A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming

[ray-dude]

13 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

 

That's the $64,000 question to ask ourselves whenever we're thinking about an upgrade to our source components. Could spending thousands of dollars result in an even bigger jump in SQ when compared to what we're able to get from M-Scaler? Both @austinpop and @romaz seemed to share the same kinda enthusiasm about the power of a million taps

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=159&tab=comments#comment-727232

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=148&tab=comments#comment-723032

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=164&tab=comments#comment-728221

 

Finally here's a fantastic review

 

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/chord-blu-mk-ii-digital-cd-transport.22848/reviews

 

Thank you (the review is mine).  I've been lurking here since my Blu + CD >>>>>> USB -> Blu experience (that was revelatory...I've always been a bits are bits guy), trying to get a little smarter about SQ improvement options on the digital side of the chain.  Amazing trails folks are blazing here.

 

While I have not had a chance to hear the Zenith SE, I was able to audition the Innuos Zenith (non-SE) at a local dealer before it got shipped to another client.  I hauled my DAVE + Blu2 + Omega Super Alnico Monitors to the dealership and set up for a 4 hour audition.  This was before I went through the major RF hygiene work that I detailed in my Blu2 review on Headfi.  Please note that the Omega SAMs are the only transducers I have that have the scaling to reliably showcase differences at the limit of what BluDAVE can do (B&W 802d3's + Benchmark amp, Sennheiser HD800's, Noble Katanas, MrSpeakers Aeon Flows, Focal Utopias, etc. all clearly are limited WAY before you can approach what BluDAVE can do)

 

With the Zenith connected directly to the Blu2 vs USB, there was a massive step down from playing CD's on the Blu2 directly (when the USB cable was disconnected).  Based on what I know now, even with the Zenith, RF hygiene is a key thing with the BluDAVE combination.

 

Unfortunately, the unit was already sold before I was able to crack the RF nut with my blue collar Sonore SonicorbiterSE + iFi iPower PS setup, so I was unable to go back to see what the Zenith could really do.  Alas, the Zenith SE in my area has been unobtanium, so I was never able to compare the two (if anyone in San Diego area has a Zenith SE and would like to compare notes over an appropriate beverage or three, please let me know!)

 

Net net: with prodigious use of ferrites on both the USB cable and (much more importantly) on the dual BNC cables that connect the Blu2 to the DAVE, I am able to get to equivalence between playing music on the Blu2 CD transport (no USB connection) and streaming over USB from my Sonicoriber to the Blu2.  Others have reported that they can get better than Blu2 CD SQ via diligence on the  digital side of the fence.  I have not been able to get there.  The Blu2 CD only is still the base reference for all the tweaking I do.

 

That being said, based on how ephemeral the remarkable depth and height resolution is with the BluDAVE, I'm absolutely certain that enhanced power and perhaps clocks would have a huge impact, but my next step is to elevate my transducers.  I believe my current largest bottleneck are the Omega SAMs themselves (even though they blow all my other transducers away, even at a fraction of the cost...incredible performance and value).  

 

Toward that end, this past week, I was able to spend a joyous 6 hours auditioning some amazing Voxativ gear with my BluDAVE stack, which was decidedly next level vs the Omegas (to say the least...wow!).  If I'm able to get those into my living room, I'm looking forward to coming back to the digital side and following the path that folks  are forging here.

 

Back to lurk mode

 

[ray-dude]

Completely different level of sound.  I adore my Omega SAMs.  Opened my eyes to what was always there in the music, but that I never had the kit to hear.  It was like the character in Flatland that is lifted out of the 2D space, and can see 3D for the first time.  Once you hear it, it is impossible to go back.

 

The Omega direct was one of several "Red Pill" experiences for me over the past year (I linked to a review of that experience in my Blu2 review on Head Fi).  One of the other Red Pill moments was when I first heard the Chord Mojo.  Absolutely stunning, dollar for dollar the finest DAC on the planet.  Blew me away.  Based on what I heard, I ordered a Chord DAVE unheard, and right after I heard the DAVE, the Chord Blu2 unheard.  

