SPDIF keep alive?

I have never heard about it until I watched the aornic review of Gungnir Multibit .
And what I found on the developer blog https://blog.rhysgoodwin.com/htpc/spdif-keepalive/ was even more puzzling:
"I’ve discovered that the onboard IDT audio has a problem with the SPDIF output, or at least my Sony receiver has a problem with it! Every time a sound is played it causes the SPDIF input on the receiver to initialize which takes about 500 milliseconds, after the sound has finished the SPDIF goes back to sleep. As a result the first 500ms is lost off every sound that is played;"
It does not make any sense to me but I know nothing about the specifics of SPIDIF. Anyone can comment on this?
Does DAC really need keep alive signal on SPDIF connection?

 

IME when using a computer as your source it is driver related. Check out my post on this here: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...-multibit-impressions.158/page-17#post-138428

 

The reviewer above is a tool.

It's not uncommon for DACs to be muted when there's nothing playing, unmuting shortly after playback starts after things become stable. Whether it's a muting relay, or something software-related (e.g. the way the Chord Mojo does it), it's fairly standard. Some players will have an option to pad the start by a user-adjustable amount to avoid this, for people who are really bothered by it.

For example, JRiver has this option:

Options like this will make the muting a non-issue. However, even without it, muting is a hell of a lot better than a violent "pop" in your transducers that you'd get otherwise.

 

I had this problem with my Chord Mojo. Every half second of a song would cut off using optical input. Now using the same cable with Gungnir Multibit I don't have that problem anymore, so probably a driver related thing. I would play around with the drivers and sample rate settings if using a PC as a source. There is also a plugin for foobar2000 which you can set a small amount of delay at the start of playback so that it won't cut off. (I can't remember the name of it, sorry!)

EDIT: Here is one that works:
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dsp_silence

 

@Delayeed - the Gungnir Multibit does it too, it's just a shorter delay. It's not a "driver-related thing", but a deliberate feature to prevent nasty pops on the output (listen for the click of the muting relay). It should be no surprise that the Chord implementation is a bit cack-handed, though

 

No it doesn't happen at all for me, only clicking I hear is when the song has different sample rate from the previous track in which case there is a small delay.
I do hear a very faint few ms click in the headphones when starting playback however but it's quiet and I didn't even notice it until just now lol.
I wonder if cables make a difference regarding this... Have you installed the Schiit Audio drivers?