Article: C.A.P.S. v2.0

[antipodes_audio]

I have been making music servers for a couple of years now and prefer to use a case such as the Origen AE H6 which accomodates full-size components. Performance is better than the Mini-ITX ones I have made, having better transparency and dynamics, you can get 16 or 32GB of RAM onboard, use full height cards and cooling is easier. The H6 is, in my opinion, a better looking case too, and is no larger than an average solid state amplifier or a large-ish CD Transport.<br />

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But for interface I feel firewire/Mac is a better way to go than USB/Windows. It is hard to be definitive about that because DACs tend to offer one or the other. It also means doing the hackintosh thing, and it limits your DAC choices - but why go past the Weiss DAC202? The comparison with any of the Apple products, including the tricked out minis is night and day. I have regularly done demos versus the Mini with 8GB RAM, SSD linear PSU etc and noone fails to hear a vast difference. The solidity of the sound is unmatched by any of the USB/Windows builds I have done. It is a shame it violates Apple's EULA because for me it is the best digital sound available today.

[machinehead]

Sounds interesting, but don't you have to use fans in a full size board?

[robs6]

Thanks for your insights, Antipode_Audio. <br />

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Wondering whether you actually tried building the C.A.P.S. server or another mini-itx mobo with an external AC supply and the SoTM USB card?<br />

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Apart from the greater memory capacity of the full-sized rig, what would you guess accounts for the better transparency you are hearing? Raw CPU power? I would have thought that the full-sized board with internal power supply would suffer a greater degree of noise on the supply busses and ground plane. Beyond that, there's the question of the fan noise as machinehead notes.

[antipodes_audio]

A few questions there - will try to be brief, please don't mistake it for rudeness.<br />

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No moving parts at all. Not sure how you got to assuming I use fans. On the contrary I suspect there are more reasons to need a fan in a small form factor machine. I have Micro-ATX machines that have been running 24/7 for years without any heat issues or related failures.<br />

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Yes, I have made Mini-ITX servers with external PSUs, 4 of them if I recall, and suspect their inferior sound came from a variety of factors, maybe less powerful chips on-board, less RAM and poorer architecture of the CPUs, though that is all just guesswork. <br />

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I felt the Mobile CPU types were really quite poor but how do you know it isn't the motherboards?<br />

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On the CPU front it is quite notable how much faster, transparent and coherent the sound becomes using an i5-2390T (or similar of the latest low-power dissipation Sandy Bridges) than say an E7500. But the E7500 produces a nicely rounded and warm sound if you like that kind of thing (again, how do you know it isn't the motherboard).<br />

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I have preferred DDR3 over DDR2 RAM as well. <br />

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I have made my own filters for the disk feeds and like them but have some SoTM filters coming, to see if they are any better. <br />

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My confidence in USB is low enough I haven't invested in trying the SoTM USB card, and I have disposed of all but one USB DAC for the reasons stated. Wasn't async USB a disappointment? <br />

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If I had a conventional DAC I wanted to use, then I would use (and have used) an Apogee Rosetta 200 to interface via firewire to the computer and then SPDIF (or AES if that is your poison, it isn't mine) to the DAC. I have demo'd that interface versus a variety of USB interfaces, using relatively inexpensive firewire cables versus very expensive USB cables, both feeding a DCS Elgar and the USB always sounds indistinct (opposite of having solidity) and muddled by comparison. I can't help feeling the SoTM USB card would just be another few hundred down the drain, as the highly touted async USB interfaces all were. But maybe now you have challenged me on that point I will have to do it.

[machinehead]

I wasn't assuming it had a fan, it was a serious question, can you build an i5 board without a fan.<br />

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Thanks for any info.

[antipodes_audio]

Some boxes will be better than others. When using fans the holes in the case are strategically placed so that air is forced through a particular route, but without fans you rely on convection. So the best fanless cases will have a lot of ventillation and preferably holes at top and bottom rather than on the sides. <br />

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The CPU cooler I tend to use most is the Scythe Rasetsu with the fan removed. The fanless Rasetsu has proved to be sufficient for any E7500 (or similar) CPU build.<br />

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You are correct that the first gen of Sandy Bridges, and most of the later ones will not be cooled sufficiently with the fanless Rasetsu. Even the 65W Max TDP ones are too hard. But recently there have been a few interesting CPUs with low TDPs such as the (more an i3 really) i5-2390T with a TDP of just 35W. I have made four servers using these and even in poorly ventillated cases like the H6 there are no heat problems.<br />

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I will be making one soon with an i5-2500T which has a Max TDP of 45W. I am sometimes asked why not just under-clock some other chip rather than use the low TDP chips, and the answer is I tried and found I still had some heat problems from time to time going that way.<br />

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As regards the Mini-ITX boards, I have found they are great for a Linux music server, but for some reason not so good for Win 7 or Hackintosh. I suspect that this means I just need to wait till they develop a bit further. For example, I imagine one that can handle 8GB of RAM may change my mind.