 

I'd say the Voxativ 4D drivers ($15k for the pair, then you have a variety of cabinet choices to drop them in) are the DAVE to the Omega Super Alnico Mojo: takes what is transformational in the Omega alnico's and makes it effortless and vast, with stunning new detail and speed, tonal balance, and virtually no distortion.  The price of the Mojo to DAVE is also roughly the price of the Omega driver to the Voxativ 4D driver.  I suspect some of the Voxativ hybrid field coil drivers may have Blu-level impact, but I'm not willing (yet  to drop $65k a pair(!) to see what they can do.

 

I was hearing things through the Voxativ's and BluDAVE that I hadn't heard before, so I suspect they might be more capable of revealing degradations from the upstream digital chain than the Omegas (see how I made this post on topic?)

 

The Voxativ 4D drivers were 103dB sensitivity, so the DAVE drove them with pretty unambiguous authority.  I was enjoying the BluDAVE too much to drop in BluHugo2 to see how it would drive the units, but based on the room shaking levels we got to, I'm sure even the Hugo2 could hold its own with these speakers.

 

I also had a chance to spend a couple hours with the incredibly impressive Voxativ T211 tube amp ($20k).  As amazing as the Voxativ T211 tube amp was (by far the finest synergy between tube amp and transducer I've ever heard), as I'm sure you've experienced, no amp on the planet can hold a candle to the DAVE (or Hugo2) driving high efficiency speakers direct.  That being said, the Voxativ T211/4D combo was the smallest gap to DAVE direct I have ever heard, which says a lot about the engineering prowess of the Voxativ team.  

[ray-dude]

Larry, I'm not at home right now for photos (all the cables are also back in my music cabinet now), but I ended up with the following:

 

Tripp Lite 2m USB cable with 2 built in Ferrite Chokes (U023-006) ($2.68)

     https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MQ29B2

 

40 (!) Topnisus ferrites ($8.99 for 10 pack)

    https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E6PLXXC?th=1

 

I placed the ferrites as close to Chord Blu2 as I could.  With USB going into the Chord Blu2, I could hear clear improvement as I clipped them on one by one up to about 20 ferrites.  After that, changes became very marginal.  I could hear no changes after 25-30.  Since I had the ferrites anyway, I keep all 40 on the USB cable (it is as good a place to store them as any).

 

When I tested the ferrite'ed USB cable vs a bare cable going into the DAVE USB, there was only a very small difference.  The massive difference was when going through the Blu2.  Since Blu2 is such a MASSIVE SQ lift for the DAVE (you have no idea), it had been hiding the USB degradation, until I listened to the Blu2 CD directly with USB disconnected.  It was only then that I could hear what the Blu2 was really capable of.

 

Separately, the Blu2 is digitally connected to the Chord DAVE DAC through dual BNC cables.  I use 2m Monoprice 75 Ohm cables.  While 2m vs 1m made a difference (I heard no difference going to a 4m BNC cable), I heard no difference with more expensive 2m Canare cables (I did not try anything more exotic).  On the Monoprice BNC cables, I recommend 5x Wurth 2.5GHz ferrites on each cable, positioned to be as close to the DAVE inputs as possible.  In my review I used the 1GHz Wurths.  I later got the 2,5GHz Wurths, and noted a VERY small improvement over the 1GHz Wurths.  In my case, I have 5x 2.5Ghz Wurths and 4x 1 GHz Wurths on each cable, because that is as good a place to store them as any (I could not hear any real difference past 5x 2.5GHz Wurths in my setup)

 

I will say that physical cable management was *extremely* important before I had the ferrites on the cables.  Even minor changes (what they were touching, proximity to other cables, etc) had a huge impact.  It made my initial tests extremely challenging to unravel.  

