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

[alligatorman]

6 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

No. The Pi runs a "player" software (squeezelite, MPD, RoonBridge - you name it).

So this is an alternative to a HifiBerry Digi+?

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

51 minutes ago, alligatorman said:

So this is an alternative to a HifiBerry Digi+?

Exactly 

[romaz]

13 hours ago, greenleo said:

But Toslink is limited to 192kHz, is it?

 

Yes, but unless you have a large DXD collection, for some people, this may be an acceptable limitation.

[romaz]

5 hours ago, lmitche said:

Happy to confirm that the m2 ngff route for the hard disk Sata port sounds best.  I moved the Adnaco fiber card to PCIE slot 1 and the network card to PCIE slot 2, so everything has an unshared connection to the CPU.

 

The SQ is beautiful.

 

 

Good to know, Larry.  Thanks.

[Cooler]

On 3/21/2017 at 10:34 PM, lmitche said:

I found the power supply upgrade notes from last year:

 

"FWIW, I have replaced the 400 watt fanless Seasonic ATX power supply with a 1600 watt EVGA ATX power supply priced at $400. This is total overkill, but the ripple specs are less than 15 uv and there is an audible increase in SQ. It comes with a 12 gauge power cord and very heavy ATX, CPU, and SSD cabling. The difference in SQ was immediate with a lower noise floor, more detail and better PRAT. Hifial bought the same power supply on my recommendation."

Sorry was on vacation in Rome and missed most of the discussion here

So is it still valuable to buy 1600 watt EVGA ATX, considering a fantastic results of Seasonic Prime titanium 750/850 watt?

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, Cooler said:

Sorry was on vacation in Rome and missed most of the discussion here

So is it still valuable to buy 1600 watt EVGA ATX, considering a fantastic results of Seasonic Prime titanium 750/850 watt?

To my knowledge no one has done an a to b comparison of the EVGA vs. the Seasonic.  Nevertheless I know people with one or the other that are very happy with their choice.

[Cooler]

33 minutes ago, lmitche said:

To my knowledge no one has done an a to b comparison of the EVGA vs. the Seasonic.  Nevertheless I know people with one or the other that are very happy with their choice.

As i understood from EVGA review, one of it benefits of it are cables (motherboard and AC). I think would be great to buy cables with the same quality for motherboard + good AC cable:

 

 

With AC cable its easier, there are a lot of them on the market, but motherboard cable, can you guys suggest some audiophile one or just with great quality?!

[lmitche]

33 minutes ago, Cooler said:

As i understood from EVGA review, one of it benefits of it are cables (motherboard and AC). I think would be great to buy cables with the same quality for motherboard + good AC cable:

 

 

With AC cable its easier, there are a lot of them on the market, but motherboard cable, can you guys suggest some audiophile one or just with great quality?!

Cooler, you are right of course.  There is a lot of value in the build quality of the cables included with the evga.  I don't know of another source for a ATX motherboard cable that is anything near the same quality. 

 

I'm using the included AC cable and have no plans to replace it.

[kaufenpreis]

Multihomed networking is difficult. Microsoft does not envision that you'd be doing this at home.

[Haninger]

On 3/22/2017 at 11:12 PM, greenleo said:

Thank you for your post.  Certainly one more way?

 

For the network bridge introduced Cutter(if my memory serves me right), no setting of the WiFi adapter is needed and no fiddling with the metric is needed in W10.  No knowledge of ToL in TCPIP is needed.  You may try☺

 

Thanks. I'm a little confused by the different connection methods suggested across what is now a very long thread.

 

Which is currently the best method to make a direct Ethernet connection between a Windows 10 Pro sonicTransporter PC and a microRendu? Thanks again!

[lmitche]

Hi All,

 

The  SATA SAGA continues!  

 

Thanks to Alex Crespi, I learned of a thread in usaudiomart where others have tested a large number of very cheap <$2 SATA cables and claim increased SQ with several brands.  I have ordered what appears to be the top three models, and they will dripple in over the next few weeks.Given the terrific results of the earlier SATA experiments I would not be surprised that there is more SQ to be gained here.

