• Disclaimer: This Vendor's Forum is a paid-for commercial area. Unlike the rest of diyAudio, the Vendor has complete control of what may or may not be posted in this forum. If you wish to discuss technical matters outside the bounds of what is permitted by the Vendor, please use the non-commercial areas of diyAudio to do so.

Build Completed, Lock LED Lit, NO SOUND

Hmmm. Completed my upgrade from Sonore Audiobyte USB/I2S with Buffalo IIISE to JL Sounds Isolated USB to I2S with Buffalo IIISE Pro 9028. All voltages from the supplies are good, all regulator voltages on the DAC board are correct, the Lock LED is lit. BUT I get no sound whatsoever, with any inputs I send through the USB.
The JL Sounds board shows up on the Sonore Rendu as the DAC, so it's communicating. I get the lock LED to light as soon as I plug in the USB cable.

Putting a scope on the input to the DAC board shows signals on all three wires, which I assume is why I get the lock. Dip switches all seem to be set correctly. All voltages check out. This is a real head scratcher...

On the JL Sounds isolated USB/I2S board all I needed to do is jumper J2 and leave everything else open for an ESS DAC, according to the documentation, which I did. Any thoughts on where I went wrong?
 
Well, now I have sound, but it's a horribly distorted hissing instead of music, mostly in the left channel.
DPLL bandwidth is set to max, lock LED stays on, but total distortion playing PCM files using Roon Ready player or from my laptop using Foobar. Hmmm once more...

I suppose I could try reconnecting the old Sonore USB/I2S board to see if it's the JL Sounds board that's the issue.
 
With a little help from Lyuben at JL Sounds it's now working fine! Turns out the LRCLK and Data lines were swapped. The biggest clue was that it played DSD correctly, but not PCM.
A simple cable swap fixed it!

Thanks also to Brian for pointing out the volume control jumper...I'd still be banging my head on the wall if not for that!

The sound is excellent by the way. Here's a pic of my DAC/preamp with the lid off, the DAC is in the upper right corner. 01A output tubes fed from the DAC through Lundahl LL1676 1:1 transformers.
 

Attachments

  • 20241219_112420.jpg
    20241219_112420.jpg
    584.8 KB · Views: 46