 

I did not revisit sensivity to physical positioning after I loaded up on the ferrites (once bitten, twice shy).  I'm still careful with physical management (no looping of BNC cables, don't touch power cables, etc), and I use the following neoprene cover to help keep the mess from going all over the place

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Kootek-Management-Concealer-Organizer-Reversible/dp/B01GCS77TU

 

(and it also serves to hide my ferrite shame)

 

All these ferrites are basically RF hygiene, and keeping that RF (whether from the streamer or the Blu2) out of the DAVE.  I have done nothing on jitter and clock management/optimization, and as I mentioned, have a very modest blue collar Sonicorbiter SE/iFi PSU ($360) as my Roon Bridge, connected by ethernet to a stock network switch and stock Mac Mini and MacBook Pro for my Roon Core.

 

Ray

 

 

[ray-dude]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-electronics-dave.766517/page-627

 

Larry, this post from Rob Watts may be helpful to your process. Looking forward to hearing about your progress. 

[ray-dude]

I did not try those, but I did give these Canare cables a shot:

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010CIW98

 

I heard no difference at all vs the $2.50 Monoprice 2m BNC cables with ferrites, and maybe the very  and very occasional slightest of expectation bias induced difference with no ferrites (even then it was maybe 1 out of 6 trials as I swapped back and forth?  I marked it a equivalent)

 

In my case, it is ultra specific to what works between the Chord Blu2 and Chord DAVE DAC, so very difficult to generalize from that.

[ray-dude]

2 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Helpful indeed, thanks again.

 

I should say (since I haven't been active here) that with the Chord BluDAVE driving Omega SAMs direct, I really key off timing detail and soundstage queues when looking for degradations.  With solid well recorded content, in my experience the most ephemeral soundstage feature is height resolution, followed by depth resolution, then a collapsing of timing/attack detail and lateral resolution.

 

At its best, the soundstage is absolutely holographic: seemingly infinite resolution, and a true surround image (with binaural recordings, it is like listening to at atmos mix in 2 channel, but with vivid spatial detail).  With choral recordings, you can clearly perceive the height of the various singers as they stretch back and up on their risers.  It is eerie, and the near continuous depth queues quickly collapse when RF noise come into the mix (apparently for reasons Rob cited in his post).

 

 

[ray-dude]

12 hours ago, AmusedToD said:

 

With all due respect, you’ve got some quality gear there, do treat it with respect. What is this “ferrites on cheap cables” mambo-jumbo? Get some decent cables and enjoy the music.

 

LOL, it is a bit embarrassing, isn't it?  All ribbing for the ferrite shame is well deserved and well earned.

 

FWIW, the context here is hearing the CD transport in the Blu2 be staggeringly better than the USB input.  For a "bits are bits" guy, that was a massive slap upside the head, and I did apologize to everyone that obsesses over the digital chain in my review

 

In the case of what I was doing with Chord Blu2 + DAVE specifically, my objective was to get the USB input to sound as good as the CD, with the hypothesis that degradations on the digital side were what was dragging it down.  The ferrites and cheap digital cables got me there, which is awesome, so I didn't need to get to that next level with more exotic digital cables.  I'm not averse to same (esp. on the analog side), but I tend to build up to diminishing returns rather than jumping in at the top (It's more fun and I learn more that way).

 

Based on what I've heard though, I'm pretty sure with better transducers (likely the Voxativ's), I'll be in a position to hear even more upstream refinements and get even better than the CD transport direct, which is why I'm very grateful to lurk here and learn from everyone's experiences.  Once I step up my transducer game and work on the analog side of the fence some more, I'm sure to swing back to power to the DAC, then head back upstream to the digital side.

 

[ray-dude]

Blu2 owner here, with symmetric gigabit fiber to the home and no data caps   Happy to help however makes sense

 

Me and my buds have been day dreaming similar schemes: they're addicted to mScaler, but at their budget ceiling with their Hugo2's.  It would be worth the disk storage and bandwidth to save my wine cellar

 

[ray-dude]

Rob is elbow deep with his own efforts with his analog to digital converter (Davina) using the same mScaler, and 40 element pulse array (32bit + 8bit headroom) to get to same, but that will be a while until that is commercially available.  Some high quality recordings mScale'ed to 768kHz (and even 384kHz to be playable by more people) would be quite revealing to folks I think.  The Blu2 really is a revelation.