[dallasjustice]

I also was unable to boot my computer with the Sonore PSU. Of course, the SMPS worked fine. I took the SOTM HD filter out, and it booted just fine with the Sonore PSU. <br />

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Necessity is the mother of invention. I noticed I had a couple of AQVOX 5v LPSUs laying around. So, I successfully powered the boot drive with an AQVOX 5v LPSU with the SOTM HD filter attached. Just for the fun of it, I then decided to power the 2nd hard drive with another AQVOX 5v LPSU. Everything sounds great. I am very happy to be back using Jriver.

[satbox]

I'm looking for a good linear PSU for my CAPS V2. I possibly thought to buy the Sonore one but it seems that it is not compliant with the CAPS V2...<br />

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Any advise of an high quality PSU that works with the CAPS V2? Thank you!<br />

[tallos]

I have read this thread and i must say it is of great interest to me.A great concept and one that appears to be the answer to so many hifi servers that don't quite cut the mustard.<br />

CAPS V2 i believe is really addressing the issues that so many servers from leading manufacturers gloss over.i.e lowest power usage,minimal processing from OS,proper USB filtering etc.<br />

I would however like to see the next chapter V3 perhaps? This could be something that i would like to build or maybe even order ready made(depends how complex)Can we get some idea of when this might happen? As much as i like the V2 i think there is room for further development.

[lightminer]

What I would like to see, and this is reflected in other peoples' comments is the video card expansion. I know that may mean a different case, but Theater View is just done too well... <br />

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The NVidia NVS 300 might be a candidate. 17.5 watts, passively heat-sink cooled, supports 1900X1200 for 1:1 output to HighDef TV, and the higher 2560X1600 for monitors. <br />

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It is really tiny and takes up almost no room - not long and skinny with integrated fan like lots of graphics cards. Might even stick into current chassis? It also has power management - it will cool off when not in use quite a bit.<br />

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This is a descendant of NVIDIA's laptop graphics cards, so the power management stuff is real.<br />

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EDIT: Ah, just poked a bit deeper. So, there is one PCI slot, and it is using the SOTM, which could be moved offboard (although I much prefer the PCI onboard solution, much cleaner) but still the NVIDIA card expects PCIE 1X or 16X, not PCI.<br />

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There is a way to do this however, just like with v2 its a matter of balancing all of the requirements, certainly a board exists for a small case that is atom-oriented that can take a small graphics card such as the NVIDIA NVS 300.

[lightminer]

This looks pretty cool, though it obviously doesn't have the internal PCI slot for the SOTM. You'd have to use the external SOTM device.<br />

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http://usa.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1021/<br />

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and this is the SSD upgrade:<br />

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http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=1357CC13A5CA7304<br />

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This also looks pretty cool:<br />

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http://us.shuttle.com/X350V2.aspx<br />

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You can configure it with NVIDIA ION and SSD...<br />

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Do we know exactly how much difference there is in external SOTM box vs PCI?<br />

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These look very attractive to me in terms of simplicity...

[firedog]

Just to note: the SOTM external box and pci card aren't the same device: the card is designed for clean electrical/sonic hookup of any USB audio device, and the box is a USB>SPDIF converter, albeit with some quality regulators built in.

[lightminer]

I guess I think of the external box as the 2nd best way - if you have a noisy computer environment and can't do anything inside the computer the box is the next best way to get asynch usb that is as cleaned as is possible, and if you do a short 3 or even 6 foot toslink run after the box you'll get total electrical isolation from the computer system and the DAC. I've not thought of it as a usb-spdif converter although obviously it does that - I guess because of their work on noise regulation on their offerings inside the computer I think of it as a cleaner of sorts...

[firedog]

All the ones I've seen use heat pipes and heat sinks, which makes them much more complicated and expensive that a CAPS 2 build. But it can be done. See http://endpcnoise.com for one of several vendors of such devices.<br />

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I assume that's part of the reason Chris used the dual core Atom board for his design - leads to a simpler and cheaper PC.

