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

[austinpop]

1 minute ago, rickca said:

Ah yes, The Turning of the Screw.  Horror.

 

No, I'm serious. I'm paranoid about opening up someone else's device. The last time the SR-7 was in my setup, it started to suddenly blow fuses one after the other! Turned out, Paul was fine with us going up to a higher amperage, and things are fine since.

[rickca]

3 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

No, I'm serious. I'm paranoid about opening up someone else's device. The last time the SR-7 was in my setup, it started to suddenly blow fuses one after the other! Turned out, Paul was fine with us going up to a higher amperage, and things are fine since.

Don't you mean going to a higher voltage?  Anyway, my reference was to the classic Henry James horror novella.

[auricgoldfinger]

2 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

No, I'm serious. I'm paranoid about opening up someone else's device. The last time the SR-7 was in my setup, it started to suddenly blow fuses one after the other! Turned out, Paul was fine with us going up to a higher amperage, and things are fine since.

 

I guess your super duper 6 AWG conduit lets too much juice get to your system. 

[austinpop]

10 minutes ago, rickca said:

Don't you mean going to a higher voltage?  Anyway, my reference was to the classic Henry James horror novella.

 

Ah OK! I'm not a connoisseur of horror novels. No, I did mean a higher amperage fuse.

 

9 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

I guess your super duper 6 AWG conduit lets too much juice get to your system. 

 

That's right. It's an amperage superhighway, man!

 

Before anyone tries to remind us - yeah, just joking around, we know current is delivered based on the impedance of the load, not the AWG of the AC line.

[seeteeyou]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

Then came the SR-7 DRXL. Man - I am astounded every time I hear this PSU! How is it possible to improve on such excellence as the LPS-1.2 and SR-4?! But it is! With the SR-7, I finally understood what Roy has been hearing. There is clear daylight now between the NUC+SR-7 and my SE.

 

It's more or less a matter of single DR Paul Hynes versus triple SR Dr. Sean Jacobs as well as NUC versus Mini-ITX form factor, though SE itself should be somewhat "crippled" by both dormant SSD and optical drive

 

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:

According to Ed Hsu of Sound Galleries, SSDs emit a noise in the 6GHz range that is very difficult to filter and the faster the SSD, generally the noisier it is.  Based on what I was hearing, I had no reason to doubt what he was saying.

 

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

While you could argue that I could have used an SSD drive in this situation and that the SSD would sit idle since the OS would be running completely from memory, my contention is that even a dormant SSD still generates noise.  In the end, the proof is in the listening.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=435&tab=comments#comment-896555

On 11/17/2018 at 8:11 PM, lmitche said:

What kind of media held your boot disk in your non ramboot experiment above? The type of media and how it is attached to the CPU matters greatly.

 

Of course THE most interesting test would be combining both 12V SR-7 DRXL rails in series so that NUC7i7DNBE would be fed 24V via its low-impedance 2X2 Molex connector instead of its high-impedance DC input.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=403&tab=comments#comment-890918

On 10/30/2018 at 4:16 AM, romaz said:

As for the 2X2 Molex connector on the NUC7i7DNHE, should I ultimately go with that board for either my RoonServer, RoonBridge, or both, I fully expect to use that connector.

 

Since one of Paul's SR7 order was cancelled, Roy should receive yet another SR7 in the future and therefore he'll have access to three SR-7 DRXL rails simultaneously.  Could 1 + 1 DRXL rails for 24V NUC7i7DNBE + 1 DRXL rail for tX-USBultra be an ultimate config or what?

[BigAlMc]

54 minutes ago, rickca said:

Let me clarify about Optane memory.

 

When you see something about Optane caching, it's talking about using the Optane memory as a cache for data retrieved from a hard drive ... so it's like a hybrid (SSD/hard drive) storage device.  It isn't an alternative to memory (RAM).  Intel pitched this as a way to speed up systems in which an SSD of sufficient capacity would be too expensive.

