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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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2 hours ago, bit01 said:

Yes you can use J River. Set it up as a media server Tools>Options>Media network and click 1st box to enable DLNA. The rest of the options can be set according to how you want to use it. Your renderer/DAC should show up in 'Playing Now' when set up right

 

Cool. I got it to work once. The DLNA server on Jriver 23 is kind of unreliable, maybe 24 is better, but I didn't see a need to upgrade based on my previous usage patterns.  However, the Pro iDSD needed to be connected to wifi network eventhough the ethernet is bridged with fixed IP. I'm not sure if it's pulling data from wifi or bridged network. It sounds similar to USB connection, but loading up songs was slow and anything DSD just won't work. 

Alienware R7 with Paul Pang V2 USB PCIE -> iFi Pro iDSD -> McIntosh MHA100 -> Hifiman Susvara. Keeping it simple!

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3 hours ago, lmitche said:

Tapatrick,  your addition of the second outside layer thickens the skin and covers more of the minute holes in the first braid, further reducing emmision or/and entrance of emi/rfi into the cable. The mumetal company has a writeup on the effectiveness of braid vs. solid conduit suggesting braid works at 85 to 90 percent of the solid material effectiveness, depending on the level of braid stretching and damage during installation.

 

I have not tried one or more layers of braid without insulation.

Thanks @lmitche, I thought the extra layer would add that bit of extra shielding. I'm going to have to add to my tweak list a comparison between the double (2 layer thick) shielding and the JSSG360... that list is getting longer by the day... :)

 

Topaz 2.5Kva Isolation Transformer > EtherRegen switch powered by Paul Hynes SR4 LPS >MacBook Pro 2013 > EC Designs PowerDac SX > TNT UBYTE-2 Speaker cables > Omega Super Alnico Monitors > 2x Rel T Zero Subwoofers. 

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I thought I wait for a couple of days before re-evaluating the LiFeP04 powered 2A LT3045 board powering the GI Spdif output of my BluWave board. The last frontier before my Brooklyn DAC. Meanwhile I have upgraded the LPSU powering ISO Regen with a 1A 6v LT3045 instead of a 0.5A 7v LT3045 post balanced AC-AC ps>MS-HPULN which resulted in a SQ jump just as predicted.

Anyway, after giving it some time I decided to re-evaluate the LT3045 LiFeP04 combo using the on/off switch on the board to see if it made the same SQ difference as I originally thought. Well, it did and actually exceeded my expectations as well. Turning it off killed the music completely. With it the air, fibers, 3D/4D, dynamics is back in full bloom. Better than Gophert>MS-HPULN and better than Gophert>MS-HPULN>LPS-1.2 as well. Toe-tapping heaven! ?

 

 

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3 hours ago, gordec said:

 

Cool. I got it to work once. The DLNA server on Jriver 23 is kind of unreliable, maybe 24 is better, but I didn't see a need to upgrade based on my previous usage patterns.  However, the Pro iDSD needed to be connected to wifi network eventhough the ethernet is bridged with fixed IP. I'm not sure if it's pulling data from wifi or bridged network. It sounds similar to USB connection, but loading up songs was slow and anything DSD just won't work. 

I use J River MC 23 DLNA with bridge on my PC to the Sonore uRendu (USB> Iso Regen>Anker>uR as explained previously)- no issues at all, but have to be plugged in the m'board USB ports, not the USB hubs which seem to get bumped. Not familiar with the Pro iDSD I am afraid but it looks great!

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4 hours ago, Jud said:

 

You do realize, don't you, that you're such a nice guy I actually thought "Lost patience? Not possible!", and had to go back and look for it.  :) 

 

I feel @austinpop has turned to dark side.......

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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7 minutes ago, Confused said:

I feel @austinpop has turned to dark side.......

 

 

:D 

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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42 minutes ago, bit01 said:

I use J River MC 23 DLNA with bridge on my PC to the Sonore uRendu (USB> Iso Regen>Anker>uR as explained previously)- no issues at all, but have to be plugged in the m'board USB ports, not the USB hubs which seem to get bumped. Not familiar with the Pro iDSD I am afraid but it looks great!

