Quite a fight with Aurlaic ark mx+

[nikosidis]

The DAC is the first one from Auralic. It got USB and COAX input.
Auralic have not updated the driver for later Windows versions so it is only working with Windows 7 or older. It is no a plug and play DAC. Dedicated software has to be installed to windows. From what I remember I in the manual 'm pretty sure that Apple, MAC does not need any dedicated driver.
I have used my Oppo 103 blu-ray player with COAX out to this DAC without problems. Recently I tought it was time to try the USB input.
As I only have Windows 10 (not working with this DAC) I conneced to a laptop I have with Ubuntu. It worked, but I had pops when playing music that I could not get rid of.
I found Snakeoil OS. It was time to try that one out. I used an old DELL D620 laptop I have. Core2Duo platform. 
Installation went fine. I got the player up and started to play music.
The first thing I noticed using MPD player with the remote app. was the sound where superior to what I was used to.
If this have something to do with now using USB input instead of COAX input I don't know. What I noticed where much cleaner sound. It was like a layer where gone.
Something in the low middle frequencys where colored using the Oppo with COAX out.
The sad thing is that sometimes I could still hear pops. I started to tweak BIOS settings. Updated Ubuntu, Snakeoil OS version. Updated firmware
on both Laptop and Auralic DAC. Tried external powered USB hub, different USB cables. Still same problem but must be said that to some degree I did might
have change the pops for the better or worse. It is also important to notice that the pops are random. In a song I used a lot that are with acoustic guitar and vocals I would
detect pops around 4 - 5 times. 
Since I where using an old HDD drive I tought as a last chance I could install a SSD 120GB. I also upgraded the RAM to 4GB. It must be said I did that before
the SSD install without any improvement. I don't know if Ubuntu detects the amount of RAM under installation and does something different. Anyway, 
now it was time to install Snakeoil OS 64-bit version to the SSD drive. 
After installation my DAC did not detect as it should. I got this full requency sound from my speakers. Just like old CRT TV with no found channel or Radio.
I tried to change some settings and rebooted the OS several times.
What solved this issue was to change the USB port. To my supprise everything worked much better now. I can still hear on some recordings pops but they are almost
not detectable. Very much better than before. It's is like the pops have shortened. It does not matter if I'm playing 16bit or 24 bit. This is not a CPU problem as far as I can tell. 
Another note is that I'm using an external SSD, USB drive where all my music is. I'm going to copy the music to the internal
SSD to see if that could improve things further. I'm also thinking of tweaking some options. What option could I use to lower or higher latency with MPD player?
I know Auralic recommends very low latency time. 
All the same I can live with this. The sound is fantastic! No way going back to playback from Oppo. I'm going to try out a laptop with Win. 7 I have at work. I keep you posted.
Thank you for a great OS for audiophiles.