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

[TheAttorney]

16 hours ago, austinpop said:

• Using this OCXO router instead of the OCXO switch yielded a similar SQ.

Are you able to test the wifi sound quality of this router?

As per another thread, I'm considering this router as a combination of 4-way switch and wireless bridge near my hifi, which is too far from my broadband modem/router to use  an ethernet cable in any WAF acceptable manner - as long as the the wireless aspect doesn't compromise SQ.

[TheAttorney]

On 19/05/2018 at 12:53 AM, austinpop said:

As far as PSUs - being the curious sort, I swapped out the included LPS with both the LPS-1.2 and the SR-4, in turn. Both of these LPSes had a significant SQ boost over the included LPS. Adrian has asked me to allow a couple more weeks of burn in on his LPS and try the comparison again.

 

Interesting. A few weeks ago I asked Adrian for the option of dropping the included PSU (as I had an SR7 incoming), he declined. I got the impression that this was because he genuinely considered his PSU to be the best match that customers were likely to find. This test suggests otherwise, so I hope Adrian reconsiders this option - should shave at least a couple of hundred $ off the price.

[TheAttorney]

10 hours ago, Bricki said:

 

Supra cat8 JSSG 360 used as Ethernet cable to sMS-200 

??

Could you elaborate how you constructed the JSSG 360?

In particular, did you add 2 layers of tinned copper braid (with insulation in between), or one layer connected to Supra's existing shielding?

And did you start with terminated or unterminated Supra CAT8 cable?

 

Secondly, has anyone compared this JSSG 360 (or original JSSG) mod to mutiple ferrites on an unmodded cable?

I currently have mutiple ferrites (at least 20) on my 2M Supra CAT 8 (multiple ferrites have been very fashionable on the HF DAVE/BLU2 threads) and this gave much the same improvements as has been described for JSSG.

 

I'm now curious whether the JSSG 360 mod is more effective? Or are the benefits cumulative? I.e. would multiple ferrites  on top of JSSG 360 give even further improvements? The big downside of multiple ferrites is the bulk and weight they add to a cable - so a JSSG 360 solution would be physically more elegant.

 

[TheAttorney]

Thank you Bricki. I think I'll give this a go. It's currently a right pain whenever I need to adjust my cable spaghetti - those darned  ferrites have such sharp teeth!

 

One final question: what diameter braiding did you use? The first UK supplier I came across had nothing between 6mm and 10mm, which seem respectively too small and too large for the job. The Supra CAT 8 cable looks to be around 7mm diameter.

[TheAttorney]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

This should allow me to build JSSG 360 without a heat gun. Once the goodies arrive, I will see how I get on and keep y'all posted.

 

I'm also trying to avoid getting a heat gun for my first experiment. So I'll be trying a hairdrier (which may not get hot enough) and am still deliberating whether it would be brave, or foolish, to put the cable in an oven fo the shortest possible time. The temperature range required tends to be between about 70C - 120C (presumably the highest temp for maximum shrinkage). If I chicken out of the oven option, then the teflon tape idea sounds very promising to maintain flexibility and easy to apply/remove.

 

One thing to consider when ordering the copper braiding: the circular tube size typically relates to its diameter, whereas the flat variety you have linked relates to the width of the flat sleeve, which will be overall smaller for the same quoted value. 

[TheAttorney]

On 6/22/2018 at 9:52 PM, austinpop said:

Another Update on JSSG 360

.... but the trend is promising for JSSG 360.

My first foray into DIY cable madness showed that a new 1M Supra CAT8 JSSG 360 sounded better than my existing 2M Supra CAT8 with 20+ ferrites (between laptop and mR). A good result because, although the 360 treatment does increase the weight and (slightly) the stiffness of the cable, it’s still much more user friendly  than the clunky multi-ferrite solution.

 

I wonder if these are 2 different solutions to the same RFI/EMI problem, or 2 solutions to 2 different problems?  In other words, I wonder if adding ferrites to a JSSG 360 will further improve it?  I’m in no rush to find out, as the JSSG 360 alone is well worthwhile on this first test. I’m interested to see how you get on with JSSGing your PH DC cable.

