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

[Superdad]

4 hours ago, Johnseye said:

The difference between the Spring at 384 with REF 10 and the Audio Alchemy at 192 is startling.

 

Hi John:

Forgive me if I have missed something—I know you have a lot of new additions to your system.  But are you saying that your Holo Spring has been modified to accept an external 10MHz clock?  Don’t think that is possible, so please clarify.

 

And yes, the Spring (in NOS mode) fed 384 rate is very dynamic!  Get your HQP settings just right and it is wonderful.  Plus tracks begin playing much sooner than SDM up to DSD256.   Comparing is sometimes hard because there is at least a 6dB difference (more like 9dB methinks) in the Spring’s output level between PCM and DSD.

And still you likely have another couple hundred hours to go before the unit “opens up.”  Maybe you’ll want to give the ISO REGEN another spin with your new DAC?  I sure enjoy it with my Spring Level 3 (well into the modified SU-1 anyway).

 

Have fun this weekend.  Our youngest son (11th grade) is getting dressed up to take his girlfriend to the high school prom tonight!

 

[Johnseye]

4 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Hi John:

Forgive me if I have missed something—I know you have a lot of new additions to your system.  But are you saying that your Holo Spring has been modified to accept an external 10MHz clock?  Don’t think that is possible, so please clarify.

 

It is possible, and at least one person I know of has done it.  Let me know if you're interested and I'll PM you.  I have not done it, I was only referring to the use of the REF 10 supporting my sCLK which in turn supports my motherboard and two SOtM devices.

 

4 minutes ago, Superdad said:

And yes, the Spring (in NOS mode) fed 384 rate is very dynamic!  Get your HQP settings just right and it is wonderful.  Plus tracks begin playing much sooner than SDM up to DSD256.   Comparing is sometimes hard because there is at least a 6dB difference (more like 9dB methinks) in the Spring’s output level between PCM and DSD.

And still you likely have another couple hundred hours to go before the unit “opens up.”  Maybe you’ll want to give the ISO REGEN another spin with your new DAC?  I sure enjoy it with my Spring Level 3 (well into the modified SU-1 anyway).

 

Have fun this weekend.  Our youngest son (11th grade) is getting dressed up to take his girlfriend to the high school prom tonight!

 

 

Yes, the output level is significant and I have to change the volume.  I'm going to need to get that analyzer app @austinpop has.

 

Now that my DAC and motherboard have changed I'm sure the IR will have no issues, but I am now master clocking a pair of tXUSB devices and so am bound and tied.

 

A lot going on this weekend, especially with Mother's Day tomorrow.  Enjoy your son's time with him.  Nice to be on the male side of that equation.  When your daughter gets picked up for prom it can be a little gut wrenching.  Did you see the controversial picture of Jay Feely at his daughter's prom?  I wouldn't trust that guy with my daughter either

 

[auricgoldfinger]

2 hours ago, mozes said:

Does the software work with any headphone? I don’t want to be forced to buy JVC headphones to benefit from this technology 

 

The Realiser is meant to work with any headphone.  I don't know about the Out of Your Head software.

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, tboooe said:

Thank you. Though I must admit that just because of the nerd factor I will probably give this a try.  Now off to eBay to find a nicely priced i7-7700 CPU!

Gee, I hope you read my post before pulling the trigger!

[austinpop]

9 hours ago, Johnseye said:

Yes, the output level is significant and I have to change the volume.  I'm going to need to get that analyzer app @austinpop has.

 

The app is called Decibel X on iOS. I use the free version.

[LTG2010]

On 12/05/2018 at 11:24 AM, vortecjr said:

It's not clear if the external power supply the new Hugo TT 2 uses acts like a "charger / energizer". Calling the external power supply a "charger / energizer" might imply that is has a switching banks of ultracapacitors. If it doesn't have a switching banks of ultracapacitors then the unit just uses the ultracapacitors in some other way.

Yes it is purely guesswork on my part, the original TT2 had a battery supply and charger so I assumed the battery has been replaced by Supercaps. I also note that the supply is rated at 5 amps peak so it would be interesting to see how they have achieved that with 6 supercaps.

[Johnseye]

Installed the i7 7700K last night with Noctua fan.  It handles DSD512 x48 with ease.  It will also handle most non -2s filters, just not xtr.  xtr 2s is fine.  The fan is incredibly quiet.  I can't even hear it.

 

I'm starting to see what people hear in DSD512.  IMO the soundstage is still collapsed compared to PCM 384, but far less than DSD256.  DSD512 is open, has a very quiet background and is soft, almost lifelike.  PCM 384 has a much larger soundstage, better PRAT and as a result more excitability.

 

So, mission accomplished.  Other than some minor tweaks I can finally do what I set out, and the change is very significant.  If this gets better over time I'm a happy man.  Will report back with a full review after break in.

[austinpop]

Are you finding a significant difference between Roon and HQPlayer upsampling  for DSD512?

 

And is x48 also better for source material in the 44.1 rate family?

 

Congrats on getting it all sorted!