[lightminer]

The Shuttle model indicated above is dual-core atom, just like CAPS v2. Just doesn't have a pci slot for the SOTM card...<br />

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And it is only $726 with 4 GB RAM, SSD (128 - assuming NAS for music storage) and ION NVidia graphics chip/card. Because of that ION chip/card you can output 1080p to your flatscreen. And it has the DVD drive.<br />

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They do make custom pieces - we could bug them to make it with a larger case and place for a single PCI card ...<br />

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Oh, and I slightly indicated the wrong Asus model, which is also dual-atom based (click on the link - this thing is super-tiny!). This is the right link here - same box, different internals, also has NVidia ION graphics controller like the Shuttle.<br />

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http://usa.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1012P/<br />

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I chose both of these for their dual-core Atom and Nvidia Ion combo.<br />

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[lightminer]

Here is a great ITX motherboard with Nvidia Ion2 graphics, this is a fanless board, and has the same dual-core atom processors.<br />

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Of course, it has the modern PCIe x4 slot, not PCI, but just saying that this is the kind of board I think we should be heading towards.<br />

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SOTM really has to get out a PCIe x1 or PCIe x2 slot or whatever it needs - that would make it compatible with all new computers. Of course this has been mentioned on many threads hundreds of times.....<br />

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(For those that don't know if it were a PCIe x1 or x2 card, it would fit into any slot of that size or larger, for PCIe a x1 card can fit into any PCIe slot. Magic.)<br />

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Anyhow, here is the board:<br />

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http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~AT5IONT-I <br />

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(You know, another interesting thing here is that it has optical out already... It would be interesting to hear this via optical out into an asynch via SPDIF optical DAC... I think that should do through 24/96 just fine)

[dallasjustice]

I really don't understand how improved video chipset or hotter/faster CPU is going to make the CAPS 2.0 sound better. I can imagine how it may make it sound worse. If you are looking for the ultimate HTPC, that's one thing. Chris' CAPS 2.0 is about building an elite dedicated music server over USB. Btw, I have tried various HTPC builds with the hope that I could get ultimate video and audio performance and ended up with neither.<br />

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All I know is that the CAPS 2.0, with the modest psu upgrades I am using right now, absolutely smokes my MBP 2011 with choice of playback software over USB.

[losingmyreligion]

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Are you running windows or linux on your CAPS box?<br />

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[Talos2000]

Chris, reading through the posts, I find various posters asking for comparisons of the sound of CAPS V2 compared to a Mac. Yet I don't see any responses (or else I managed to miss them). Surely you must have some thoughts on the subject, given that you are very clear on the sonic value of your design vis-a-vis its Windows-based predecessors and alternatives.

[dallasjustice]

I am running windows 7 32 bit and Jriver in media server mode. I am using 32 bit in anticipation for merging technology's "emotion."

[4est]

I would really love to see a player software comparisons of these on the same hardware, especially the CAPS.

[dallasjustice]

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. :-)

[lightminer]

I don't disagree with anything anyone is saying. <br />

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But somehow, taking CAPS v2 and adding Ion2 capability - getting Hulu or purchased VOD from Amazon or Apple to play with little or no shaking or stuttering would be awesome.<br />

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I'm not sure, but if the SOTM card came out for PCIe 1x came out, then the ASUS board indicated above should do that just great.<br />

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Not looking to game on it, or do anything with high frame rates or anything. Just add Ion2 to what is there.<br />

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What is annoying is that looking at a large number of ITX boards, they seem to either have a PCI slot or Ion2, I've found plenty of one or the other - all dual-core Atom but none with both, as PCI is so old and Ion2 so new.<br />

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Compared to the board Chris chose - there is nothing special about his board in itself for audio - it isn't 'better' for audio than these other ITX atom dual-core based boards, it just is the one that fit the criteria he was looking for in terms of functionality - primarily size (ITX), no fan, dual core Atom, and has a PCI slot. I've seen two or three other options that also fits that criteria and should sound exactly the same - and some of those have Intel embedded graphics, but they don't put out 1080p, it needs the Ion2 reinforcement to do that. Any of these other ITX boards would sound just the same given the rest of the components being the same.<br />

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So, now the thing is to see if we can just add fanless Ion2. <br />

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Note as I've had 2 comments on this - there is no change in processor at all (both are 525) between the ASUS and the CAPS2 board. Might be a few more Mhz here or there but very very minor difference if any at all - several are exactly the same processor.<br />

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The one thing I'm not sure about is if somehow having no video at all lowers a noise floor or interference or something, not sure, we'd have to test two similar boards with all of the other components being the same.

[Guest Claude]

I haven't found any information on how to control the caps. Do I use a monitor or can I control it via RDC (but that would need wireless or a wired network connection)?<br />

Can someone please point me to the information. I guess I am overlooking something.<br />

Thanks a lot.<br />

Claude

[Guest Claude]

Has anyone experience using a linear PSU? I read "Dallas Justice" experience with the AQVOX and I know that Mani has someone build him a linear PSU. <br />

I guess, it will be possible to upgrade later on and just start with the CAPS as build by little green computers?<br />

Greetings from Berlin<br />

Claudius<br />