Thanks. I'm going to try that tonight. The Pro iDSD is current plugged into a Paul Pang PCIE card. Maybe it needs to be on the MB's USB.

Alienware R7 with Paul Pang V2 USB PCIE -> iFi Pro iDSD -> McIntosh MHA100 -> Hifiman Susvara. Keeping it simple!

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On 8/18/2018 at 4:49 PM, tims said:

I tried the JSSG 360 on my Lush cable and was expecting good things from the reviews the 360 tweak has gotten here but was disappointed with a drop in SQ; flabby bass and digital glare - the pre-tweaked Lush sounded great in my system prior to the tweak.

Anyway, I went to the Phasure Audio site for more possibly more info on the Lush 360 tweak and found the Lush^2 (Lush squared?) recently developed by @PeterSt.  This has to be a one of a kind - the new Lush is based on the JSSG 360 tweak but the shielding (on the cable) can be set-up with over a 1000 permutations/configurations (the web page states over 10,000!)

Crazy stuff! ??

 

Lush^2

 

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=4071.msg43527#msg43527

 

 

 

As above, I didn't have much luck with the JSSG 360 tweak on my Lush cable so I decided to try a DIY version of the new Lush^2 but using just the 2 shields of the JSSG 360.  

This time I changed things in that I removed the electrical tape from the inner shield and replaced it with a double layer of plumber's thread seal tape (PTFE). 

From @PeterStLush^2 I borrowed the idea of putting a "pigtail" at the end of each shield so that now I had both shields totally isolated from each other with each shield having a wire (pigtail) connected to each of the shield's ends. I can now connect a wire (using the pigtails) between the shields,  enabling me to try some different configurations such as the shields in parallel (as per the 360 tweak), the shields in series, one shield floating the other with the wire attached each end etc, etc.  So now (I think) I have a combination of the JSSG 360 shields and the original John Swenson idea of using a wire between the shields ends.    

After moving the wire(s) around in various configurations, I finally settled on having one shield floating (the inner shield) and a wire between the ends of the outer shield as this sounds best for my hifi setup.

My bass has now returned to what it was using the un-tweaked Lush (probably better), but now the sound-stage is something else.  One of my favorite songs is Patrica Barber's Ode To Billy Joe.  The finger snaps/clicks throughout the song were always front and centre but now each separate click moves across the stage; quite eerie.

However, although the SQ gains are considerable with the shielding tweaks above, I feel I've lost some of the full bodied sound of my pre tweaked Lush so I've ordered the Lush^2  as I figure if the shielding tweaks I made have improved the original sound of the Lush cable that much,  the Lush^2 must be way better! ?

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By the way the ocx10 I have is a modded one with Evox capacitor. 

One last comment , good recording become much better and bad recordings stays bad. The gap between both become bigger and i think this last barrier on musicality will trigger a harder search for better records instead of better equipment ? hopefully if I can be cured ....

PCserver Supermicro X11SAA under Daphile  ,Jcat pcie net card ,Etherregen,e-red dock endpoint,powered by LPS 1.2 , SPS 500 , Sean Jacobs level 3 psu,  DAC Audiomat Maestro 3, Nagra Classic Amp , Hattor passive preamplifier , Martin Logan montis

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1 hour ago, seeteeyou said:

Recently Cybershaft announced whole bunch of new models (all the way from OP15 to OP20) plus another clock distributor with 3 outputs

 

http://www.cybershaft.jp

http://www.cybershaft.jp/overseas01.html

 

However, maybe the lack of DC power input might seem to be a big deal when compared to what we're able to get from SOtM?

 

Thanks for this info. Very interesting!

 

That Ultra High Accuracy OCXO 10 MHz Clock Limited 2 looks very interesting. It has 3 outputs. Given the Ref 10 is rated at -116dBc/Hz @ 1Hz, I guess that makes it comparable to the OP16, which is priced at 329,400¥, or just under $3000. Of course, only 3 outputs is a bit limiting, and it is unknown how the PSUs compare.