[ray-dude]

When I (briefly) spoke with Jim this week, he had basically given up on getting more 6 gauge wire (something about a minimum order being in the 6 figures).  At this point, it seems to be unobtanium, but I may have misunderstood him.  You should give him a ping Bruce.

 

I'm having some electrical work done this week for an electric wall charger, so I'm punting and having 2 dedicated lines put in with standard 10 gauge solid core Romex.  If in the future Jim is able to source his 6 gauge wire (or Roy decides to have his house torn down and has some spare sitting around  I'll just have those runs rerun.

 

Once the lines are in place, I'm hoping to be able to audition some of Jim's power conditioners, and perhaps experiment with various combinations using the 2 dedicated lines (various permutations of analog/digital and high/low power draw, etc)  I too have a Chord setup, so Rob's hypothesis that the Chord DAVE power supply is adversely impacting adjacent systems (detailed in the link to Roy's post on head fi) is worth testing in my setup.

 

[ray-dude]

1 hour ago, Bruce Orr said:

Thanks. I'll send a note to Jim to see if he's ready to admit the AWG 6 - to his specs - ain't gonna happen. I'll let you know one way or the other.  10 solid is the fallback. 

 

If he can source 2x25' lengths of the 6 AWG cord, I'm in!

[ray-dude]

2 hours ago, d_elm said:

6-3 Romex is available from the hardware chains, eg homedepot. Are you looking for special copper ?

 

Thanks @d_elm.  My understanding (very loose, since we only have been able to speak briefly) is that he recommends a specific 6AWG cable.  I suspect it is solid core (based on posts of others), and the typical 6 AWG (and 8AWG) power cable is stranded.  Jim recommends the 10 AWG Romex, which is also solid core.  I've been poking around, but I haven't (yet) found any solid core options in 6 AWG or 8 AWG.

 

I defer to others who've been able to work with Jim more than I have to clarify one way or the other (I hope to chat again with him this week)

 

[ray-dude]

2 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Good question, but I'm not sure the model is right.

 

FWIW - To my ears, the endpoint and a properly sized server brings different and complimentary things. The endpoint adds transparency, harmonics and creates the sense of space. The server adds density and weight where a poorly size server makes the sound more thin, so it is tough to hear the contrast and transients.

 

 

This is a very helpful description, thank  you Larry.  

 

I am still trying to get my head around how the server side could be having such an impact (not questioning whether it is real, just commiserating with the happy question of "why?").  How can an ethernet-based transport be impacted by the upstream server, esp. with different transport protocols? (RAAT, etc)  

 

I was noodling on this on the drive in to work this morning.  For those with multiple server NUC configurations, if you are running both at the same time on the same network and streaming to different end points, is there any cross feed in SQ?   That is, if you are listening to A-level server talking to A-level end point, do you hear a SQ change if B-level server starts streaming content to a B-level end point on the same network? (bonus point if on same switches)

 

Back to lurk mode while I wait for my NUC to arrive

 

[ray-dude]

16 hours ago, Bricki said:

Of course there are better dacs than a mojo but I would rather spend my money to improve things upstream because that is where I believe the more significant bottle necks are. 

 

@austinpop may have an opinion about the relative benefits of improving the dac vs improving everything before the dac??

 

He has had a lot of recent experience with doing exactly that, so he may be able to chime in here. 

 

Rajiv will of course speak to his opinion, but I've seen astronomical improvement by up leveling DACs.  It may be heretical, but my view is that everything before the analog chain (I include DAC in the analog chain) takes away SQ.   For me, all the work on the digital/network side is about taking away as little as possible.

 

By way of example, I documented my journey up the DAC (and transducer) ladders here:

 

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/chord-hugo-2.22209/reviews#review-19435

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/chord-blu-mk-ii-digital-cd-transport.22848/reviews#review-19675

 

(as a bonus, this documented my journey from Mojo to Hugo2 to DAVE to BluDAVE, related to question earlier about whether an update from Mojo is worthwhile)

 

 

 

[ray-dude]

1 minute ago, austinpop said:

Quick update... like a moth drawn to the flame, I keep getting drawn back to running squeezelite with large buggers on my NUC as a Roon endpoint, because of the better SQ... and then I get burned when it starts misbehaving again.

