You may be on to something. This is in fact in line whit what i’ve been saying about interference from ethernet (high freq signals filtering) and possible WLAN proximity.
I’m living in an area, where there is no any industrial buildings, and we actually do have separate transformer for the block. Also my SA30 is connected to internal power line, which doesn’t have any devices connected, except for amp, TV, DVD player and Android TV box. So the line should be rather “clean”.
Might explain why i haven’t had distortion on 867, where some others did.
But you see - we are again guessing here, even if those are educated guesses. We should really hear something from Arcam on this.
What you said is why i still think distortion issue is both software and hardware related, as i said to @arcam_paul. I actually think hardware is prone to jitter cause of not good enough filtering and/or shielding (possibly also some poor quality internal clock, as well as wrong PCB design making some signals prone to interference), and Arcam is trying to fix it with software (i.e. PLL width changes, to allow DAC to be lest prone to clock drift). I would love to be proven wrong…
One more thing - pre 705 firmwares were distortion-free as it seems. But where you have distortion now, you seemingly had dull sound before. I read that in some other devices/amps with ESS DACs, where there is an option to change PLL width, people were saying that changing that setting would stop TOSLINK (optical) input drop-outs, but made it sound worse. Might be related to our case.
Again - just guessing 
I have been streaming some FLAC files that are SACD rips at 88.2/24 for a couple of hours today with no distortion whatsoever. This is the sample rate that many have commented cause the distortion for them. In fact I haven’t had any distortion for some time. I should point out that I don’t use DIRAC.
The distortion bug most often occurs when switching MQA resolutions, like from MQA 48khz to MQA 192 kHz. I do not get distortion with playing a long list of non MQA 88.2 or 24 96 rips from my hard drive.
Well the only problem with this arrangement Paul, is the SA 30 would have to be returned to us in a “repaired” form! I am ready to send mine in with a check if Arcam can make it work as advertised when I bought it. 
Anyway, thanks very much for taking the time to check in with us and give us some feedback. Many have already returned their SA 30’s for refunds. We are the hard core SA 30 lovers that see and hear so much potential in the SA 30 we are willing to hang on till the bugs are fixed. Please keep us in the loop. And stay well.
Ken
I have some MQA files that I downloaded some time ago from a test site.
I have not had distortion from any of these either.
I understand. If you just play a few MQA files of the same format things usually work fine. If you cherry pick tracks from Tidal , via Roon where the SA30 is switching formats between songs, the distortion bug will eventually happen. You may get by with perfect sound for hours, then all of the sudden when it switches resolutions the distortion will start as the track starts. For example, if I pick an album to play that is MQA 192, from nothing playing, the album will play perfectly. But after the album is over Roon Radio will start to pick tracks and play them. Some will be red book, some will be other MQA resolutions, some will be 24/96 flac from my hard drive etc, within an hour or so when switching MQA formats, the distortion will start. It is only fixed by switching off or switching to an analog input and restarting the track. I am listening to a 2L album at MQA 352, which the SA 30 is playing at its 192 max resolution. It sounds great. But I started the album from standstill. If I only play MQA 352 all day, I do not think it will ever start distortion. But if I start switching tracks with variable MQA resolutions, it will eventually start distorting. I went back to 867 as I found the distortion situation worse on the 910. And the distortion seemed to be of a different nature. Not as loud and obvious, but an etchyness on the upper end of cymbals, piano notes and violins. Actually I have never heard the Arcam mess up on the MQA 352 2L recordings until 910. That is why I switched back to 867 last night and will wait till Arcam publishes the next firmware.
My SA30 no update from 1.41.
I would concur about the idea of playlists (or queue) with different sample rates of MQA.
my experience of the distortion has been when discovering new music via Tidal and flipping back and forth between different quality files.
Now most of the time I’m actually an album listener so with hindsight I am wondering if that is the main reason I’ve said I haven’t had issues when others have, so I started with 521 and never had a single issue, but was I only album listening? I can’t say categorically. I did use the same reference files as paulguk when I first got the amp, incl various FLAC files and MQA, and I also went as high as I could go with DSD too on a USB drive and from a UPnP server (Asset UPnP on a Windows 10 PC). I was switching back and forth between diff resolutions of Mozart violin conertos and I never heard any distortion then either,
When I switched to 705 briefly I was definitely in a new music discovery session flipping between things and it became very prevalent very quickly after the update so I went back to 521. Plus the 705 was somewhat “weedy” sounding
I’ve then really forgotten about the issue until 867 was seemingly forced upon me via chromecast and Google Home setup. now I don’t recall again having had mixed playlists and I think I’ve been album listening since, but 867 has again behaved for me with regard distortion. It does sound different to my ears compared with 521, but I struggle to described how. I hesitate to say it is better or worse though. My ears probably got used to 521.
