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


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Most important: please realize this thread is about bleeding edge experimentation and discovery. No one has The Answer™. If you are not into tweaking, just know that you can have a musically satisfying system without doing any of the nutty things we do here.

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On 9/20/2018 at 4:02 PM, lmitche said:

Mostly, it is the unexpected stuff that makes this hard. The NUC bios is pretty awful,. I haven't seen anything this bad since early days of the consumer motherboard business. You can get things to work, but it takes persistence to deal with the inconsistent behavior.

 

I would like to hear what is the awful/problematic part? Because I've been using NUCs as long as they have existed with Linux and haven't had any problems so far...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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19 minutes ago, lmitche said:

 

By quick glance that model seems to have problems other than related to the OS (Windows too). But I don't have that particular model, but that is not enough to generalize to all NUCs.

 

I've had NUCs as long as they have existed, running Linux. Latest I have is I think 7i7BNH. I don't yet have 8th generation.

 

My Debian 9 builds of HQPlayer Embedded have always been done on NUC5i5RYH.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Just now, sig8 said:

And I am the living example of unsuccessful NUC boot on AudioLinux. I got the same NUC what @lmitche

has. It just won't boot on AudioLinux. I got another one thinking something wrong with first one, still same. @lmitche shared his bios pictures, i followed one by one, still no. Tried several USB flash drives. It boots without issue on Ubuntu and AudioLinux headless, but not on AudioLinux. Almost gave it up, but if I ultimately go with headless then it won't matter. I was just trying to compare it to my i7-6700 up-sampling vs NOS on NUC in HQPe because Roy raved about this NUC. Same flash drives will boot without issue on my i7 and on my J1900. Done several resets of bios, even updated bios to 0044 on one of them.

 

If it boots Ubuntu, then it is problem in Audio Linux and not in the NUC?

 

Have you tried booting up my bootable HQPlayer Embedded image on it?

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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3 hours ago, Em2016 said:

Is this Rendu image also ramroot? Not that I really care for SQ reasons but it should make pulling power on the Rendu out a bit safer if i need to poweroff, if nothing is being written to the Rendu's SD card?

 

No, it is not. Usually these devices have so little RAM that I don't see a point in wasting large percentage of it to hold the image. Most of the image content are things like device firmwares and drivers for WiFi interfaces and such. It would be holding a lot of things in RAM that end up being never used. On a PC it is less problem to hold 600+ MB of unused data in RAM.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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1 minute ago, Em2016 said:

Nothing is being written to the SD card, right? So like your other non-ramroot NAA bootable images, there's no issues in pulling the power of the Rendu right?

 

There is no safe way to shutdown anyway (no power on/off button) so I guess there's no choice but to just yank the power cable.

 

Nothing much, the OS itself may write some small amounts of runtime information, but nothing critical. It is journaling filesystem so if you pull the plug it will fix up unfinished things on next boot up. And if it ever goes bad for what ever reason, you can just dump the image on card again and that's it.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 2 months later...
31 minutes ago, Triplefun said:

If anyone is interested EVGA have released an internal sound card with headphone amp based on an AKM AK4493EQ dac. Granted the nu audio is a pcie to USB architecture but the noise suppression and sq are quite remarkable.

 

And seems to be totally impossible device to obtain... :D

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 3 months later...
7 hours ago, Bricki said:

First of all, a big thank you to @Nenon for organising the RAM group buy. I'm sure he's helped many people get a nice sound quality bump to their systems.

 

IMG_20191119_182646.thumb.jpg.799826cf0b2b9554e57a560a762a15f4.jpg

IMG_20191119_182818.thumb.jpg.90bd58227b8e0949192c1864659f5272.jpg

 

Have you checked who's RAM chips the Apacer is using? Not revealed due to the sticker on that side, but on the other side it should be visible?

 

Your previous Kingston seems to have Micron chips (who also sells memory modules under their own Crucial brand).

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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5 hours ago, Bricki said:

IMG_20191118_185318.thumb.jpg.4cf309146a7aac0431e01a1f93005121.jpg

These are the chips on the Apacer RAM... I think they are Samsung but I don't know for sure

 

Yes, I also suspect it is Samsung.