 

If you are interested I can post test results here.  

 

Larry

[greenleo]

1 hour ago, Haninger said:

 

Thanks. I'm a little confused by the different connection methods suggested across what is now a very long thread.

 

Which is currently the best method to make a direct Ethernet connection between a Windows 10 Pro sonicTransporter PC and a microRendu? Thanks again!

If your PC has two NICs(which is a must for the direct connection) and a free USB port and an USB WiFi adapter(this cost money), then using two two NICs + WiFi adapter to setup the network bridge is the easiest way.  It can be done literally in a couple of minutes.  The WiFi adapter is a dummy that does nothing.

 

There could be physical limitations or personal preference that using the WiFi adapter is not desirable.  Then setting up an dhcp server with two NICs to enable direct connection is possible.  I believe Peter_T mentioned that in the thread.  It will take you some time to figure it out.  As you my have realised, there are different dhcp server software and different settings to be set as required by the corresponding software, the experience could be frustrating as seen from some of the posts in this thread.

 

It so happens that I have an idle WiFi adapter.  Hence I use the network bridge method.  I have extended the method to make it work in the Win Server 2016 GUI mode as well.

 

In terms of SQ, either method, network bridge or dhcp server, sounds similar because in both of the cases, only the NIC connected to mR needs to work.

 

 

[greenleo]

12 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Hi All,

 

The  SATA SAGA continues!  

 

Thanks to Alex Crespi, I learned of a thread in usaudiomart where others have tested a large number of very cheap <$2 SATA cables and claim increased SQ with several brands.  I have ordered what appears to be the top three models, and they will dripple in over the next few weeks.Given the terrific results of the earlier SATA experiments I would not be surprised that there is more SQ to be gained here.

 

If you are interested I can post test results here.  

 

Larry

Please do.

[Haninger]

14 minutes ago, greenleo said:

If your PC has two NICs(which is a must for the direct connection) and a free USB port and an USB WiFi adapter(this cost money), then using two two NICs + WiFi adapter to setup the network bridge is the easiest way.  It can be done literally in a couple of minutes.  The WiFi adapter is a dummy that does nothing.

 

There could be physical limitations or personal preference that using the WiFi adapter is not desirable.  Then setting up an dhcp server with two NICs to enable direct connection is possible.  I believe Peter_T mentioned that in the thread.  It will take you some time to figure it out.  As you my have realised, there are different dhcp server software and different settings to be set as required by the corresponding software, the experience could be frustrating as seen from some of the posts in this thread.

 

It so happens that I have an idle WiFi adapter.  Hence I use the network bridge method.  I have extended the method to make it work in the Win Server 2016 GUI mode as well.

 

In terms of SQ, either method, network bridge or dhcp server, sounds similar because in both of the cases, only the NIC connected to mR needs to work.

 

 

 

Thank you.

[romaz]

15 hours ago, Cooler said:

As i understood from EVGA review, one of it benefits of it are cables (motherboard and AC). I think would be great to buy cables with the same quality for motherboard + good AC cable:

 

 

With AC cable its easier, there are a lot of them on the market, but motherboard cable, can you guys suggest some audiophile one or just with great quality?!

 

 

Chan (owner of Pachanko Cables) can make you audiophile grade motherboard cables upon request.  He's well regarded here on CA and has a strong following:

 

https://www.pachankostudio.com/

SOtM can make you motherboard cables as well upon request using UP-OCC grade copper or silver (solid core or stranded).

 

Audiophile-grade AC cables are more easily found.  For an ATX PSU, the low gauge chords are probably best because they have the least amount of line resistance.  I'm guessing the thick 20A chord used by the EVGA 1.6KW PSU is one of the reasons this PSU might sound especially dynamic.  This is where a dedicated 20A line really comes in handy, not for noise isolation but for lower line resistance.

[romaz]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Hi All,

 

The  SATA SAGA continues!  

