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

[Middy]

I started a desk fan company but it didnt take off..

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, Middy said:

I started a desk fan company but it didnt take off..

Fans have no fans here.

[tapatrick]

22 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Fans have no fans here.

what did one NUC say to the other... "I'm a big metal fan" 

[austinpop]

A typical conversation at @lmitche Obedience Training School for NUCs:

 

Larry: NUC, NUC

NUC: Who's there?

Larry: Larry

NUC: Larry who?

Larry: sudo "dd if=/dev/<usb stick> of=/dev/<Optane SSD>; reboot"

NUC: [audiolinux@audiolinux ~]$

Larry: That's better.

[BigGuy]

[Monge]

@lmitche It’s true that the NUC7CJYH2 has a Celeron J4005.

I also found NUC7CJYH1, NUC7CJYH2, NUC7CJYH3 etc. at mouser

 

https://eu.mouser.com/Intel/Embedded-Box-Computers/NUC7C-Series/_/N-1yy6lwuZatq2wZ1y962fa

[Account Closed]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

Fate of NUCs who talk smack to Larry...

 

NUC NUC. Who’s there? Larry. Larry who? 

 

sudo dd if=/dev/<usb stick> of=/dev/<Optane SSD>

 

You will be assimilated.

 

Finally, something serious (funny)! LOL

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

Fate of NUCs who talk smack to Larry...

 

Yeah, Larry's a real kNUCklehead!  

(But he's building me one and I love him...)

 

[ted_b]

Funny, I was thinking Larry's nuc-building venture could be called NUC-L-Heads (the "L" for Larry). 

[RickyV]

I think Larry has gone NUClear. 

 

?????????

 

?

[RickyV]

Master in the NUClear sciences. ?

 

 

?

[seeteeyou]

On 11/1/2018 at 6:54 PM, MrUnderhill said:

The DUAL CAT involves doing some DIY on a PoE distribution box to use all eight CAT wires, and then use one cable for +ve and one for -ve.

 

Free international shipping is slow but it's gonna cost $8.09 on November 11th

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PoE-World-8-Port-Security-Power-over-Ethernet-Passive-injector-Mid-span-PoE-Injector-Network-for/32897304783.html

 

36AWG UTP cables for the sake of skin effect

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34238

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-SlimRun-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable-5ft-Red-Stranded-550MHz-UTP-36AWG-/232978708533

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-SlimRun-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable-5ft-Blue-Stranded-550MHz-UTP-36AWG/392156001257

 

Wire Gauge and Current Limits Including Skin Depth and Strength

https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

[lmitche]

Interesting article on performance and cooling with Intel's latest products.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more-power-than-expected-tdp-turbo

[Solstice380]

53 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Interesting article on performance and cooling with Intel's latest products.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more-power-than-expected-tdp-turbo

 

I would guess that setting up one of the heavier HQPlayer filters for DSD512 puts a CPU into PL2, plus!  I use CoreTemp to monitor temp and power.  The 6700K CPU idles at 27-29C and 24W.   Firing up HQP at 44 to 512 with poly-sinc-short-mp took the CPU to 100% and 90C on 2 cores and 50+W overall.  That only lasted a couple seconds until throttling started, I think.  The 6700 is OC at 4.2GHz and it dipped some, settling in at 20% utilization when playing.  The filter build took about 10 seconds. 

 

I just had to replace my water cooler unit, the pump went and the system shut down properly from overtemp.  Whew!

[tapatrick]

12 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

 

Free international shipping is slow but it's gonna cost $8.09 on November 11th

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PoE-World-8-Port-Security-Power-over-Ethernet-Passive-injector-Mid-span-PoE-Injector-Network-for/32897304783.html

 

36AWG UTP cables for the sake of skin effect

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34238

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-SlimRun-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable-5ft-Red-Stranded-550MHz-UTP-36AWG-/232978708533

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-SlimRun-Cat6-Ethernet-Patch-Cable-5ft-Blue-Stranded-550MHz-UTP-36AWG/392156001257

 

Wire Gauge and Current Limits Including Skin Depth and Strength

https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

monoprice 36awg cables in the UK..

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monoprice-SlimRun-Cat6A-Ethernet-Patch/dp/B078JX6728/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1541846184&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=monoprice+pure+bare+copper+wire+5+ft%2C+36awg

 

or UTP but only up to 30awg

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monoprice-SlimRun-Cat6A-Ethernet-Patch/dp/B01N41GTGT/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1541846847&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=monoprice%2Bpure%2Bbare%2Bcopper%2Bwire%2BUTP&amp;th=1

 

and calculators to work out awg, voltage, length and current..

https://www.inchcalculator.com/voltage-drop-calculator/

https://www.wirebarn.com/Combined-Wire-Gauge-Calculator_ep_42.html

https://www.wirebarn.com/Wire-Calculator-_ep_41.html

 

 

[Middy]

Silent case installation  video. Doesnt seem too bad for those thinking of removing the fan and upgrading.

 

It does open the opportunity for custom shielded cables. Or at least mod-ing the supplied short ones..