 

On a practical note, I found the 10mm diameter copper braid easy to work with, to expand and shrink as necessary. But the 20mm flat width heatshrink wrap was a tight fit over the Supra plugs, so I used plumbers PTFE tape instead – this ultra thin tape kept curling up badly as I wound it round and was a right pain, so next time I’ll use PVC insulation tape. I like to use whatever I have in my spares box.

 

BTW, I also tried the new 1M Supra CAT8 with POE adapters and ADDED this to my existing short silver DC cable for my MCRU powered ISORegen. This wasn’t a particularly fair test of the POE DC cable concept, but it’s what I had to hand at the time. Result was a drop in SQ, so I’m putting this POE idea to one side for the moment, with JSSG 360 appearing to have the greater potential for my next tweaks.

[TheAttorney]

12 hours ago, Blake said:

 

I will lend you my Ghent JSSG 360 Gotham. Check your pm.

 

I await Austinpop's test (versus 7N Silver) with interest.

 

I'm currently choosing between Neotech 7N OCC copper and the Audio Sensibility 7N silver for my DIY JSSG 360 DC cable for my PH SR7,  to compare against my existing PH 6XL silver cables.

 

I'm sure the Audio Sensibility would be better, but the Neotech is much cheaper and easier to get in the UK (e.g. no customs).

 

Does anyone have an opinion if it's worth the cost and bulk to go star quad, rather than twisted pair, in this combination?

I imagine it would be much easier to construct star quad if the cables came in at least 2 colours, preferably 4.

[TheAttorney]

On 7/28/2018 at 5:26 PM, mozes said:

If you can get the same 16 awg, then go for the OCC copper. In fact, I prefer the 14AWG OCC copper to 16AWG OCC silver, but that's me. I like full body vocals and an expansive sound stage which I find that OCC copper excels with these attributes.

 

I've decided to go for star quad 18AWG Neotech copper. For the amount I need to constuct a 0.5M DC cable, 4 x 18 AWG will cost me less than 2 x 14AWG, and has a fractionally higher current rating, and the star quad should theoretically give better performance than twisted pair.

 

Whether I'll notice these small difference is another matter, but my main objective is to see if I can get better peformance at a lower cost than my PH 6XL silver cables (I bought 2 of these with my 3-rail SR7, with a view to building my own for the 3rd rail).

 

 

[TheAttorney]

4 hours ago, romaz said:

 On a scale of 1-10 (where 1 is the smallest improvement and 10 is best), I would assign both of these units a score of 1.  My original SOtM-modified switch when connected to the REF10 scores a 5.  The TLS switch scores a 7.  That means the new SOtM switch scores a 10.

Another great post romaz. Now, two questions:

 

1. Does the SOtM switch score 10 only if connected to the REF10? If so, what would the score be without the REF10?

I'm thinking that the TLS switch may still be a contender for those that don't want the extra cost and spaghetti count of an external reference clock.

 

2. I understand that the new TLS streamer/renderer is a commercialised version of your NUC idea. Probably much more expensive, but may be right for those that don't want the DIY route. The TLS also has the OCXO option, plus possibly other magic dust added - which all begs the question: how does the TLS renderer comare to your DIY NUC?

 

EDIT: Oh, I see that austinpop is already on the case regarding the new TLS streamer!

[TheAttorney]

13 hours ago, ElviaCaprice said:

I understand everyones time is worth something.  So, being able to purchase it all assembled and ready to go is worth something.  But I have to say, this server component is changing fast and one should be able to make tweaks or fix something on their server component both hardware and software.  So the more you know about it's makeup the better you can keep the experience optimized to your needs.  Thus, get the most versatile software component possible.  Hardware modular

 

This is a fair point, and anyone who's following this thread is a already a compulsive tweaker to some degree. But the question is how compulsive should that tweaking get? I only do a fraction compared to many enthusiasts here, but already I feel it's becoming too much and is getting in the way of simply enjoying the music. 

