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

[austinpop]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:13 PM, Blake said:

 

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

 

Many thanks to Blake for sending me his Ghent Gotham JSSG 360 cable. It arrived yesterday, and I let it settle in to my system for a few hours, between my LPS-1.2 and TLS OCXCO switch.

 

I did some quick comparisons last night between it and my reference - JSSG 360'd Audio Sensibility 7N UPOCC silver cable. Please note - since this was on my switch, I used Tidal streamed music to do the comparison.

 

Bottom line - to my ears, the Audio Sensibility was still a fair bit better. The Gotham cable is very nice, but the richness, density, and image size with the Audio Sensibility is something else.

 

There are 2 other factors that could be affecting this. First, Blake's Ghent cable is 1m long, while my AS cable is only 0.3m. Second, I don't know if the Gotham has had any burn in at all. @Blake?

 

I'll let the Ghent Gotham cable burn in for the next couple days, and retry the test. Stay tuned.

[auricgoldfinger]

Metallurgy (including purity) and aggregate AWG matter.  ?

[ElviaCaprice]

3 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

Metallurgy (including purity) and aggregate AWG matter.  ?

Matter for what??

[auricgoldfinger]

Just now, ElviaCaprice said:

Matter for what??

 

Overall sound quality.

[octaviars]

6 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I did some quick comparisons last night between it and my reference - JSSG 360'd Audio Sensibility 7N UPOCC silver cable. Please note - since this was on my switch, I used Tidal streamed music to do the comparison.

 

 

How does the ZENith play Tidal in Roon does it buffer the song? My NUC with ROCK buffers the whole song when I hit play on a Tidal song so I can remove the LAN cable from my router and the song contuinous to play until the end.

[ElviaCaprice]

12 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

Overall sound quality.

Does you DC power chord feed your stream directly to your DAC?  I think one needs to step back and think thru the whole picture of what exactly this small factor brings to the full system picture.  RF noise, yes, can be a big factor, thus shielding.  Gauge, yes on a small level for impedance, length more so.  Metallurgy, above basic copper, not so much, very tiny factor if any for impedance, or worse more noise.  

But in the end, it's how it performs for you!!

[austinpop]

5 minutes ago, octaviars said:

 

How does the ZENith play Tidal in Roon does it buffer the song? My NUC with ROCK buffers the whole song when I hit play on a Tidal song so I can remove the LAN cable from my router and the song contuinous to play until the end.

 

No it does not buffer the song.

[octaviars]

Just now, austinpop said:

 

No it does not buffer the song.

 

Ok, so the playback stops directly if you remove the LAN cable?

[octaviars]

Just now, austinpop said:

 

No it does not buffer the song.

 

Ok, so the playback of Tidal stops directly if you remove the LAN cable?

[auricgoldfinger]

8 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Does you DC power chord feed your stream directly to your DAC?

 

For starters, a master reference clock, several endpoints, and a modified switch.

[ElviaCaprice]

5 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

For starters, a master reference clock, several endpoints, and a modified switch.

I think you missed my point.  No big deal.  Your original points we're correct.  I just like to digress into overall system vision.

[Blake]

35 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Second, I don't know if the Gotham has had any burn in at all. @Blake?

 

I'll let the Ghent Gotham cable burn in for the next couple days, and retry the test. Stay tuned.

 

It had about one week of "power on" time before I sent it to you.

[Superdad]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:19 PM, austinpop said:

Soon JSSG 360 will be the "braid" and butter for all cable manufacturers.

 

Should JS expect any royalty checks? 

[Superdad]

On 7/30/2018 at 3:58 PM, genjamon said:

Actually, the shielding doesn't cover all effects.  Star quad still benefits in rejecting magnetic interference beyond what shields can do, or so says Benchmark:  

 

Strange that Benchmark is not mentioning the primary benefit of star-quad cable topology:  The lowering of inductance!

[austinpop]

20 minutes ago, octaviars said:

 

Ok, so the playback of Tidal stops directly if you remove the LAN cable?

 

Well, I always like to test my assumptions to see if they're still correct. In the past, Nuno has indicated that the reason their internal player on Zenith SE, based on the squeezelite platform, had better SQ was because they had implemented in-memory playback, and that they could not do that in Roon, since they didn't control, or alter, the code.

 

It sounds from what you're saying is that Roon themselves have implemented something similar in ROCK.

 

That said, any OS will try to read ahead when it detects sequential reads, and store in the filesystem cache. I distinguish this from the memory playback optimization in terms of the fact that the former is not necessarily a caching of the full file, while the latter is.

 

I tried a test with a Tidal track of length ~20 minutes. About 10 seconds into playback, I pulled the LAN cable from the switch. The music continued playback for about 5 mins before finally stopping. This interval depends on many things - the speed of the network, the logic of Roon's system calls, the tuning of the FS cache in the OS. I must say, I was surprised that the cache was so deep (5 mins).

 

However, let's not get sidetracked from the fact the experiment I was trying was comparing DC cables in a known location in the system.

 

@ElviaCaprice - you raised the point about looking at the whole system, which is always a good idea. But let me reiterate: the point of my experiment was to keep everything else constant in my system, swap DC cables at a known location, and report on the effect.