 

On systems that don't use a hard drive or don't support Optane memory for caching, you can use Optane memory as if it were an NVMe SSD.

 

 

Thanks Rick,

 

So any thoughts on whether an NUC with optane memory such as the below is likely to have better latency?

 

Intel NUC 7 Kit NUC7I7BNHX1, i7-7567U, DDR4 SO-DIMM, 16GB Optane Memory

I'm wondering if there's a theoretical benefit but have zero idea as to whether the AL in Ram boot running only audio. would have sufficient resources and never really utilise the Optane.

 

57 minutes ago, Middy said:

Thanks Alan,  i am sure there are many levels reading these posts. My level is in the basement  next to the washing machine...

Thanks always for good infomation..

 

 

 

Thanks Dave but in fairness it was as much of a question as a guide.

 

Cheers,

Alan

 

[Johnseye]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

 

Orthogonal approach, to be honest.

 

I have always found the efficacy of HQPlayer to be dependent on the DAC. For the Terminator, it makes a big difference. For the Ayre QX-5, it likes native resolutions best. At least to my ears.

 

You might find it different now.  The various filters were much more discernible to me with this endpoint in line. 

 

59 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

I am following in Roy's (and Larry's footsteps. This is the i7 NUC Roy found to sound even better than the NUC7CJYH. 

 

It is also the same board that I am using.

[LTG2010]

7 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

So any thoughts on whether an NUC with optane memory such as the below is likely to have better latency?

The Optane imo is only suitable as a boot device instead of a USB stick, or for storage- RAM is 10x faster so you would boot into RAM.

You would get fantastic sound quality if you set up your Zenith as an AL server with bridged connection connected to an NUC NAA.

[yellowblue]

Someone who can help me which adapter I need to get to use my LPS 1.2 with the NUC7CJYH?

[rickca]

2 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

Out of interest can I ask why you selected this model

Note that NUC7i7DNBE is 15W TDP and has an available fanless case Akasa Plato X7D.

 

NUC7i7BNH is 28W TDP and I don't think there is a suitable fanless case available.

[Johnseye]

1 minute ago, yellowblue said:

Someone who can help me which adapter I need to get to use my LPS 1.2 with the NUC7CJYH?

 

2.1 to 2.5 mm

[BigAlMc]

6 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

You would get fantastic sound quality if you set up your Zenith as an AL server with bridged connection connected to an NUC NAA.

 

Thanks @LTG2010,

 

Yeah that's interesting. Not sure I have the nerve to risk messing with the SE's BIOS and whatnot.

 

Also bridging in AL might be a stretch for my technical skills. I was happy when I managed to SSH into the NUC using Putty! So baby steps at the moment.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[BigAlMc]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

Note that NUC7i7DNBE is 15W TDP and has an available fanless case Akasa Plato X7D.

 

NUC7i7BNH is 28W TDP and I don't think there is a suitable fanless case available.

 

Thanks Rick,

 

That helps. So optane might be a waste and I might be stuck with a fan, whereas the other one is lower power and there's fanless cases available.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[rickca]

4 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

That helps. So optane might be a waste and I might be stuck with a fan, whereas the other one is lower power and there's fanless cases available.

 

I can't vouch for how well that fanless case manages temps with that NUC.  I don't have personal experience with it.  But that's what Rajiv is getting.

[lmitche]

8 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Thanks Rick,

 

That helps. So optane might be a waste and I might be stuck with a fan, whereas the other one is lower power and there's fanless cases available.

 

Cheers,

Alan

Alan,

 

Optane is useful as a storage drive for booting the OS and for storing the roon database and software. The latter is important as Roon updates software updates come without warning, and a non-volatile device is necessary to store the update for the next time it is loaded into memory.

 

So once AL is booted into ram the only Optane activity is Roon database updates. As Optane is the fastest memory available, especially with small random updates, the low latency gets these write operations done quickly, and the windows of noisy write operations is reduced.