 

So I'd rather throw money at a ready made black box, and then maybe do a bit of tweaking around the edges to keep that part of my brain amused. If this means that my setup gradually drops behind the current state-of-the-art then so be it. I can always catch up with another black box in a couple of years time.

 

It's perfectly fine if you enjoy opening up that black box, or even building your own from scratch. But I feel I already have enough options to go on with cables/power supplies/ fuses/vibration control/grounding/etc/etc.

[TheAttorney]

It seems rather ironic that the Direct Bridge method can be improved by inserting a switch into the direct path.

Seeing as the main purpose of these new super switches is to improve SQ, rather than act as a switch, then what's to stop the designer putting that technology into the input end of their renderer devices?

 

So, if we take the upcoming Uptone switch, which is built from the ground up, why can't the key SQ ingredients go into a new superultraRendu? And save on an extra box (with p/s and cables etc) - for those that don't need any extra switching capabilities?

 

I know it's different companies in this particular example, but the principle stands.

[TheAttorney]

3 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

What we need is a new “standard” of DC connectors so we can use thicker cables and tons of JSSG 360 all over the place. 

 

 

Yes, it already exists and is made by Jaeger, as used in the Paul Hynes power supplies. This xlr-style connector is very bulky though, so it'll never catch on for the mainstream and won't fit onto those tiny Uptone boxes.

[TheAttorney]

18 hours ago, romaz said:

 

Just an update on these NUCs that Larry and I have been working on, we are planning on testing different NUC platforms including different CPUs, RAM with different timing, various storage media for the Roon database, etc., to see if we can agree on an ideal platform for both RoonServer and RoonBridge.  I will also be sending one of my NUC boards to SOtM for clock replacement to see where that leads.  While SQ is based on more than just latency, this is obviously an important metric and so Larry ran some latency tests on the Celeron NUC that we both own and got average latency readings in the 4-5us range.  Not as good as the 2.5us of latency of the Pink Faun 2.16 but very close and considering that this was achieved with hardware that cost less than $200 is astonishing.  

 

It would also be interesting to see how all this compares to The Linear Solution's DS-1, which, as I understand it, is a productized version of your NUC idea, plus his low latency operating system, plus ocxo clock on ethernet or USB, plus sprinkled with his own magic dust. It costs much more than a DIY NUC, but much less than a Pink Faun 2.16.

[TheAttorney]

On 10/24/2018 at 9:42 PM, romaz said:

.... As I shifted my lone DR rail to my NUC, I was forced to use an SR (single regulated) rail from my SR7 on my tX-USBultra and I was quite surprised/disappointed to find that my tX-USBultra was now resulting in a clear step backward with respect to dynamics and tonal richness and smoothness.  It's not like I was powering the tX-USBultra with a cheap switching PSU but that's how the DR rail made the SR rail sound like and this highlights the importance of PSUs. 

 

It is both a blessing and a curse that us audiophiles can be perfectly happy with a great product (e.g. the SR SR7), then hear something better (DR SR7) and suddenly the original isn't good enough anymore. As you once said, we can't un-hear what we've just heard, even though the original doesn't suddenly stop being a great product that may beat all other rivals.

 

Over a period, I've being trying a few external tweaks to my SR SR7 (don't get excited, nothing wild or innovative here). When I get some more time, I'll report my impressions on the SR7 thread, but for now, what struck me was that your comment "a clear step backward with respect to dynamics and tonal richness and smoothness" is just what I heard in each case when I removed two of those tweaks - to the point I didn't want to listen to my system untl they were reinstated.

 

The differences were probably objectively tiny, and probably nothing as big as your DR change, but it's a curse for me not to be able to un-hear these things. It also begs the question: Would various improvements to the SR7 bring the SR version closer to the DR version? Or would both versions benefit equally? On the basis that the less "bad stuff" there is flying around inside a power supply, the less there is for the 2nd regulator to improve upon.