 

Thanks to Alex Crespi, I learned of a thread in usaudiomart where others have tested a large number of very cheap <$2 SATA cables and claim increased SQ with several brands.  I have ordered what appears to be the top three models, and they will dripple in over the next few weeks.Given the terrific results of the earlier SATA experiments I would not be surprised that there is more SQ to be gained here.

 

If you are interested I can post test results here.  

 

Larry

 

 

Yes, Larry.  Please do!

 

I am very happy with the Pachanko SATA cables I have but one thing I am interested in is whether an inexpensive SATA cable with 4 ground wires sounds better than 3 ground wires.  The SATA data connector spec calls for 3 ground wires (pins 1, 4, and 7) and yet some SATA data cables contain 4.  I happened to take apart one of the SATA cables that came with my motherboard and noticed it contains 4 ground wires and so I plan to use this certain cable as a grounding cable but I wonder if this might be a reason why certain cables sound better.  The biggest difference maker, I believe, however, will be how good the shielding and the connectors are.  Anyway, this might interest you:

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SATA-cables-Is-there-a-difference-97/

[ElviaCaprice]

I predict, like USB, the cleaner your power, the less likely the cables make any bit of difference, other than proper impedance and as short as possible.  Otherwise all your doing is coloring electrical noise with various cable constructs.

[ted_b]

1 hour ago, greenleo said:

Please do.

+1

[greenleo]

21 minutes ago, romaz said:

 

Yes, Larry.  Please do!

 

I am very happy with the Pachanko SATA cables I have but one thing I am interested in is whether an inexpensive SATA cable with 4 ground wires sounds better than 3 ground wires.  The SATA data connector spec calls for 3 ground wires (pins 1, 4, and 7) and yet some SATA data cables contain 4.  I happened to take apart one of the SATA cables that came with my motherboard and noticed it contains 4 ground wires and so I plan to use this certain cable as a grounding cable but I wonder if this might be a reason why certain cables sound better.  The biggest difference maker, I believe, however, will be how good the shielding and the connectors are.  Anyway, this might interest you:

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SATA-cables-Is-there-a-difference-97/

Hi Roy,

 

I guess your SATA cables are connected to both of the OS and the file disks, right?

 

Have you ever try to use RAM disk as the file disk and an ordinary/Pachanko SATA cable to the original file disk for comparison?  I suspect that the SQ would be same.

[romaz]

1 minute ago, ElviaCaprice said:

I predict, like USB, the cleaner your power, the less likely the cables make any bit of difference, other than proper impedance and as short as possible.  Otherwise all your doing is coloring electrical noise with various cable constructs.

1

 

Clean power is always important but line resistance is maybe even more important only because the PSRR of well-built components is so high these days.  I pride myself in having clean power (dedicated 20A line, Shunyata Denali line conditioner, High Fidelity Cables power distributor, SR grounding block) and yet cables still make a HUGE difference in my system, not from the standpoint of lowering noise but minimizing line resistance.  Absolutely, the shorter the cable the better because shorter cables have less line resistance but there is much more to it than just cable length.  Here is an excerpt from one of my posts on Head-Fi a few months ago that discusses some of the things I consider when evaluating a cable:

 

1)  Conductor:  This can range from tin to iron, brass, gold, copper, silver and graphene (the fastest electrical conductor known to man).  Here are the relative conductivity of various conductors:

 

Material IACS (International Annealed Copper Standard)
Ranking	Metal	% Conductivity*
1	Silver (Pure)	105%
2	Copper	100%
3	Gold (Pure)	70%
4	Aluminum	61%
5	Brass	28%
6	Zinc	27%
7	Nickel	22%
8	Iron (Pure)	17%
9	Tin	15%
10	Phosphor Bronze	15%
11	Steel (Stainless included)	3-15%
12	Lead (Pure)	7%
13	Nickel Aluminum Bronze	7%

 

Graphene isn't listed but it is claimed to have a conductivity 100x of copper.  Note that silver is 5% more conductive than copper and that purity matters.  UP-OCC grade purity is the purest form of silver or copper that is commercially available (guaranteed to be 99.99997% pure).  Unfortunately, silver is much more expensive than copper and UP-OCC grade is much more expensive than standard OFC (oxygen-free copper).  What does increased conductivity get you?  Decreased line resistance.