 

A 32 gb Optane drive is best. 16 gb is really not enough storage.

[seeteeyou]

On 10/29/2018 at 7:01 PM, romaz said:

With my Mac Pro as RoonServer, sound was fuller and richer and was easily the better sounding RoonServer machine.  This has led me to buy into Pink Faun's premise that for your RoonServer machine, "more is more." 

 

On 11/12/2018 at 3:37 AM, romaz said:

I can verify that when I use "Extreme" mode on my Mac Pro, this otherwise quiet and cool running machine gets noisier and hotter.  While you would think that this would result in increased electrical noise that would be detrimental to SQ, SQ actually improves.

 

Maybe one day we'll see how Hades Canyon with i7-8809G would perform as an endpoint. A water cooler should be essential for a 100W TDP package with 45W TDP alone for the quad-core processor.

 

The only things that are directly connected to the CPU are two USB ports plus another pair of HDMI + mDP ports, though. Even one of the most recent NUC series called Crimson Canyon with Radeon 540 GPU + the very first 10nm CPU i3-8121U would come with SoC, it's gonna be interesting to compare that to Hades Canyon without the supposedly advantageous SoC

 

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/mini-pcs/nuc-kits/NUC8i7HVK_TechProdSpec.pdf#page=15

[BigAlMc]

2 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Alan,

 

Optane is useful as a storage drive for booting the OS and for storing the roon database and software. The latter is important as Roon updates software updates come without warning, and a non-volatile device is necessary to store the update for the next time it is loaded into memory.

 

So once AL is booted into ram the only Optane activity is Roon database updates. As Optane is the fastest memory available, especially with small random updates, the low latency gets these write operations done quickly, and the windows of noisy write operations is reduced.

 

Thanks Larry,

 

But to be clear are you talking about Optane memory like the NUC I posted or an Optane SSD?

 

Cheers,

Alan

[rickca]

@BigAlMc you can optionally use Optane memory in NUC7i7DNBE as well.  Larry's point is well taken.

 

Don't get hung up on the 'memory' part of Optane memory.  It just looks like a small NVMe SSD to the system.

[lmitche]

3 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Thanks Larry,

 

But to be clear are you talking about Optane memory like the NUC I posted or an Optane SSD?

 

Cheers,

Alan

Alan,

 

The Optane on the NUC you posted can be use as a hard drive cache or SSD. If you don't use Roon, it is a great size to boot AL into ram.

[BigAlMc]

Optional Optane! I like it ?

 

More seriously it was Larry's use of the word drive that had me wondering. 

 

Larry just clarified whilst I was typing  - thanks Larry!

 

And yup use case I'm considering is an AL based Roon server.

 

Would be in the living room so would need to be silent as well.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[greenleo]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

Roy graciously lent me his NUC7CJYH encased in the Akasa Newton JC

Rajiv,

 

Is the clock of this NUC replaced by the SCLK-EX?

[austinpop]

5 minutes ago, greenleo said:

Rajiv,

 

Is the clock of this NUC replaced by the SCLK-EX?

 

Nope.

[Dev]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

Note that NUC7i7DNBE is 15W TDP and has an available fanless case Akasa Plato X7D.

 

NUC7i7BNH is 28W TDP and I don't think there is a suitable fanless case available.

 

I am curious where are folks sourcing the barebone NUC7i7DNBE from and at what price ? Few places that are selling have a higher price than NUC7i7DNHE which is the same board in a NUC case.

[greenleo]

1 hour ago, yellowblue said:

Someone who can help me which adapter I need to get to use my LPS 1.2 with the NUC7CJYH?

2.5

[austinpop]

6 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

I am curious where are folks sourcing the barebone NUC7i7DNBE from and at what price ? Few places that are selling have a higher price than NUC7i7DNHE which is the same board in a NUC case.

 

I ordered mine from Newegg. But looks like they're out of stock already.