I have just installed a Vivaldi DAC and a Network Bridge. I have them connected over SPDF1 and AES1+2. When I paly over SPDF1, everything is working fine. However, when I use the AES1+2, I get mono playback. Anyone who can tell me what I am doing wrong?
At the risk of asking the obvious, have you got the NB connected to Vivaldi AES 3 & 4, and Vivaldi set for Dual AES on inputs 3 & 4?
EDIT: in looking at the NB manual, it may not be recommended/necessary, as it is with the Upsampler, to use AES 3 & 4. I would rephrase the question as “do you have the DAC input set at Dual 1 & 2?”.
I have AES1 to AES1 and AES2 to AES2. The DAC is set to AES1+2.
Using just AES1 works fine and just AES2 the same. It is when I use AES1+2 it turns mono.
Hmmmm. Well, so much for that thought. Have you tried AES inputs 3 & 4 on the DAC?
You’re not doing anything wrong. You’ll hear mono when your source file rates are lower than the “Dual AES Sample rate” setting on the Network Bridge. So, when listening to such lower rate streams, you need to switch your Vivaldi DAC into AES1 (out of AES1+2).
Page 15 of the manual explains it;
Damn, I even RTFM and missed that!
I wasn’t especially eagle-eyed or anything, it’s just that I encountered this exact issue back when I used the Network Bridge with Chord Dave. In fact, I’ve posted about this previously;
One caveat with this configuration; When playing back PCM rates lower than 88.2k, you’ll need to switch out of AES1+2 into AES1 only, otherwise you’ll hear mono.
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Thanks! Good to know. I must admit this was a dissapointment. It should be an easy thing to detect the bitrate, which it does and temporarily go to single AES.
I thought that I had an answer until I read Anup’s comments which indicated that I was wrong hence my deletion of my earlier post.
It is now a long time since I used a Network Bridge/Vivaldi combination however I can recall that for lower rate data Vivaldi only displayed a single AES input.
Dual AES should be set to Auto and not to “On”. It should then switch automatically from Dual to Single AES or vice versa as the incoming rate changes and you should not hear “mono” .
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Good point Pete! I forgot about that!! (my Network Bridge was only always used with Dave which doesn’t have any such auto capability. While with my Vivaldi DAC has always had it’s stablemate Upsampler ).
Thanks a lot, that makes sense and I would have spent significant time figuring out this myself 
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