 

2)  Conductor gauge:  Most basic computers come with 18g power chords.  Audiophile power chords for low power digital components seem to range from 12-16 gauge while chords designed for high current devices like amplifiers and power distributors are as large as 6 gauge.  What happens as wire gauge gets bigger?  Once again, line resistance goes down and large conductor gauge is especially important for the conduction of lower frequencies.  

 

3)  Dielectric:  This is an area of controversy and there isn't consensus on what is real and what is hype.  In short, dielectrics are designed to function as insulators against other conductors within a cable but also against its outer environment.  One premise held is that the only perfect dielectric is a vacuum (negative air pressure) and that any other material used as a dielectric will have some negative impact on SQ due to skin effect.  With alternating currents running through a conductor, it has been said that lower frequencies (bass) travel at the inner most core of a conductor while also occupying the largest cross section of a conductor as it travels down that conductor.  This is the premise on why large conductors are so important for bass transmission.  The higher frequencies (midrange and treble) travel toward the outer edges of the conductor.  With the perfect cable where you have a conductor that is highly conductive and a dielectric that has zero impact, then the high and low frequencies arrive at their destination at exactly the same time (meaning perfect timing).  Because it is the highest frequencies that travel at the outer edges of a conductor, the dielectric used will have impact on these higher frequencies potentially resulting in treble and even midrange smearing but also timing issues.  This is often where cable companies get creative and why some cables can cost so much.

 

Here are examples of the dielectric constants of various materials:

 

Air (vacuum) 1.0

Cotton 1.3

Wood 1.4

Teflon (PTFE) 2.1

Polypropylene 2.2

Kevlar 3.5

Neoprene 4.0

Distilled water 34

 

Teflon and polypropylene are the most commonly used dielectrics because of their durability and heat resistance.  Certain manufacturers have gone to cotton as a primary dielectric (i.e. DHC, Zenwave) and I believe their results speak for themselves.  Once again, what is the impact of the dielectric on the conductor that supposedly leads to this purported smearing?  It has to do with the build-up of an opposing electrical charge but ultimately, this is once again a form of line resistance.

 

There are other factors like cable geometry, solid-core vs stranded wire and litz configuration which I won't get into here but the strategy for their use is to reduce line resistance.

 

Finally, there is shielding.  All cables are shielded but some shields are especially designed to repel or mitigate EMI and this is the concept behind cables designed for "digital" gear with the idea that it is our digital gear that is most sensitive to EMI.  While important for certain components, it has been my observation that well-made components with high PSRR have less need for exotic shielding.

 

My Chord DAVE has very high PSRR to the extent that when I take it with me to audio shows for comparison purposes, with any cheap power chord plugged straight into the wall, line noise is hardly ever an issue but adequacy of current is since it can result in a choke hold which can impact dynamics.  As I have done extensive comparisons of mains cables, in my system, the ones that make the largest difference are the chords designed for high current amps and not the ones designed for noise reduction.  For example, even though my DAVE consumes less than 20 watts, it benefits greatly from Shunyata's Alpha HC (High Current) chord (7g) which is designed for analog gear and is choked, in comparison, by Shunyata's Alpha Digital chord (10g) even though the Digital chord excels in noise reduction.