 

This is consistent with what others have been reporting with their cable experiments. I am assuming they take the same care to hold everything else constant, and only vary this one thing.

[ElviaCaprice]

57 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Blake's Ghent cable is 1m long, while my AS cable is only 0.3m.

 

That is a bigger factor.  Far more than metallurgy in my opinion.

[austinpop]

42 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Does you DC power chord feed your stream directly to your DAC?  I think one needs to step back and think thru the whole picture of what exactly this small factor brings to the full system picture.  RF noise, yes, can be a big factor, thus shielding.  Gauge, yes on a small level for impedance, length more so.  Metallurgy, above basic copper, not so much, very tiny factor if any for impedance, or worse more noise.  

But in the end, it's how it performs for you!!

 

Just based on my empirical experience with cable metallurgy, I have to disagree with you there. This is not the first time I have found UPOCC silver to be beneficial to digital components: I heard the same with the Habst clock cable. Like many of you, this is counter to my past experience with the use of silver in the analog realm, where I always found silver to sound too bright, while good quality copper had a more pleasing warmer and smoother palette.

 

What I have learned with JSSG 360, and why I like it so much, is that it is additive. It does not remove the differences between cables, so you should still find the best-sounding cables for your ears and budget. Then use JSSG 360 for a further improvement.

[austinpop]

22 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Should JS expect any royalty checks? 

 

Only if he has a patent. You know that!

 

From this DIY community, he'll have to settle for gratitude and god-like respect.

[Johnseye]

5 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Like many of you, this is counter to my past experience with the use of silver in the analog realm, where I always found silver to sound too bright, while good quality copper had a more pleasing warmer and smoother palette.

 

 

I wonder if this is because we come to expect analog to be warmer and when it's not we think something's wrong.  I recently picked up some silver Double Helix XLR cables and am currently using them from my phonostage to preamp.  I notice less warmth but an increase in clarity.  Considering vinyl is warm or smooth sounding, the additional clarity is a positive imo.  Sometimes balancing our perceived warmth is a good thing, same as in digital balancing out the cold brightness with some warmth can be a good thing.

[ElviaCaprice]

 

22 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Just based on my empirical experience with cable metallurgy, I have to disagree with you there. This is not the first time I have found UPOCC silver to be beneficial to digital components: I heard the same with the Habst clock cable. Like many of you, this is counter to my past experience with the use of silver in the analog realm, where I always found silver to sound too bright, while good quality copper had a more pleasing warmer and smoother palette.

 

What I have learned with JSSG 360, and why I like it so much, is that it is additive. It does not remove the differences between cables, so you should still find the best-sounding cables for your ears and budget. Then use JSSG 360 for a further improvement.

Yes, silver is a better conductor.  But at what gauge does copper become better to a comparable silver?  Then throw in star quad for the copper.  So at what gauge does copper star quad become a better conductor with lower impedance/inductance? 

[austinpop]

2 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

 

Yes, silver is a better conductor.  But at what gauge does copper become better to a comparable silver?  Then throw in star quad for the copper.  So at what gauge does copper star quad become a better conductor with lower impedance/inductance?

 

I'm only going by what I hear. I have no explanations.

[ElviaCaprice]

9 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

I wonder if this is because we come to expect analog to be warmer and when it's not we think something's wrong.  I recently picked up some silver Double Helix XLR cables and am currently using them from my phonostage to preamp.  I notice less warmth but an increase in clarity.  Considering vinyl is warm or smooth sounding, the additional clarity is a positive imo.  Sometimes balancing our perceived warmth is a good thing, same as in digital balancing out the cold brightness with some warmth can be a good thing.

Remember, Rob Watts cautions that a perceived clarity could just be increased RF that give the edges more clarity.  Silver is a better conductor and that would also mean a better antennae of RF noise.

 But I'm sure your ears are trained and trusted.  Just playing devils advocate. ?

[austinpop]

5 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

I wonder if this is because we come to expect analog to be warmer and when it's not we think something's wrong.  I recently picked up some silver Double Helix XLR cables and am currently using them from my phonostage to preamp.  I notice less warmth but an increase in clarity.  Considering vinyl is warm or smooth sounding, the additional clarity is a positive imo.  Sometimes balancing our perceived warmth is a good thing, same as in digital balancing out the cold brightness with some warmth can be a good thing.

 

Yes, ultimately it's about your system's synergy, and your ears. There are no right answers.

[Johnseye]

2 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Remember, Rob Watts cautions that a perceived clarity could just be increased RF that give the edges more clarity.  Silver is a better conductor and that would also mean a better antennae of RF noise.

 

Not these cables compared to the copper XLRs I have been using.  They are also shorter.

[octaviars]

26 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I tried a test with a Tidal track of length ~20 minutes. About 10 seconds into playback, I pulled the LAN cable from the switch. The music continued playback for about 5 mins before finally stopping. This interval depends on many things - the speed of the network, the logic of Roon's system calls, the tuning of the FS cache in the OS. I must say, I was surprised that the cache was so deep (5 mins).

 

However, let's not get sidetracked from the fact the experiment I was trying was comparing DC cables in a known location in the system.

 

Perhaps a side track but did the music sound different during the 5 minutes it was playing without the LAN cable connected compared to when it was connected?