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

[firedog]

On 10/9/2017 at 10:30 PM, ElviaCaprice said:

LOL, it's a disease building high power PC's.  Did it for many years myself, thus I can see how the computer audiophile (especially beginners) find it compelling to go the HQP route with these kind of builds.   Just like big ass speakers and amps.  The bigger the better sound.  NOT

It was hard at first for me to scale back my PC mentality and go the low power route for audio.

 

I think it's a mistake to generalize. Take a maker like Innous - they use "off the shelf" MOBO's. But, they claim they painstakingly measure basically everything on the market (slight exaggeration) and find the boards that are low noise. Acc'd to them, some of these exist, and you don't need an "audiophile" board if you use them and then optimize OS, etc. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Johnseye said:

There was a difference in SQ between these two unmodified server builds, with the Celeron Jetway board sounding better.  I can only guess it's because of the lower power.

I'm not an expert and not arguing with you, but I still think it is difficult to generalize. There are some makers that say they get better sound with high powered boards. I'm guessing there are some implementations that work better with low power and some with high power. 

[firedog]

25 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Hi Peter,

 

Sadly, I concur with this statement. For me the eye opening moment was where I first bought an Innuos Zenith. I had a loaner MKII whilst I awaited my SE. The Innuos OS let's you quickly change 'Server Integration' and this allowed me to quickly switch between Roon and UPnP.

 

The difference was dramatic and not in Roon's favour. But the controllers, such as Orange Squeeze are pretty basic compared to Roon. Selecting music becomes laborious and the metadata/magazine feel is lost.

 

So the trade-off becomes Roon's superior user experience, UI, magazine feel etc, versus using a fairly basic controller to better SQ.

 

I raised this on the Roon forums but Roon themselves completely fobbed me off. Worse still you get attacked by 'helpful' Roon enthusiasts who don't want to hear a negative word about Roon and prefer to insult your understanding of the basics.

 

Dunno if it's just me but I find Roon Communities to be one of the most toxic cultures in the world of audio forums.

 

 

 

I wasn't aware this was even an option. No offence (and my previous commentary on hostile culture is in my mind here) but this doesn't sound right.

 

Firstly, if you sold the Lifetime subscription for the same amount you paid for it, then surely the buyer has been short changed as they are getting a used product at the new price?

 

Secondly, as an industry professional, if you choose to buy something to evaluate it, is that not the cost of doing business. I understand selling on a used bit of hardware (at a substantial discount). But a "lifetime" membership??

 

Finally, it's called a "lifetime" membership for a reason. Much as I am frustrated with Roon Labs approach. The deal with the Lifetime membership is that you are agreeing to help fund their expansion by investing. And in return you get a long term discount. Selling that commitment on just to recoup your money strikes me as pretty dubious. I'll write mine off if I change my mind. I knew the risks. I took the gamble.

 

Cheers,

Alan

 

 

 

 

 I don't know when the lifetime license was bought, but the price of the license went up significantly a few months ago, so if it was sold for the old price, that seems a decent deal. In any case, if the buyer agreed to a price, he thought it was fair. 

And AFAIK, Roon is aware of people selling licenses, and doesn't object. It's been mentioned on their forum more than once. 

[firedog]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

My First Week with the Taiko Audio SGM Extreme

 

Yes it's true. I just had to try one for myself.  And now that I've heard it, it's staying! But let's back up.

 

When I read @romaz's and then @ray-dude's accounts of their respective epiphanies with the Extreme, I fully believed this server was something special. I know these two gents personally, and even more importantly, we trust each others' ears. But the price. Oh, the humanity! How to justify something so expensive? What follows is the (typically creative) logic by which we audiophiles convince ourselves to justify new purchases. Well, not entirely creative.

 

Because here's the thing. As I talked about this with above friends, it became clear that the Extreme would allow me to shed most - not all, but most - of my spaghetti. Hang on, you shout, you love spaghetti! You've been talking about spaghetti on this thread for 3 and a half years. Aren't you the one who sent off your gear to be modded with little SMB cables running between little SOtM boxes? And all the cables? What is happening??

 

So I'll let you in on a secret. I hate spaghetti.  The spaghetti was never the goal. SQ was the goal. Spaghetti was only the means to an end, which was unavailable with "conventional" digital gear. But if you give me a conventional piece of gear with endgame SQ that needs no add-ons, external PSUs and clocks, I'll shed that stuff in a heartbeat.