[mozes]

16 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

I'm starting to see what people hear in DSD512.  IMO the soundstage is still collapsed compared to PCM 384, but far less than DSD256.  DSD512 is open, has a very quiet background and is soft, almost lifelike.  PCM 384 has a much larger soundstage, better PRAT and as a result more excitability.

Are you comparing to upsampled PCM  384 or native 384?

one more question, does upsampling to PCM 384 require similar processing power like upsampling to DSD512 does?

[ElviaCaprice]

25 minutes ago, mozes said:

does upsampling to PCM 384 require similar processing power like upsampling to DSD512 does?

I would imagine the DAC design makes a big difference here.  DAVE, from all reports by Romaz, does not benefit from PC upsampling, plain and simple.  M-Scaler will be the component of future here.  Again by Romaz experience.

[vortecjr]

4 hours ago, LTG2010 said:

Yes it is purely guesswork on my part, the original TT2 had a battery supply and charger so I assumed the battery has been replaced by Supercaps. I also note that the supply is rated at 5 amps peak so it would be interesting to see how they have achieved that with 6 supercaps.

They can just be caps after the regulators.

[ElviaCaprice]

Good to see @Johnseye go a different route with powerful mobo, upsampling HQP and sCLK-EX mobo.  But I (just this persons opinion) can't see a path yet where this will ever benefit the Chord DAC system design of low power, simplified component structure (especially the analog end).  Nor do I see it ever as a superior SQ path.  But it definitely could be a lower cost designed system path.  So maybe the bang for buck will be worth it, to many folks??

[ElviaCaprice]

Actually the original Chord TT had both Lipo batteries and super capacitors.  The new TT2 will drop the Lipo batteries.   Not up on that design, good question for Rob Watts, if he hasn't answered it already, on Head-fi TT2 thread, which he readily replies to.

[rickca]

54 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

Installed the i7 7700K last night with Noctua fan.

I've kind of lost track of the changes you've made.  Did you get a new motherboard modded for sCLK-EX by SOtM?  What's the new motherboard and what was the old one?  Can you compare the lower power sCLK-EX motherboard with the new one, or did you reuse the same sCLK-EX board?

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, mozes said:

does upsampling to PCM 384 require similar processing power like upsampling to DSD512 does?

 

SRC (of 16/44.1 Redbook material) to 384KHz rate requires MUCH less compute power than even going to DSD256.

[Superdad]

44 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

They can just be caps after the regulators.

 

Much more likely that Chord is using them before the regulators.  Just as extra filter capacitance, not as an actual disconnected-from-mains power source as we do in our UltraCap supples (I guarantee they are not using a bank-alternating scheme—that takes a WHOLE LOT of circuitry!). 

[LTG2010]

1 hour ago, mozes said:

one more question, does upsampling to PCM 384 require similar processing power like upsampling to DSD512 does?

I can do it with my celeron j1900 @1.9ghz runs at 15% It can also do DSD 128 but it runs at 85% sound is as Johnseye reported a bit softer, but I'm not using hqplayer, where I assume the differences would be more apparent.

[mozes]

19 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

I can do it with my celeron j1900 @1.9ghz runs at 15% It can also do DSD 128 but it runs at 85% sound is as Johnseye reported a bit softer, but I'm not using hqplayer, where I assume the differences would be more apparent.

Thanks for the info, PCM is clearly less demanding than DSD. I only play music at native sampling rate but it’s always good to know what possibilities are out there.

[LTG2010]

5 hours ago, vortecjr said:

They can just be caps after the regulators.

 

5 hours ago, Superdad said:

Much more likely that Chord is using them before the regulators.  Just as extra filter capacitance, not as an actual disconnected-from-mains power source as we do in our UltraCap supples (I guarantee they are not using a bank-alternating scheme—that takes a WHOLE LOT of circuitry!).

Here's some more information from Rob Watts:

'' So now we are getting into the more interesting stuff with TT2 - the output stage and PSU. When you turn on TT 2, it enters a charge mode, where a large controlled current is fed into the supercaps to charge them up and this takes about 10 seconds. The charge process is via a FET switcher and a very large inductor; this has two benefits - the current drawn from the supply is large and constant (3A) but initially is converted to ten amps going into the super-caps as the voltage is low. The second benefit of the inductor is that, together with other other inductors, ferrites and capacitors, removes noise from 20 Hz (actually the filter starts at 1 Hz) to 5 GHz. The power unit supplied is actually much more capable than it seems, and the PSU structure has been built around this particular power unit. I went through a lot of power supplies and a couple of design revisions, to ensure that when connected there was no measured change in performance at all. So this power structure has the benefits of ultra low noise from batteries - without the worry of battery life - but also huge dynamic current capability.

The OP stage was radically re-designed - initially I was using a beefed up Hugo2 design; but ended up using the design from the power pulse array project as this had been running in parallel to TT2's development. This OP stage is capable of large amounts of current, and more importantly, is extremely low distortion with current delivery - as you increase current load, distortion barely changes, and then only by increasing 2nd harmonic only.

