Vivaldi Upsampler Losing Auto Wordclock

Hello All: I am having an interesting new problem with my Upsampler. This started just two days ago. Nothing in my system has changed. I have the Upsampler, DAC, and Clock set in Auto Wordclock mode, and it all sounds great. In the last two days, I have had the Upsampler randomly lose its Auto setting and revert to Master mode, causing the sound to stutter at roughly .5s intervals constantly.

When I check the Menu settings, the Upsampler shows that it is correctly set for Auto Wordclock. But the status display shows M. And Mosaic shows that the Upsampler is correctly set to Auto Wordclock. No amount of changing settings fixes the problem, including doing a Factory Reset of the configuration. The only thing that solves the problem is a hard power reboot, either from the front panel, or the rear switch. That’s not a difficult fix, but it sure is an annoying one.

This happens at any resolution, whether I am upsampling or not, whether playing local storage or internet streaming. And of course, it only happens when I am out of the room and return to find it in that state. I am trying now to sit in the listening room without leaving to see if I can catch some change in track or resolution that prompts the behavior.

UPDATE: just saw this happen when Roon went from playing one Qobuz album at 44.1/16 to another Qobuz album at 96/24. Switching back to the 44.1/16 album causes the Ipsampler to revert to Auto Wordclock. Playing the 24/96 track again causes the Upsampler to lose Auto Wordclock again. So, I may be on the trail of a fix. And I can confirm that playing local 24/96 encounters the same problem. I have checked my Clock cabling, and it all looks fine. As I said, nothing about the system has changed. So, my guess is that I have changed something in my Upsampler’s settings to cause this problem. I just tried another factory reset. This caused the clock setting to change to Audio. I then changed it to Auto Wordclock. As soon as I started playing a local 24/96, the Upsampler reverted to Master mode, but the music now plays without interruption. Right now, I am stumped, but I’ll keep working at it. FWIW, the DAC never loses Auto Wordclock, and always shows the correct version of W1or W2 no matter what the Upsampler is doing.

Background: using Roon to play; all components running current software.

I am sure that I am missing something obvious here. Any thoughts on this?

Greg , this vaguely resembles the problem that I had with syncing recently :

It turned out that the wordclock cables were not correctly connected to my upsampler. Although you say " nothing about the system has changed" I wonder. Just check the wordclock cables and their connection.

However you introduce another variable, Roon, which I cannot add any comment on.

Pete: thanks for the reply. I will double check the cables. The good news is that, because I can repeat the problem, I should be able to track down the fix.

I thought that I had discovered a clock cable mismatch, when I disconnected the Upsampler Group 2 cable from the Clock while playing a 24/96 file and nothing happened, but disconnecting the Group 1 cable caused signal loss. So, I swapped those two cables, and Auto Wordclock was restored. But then, at some point the Upsampler reverted to Master mode again. So, I pulled all three components out of the cabinet, and hooked them up on the floor so I could see everything. I had my 18yo daughter check the cabling to ensure I had everything where I said it should be. Each clock cable is separately color coded, so it’s easy to say something like “Group 1 Red cable” and get feedback from my daughter, so we both know we are identifying the same thing. Every connection was confirmed and visible. But there was one thing that was different: I had my Oppo UDP-205 (powered off) connected via Toslink to the Upsampler. I do not know how or why this should have mattered, but along with re-seating every cable, I removed the Toslink cable.

Since that time, about six hours ago, my Vivaldi stack has been playing flawlessly across all resolutions, with and without DSD pass through, upsampling, and clone mode.

That sounds too strange for me to make any comment. Perhaps one of the dCS guys may wish to contribute?

Hi Greg,

As a little time has passed, has the Upsampler behaved or has the issue returned?

If you reconnect the Toslink from the Oppo, does the problem return?

If it does return with the Toslink reconnected, what does the Upsampler think the Word Clock and Toslink sample rates are (this can be found on the Unit Info screen)?

Hello James. The stack continues to play flawlessly. I have not yet reconnected the Toslink cable to the Upsampler. I plan to do that today and see what, if anything, happens.