Cubox any one?

[MikeJazz]

Next week I am going to power it from a 2.1amp usb battery power pack instead of the wallwart.

Also switching to a realtime kernel with MPD like my older E350M tomorrow for comparison. On the e350M there was clearly an improvement, but I need to confirm the belief on this little box.

G0bble

 

Any feedback? I am potencially interested in a power solution for my Cubox as well...

[G0bble]

Any feedback? I am potencially interested in a power solution for my Cubox as well...

The hash is gone. As in all audiophile evaluations - you won't hear the hash when the original sound with PSU is all you have heard. But as soon as you swap out the PSU for a battery its is apparent that there was some hash in the original sound. The bass is deeper. But I am confused about whether the sound is thinner with the battery or if the decay has improved. Haven't listened much.

 

Tell you Monday.

 

G

[G0bble]

If you get a battery solution - don't get one that is too smart. Some will check if its android or apple a cell or a tablet and decide how many amperes to supply. If they cannot detect they won't supply the full current of 2 amps or more. Get one with basic circuit protection for over or under voltage and current draw designed to protect the battery, nothing more.

 

G

[G0bble]

I did some 10 hours of listening over the last few days. For less that $50,the 12000mah battery is an awesome upgrade. With a half full versus half empty cup analogy - The sound is sharper and more accurate if not thinner, depending on how you want to look at it. I no longer pick my brains about it. I am loving my system even more now and I can't wait to switch it on again tomorrow. Deeper lows, blacker blacks, more etched, no comet tail to the notes, more noticeable space between layers that I am constantly aware of throughout the listening experience.

 

Go for it! Be sure to get one that supplies 2.1 amps though.

 

G

[MikeJazz]

Thanks for the great feedback G!

[Guest]

Cubox works great.

 

[blindpet]

I've dedicated my CuBox to serve as a network audio adapter with minimal OS. Streaming PCM/DSD audio from player and CuBox just adding a network interface to the DAC. No USB problems or anything with hires audio. Just a tiny box sitting behind my DAC. When I get my hiFace DAC I will try it out too for 32/384.

 

Did you happen to use Runeaudio for this?

[Superdad]

Did you happen to use Runeaudio for this?

 

No, Miska's company is Signalyst, and he is the developer of HQ Player (for Linux, Windows, OS X). HQ Player is a software music player, which, while not having the most advanced user interface, does have the most advanced sample rate conversion engine for both PCM and DSD (and for taking PCM up to DSD rates). Miska has spent years refining both his PCM upsampling filters and his SDM modulators--culminating in several unrivaled filters referred to as Poly-sinc.

 

As with other purist music players and the computer audiophile quest for the best playback, the key is to leverage modern computer horsepower to perform sample rate conversion and digital filters so that what is sent to the DAC is at bit rates such that the DAC's own resource-constrained digital filters are bypassed. (For most typical DACs that means feeding them PCM at 352.8KHz or 384KHz.)

 

HQ Player does that but also goes further in offering to convert PCM material to hi-rate sigma-delta modulation (as a 1-bit DSD stream since that is what can be transported in today's consumer audio world), for feeding to DSD-capable DACs. There are good threads on HQ Player here at CA.

 

HQ Player can be used in a desktop mode--doing the processing and sending the output to a USB-connected DAC--or one can split the system, letting the desktop perform just the heavy processing (and at very high rates his SD modulators take some serious computing power) and sending the result out via Ethernet to a minimal DAC-conected computer such as a CuBox or BeagleBoard. That is what Signalyst refers to as an NAA, and the OS underlying it is always a Linux-variant. There is an advantage to such an arrangement because the a small, quiet Linux box can be stripped of superfluous processes and if its power supply and USB port is good it makes for an ideal music source.

A lot of people liken the NAA to DLNA's server/renderer/controller architecture, but it is not that at all. An NAA is not a DLNA 'renderer.'

 

Sorry my writing of this was interrupted for a hour, and now I have to run. I hope the above overview info is useful to you blind pet.

 

Regards,

--Alex C.

[fob69]

Hello,

 

I am new on the forum...

 

I have a squeezebox touch connected to a sabre DAC with assync USB.

 

I think about migrate on a linux bases client ...

 

Does someone has feedback on sound quality of : Rapsebby / cubox-i / hummingbird / others compare to the original sb touch with USB async ? (y would use squeezelite or maybe something else if the front end is as good as LMS + Ipeng).

 

Thank you

 

Bernard

[hagensieker]

I have a Cubox -i4 that's in my suitcase I use for travel. Soon as I hit the hotel room I set it up as a web, and print server, and have installed Logitechmediaserver on it with squeezelite. I run Arch with LXQT desktop but generally run it headless. I generally run it with a Fiio E17 DAC and Sony MDR-V6 headphones. I think it is an excellent sounding little system.

[johann]

Hello,

I have a squeezebox touch connected to a sabre DAC with assync USB.

 

I think about migrate on a linux bases client ...

 

Does someone has feedback on sound quality of : Rapsebby / cubox-i / hummingbird / others compare to the original sb touch with USB async ? (y would use squeezelite or maybe something else if the front end is as good as LMS + Ipeng)

 

I think you will get the same quality or possibly worse. The RPIs seem to work well with some DACs and not all with others.

But those small boxes are very cheap and it takes less than an hour to have one setup with so in worst case you throw away a small amount of money and a little time and you could always use it for something else such as a media centre with XBMC (or Kodi nowadays) for instance.

[Bazinga]

I don't know if this was mentioned or not but my Totaldac D1 server uses the cubox