 

With somewhat wishful thinking, I switched over to Squeezelite-R2, in the hope it would be more stable. No such luck.

 

When it works though ... aah!

 

I've learned to hit play and leave it alone!!  Watching the detailed logs, it looks like it is the two way orchestration is when things glitch

 

I can't go back to Roon Bridge, but I can't impose squeezelite on civilians (yet)

 

 

[ray-dude]

1 minute ago, rickca said:

buffers maybe?

 

With all the "endearing quirks" with squeezelite, I'd say boogers is the right word

 

[ray-dude]

2 minutes ago, greenleo said:

Roy, the OP of this thread, among others regards DAVE alone highly, Blu2+DAVE combo and HMS+DAVE better and better.  If you may, HMS+DAVE should provide a long term joy. TT2+HMS may provide the best bang for buck but I've never heard this system and can't comment.

 

Agreed completely with the importance of the DAC.  To the above, Chord DACs are a bit unique in that what is traditionally the amp stage is (to some extent) built into the DAC.  The Hugo2 is basically an idealized 800mW amp.  The DAVE a 2W amp.  And the TT2 an 18W amp.

 

The reason this makes a difference with the stack is that eliminating the traditional amp (Class A, AB, D whatever) has a HUGE impact on transparency/imaging/depth/speed/etc.  After hearing this stack, I sold my B&W 802d3's and purchased Voxativ 9.87's with the 4D drivers (104dB sensitivity).  I drive these direct from DAVE with great authority.  

 

With the combination of point source high efficiency single driver speakers and a world class DAC driving them direct, the effect is a holographic soundscape (left right, up down, depth, and even sides and back).  It is an effect that is hard to describe, but (for me) intoxicating.

 

If you have less efficient speakers, some of the loss in resolution (mainly depth) from going from DAVE to TT2 could be more than made up for by the tremendous increase in transparency by driving speakers direct from TT2 (its a trade off).  Otherwise, DAVE is still the finest DAC I've ever heard.

 

As always, happy to host listening parties if folks are in the neighborhood (San Diego)

[ray-dude]

21 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Bridged topology

 

As you would expect, with bridging, the topology now looks like:

 

Thank you for the report Rajiv!  May I ask, what are you using for the second ethernet port on your NUC server?

 

I'm currently in the middle of linux-fu to get a WiFi/ethernet bridge working on my server NUC, just to keep another device off the USB controller on the server, but keep hitting roadblocks.

 

(oops, I see the response above now...thank you!)

 

 

 

[ray-dude]

14 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Hi Ray,

Yes, I am using the same USB 3 Ethernet dongle I bought 2 years ago to bridge my Dell machine at the time. The chipset is:

Device-2: Realtek RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter type: USB driver: r8152 

           IF: enp0s20f0u2 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full 

 

 

EDIT: It's still on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NOP70EC

 

 

Thank you Rajiv!  I'll snag one to play with as I work on WiFi/Ethernet bridging (frustratingly close)

 

To your question about why it makes a difference, does anyone have a sense of what happens on bridged segments at the physical layer?  That is, is the only electrical signal that gets sent on the bridged port packets intended for the the device on the other side of the bridge?

 

Pure speculation, but our experiments with large buffers with SqueezeLite on the end point NUC clearly points to ethernet traffic having a very noticeable impact on SQ on the end point.  My hypothesis (untested) is that the end point responding to interrupts from the ethernet controller is somehow impacting the connection to the DAC over USB (data and audio have different messaging interfaces in USB, so there may be some contention in the USB controller?)

 

There is some network-related mechanism underlying the SQ difference we hear with large buffers.  To narrow it down, on my near infinite "to test" list is see if copying a large file to the large buffer SL end point during playback causes SQ to fall back to what we heard with small buffers.  If it does. next test would be to see if pushing heaving traffic across a shared switch (non-bridge config) impacts SQ on a large buffer SL end point connected to that switch.  

 

Alas, I'm a couple weeks away from having time for the next series of tests, but it is great to read that bridging still has an impact with the NUCs.

