After the introduction of Diretta here, and according to the fact that installation process disappeared, you would find in this article some guidance concerning Diretta installation.

First of all, let’s start by what you need :

• one PC with windows OS installed (prefered Windows 10 but Windows 2019 Server works also fine). This PC could be powerfull enough as it is going to onboard your server software (JRIVER, LMS, ROON, Audirvana, HQPlayer….), depending on what you expect to do (convolution, transcoding, upsampling,…). This PC in the “Diretta world” is called “host”. This “host” needs to have 2 ethernet ports. If you have only one, you can use a USB/Ethernet adaptor : it works fine.
• one device that could be a PC or a dedicated piece of hardware like the SPEC RMP-UB1. This device is called “target“. According to Diretta, no need to be powerfull as it is an endpoint which is going to be connected to a USB DAC. A LattePanda PC seems enough. Some users are using customized target with optimized power supply, USB board or Ethernet board. Let’s be clear, optimizing the PC brings clearly improvement in the sound quality. Anyway, the beauty of Diretta is the capacity to provide nice SQ with little investment from PC Target side. This target needs to have at list one ethernet port and one USB port. The Ethernet port is directly linked to the “host” and the USB is linked to the USB DAC where you can find some information concerning compatible ones here. The list is not exhaustive and in 99% of the case it should work. The target is booting from USB on the Diretta USB-key (see below) so no need of any hard drives (SSD or standard one)
• One DAC with USB entry port
• One USB cable
• 2 ethernet cables
• One Diretta bootable USB key
• the Diretta ASIO driver you can find here

Once you have the shopping list in hands, let move to connect all this stuff from hardware perspective. You need to :

• Connect the “host” with an ethernet cable to a switch or to a router in order to be connected to the network and internet. This connection would be named “IPV4“
• Connect with the second ethernet cable the “host” (with the 2nd ethernet port) and the “target”. No need to go through any switch or router. It is a direct connection we would call later “Diretta-IPV6“.
• Connect the “target” to your DAC through USB connnection and make sure you selected the USB input from your DAC.

Now that all the connections are done we need to go through the software configuration on the “host”. If you go under windows in your “control panel” and “network” you should find 2 connections : 1 with the network identified and the other one with an “unknown network”. The one with “identified network” is the connection coming from your switch providing access to the network and internet (below Internet IPV4). The “unknown network” (identified below as Diretta) corresponds to the direct connection between the “host” and the “target”.

For the next step, you need to right click on the connection named “Diretta” (the “unknown network”) and select properties. You would have the window below

You need to select “Protocole Internet Version 6 (TCP/IPV6)” and click on the “properties” button and “adanced”

Once you are inside the “advanced” window, you need to untick the “automatic metric” and put “100” in the field “Interface metric”. Once it is done, click on ok and you can go out of all the windows. Please note that for a unclear reason, if you want to use Roon, the IPV4 needs also to be enabled on the “Diretta-IPV6” interface as below.

PAY ATTENTION : If you are using Audiophile Optimizer, this software is disabling the IPV6. You need to enable it again going into the Registry Editor (launch regedit by typing in the windows logo “regedit” and replace the value as per the information below :

Found in the registry edito the following entry : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP6\Parameters

Go on the key DisabledComponents or create it if not here. Replace the hexadecimal value “ff” by “0”

Reboot the PC. The ethernet board in IPV6 would appear in the Diretta Asio driver configuration and the USB Target should also appear.

Now all your network should be set properly. You need now to install the ASIO Driver of Diretta mentioned earlier in the shopping list. While the ASIO driver is installed, you can launch it and you would see the window below :

You need to launch your “target” device, putting the USB key in a USB port and selecting from the BIOS of your PC to boot on this USB key. The boot requires only few seconds as the linux-based OS on the USB Key is loaded in the RAM of the “target”. After the boot you would be able to remove the key.

After the target would have boot, you would be able in the “ASIO Driver Configuration” window to select the Ethernet interface recognized between your host and your target and in “connect type” the USB interface connected to your USB DAC. All the other parameters like “preset profile”, “ASIO Buffer”, etc…have an impact on the sound and it would be up to you to make the tests of what is more suitable for you. Please note that changes in parameters needs to close your server (roon, Jriver,…), make the change in the ASIO Configuration and click “save” and finally re-launch your server.

In order to enjoy music, the last setup to do is to select the Diretta Asio Driver as source in your server (Roon, Audirvana, JRiver, LMS or HQplayer).

Enjoy the music !