 

The presence of models all the way to OP20 is intriguing, albeit at an eye-watering price of 567,000¥, or $5135.

 

Still, it's good to see more choices in the 10Mhz reference clock space.

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1 hour ago, austinpop said:

BTW - to add to the results of the Austin Clock Meet, that @limniscate and @auricgoldfinger already described. We also had access to a vanilla OCX-10 with sPS-500 PSU. The 2 key takeaways for me were:

  1. It is possible to get very, very close - though not quite equal - to the SQ of the Mutec Ref 10 with the OCX-10. It requires:
    • the Evox caps and the eABS-200 RF/EMI paper, and
    • an SR-7 PSU
  2. There is a big SQ jump going from the vanilla OCX-10 to:
    • the Evox caps and the eABS-200 RF/EMI paper, and
    • stepping up from sPS-500 to the JS-2 to the SR-7. Each PSU step is significant, and not subtle.

Thanks for that report back.  Were you able to use the same cables when comparing?

 

The weight of evidence seems to argue strongly for a reference clock in systems with numerous clocks to sync but I’m wondering how much of the reported benefit from a modded SR7-powered OCX-10 I would get in my Zenith SE/Blu2/DAVE system where I would only have a tX-USBultra to connect to.

 

It will be a while before I can give this a try.  I’ve still to finalise the spec for my SR7 with Paul Hynes and won’t be getting that until sometime in the New Year, by when an Mscaler will have replaced my Blu2.  I will also have to upgrade my standard spec tX-U for clock input.  Probably best to go for three rails with the SR7 - one DR and two non-DR (if I can do that).

Zenith SE > USPCB (5v off) > tX-USBultra 9V (SR4) > Sablon Reserva Elite USB > M Scaler > WAVE Stream bnc > DAVE > Prion4/Lazuli Reference > Utopia/LCD-4/HE1000se

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1 hour ago, austinpop said:

 

 

Very glad you heard the effect a good reference clock can have!

 

BTW - to add to the results of the Austin Clock Meet, that @limniscate and @auricgoldfinger already described. We also had access to a vanilla OCX-10 with sPS-500 PSU. The 2 key takeaways for me were:

  1. It is possible to get very, very close - though not quite equal - to the SQ of the Mutec Ref 10 with the OCX-10. It requires:
    • the Evox caps and the eABS-200 RF/EMI paper, and
    • an SR-7 PSU
  2. There is a big SQ jump going from the vanilla OCX-10 to:
    • the Evox caps and the eABS-200 RF/EMI paper, and
    • stepping up from sPS-500 to the JS-2 to the SR-7. Each PSU step is significant, and not subtle.

For this reason, I think SOtM would be well advised to ship the OCX-10 standard with the Evox caps and eABS-200 paper. The experience with the SR-7 underscores the advantage of having a device that allows external PSUs, but of course the aggregate cost of the OCX-10 with an SR-7 rail is then quite high.

Does you or anyone has tried powering the OCX-10 with an LPS 1.2 as in my experience the LPS1.2 is significantly better than the SPS-500 .

 

The person who loaned me the ocx10 also reported that he has a friend who has a mutec ref clock in his system and has achieved significant sq increase by disconnecting the internal psu of the mutec and powering it by an sps-500 ...probably the impact of outside psu which is quite often a good thing as it removes vibrations and electrical noise from sensitive components .

 

 

PCserver Supermicro X11SAA under Daphile  ,Jcat pcie net card ,Etherregen,e-red dock endpoint,powered by LPS 1.2 , SPS 500 , Sean Jacobs level 3 psu,  DAC Audiomat Maestro 3, Nagra Classic Amp , Hattor passive preamplifier , Martin Logan montis

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28 minutes ago, austinpop said:

The presence of models all the way to OP20 is intriguing, albeit at an eye-watering price of 567,000¥, or $5135.

 

We still have to factor in the costs of excellent clock cables or else we're basically wasting our money on such an expensive reference clock. And then there's also external grounding for Habst since we couldn't afford to ground that with an output from Cybershaft.