 

[ray-dude]

Many thanks to @austinpop for taking time out of his recent visit to San Diego to join our little audio group for an lovely evening of wine, ceviche, geek talk about servers and networks, and fine music from Hugo mScaler + DAVE direct to single driver high efficiency speakers (Omega Super Alnico Monitors, Voxativ 9.87's with 4D drivers, and Voxativ Zeth's with 1.8 drivers).  

 

Very well timed for the same day that Rajiv's fantastic Hugo mScaler + Hugo TT2 DAC review got posted (we'll see if we tempted him with the DAVE

 

I've only recently started down the road of optimizing my upstream of the DAC chain (couple NUCs, ISO Regen, etc), so we all appreciated the discussion on master clocks, network and power isolation, etc.  MUCH to learn, but fantastic to be able to share the trails being blazed here.

 

 

[ray-dude]

I remember when I was doing my SL experiments, I inexplicably was hearing differences between LMS and Roon as a server, but only for certain tracks.  I tracked it down to some transcoding that was happening (hidden in the LMS configuration matrix).  Once I turned off transcoding, order returned to the universe.

 

To echo the experience of others, I don't have any skipping with LMS and SqueezeLite, only Roon Core.  Alas Rajiv, my experience on how low I can take buffers very closely mimics yours: Lots of sensitivity to input buffers and ALSA buffers, but less so to output buffer.

 

As an aside, I'm currently running Roon Bridge on my NUC endpoint, but feeding it with two ISO Regen's in series (LPS 1.2 powering both).  That has hugely narrowed the SQ gap between Roon Bridge and SL with large buffers for me (almost equivalent).  Lots more experimentation to do, including rerunning a lot of my previous listening tests to see what may have changed as the rest of my chain has evolved, but an interesting hint (for me) of what may be going on with large buffers in SL.

[ray-dude]

7 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

What exactly did you do to turn off transcoding?

 

It was on the screen that had the different file types, with the transcoding target to different file types.  I had to go through one by one to make sure my main audio formats (flac, mp4, wav, dsf, etc) were getting passed through as native files.  

 

If helpful, I can fire up LMS and look for the specific admin screen (let me know).  Alas, I didn't find a switch to make a global change

 

[ray-dude]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Please try it and tell us what you find.

 

 

 

Interesting, using 

ethtool eno1

 I just checked the ethernet speed on my 7i7 NUC endpoint (running AudioLinux) and I'm getting 10Mb/sec(!)

 

That may explain why I've had some skipping issues with very high res files

 

Time to figure out how to set or what is causing the low negotiated speed

 

 

[ray-dude]

32 minutes ago, Chopin75 said:

hmm. so I guess I can tell him what I need - e.g what my server is, how many amp I need etc and he may be able to build one then? I hope he is more reliable than Paul Hynes. From your article it takes 6 months to get the Server+ LPS !  A LPS to separately supply the CPU, ethernet etc. I already have a separate DC supply to SSD & USB bridge. 

 

 

In my experience with Sean, his communication and follow through has been impeccable (and I adore the custom supply he built for me).  Absolutely hassle/stress free interaction, met my delivery expectations to a "T", and well exceeded my expectations on impact to my system.  Everyone that I know that has worked with him has a similar story.  Unqualified recommendation from me.

 

I am still waiting on my SR4 and SR7 (might be several years for me...build #31), so I can't speak to whether the hassle of is worth the wait.

 

[ray-dude]

19 minutes ago, Chopin75 said:

Haha, you mean Pau Hynes is still supposedly making them for you?  Several years for a LPS ? By then a full size hand made cello or even luxury piano would have been finished already ! 

 

I should clarify. I ordered both over the past 4-7 months. I expect the SR4 hopefully this summer, but woth Paul working on the mid teens for the SR7, might be another couple years. I hope he is able to get into a groove and start cranking out a couple a month, so I get to see mine in 2020 (my hearing isn’t getting any better!!)

 

The silver lining for me is that well probably have gone through a couple more  waves of server strategies by then (I’m sticking to my NUCs until my SR7 arrives)