On the “volume scaling” and max volume setting I see this issue definitely in the web client and not in the MusicLife amp control. It’s more pro in Ed of course the lower the max volume is set.
I’ve also noticed that MusicLife keeps messing with the DAC filters or maybe it is just displaying the wrong one….I set it to default apodizing on the amp and on occasion MusicLife will say different so I switch it back via MusicLife, I’m guessing that does have an impact (however subtle) on the sound qualities.
Cheers
I find 867 very stable - I think I’ve only had the distortion issue twice since installing it. I agree with the view that distortion seems to be triggered by variations in sample rate.
Distortion is completely unacceptable. You can’t say that a version is stable because distortions appeared once or twice. On the other hand, I can’t understand how Arcam, buying the streaming module from a third party vendor - StreamUnlimited, can’t force them to make the product work properly. Especially since this is an entire platform and not a product designed and manufactured as a unique component only for one solution.
I’m afraid it’s not so easy. First of all i think the issue is not only on module side. It seems to be somewhere between streaming module and DAC.
Second are you sure it’s off-the-shelve solution? Didn’t see module like one used in Arcam on their website. It might be customized.
And lastly depending on the contract they have, might be that provider doesn’t give a…, and to fix it Arcam would have to replace modules to something else, paying for this, and redoing whole software stack. It’s not always so easy.
Believe me, in business it’s not that uncommon, that “the tail is waving the dog” (you probably know what i mean, judging by your nickname 
).
But of course you are right, that distortion is unacceptable. That’s why we are all pissed off and waiting for Arcam to fix it finally.
My experience is different. The distorsion appears erratically, with no specific pattern. There are unaffected listening sessions as well as catastrophic ones. Initially I too had the feeling that switching from low to high res MQA could be the trigger, and this is probably the most common case. However, in some cases the problem appears while zapping between tracks of equal resolution, or even while reproducing a full album without touching the track sequence. It happens in Tidal as well as in Qobuz, so I doubt it is linked to MQA. I also noticed that the problem tends to manifest after some listening time, rarely at the beginning of the session. Finally, what is also surprising to me is that the intensity of the distortion is variable from case to case, meaning that the same track could be just slightly affected (to the point that sometimes I wondered if it was just my ears) or completely unlistenable, and independent of the triggering sequence. I wonder if there are variable physical or environmental factors that might play a role…
Quote from myself:
Switching from ethernet to wireless already helped some users to decrease amount of distortion occurences. So there’s definitely something “environmental” causing the distortion. Something, that is causing clock drift. Might be any kind of interference.
But again - we don’t know for sure. Just guessing based on info that we already have, and silence of Arcam on this.
A post was split to a new topic: MusicLife keeps messing with the DAC filters
Thinking back to my theory that I put out yesterday about noise on mains. How do people get their stream from the router to the SA 30. I was reading an article in a HI FI magazine this afternoon about how internet over mains is something that can cause jitter. I use Wi Fi to a TP Link 4 port ethernet wi fi extender so the signal is over wi fi but then connects to the SA 30 via an ethernet cable.
Ethernet over mains is bad idea, not only considering Arcam.
Use it only if you have no other choice. That’s my opinion.
If you can, try to connect SA30 driectly to WiFi, not using ethernet from extedner. See if it helps to reduce distortion.
I would never use mains over ethernet personally but it was a thought that possibly some people who suffer distortion may be doing that.
It just seems odd that some people get it whilst others don’t. As I said yesterday ever since I started using a mains conditioner I don’t hardly ever get it anymore and I do play music of various sample rates streamed from my NAS.
Jatrus,
After reading your post I think I fit more into your catagory of distortion issues also. I have had less days like yours since switching to WiFi and removing the ethernet cable from the Arcam sa30. But your post rings true… But if I want to expose distortion probably the quickest way is to start switching MQA resolutions.
I have noticed this too…
But I use the Ethernet connection and now rarely get it!
How about clock temp drift, which is adding up with drift caused by external noise?
Not an expert here, but I think it’s possible.
There can be different sources of noise. You eliminated noise from the mains, Ken and me from ethernet. Both improved situation.
Can you try with wireless? Wonder if that will bring further improvement.