 

No, my epiphany came not from a listening session, but from a spreadsheet. I looked at my current topology (Spaghetti Central):

 

and envisioned what it would look like (Extreme Edition):

 

Then it was off to the spreadsheet to tally up all the bits and bobs I could sell off, and I nearly fell off my chair. The spaghetti approach has the appealing characteristic of not making any one purchase too painful. But add all your stuff up (and I mean all of it) and you realize how much you've spent in aggregate. It's a frog boiling analogy. And if total expenditure was a metric, and I was the frog, I was probably ready to serve. 🥵 I had spent HOW MUCH on the Spaghetti Edition? So tallying up the surplus gear yielded a number that, while nowhere near enough to fully cover the Extreme, did yield a very nice discount. Add a dollop of creative justification, some excellent chats with Emile, and it was done.

 

A couple of final point before I get into the listening impressions. One area that I've never been comfortable with is building my own servers. And it was clear that to achieve what the Extreme has would take patience and tinkering that even I did not have. This factored into my decision. And last - I was tired of all the tweaking. Even before the Extreme, I've been spending most of my time just enjoying my music. In fact, most of my posts here have been in the Album of the Day thread. As Yoda the weary audiophile would say: Strong in me, the impulse to Be Done is!

 

Preliminary Listening Impressions

 

My unit benefited from about 3 weeks of Emile's torture burn-in script at Hengelo, so reached me already fairly burned-in. While I don't doubt it will improve further, what I'm hearing now is stunning out of the box. I won't waste words repeating what Ray and Roy have written in their excellent reviews here and on WBF. I'll just touch on some key points. I admit I was also prioritizing my comparisons with a view to freeing up gear to sell, so you may see a flavor of that here!

• Effect of the tX-USBultra: yup, it gets in the way. I know the guys had found this, but I was skeptical. Spaghetti has come and gone from my system, but at least for me, the tX-USBultra has always done good things in my system. So I was shocked to enter this new world, where the combination of server design and USB chipset (ASMedia 3142) rendered an external regenerator moot. And an extra USB cable, clock cable, and potentially the reference clock. Cha-ching!
   
• Comparison with my i7-8700k server: I had raved here only a few months ago about how good my 8700k server was, and these last weeks I've been saying to myself that I could easily consider what I had my endgame. The Extreme is just on another plane. It's not even close. Dynamics are better, as you'd expect, but it's not just about dynamic range and soundstage size, which is massive. It's also the dimensionality of instruments, and physicality of the lower registers. A cello or double bass pluck has a more physical gut effect (pardon the pun!). Similarly, you can feel the volume of the horns and trombone notes more viscerally. Finally, there's the layering. It's similar to the HMS effect, but in its own way. Instruments just separate better - not so much in space as between themselves. This can be disarming, and profoundly emotional, especially music that you already know and love. Suddenly you hear things that just never came to your attention before. It's mesmerizing, immersive, and quite intoxicating!
   
• HMS vs. HQPlayer: I had tried the HQPlayer sinc-M/LNS15/768kHz PCM-to-PCM upsampling on my 8700K server with Euphony OS, and felt that while it achieved maybe 90% of the HMS quality, the HMS just had that extra je ne sais quoi. Actually, I had a good guess quoi, I assumed it was Rob Watt's secret sauce in his WTA filter design. So imagine my surprise when on the Extreme I feel HQP comes within 95-100% of HMS SQ. Probably a credit to Emile's resource tuning, and perhaps potential for more here? With both HMS and HQP, the effect is stunning. Again, it's all about realism. The layering, the soundstage, the temporal coherence are all there, but now instruments feel so REAL. As dearly as I love the HMS, I'll take the 95% from HQP and sell the HMS for more cost mitigation. Let me emphasize just how good the Extreme/HQP, with an elegantly simple Sablon USB 2020 cable, makes the DAVE sound!
   
• Roon+HQP vs. HQPlayer standalone: On Roy's advice, I tried HQPlayer as a standalone player, without Roon dragging down the SQ. I had some initial issues with the learning curve, but was soon happily running HQP standalone via HQPDControl on my iDevices. There is a clear gap between HQP standalone and Roon+HQP. Shades of Stylus vs. Roon on Euphony OS. The best part of HQP standalone is that I can disconnect the Ethernet cable from the Extreme and eliminate the network completely!
   
• Network tuning is TBD: I still haven't played with network settings. Correction. My switch topology is still my optimized path for my Spaghetti Edition system. I need to revisit to see what sounds best with the Extreme. One driving force will be to see if I can do without my REF10 SE120 clocking my switches. Clearly for local music, I can completely mitigate the network by running HQP with the network disconnected, but Qobuz is an important use case for me, so I can't just unplug my way out of this. I also am anxious to see how Emile's upcoming switch plays in this equation. And hark! Is that a thundering herd of Buffalo headed my way?

 

Congrats on your new setup. Simplification is good. 

I do visit your hometown sometimes, maybe when times are different  we can meet up and I can hear your system....