I got a new JCALLY JM20 CS43131 USB-C DAC dongle to replace my Apple version. This goes into my headphone amp. I only use my desktop with stereo wired headphones. No surround or passthrough. I used this for about a week with my Win11 PC with no issues in Tidal, Foobar, YouTube, etc. I fiddled with various sample rates but ended up leaving it at 24/192 since I use Peace APO to apply EQ settings. I have used Peace with the Apple dongle and various other DACs without issue with Kodi for years. The JM20 uses the CS43131 chip and, as I understand it, it’s a cheap but very good DAC chip used in many USB DACs. It supports higher sample rates compared to the Apple dongle and it is closer to the line-level out that you’d get from a true desktop DAC.
Then when I tried to play a video in Kodi using the JM20 as the sound output, I would get popping/dropout noises every 10 seconds. Nothing I did could fix this. I have tried:
- all number of Kodi sound settings (Best Match/Fixed/Resample/Keep Audio Device Alive/Low Volume Noise, Adjust Refresh Rate, etc)
- setting Win11 sound settings to 24/48, 16/48, 32/192, etc.
- lowering volume or raising it on the dongle (generally I leave everything on 100% with a negative preamp in Peace)
- turning Peace APO on and off = no change
- using a USB-A to C adapter to try a diff port (working Apple dongle uses exact same C port as JM20)
- running Kodi fullscreen or windowed
- Uninstalled Kodi, nuked user profile, reinstalled with default settings
- Updated BIOS and turned off a Ryzen PBO underclock (back to defaults)
I have also noticed that when Kodi is running and the JM20 dongle is plugged in, all audio in Windows has pops/drops. If I play a track in Tidal and then start Kodi, as soon as Kodi is loaded, Tidal will begin to pop. If I close Kodi, Tidal stops popping. This applies to everything: YouTube, etc. If I stop playing the video and just leave Kodi running (playing nothing) with nothing else playing on the PC, I can hear pops/clicks/drops roughly every 10 seconds until I shut it down. Playing videos using MPC-HC works fine, unless Kodi is running. Then the MPC-HC video will pop just like everything else until Kodi is shut down.
At this point, I would just assume this cheapo Aliexpress JM20 is defective, but why is it only defective with Kodi?
Both of these logs are with a brand-new vanilla Kodi 21.1 install with a fresh user profile playing a local test file. No addons or anything. My untrained eye couldn’t see anything obvious in the logs. I also have a Scarlett Solo interface and this also works fine with Kodi and Peace APO.
Log with JM20 and popping
Log with Apple dongle and clean audio