CEntrance HiFi-M8

CEntrance will be bundling a Windows Audio driver with the HiFi-M8.

Right now we are working to define the functionality of the driver above and beyond what’s already available.

The CEntrance Universal Driver is our famous piece of Windows technology, which has been licensed to a large number of equipment manufacturers, from McIntosh, to Korg, to DiGiCo.

Drivers represent a significant management hassle for a manufacturer. They need to be maintained, up-kept, improved, re-released when new versions of the OS are released, etc. They need to be written from scratch when a manufacturer switches from one USB chip to another.

Most manufacturers end up using a different driver for every product they offer. This creates confusion for the users, since they don’t know which driver to download, how to install, etc. They often end up downloading the wrong driver that doesn’t work with the product they purchased. All of that creates a bad user experience. Something that CEntrance is committed to avoid.

Our position is simple. We offer one driver that works with all CEntrance products. It auto-detects the actual piece of hardware you own, it configures itself appropriately for use with the USB technology implemented in the product, and it safely and seamlessly installs behind-the-scenes, to provide uninterrupted music listening experience.

The CEntrance Universal Driver is already compatible with DACport and DACmini.  Both of those products are based on TI USB technology (the TAS1020B chip). On the other hand, the HiFi-M8′s USB engine is based on a chip from a company called XMOS. It’s a completely different architecture. The good news is that our driver already supports the XMOS line of chips.

We are now working to understand if the driver would need to be updated for HiFi-M8 and if any new features are needed. Looks like one such new  feature is adding the ability to switch sample rates from the playback application. In the coming weeks we will be working to make the changes and re-release the driver on our website. The driver will continue to support all of our existing products, while adding this new functionality. The end user will still have one driver to download. Everything will be transparent. Nice and easy!