 

Kingston uses chips from varying different vendors. So they vary depending on manufacturing time and model. I suspect it is the same case for Apacer as well. I've had Kingston memory with Samsung and Hynix chips as well.

 

While of course Crucial uses only Micron chips...

 

There are not that many memory chip manufacturers in the world...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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27 minutes ago, RickyV said:

Miska do you have idea what the differences are between consumer ram and the industrial wide temp apacer ram? Staying with the same chip brand, is the inside of the chip different, is pcb different so what makes it wide temp range?

i do not think Samsung consumer ram sounds the same as the industrial ram.

 

I don't know about the sound. But industrial chip variants just have wider temperature range than commercial (there is no consumer grade). If you want even wider, go for automotive (which is usually something like -55..135 C). There are two temp grade of this chip, "C" would be commercial and this one is "I" which is industrial.

 

Based on the part number on the chip you can check the datasheets. Here's a link to datasheet of that RAM chip:

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/global.semi/file/resource/2017/11/4G_E_DDR4_Samsung_Spec_Rev1_6_Jan_17-0.pdf

 

So temperature ranges are C=0..95 C and I=-40..95 C. Thus, the industrial version can also operate inside freezer... ;)

Both are rated for storage temperatures of -55..100 C.

 

It also says

Quote

Some applications require operation of the Extended Temperature Range between 85C and 95C case temperature. Full specifications are guaranteed in this range, but the following additional conditions apply: a) Refresh commands must be doubled in frequency, therefore reducing the refresh interval tREFI to 3.9us. b) If Self-Refresh operation is required in the Extended Temperature Range, then it is mandatory to use the Manual Self-Refresh mode with Extended Temperature Range capability (MR2 A6 = 0b and MR2 A7 = 1b).

 

Refresh settings have adjustment for Normal, Reduced and Extended temperatures. Refresh cycles are the same for both commercial and industrial variants at all temperatures, except for both twice as high when operating between 85 and 95 C.

 

So specification wise there's not really much difference between C and I versions.

 

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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16 minutes ago, elan120 said:

I originally use Hyper X Impact DDR4 2400 with CL14, and Apacer DDR4 2400 clearly surpass it in SQ, and now Apacer DDR4 2666 is another step up.

 

OK, trying to think of what the technical factor could be.

 

For me, the server memory speed is one of the most critical factors in addition to CPU clock speed to allow best possible algorithms.

 

While almost all my NAA devices have RAM soldered directly to the CPU board. Some even have RAM and CPU stacked same way as has been done on mobile phones for a very long time (CPU on the motherboard and RAM on top of the CPU, lower side of the CPU attaching to the mother board has larger BGA array while on the upper side BGA array runs around the chip itself. This makes the whole package extremely compact).

 

I have just one NAA that has SO-DIMM memory, which is LogicSupply (now called OnLogic) CL100, but it has Transcend memory modules, from the picture seems to have Hynix chips:

https://www.onlogic.com/eu-en/ts1gsk64w6h/

I have never opened the device, so don't know for sure.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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4 hours ago, rickca said:

Comet Lake desktop lineup from Intel has leaked.  This is still 14 nm, the 10 nm desktop timeframe is unknown.

So we will have 10 core/20 thread i9-10900K as the new top of the heap.  Really there's nothing all that exciting here over the current 9th generation desktops.

 

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084095/intel-comet-lake-s-desktop-processor-lineup-in-full

 

For me it would be big news if they manage to keep 9900K-like clock speeds and again add another two cores. Like it's been 7700K -> 8086K -> 9900K(S)... Percentage wise the increase would get smaller, but still be relatively big.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 4 weeks later...

P.S. I have a Mojo, but I don't use it. At the moment I use poly-sinc-ext2 filter and ASDM7EC modulator to DSD256 output to Holo Audio DACs (set to NOS) and RME ADI-2 Pro (set to DSD Direct). I also use the EVGA NU Audio card at DSD256 with same settings - very good performer and doesn't cost much!

 

P.P.S. I've been also playing somewhat with Playback Designs Merlot DAC, which is supposed to finally land in the living room system when I get my new equipment rack in use. (the rack took almost six months from order to delivery!)