 

People seem obsessed with dedicated lines because they believe it is the noise isolation that is important when, in my opinion, the most important reason for a dedicated line is to lower line resistance and this applies equally for low power digital equipment as it does for gigantic amplifiers  Here is what Vince Galbo of MSB has to say about it and I couldn't agree more:

 

"People often tell me “I have 20 amp dedicated lines”. By US electrical code definitions, a 20 amp dedicated line will have 12 gauge wire in the wall. So while you may have a “dedicated line”, 12 gauge wire is absolutely insufficient for high end audio systems. We are recommending ten gauge or thicker wire here. It is the subject and goal of this paper. The gauge of the wire is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than the fact that the line is “dedicated”. The subject of this paper works on the theory that the varying musical demands of your amplifier are actually modulating the incoming power line, divorced from the utility (power company) by some resistance (12 or 14 gauge wall wiring at some length from the breaker panel has too much resistance for audio purposes). The noise coming from your utility is probably much lower than you suspect and the gauge of the wire is far more important. The amp demands current up and down with the music at audio frequencies that are of course above and below the 60 cycles from the power company. These demands are impressed on the line wavering the incoming voltage and so the amp is re-ingesting its own noise and also making the line dirty for itself AND the audio front end. This is possible because the wall wiring back to the breaker panel has some degree of resistance depending on the length of the run and the wire gauge (12 gauge or sometimes even 14 gauge). Power conditioners and certain power cord designs help because they make an effort to “shunt” this noise (short it out and kill it) and consume the unwanted frequencies. A better answer is to reduce the resistance back to the breaker panel making it difficult for the amp to modulate the power at all and also at the same time getting maximum power for the amplifier power supply. And so there are two benefits to reducing the resistance back to the breaker panel."

 

http://www.msbtechnology.com/faq/how-to-wire-your-house-for-good-power/

 

To be oblivious to what good power cables can provide with respect to line resistance is to be oblivious to a whole other world of dynamics hidden within your electronic gear trapped by poor cables.

[romaz]

20 minutes ago, greenleo said:

Hi Roy,

 

I guess your SATA cables are connected to both of the OS and the file disks, right?

 

Have you ever try to use RAM disk as the file disk and an ordinary/Pachanko SATA cable to the original file disk for comparison?  I suspect that the SQ would be same.

 

 

Yes, I have 2 Pachanko SATA cables and I use them for both OS and file disks.

 

I have used RAM disks in the past but I have never directly compared them against my Pachanko SATA cables.  At this point, I have no plans to go back to a RAM disk.  Here is my response to your question from just a few days ago:

 

 

[greenleo]

3 hours ago, romaz said:

 

Yes, I have 2 Pachanko SATA cables and I use them for both OS and file disks.

 

I have used RAM disks in the past but I have never directly compared them against my Pachanko SATA cables.  At this point, I have no plans to go back to a RAM disk.  Here is my response to your question from just a few days ago:

 

 

Thank you Roy for your reply.

 

I'm not concerning the SQ of RAM disk vs SSD,....

 

I concerns the function of the SATA cable and the size of relevance.  I view the functions of a better SATA cable provides better signal and prevents other EMI enters the system.

 

If the file disk is working, then these two effects are working together and it is hard to estimate how large the individual effects is.  Using a RAM disk to play back, the file disk should be idle.  Then function of providing better signal is gone.  By using an ordinary SATA cable connected to the file disk as a control, and compare it with using a Pachanko SATA cable, the rejection of EMI back to the system by the Pachanko cable may be estimated.  Then how to build a better CAS may be formulated.

 

Thanks again for your reply.

[Peter_T]

Recently CAT asked on the Jplay forum about an audiophile ethernet card. Marcin (Jplay/Jcat) answered that they will start to sell an ethernet card (2 ports) with femto-clock in May.

[Cooler]

36 minutes ago, Peter_T said:

Recently CAT asked on the Jplay forum about an audiophile ethernet card. Marcin (Jplay/Jcat) answered that they will start to sell an ethernet card (2 ports) with femto-clock in May.

Thanks for sharing,  but i still do feel it makes sense to spend $1k on mR/sotm + LPS-1 and then spend 2-3 times more to build true audiophile PC

 

I decided to stick to good PC parts (like titanium PSU, intel ethernet cards, good cables), but not spend $400 for each part of PC and at the end have $5k PC.

[Cooler]

i meant DONT feel it makes sense)