 

As usual we've gotta be aware of the degradation when we're going all the way from the crystal inside Cybershaft to other components such as UpTone Audio EtherREGEN or SOtM sCLK-EX etc. It might be somewhat difficult to justify the additional costs when we're climbing up the ladder, the performance of OP20 itself could very be degraded significantly since we're jumping through all the hoops.

 

And then there's also something about the quality of the PSU since we really know nothing about that at the moment. FINEMET core transformers are supposedly some of the best choices from Japan (I wish that someone could compare that to flagship models from Paul Hynes / Sean Jacobs etc.) but it's highly unlikely for Cybershaft to include that due to prohibitive costs.

 

We still haven't seen any comparisons between SOtM's approach (i.e. external OCXO with exceptional phase noise followed by significant degradation) and Pink Faun's / Adrian Wun's approach (i.e. internal OCXO with average phase noise followed by minimal degradation) yet, though we might get an answer from @romaz in a few months after DS-1 streamer from TLS is ready.

 

It's so intriguing since the starting point itself should be an Intel NUC with a fantastic baseline 

 

https://www.provantage.com/intel-boxnuc7cjyh1~7ITSP1N8.htm

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/mini-pcs/nuc-kits/NUC7xJY_TechProdSpec.pdf#page=23

Quote

The Intel NUC Mini PC NUC7CJYS contains a 32 GB Embedded MultiMediaCard (e-MMC) onboard storage module with Windows 10 Home operating system preinstalled. The Intel NUC Kit NUC7CJYH and Intel NUC Kit NUC7PJYH do not contain e-MMc storage nor Windows 10 preinstalled.

 

In other words, we could actually build a completely diskless system (without an e-MMC) thanks to PXE or iSCSI

 

https://communities.intel.com/thread/117127#559446

 

Intel® Ethernet Connections Boot Utility, Preboot Images, and EFI Drivers

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19186/Intel-Ethernet-Connections-Boot-Utility-Preboot-Images-and-EFI-Drivers

 

Realtek

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3

 

Serva Download
https://www.vercot.com/~serva/download.html

 

Ultimate PXE (Network) Boot Tutorial
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335603-ultimate-pxe-network-boot-tutorial/

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57 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Hauling the OS activity data over the network just creates a ton of noise on both Linux and Windows.

 

As @romaz mentioned before, it would be interesting to try one of those reclocked network switches from TLS / UpTone Audio / SOtM etc.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=359&tab=comments#comment-860030

On 8/8/2018 at 7:29 PM, romaz said:

In this instance, with the reclocked switch in the "direct" pathway, I decided to swap out my SE once again and replaced it with my noisy Mac Pro and what I found was truly revelatory.  This switch very effectively isolated the noise coming from the Mac Pro.  As I A/B'd between SE and Mac Pro, the difference between the 2 was now subtle at best.  In blind testing, I was unable to tell that there was a meaningful difference at all.

 

57 minutes ago, lmitche said:

I guess one could try it again with ramboot.

 

Completely diskless setup could also be done with USB drives. Some enclosures have a switch to power it off so that could be flipped after the entire OS is booted into RAM

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-free-Enclosure-Optimized-EC-UASP/dp/B00OJ3UJ2S

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Enclosure-Optimized-Tool-Free-FE2010/dp/B01FQ5R0PG

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Enclosure-External-Tool-free-FE2001/dp/B00DW374W4

 

57 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Linux will uefi boot with Windows removed, but the console is blank afterwards so we have to remote into the box for setup.

 

Did you try a distro that's running entirely from RAM? The real test could very well be comparing the latency of RAM versus that of Optane IMHO.

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12 minutes ago, seeteeyou said:

 

Did you try a distro that's running entirely from RAM? The real test could very well be comparing the latency of RAM versus that of Optane IMHO.

The goal for today is to get everything running from emmc. This should have been trivial, but Intel delivered a bunch of surprising obstacles. 

 

Once done, I am anxious to give ram boot a go. There will have to be a serious effort to shrink the distro to fit into a ramdisk. The nuc7cjys only accommodates 8gb of ram max.

 

One step at a time.

Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio

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