[TheAttorney]

Every time I'm ready to finally upgrade my laptop to a supa dupa new server, the conversation moves on again to something even more wonderful! Do you guys never stop? 🙂

 

With the recent talk of m.2 Optane drives and a single box Euphony server, I'm wondering if I can truely keep it simple by putting all my music files and OS on a single optane drive in a single NUC?

 

My compressed redbook FLAC files currently total under 180GB, and are unlikely to grow much more in the new streaming world.

And one can readily buy optane drives up to 500GB+ (although I don't know if the larger sizes will physically or logically work in a NUC environment). So what would stop this being a good idea?

[TheAttorney]

17 hours ago, cool_chris said:

This is more complicated then I was expecting it to be .

 

The only surprise with this statement is that you ever, in your wildest dreams, expected it to be simple 🙂

[TheAttorney]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

. Here are the PSUs and associated cables that I was preparing to compare:

• SR-4: Paul Hynes fine silver DCFS3XLR 3A cable, modded with JSSG360. Terminators are XLR-4 to Oyaide 5.5x2.1
• SR-7 Paul Hynes fine silver DCFS6XL 6A cable. Terminators are Jaeger to Oyaide 5.5x2.1

My cable findings? I preferred all 3 silver cables over the Farad Level 2 cable on the Farad PSU.

 

Another great review Rajiv.

 

I'm curious how the PH 6A cable compares with the PH 3A, using the same power supply?

I opted for the 6A versions when I ordered my SR7, but have occasionally wondered if they really gave a SQ improvement over the 3A - when both driving a small (< 3A) load?

 

When ordering very short lengths, the cost difference between the 3A/6A/10A is significantly reduced.

 

BTW, I found that JSSG360 was detrimental to SQ for my PH cable. Did you do a comparison when you JSSG360'd yours?

 

Edit: Correction: it was my DIY copper Neotech that I had JSSG360'd. It was a star quad construction - 4 twisted wires with no separate screen or ground wire. But this unexpected experience stopped me from JSSG360ing my PH cables.

[TheAttorney]

On 9/18/2019 at 9:19 PM, RickyV said:

Sounds interesting I was looking for ram for my nuc7i7dn, Euphony, endpoint. 4Gb would be enough wouldn’t it?

 

 

I'm also tempted by @auricgoldfinger's post for my nuc7i7dn Euphony Stylus standalone server, which I ordered with 16GB RAM to allow for maximum future flexibility, even though Euphony's guide states that 4GB is sufficient (as written before the new ramroot feature became available).

 

With no DSP, but with 100% buffering of the music file, the Euphony readings state that only 3% of RAM is being used.

With ramroot enabled, that goes to 10% RAM (1.6GB). Therefore 4GB RAM should be enough even for a ramrooted server, and I'm very tempted to just try that because of cost and SQ (romaz's old post stated that smaller RAMs sound better - presumably due to less noise and current draw).

 

One unknown is if there are any start-up peaks, or library management activities, which would go well beyond the steady state RAM usage. i assume an endpoint would have lower RAM requirements than a server.

[TheAttorney]

16 hours ago, RickyV said:

If you have two ram modules in use try removing one. So listen music, and after half an hour remove the second one ram module and listen again. Curious what you think.

 

Well i did try this, partly to see how easy it was to remove/insert RAM into my Porcoolpine NUC (it was easy), in preparation for a possible new RAM purchase. TBH, I wasn't expecting much from a change like this, and the difference was indeed incremental, but I did think there was an improvement in clarity and reduced smearing. I'm not going to do repeated A/B tests on this, so consider it a promising, rather than conclusive, result. I am, however, going to get that 4GB industrial strength Apacer based on these results.

 

15 hours ago, Aberrant-Decoder said:

Where would you library of music live?

 

With the basic ramroot function of Euphony, only the O/S filestore gets loaded into RAM, the music library stays on disc, but I also use the options to cache to Optane and furthermore each music file 100% buffered into RAM before play. And this works really well. There are further options to load everything into RAM, but that's best left for specific circumstances (e.g. endpoints) that don't apply to me. More info on the Euphony setup thread.