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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The original thought of NAA is to run it on a low power Intel or ARM device where 5V USB bus power feed also comes straight from the 5V DC PSU feed the board uses. Thus the 5V USB bus power doesn't go through DC-DC conversion on the computer board. And the CPU has low operation current. Thus most Intel based boards I'm using for the purpose are using Atom SoC.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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12 hours ago, elan120 said:

I got curious how much impact endpoint can still contribute with this new server, so I put NUC7PJYH back in using the same AL/NAA setup as well as the same power supply and RAM, the result still clearly show NUC7i7DNHE is a step up in SQ.

 

Have you tried going with something low power? Like the UpBoard or RasPi4 running from 5 V LPS?

 

Preferably with the bootable NAA image so that you get same OS consistently, even on different hardware.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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7 hours ago, elan120 said:

I ran RPi3 with LPS-1 for a while before moving to single PC setup and now back to two PC.  Never tried UpBoard or RPi4, but I might revisit and try using the RPi3 I already have at some point down the road to see what happen now with the new PC.

 

RPi3, as the earlier models too have the problem of overloaded USB bus, so you get clicks. So it is only good with cards that hook to it's I2S, like HifiBerry, etc.

 

My issue with NUCs are their built-in PSUs which I don't like...

 

7 hours ago, elan120 said:

When I did the comparison earlier, it was using the same OS with same configuration, so the consistency should be present.

 

Same OS and same configuration on RPi and PC?

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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3 minutes ago, elan120 said:

What built-in PSUs are these?  Are you referring to the included AC adapters like below picture?  If yes, I changed them to a 19V LPS.

 

DC-DC converters / switching regulators to convert the variable input voltage (they accept fairly wide range) to the various needed voltages, including USB bus power.

 

5 minutes ago, elan120 said:

Not this time, only compared the two NUCs mentioned, which were using the same OS and configuration.

 

OK, I think it is just important factor when making comparisons.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 2 weeks later...
6 hours ago, bodiebill said:

Heads up...

Apparently, ATX12VO ("12 volt only") is going to replace the current ATX standard with 24 pins:

 

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/atx12vo-future-power-supplies-will-not-have-24-pins-atx-connector-anymorebut-10-pins.html

 

Could this be bad news for audio as the motherboard will have to perform more (conversion) tasks to power components, potentially adding noise? 

 

Let's see how many pins they end up with in practice. But if possible, less cable mess is just good. I just upgraded my Windows development machine PSU+motherboard+CPU+RAM. It also has GeForce RTX 2080Ti.

 

Motherboard has:

- 24-pin ATX power

- 8-pin 12V CPU power

- 4-pin 12V CPU power

- 6-pin auxiliary PCIe power

 

And the graphics card has:

- 8-pin auxiliary PCIe power

- 8-pin auxiliary PCIe power

 

And then for the drives there's a SATA power cable. So 7 power cables running from the PSU.

 

Luckily there are still free power cables and connectors left in the 1000W hybrid (semi-fanless; fan only starts if needed) PSU.

 

Runs HQPlayer very nicely and very quietly even under high loads. Despite having 8 cooling fans. Can barely hear it from 1 meter distance.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/22/2020 at 2:27 PM, lmitche said:

Be sure to disable Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) on the server to NIC connection with ethtool. Once the latter is done, give 1gbps another go.

 

Why?

 

My recommendation for NAA usage with HQPlayer is specifically to have it, because it makes the Ethernet link much more quiet. It can deal with both the amount of power put on the wire, and also sleep when there is no data traffic.

 

I have it specifically enabled on all my links...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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3 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

Disabling of Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) ensures a constant power supply. In my experience, in addition to many other admins in Network Connections, this enables smooth music transfer with low latencies.

 

802.3az (EEE) is better kept enabled, as it enables cable length detection and quiet idle. No need to blast at full power that would be needed on 200m cable if your cable is much shorter. I have it enabled on all my links that support it (not all Ethernet devices support it though).

 

3 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

Look Ethernet JCAT LAN Music below. The data is transmitted in a stable manner over the network. There are no jumps in the diagram as is often seen.

 

HQPlayer has it's own specific traffic pattern. But as long as jitter doesn't exceed about +-500 ms it should work fine, so most of the time it would work around the globe over internet.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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