Maybe some extra work to improve WIFI if not going cable only.

[nbpf]

To those who have recently experimented with low-latency or real-time systems: would it be possible to summarize your findings? Do we have an idea of which measures of latency have a more significant impact (assuming that they do have an impact) on sound quality? Minimum latency, average latency, maximum latency or perhaps something else? On which systems?

 

I'll try to make the first step: on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ & DigiOne Signature running MinimServer and upmpdcli, I have tested the standard kernel (4.14.71-v7+) against a real-time kernel (4.14.74-rt44-v7+) with the same optimizations: no bluetooth and HDMI output, fixed CPU frequency (1200MHz), internal audio off. The differences between standard and real-time kernel can be summarized as follows:

 

standard:

# Total: 100000000 100000000 099999995 099999949
# Min Latencies: 00004 00004 00004 00004
# Avg Latencies: 00006 00006 00007 00006
# Max Latencies: 00335 00278 00283 00269

 

real-time:

# Total: 100000000 099999949 099999824 099999700
# Min Latencies: 00006 00005 00006 00005
# Avg Latencies: 00009 00009 00008 00008
# Max Latencies: 00091 00059 00052 00058

 

The corresponding latency plots are

 

 

, respectively. The results clearly show that the real-time kernel does very effectively limit the maximal latency to values well below 100ms. This is done at the expense of the average latency that increases from about 6ms to 8.5ms. The minimum latency also slightly increases with the real-time kernel.

 

These result are consistent with the many reported at https://www.osadl.org/Latency-plot-of-system-in-rack-1-slot.qa-latencyplot-r1s1.0.html. From the point of view of sound quality, I have not been able so far to perceive any difference between the two kernels.

 

[seeteeyou]

 

FYI - someone in China put NUC to the test and posted the following values afterwards

 

Quote

Memory  Latency (ns)
L1 Cache  Latency (n/s)
L2 Cache  Latency (n/s)
L3 Cache  Latency (n/s)

 

NUC8i7BEH
http://koolshare.cn/thread-148448-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/137979/Intel-Core-i7-8559U-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-50-GHz-

 

NUC8i3CYS
http://koolshare.cn/thread-145952-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/136863/Intel-Core-i3-8121U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3-20-GHz-

 

NUC7i7DNHE
http://koolshare.cn/thread-143647-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/124968/Intel-Core-i7-8650U-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-20-GHz-

 

NUC7i7BNH
http://koolshare.cn/thread-119874-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/97541/Intel-Core-i7-7567U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-4-00-GHz-

 

NUC7i3BNH
http://koolshare.cn/thread-86452-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/95442/Intel-Core-i3-7100U-Processor-3M-Cache-2-40-GHz-

 

NUC6i7KYK
http://koolshare.cn/thread-47275-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/93341/Intel-Core-i7-6770HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3-50-GHz-

 

NUC6i5SKY
http://koolshare.cn/thread-29745-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/91160/Intel-Core-i5-6260U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-2-90-GHz-

 

NUC5i7RYH
http://koolshare.cn/thread-10837-1-1.html

https://ark.intel.com/products/84993/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3-40-GHz-

[elan120]

Just had to share another Gotham JSSG360 cable experience.  After the success from replacing my music PC CPU 12V power cable to Gotham JSSG360, I got very motivated to continue this path, and last night, I replaced SATA power cable to Gotham JSSG360 as well, after letting it burn-in overnight, I was very pleasantly surprised today how much SQ improvement this cable yielded.  Since these are not difficult cables to make, if you have not try them, I would highly recommend having them replaced, you will likely be as pleasantly surprised as I am.

 

Below are few pictures of this cable:

 

Pins crimped.  Note, my SSD only require 12V input, so the 4 available wires only 5V and 12V pins were used. 

 

SATA connector with pins inserted:

 

Completed cable:

 

Cable installed:

 

 

 

[Middy]

Lovely work Elan.

[diecaster]

I want to know how these minute differences in latency affect a DAC that is buffering input and not being starved for data. 

 

Any reasonable explanation would be great to have. 

[seeteeyou]

Nah, we aren't smart enough to figure out all the technical details about latency on this thread.

 

Maybe try to start a new one and see if there were anyone who's gonna help.

 

All we do here should be 'science experiment' according to @vortecjr so obviously everything is nothing more than trial and error. We just don't even know why things work better for some ears but not others.

[diecaster]

I am not looking for a science experiment...just some sort of logical hypothesis as to how latency could matter if the DAC’s buffer never becomes empty. Is no proponent of this low latency concept able to be an apologist for it?

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, diecaster said:

I am not looking for a science experiment...just some sort of logical hypothesis as to how latency could matter if the DAC’s buffer never becomes empty. Is no proponent of this low latency concept able to be an apologist for it?

Yes, there are no apologists here.  We are not religious.

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, diecaster said:

Let’s not confuse an apologist with apologetics. Doing so would indicate you don’t know what “apologist” means. 

 

This is ridiculous. Kindly stop this.