[TheAttorney]

Continuing the RAM theme, I'm awaiting delivery of 4GB Apacer ordered exactly as per auricgoldfinger's link:

 

https://www.soselectronic.com/products/apacer/75-b93gj-g010b-307859

 

This is non-ECC, as applicable for consumer level NUCs like my 7i7DN.

 

In the meantime, an update on my earlier result where I had stated that going from 2 x 8MB to 1 x 8MB was a promising, rather than conclusive, result: That listening session was during the daytime soon after I had removed the RAM. But my "serious" listening is always done late at night, and at that point, it was much clearer that the change was a real and definite incremental improvement - with the usual caveats of casual subjective tests, I'd say the improvement was in the same ballpark as Stylus' CPU Core Isolation, but less than Ramroot.

 

So, in my circumstance, I'm now convinced that....

      1 x 8GB stock sounds better than 2 x  8GB stock

 

And shortly I'll be be able to tell if...

     1 x 4GB industrial grade will sound better than 1 x 8GB stock (hopefully twice as big as the first delta)

 

BTW, the supplier SOS in above link is based in Slovakia (in the EU). The SOS headline costs do not include VAT or shipping,  but even when this added, it's still quite a bit cheaper than getting the same part from Mouser. If you do order from SOS, ensure you register first to get around 15% discount (I roughly estimated in my case)

 

[TheAttorney]

The stock RAM that came with my 7i7DN board from SimplyNUC is a Team TED48G2400C16-SBK.

On quick google, I couldn't find its spec, other than 2400 speed and is typically used in laptops.

 

The alleged better quality build standard of "industrial grade" RAMs may result in reduced noise, and may result in reduced errors, but that's just a guess.

 

The ECC aspect puzzles me: I wasn't aware that RAMs could give errors that needed ECC to correct! Won't planes fall from the sky etc if RAMs produce errors that are not auto corrected by ECC? And, as I understand it, ECC won't necessarily fix all errors, just greatly reduce them. Anyway, it's likely that a better built RAM will produce less errors in the first place.

[TheAttorney]

My 1 x 4GB Apacer arrived today 🙂. I did wonder if I'd dropped the size down too much for Ramroot usage: After ordering, I noticed Euphony had a logical drive called zram0 that had 4.9GB allocated, much higher that the measured memory utilization). So I was not entirely surprised at load time when I saw a Euphony Stylus message saying "not enough memory for ramroot" - Noooooooooooo!

 

Anyway, despite that message, Euphony carried on loading, and must have adapted itself to the lower memory because it did in fact come up in ramroot (with 38% memory utilisation, and zram0 downsized to 2.8GB). Later, I'll find out what that zram0 is about, but for now....

 

Soundwise, it's very promising, with an immediately noticeable increase in overall clarity, with a greater sense of airiness, impact and presence, and with a greater sense of depth to the soundstage. But this is only a few hours from cold (does RAM benefit from burn-in?), so I'll see how I get on with my late night listening.

[TheAttorney]

My final update on "RAM Rolling":

 

The improvement going from 1 x 8GB stock to 1 x 4GB Apacer was clearly greater than going from 2 x 8GB stock to 1 x 8GB stock.

But I can't quantify it any further becuase the sound seemed to seesaw between slightly bright and slighly dark on the first few consecutive days. There could be a dozen real or imaginary reasons for that, one of which is that RAM can be impacted by burn-in.

 

That slight seesaw effect resulted in a moving reference point, hence I can't now exactly quantify the end result. But overall I wouldn't argue with the post a while back that said his memory upgrade gave a greater SQ boost than changing Euphony disc root to ramroot - i.e. RAM Rolling really is worth the effort. 

 

Finally, my Euphony ramroot error message (at point of enabling ramroot, not during the subsequent reboot) was because Euphony had not expected people to use so little memory for ramroot. So with current version, there is a small chance of running out of memory - although I never have got even close to that, despite having over 200 tracks in my play queue. Euphony reserves additional root filestore for headroom, upgrade and repair purposes etc, which does increase the total space reserved.