But there is no point in having an output stage that has no distortion with current, if the PSU can't deliver the current. This is where the super caps comes in; audio requires bursts of current, and super caps are perfect at doing this; so the effect of the large inductor and the supercaps with the 1 Hz filtering, means that the PSU is only seeing DC current - no audio components.''
 

[Johnseye]

9 hours ago, austinpop said:

Are you finding a significant difference between Roon and HQPlayer upsampling  for DSD512?

 

And is x48 also better for source material in the 44.1 rate family?

 

Congrats on getting it all sorted!

 

I haven't done a side by side between HQPlayer and Roon upsampling.  Will let you know.

Your second question is an excellent one.  I pointed out x48 because I believe it's more challenging to process.  I'll have to do some research on that.

 

9 hours ago, mozes said:

Are you comparing to upsampled PCM  384 or native 384?

one more question, does upsampling to PCM 384 require similar processing power like upsampling to DSD512 does?

 

I've only been comparing upsampling right now.  I'm going to have to buy a couple native 384 and 512 albums to see how they sound.

As others answered, DSD512 is the most processor intensive.

 

It's remarkable how handily the 7700K breezes through the upsampling.  It never skips a beat...or a drops out.  The buffer can be run at low latency.  All the problems I experienced with the Celeron are gone.  The difference is the processor.  I'm using all the same power supplies so no need for an atx psu.

[elan120]

56 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

It's remarkable how handily the 7700K breezes through the upsampling.  It never skips a beat...or a drops out.  The buffer can be run at low latency.  All the problems I experienced with the Celeron are gone.  The difference is the processor.  I'm using all the same power supplies so no need for an atx psu.

Great to know all is working out.  Which power supplies you are using for this higher power server, and what would you recommend?

[Johnseye]

1 hour ago, elan120 said:

Great to know all is working out.  Which power supplies you are using for this higher power server, and what would you recommend?

 

I'm still using my SR7.  No power issues what so ever.  I wouldn't really call it a high power server.  The processor has a higher wattage potential, but if you've ever used a Kill O Watt you know the devices never use their full stated wattage.

[Johnseye]

10 hours ago, rickca said:

I've kind of lost track of the changes you've made.  Did you get a new motherboard modded for sCLK-EX by SOtM?  What's the new motherboard and what was the old one?  Can you compare the lower power sCLK-EX motherboard with the new one, or did you reuse the same sCLK-EX board?

 

I did.  An ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac.  SOtM modified the system and LAN clocks, same as my last board, but they also changed out 8 capacitors with this one.

 

They also changed my sCLK.  Unfortunately the system frequency was different.  19.2 on the old board and 24 on the new one.  It would have been nice to swap back and forth for a more current comparison, but I'll just have to go by memory.

 

One thing to note is that those RF cables are finicky.  I had several that didn't work for some reason or another when they worked fine on the old board.  They were the shorter ones.  I'm going to have to buy some new ones and see if they work or if there's some other cause.

[Johnseye]

10 hours ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Good to see @Johnseye go a different route with powerful mobo, upsampling HQP and sCLK-EX mobo.  But I (just this persons opinion) can't see a path yet where this will ever benefit the Chord DAC system design of low power, simplified component structure (especially the analog end).  Nor do I see it ever as a superior SQ path.  But it definitely could be a lower cost designed system path.  So maybe the bang for buck will be worth it, to many folks??

 

The most important thing to recognize is that my power supply didn't change, other than needing the HDPlex 400W HiFi DC-ATX converter.  It's mass overkill but better quality than the 160w or PICO versions.  Larry at HDPlex had to customize it for a 2.5mm connector.  My SR7 is still powering my server.  My wattage requirements have only gone up slightly.  The processor went from 6w to 91w.  There's also a 65w i7 7700 proc if I ever wanted to experiment more, but I wanted to make sure I could oversample.  Unfortunately the 35w version couldn't handle it.

 

So I've added a potential of about 85w to my system and a fan.  How much of an impact does that have when you factor in the ability to oversample in NOS mode on the Spring?  What I hear so far tells me I gain far more in SQ than what possible negative impact the 85w adds.  I had a DAVE on loan for about a week last month.  I know what it sounds like in my system.  We have slightly different approaches as I use a preamp and amp.  I like the speakers I have a lot and to me they are the most important and impactful component, so I've built from them backward.

 

There's no one best approach.  I've learned a lot from many people through this forum and I've used what works for me.

[hurka]

37 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

I did.  An ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac.  SOtM modified the system and LAN clocks, same as my last board, but they also changed out 8 capacitors with this one.

 

They also changed my sCLK.  Unfortunately the system frequency was different.  19.2 on the old board and 24 on the new one.  It would have been nice to swap back and forth for a more current comparison, but I'll just have to go by memory.

 

One thing to note is that those RF cables are finicky.  I had several that didn't work for some reason or another when they worked fine on the old board.  They were the shorter ones.  I'm going to have to buy some new ones and see if they work or if there's some other cause.

Can you explain why lan clock are changed vs usb clock?