/export of FLAC files. It will also give you an idea what the waveform of the track looks like.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

[technobear]

Would you mind posting a FLAC file that you find sounds bad? Maybe not the whole file, just a 10-20 second crop of the worst part. You can download Audacity (works on any computer). It supports edit/export of FLAC files. It will also give you an idea what the waveform of the track looks like.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

I don't use FLAC. I use WAV.

I guess I wouldn't be breaking any laws to extract a short clip so I'll see if I can do that.

Here is an example of what the waveform looks like:

[seanadams]

Chris,

Never heard of anything like this. I can't imagine why clipping in the source material would be a problem. If you're getting loud noises *independent of the volume setting* then that indicates some failure in the digital audio chain _after_ the Transporter's software volume control.

Please try re-flashing Transporter's internal logic circuitry. To do this, hold 'power' until the unit resets, then press '1' on the remote when the Logitech logo appears. It should say "reprogramming xilinx" for a few seconds, then reboot.

Also if possible try connecting transporter to a a receiver, with the digital outputs connected to one input and the analog outputs connected to a different one. Try switching back and forth and see if the noise is similar.

The next step would be to provide an example file, and our QA team will attempt to reproduce it. Depending on that, we would either replace your unit or go looking for a bug.

Sean

[technobear]

Ah, I think you misunderstand me. The crackling sounds *are* in proportion to the volume setting. What I mean is that the crackling doesn't go away when you lower the volume. Of course it gets quieter.

I'm not surprised that this might be the first time anyone has had this problem. I have over 500 CDs and this is the first one to do this.

I have of course tried various other recent CDs since this problem occurred to see if any others do it but they don't.

Indeed most of the tracks on 'Consolers of the Lonely' don't exhibit the problem although the sound editor shows me that there is plenty of clipping. I guess that just on one or two tracks the clipping is so severe that the Transporter gets it wrong.

Unfortunately I don't have another DAC into which I can plug the Transporter's digital output to see if that cures the problem. Until recently I had a Lavry DA10 but I sold it after deciding the Transporter is better. I do have a Behringer DEQ but it has balanced outputs and my amp only has unbalanced inputs and I don't have any adaptors.

The problem still occurs if I insert the Behringer into the effects loop of the Transporter but I guess that doesn't tell us anything except the Behringer reports that clipping is occurring but it does that with a lot of recent CDs.


Edit: Just to add that I looked at making a sample and I can do that but I am unable to host it on the web as my ISP rejects the file type so I'm not sure how to get it to you.

[Mnyb]

You can zip the file if you are allowed to host zip's .
If not change the file extension to something you are allowed to host then whoever wants have a peek can change it back to what it should be if you tell us what it is.

[dub3000]

what happens if you open the WAV file up in some other audio editor like wavosaur (free) and reduce the overall volume by ~1%? does it still freak out?

[technobear]

what happens if you open the WAV file up in some other audio editor like wavosaur (free) and reduce the overall volume by ~1%? does it still freak out?

I tried this using Roxio. Reduced it to 80%. Same problem.