 

I understand that the next Euphony release will have it's space allocation adjusted slightly to fully support 4GB for default ramroot booted from internal drive. But boot-from-USB-stick reserves additional space - 4GB still may be possible, but see the recently updated ramroot Knowledge Base entry for more details. 

 

[TheAttorney]

8 hours ago, Nenon said:

If you can, please try the DIY Mundorf silver/gold cable recipe I posted if you haven't (more info here). They are the best DC cables I have heard, by far. I have wired EVERYTHING DC in my system with these cables.

 

I've now replaced all 3 of my DC cables out of my PH SR7 with these Mundorfs.

The first one was twisted pair, as per Nenon's original recommendations and, even from cold, this knocked my previous DIY star-quad Neotech copper (4x18AWG) out of the park - to be fair, the Neotech had an el cheapo screw-terminal barrel plug, which wouldn't have done it any favours compared to the Oyaide gold plated plug on the Mundorfs.

 

The second twisted pair Mundorf (from cold) beat my PH 6A silver (twisted triple, 3 x approx 19AWG, one used as screen wire). Not as dramatic an improvement as against the Neotech, but still a good step upwards.

 

For the 3rd pair, I tried the thinner 1.0mm dia (18 AWG) as a tight parallel pair (not twisted) as per Nenon's later recommendations. This time, with no JSSG360 screening. This also beat my PH 6A silver. By this stage I was getting burned out by burn-in fatigue (the Mundorfs sound good from cold, but need at least 2 weeks before they suddenly blossom). So all sorts of variables come into play over several weeks and I could no longer accurately quantify or relate how these improvements compared to the previous swaps.

 

I later added JSSG360 to the 3rd pair. This possibly made a small improvement, but hard to quantify. These were just 0.4M long, so maybe screening not so crucial?

 

So, I have no doubt these Mundorfs are fantastic. They have no downside in that they increase detail and dynamics whilst simultaneously decreasing glare and brightness. But I don't really know how beneficial are the following:

 

1. Value of JSSG360 screening for shorter lengths

2. Difference between the 1.5mm dia Mundorf vs the much cheaper 1.0mm

3. Difference between twisted pair and parallel pair

[TheAttorney]

9 hours ago, Bricki said:

Recently my cables have been performing better sonically without JSSG360 shielding.

 

A while back, I had mentioned that my star-quad Neotech DC cable sounded distinctly better without JSSG360. At that time, I was not aware of cotton tubing. I now understand that it's best to have some space between signal wires and screen (the experts here can probably explain why) and that is what the cotton tubing can provide. The spacing is a possible reason why some shieldings are more successful than others.

 

For those dipping their toes into DIY DC cables, much of the faff is in the JSSG360 part. But you could split the work as I did with my 3rd cable: First build the cable including the cotton tubing and then just live with that for a few weeks (or forever if you're happy with the sound).

Then you can slide the JSSG360 parts over the DC plug, without having to de-solder anything. I wrap PTFE tape as the insulation between the 2 braided shields and this saves having to get a heat shrink gun ("gas" PTFE tape is thicker and easier to handle than plumbers tape).

 

A good, and cheapest, supplier of Mundorf,  especially in the UK, is hificollective.co.uk. £56+VAT/metre for the 1.5mm, and £30+VAT/metre for the 1.0mm. HFC also do most of the other parts needed, like cotton tubing, silver solder etc, although strangely not so good on DC plugs. My 0.5M length 1.5mm Mundorf cost me slightly less than the same length of ready made PH 6A silver, although it has to be said that Paul's soldering and construction skills are far greater than my feeble efforts - my Mundorf did sound better though 🙂, even the much cheaper 1.0mm version.

 

HFC also stock Neotech and several others. The Mundorf silver/gold, rather like my recent Sablon 2020 USB cable, just sound so completely "right" that I have no intention of ever looking for anything else. But if I did 😈, then I'd be rather curious about the various Neotech silver, silver/gold and especially the "rectangular" silver wires.