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

[StreamFidelity]

16 minutes ago, zerung said:

Emil in his SGM Extreme did not use clock and opined that it was not important for his design.

 

It's not that simple with Taiko Audio. As far as I know, the ASUS WS C621E SAGE Board is installed in the Extreme. And if it is true what @OAudio writes, then the clock problem is solved excellent.

 

On 5/29/2020 at 7:48 PM, OAudio said:

1. The clock subsystem. Wow this is where Intel have really helped out in the design. 

• A single oscillator on the PCH generates the CPU, RAM, DMI, PCIe, SATA, USB and Network (for on-chip N/W) clock domains signals,
• All these domains and subsystems now locked to each via the single clock - the PPLs generating the clocks for the domains all reference the same master,
• The master clock is even an integer multiple of the USB clock frequency ! so exceptional for good timing of on board USB interfaces for music if you want,
• Finally the power system for the master clock is very different to consumer motherboards, the design effectively carves out almost all of the clock subsystem, (its PLLs and transmission buffers) away from most of the motherboards power rails and other systems.

[StreamFidelity]

12 hours ago, jean-michel6 said:

Altogether sata on mobo is also an EMI nest and noisy. I have totally disable sata on my demat pc’s with great sq results .

 

That is also my experience.

[StreamFidelity]

I think saving in RAM and Buffer size are two different things. Saving in RAM is about separating the music files from the network noise. The music is played from the fast working memory.

Buffer is about fetching the largest possible data packets on a slow network to avoid dropouts. In my experience, however, a large buffer has a very negative effect on the latencies. I have set both the network card adapter and USB to the smallest buffer.

See Denafrips USB ASIO as an example. The output latency is very low 1.50 ms. That makes an audible positive difference in my system.

 

[StreamFidelity]

24 minutes ago, dminches said:

This approach in Euphony does a great job in reducing network noise.

 

I like to believe that.

 

Still, you could take a look at your network map. There are a multitude of settings in the network adapter that influence the buffer in the data traffic. That's what I mean. There a small buffer ensures low latencies and, in my and other experiences, this improves the audio playback considerably. Look for example to Pink Faun: "During the process of developing the streamer 2.16, we found out that latency is one of the key elements to achieve the really smooth and natural sound; the lower the latency, the better."

 

My contribution should only make it clear that not all buffers are the same. I also think it makes sense to cache it in RAM, and the buffer should be very large there. The buffer in the network traffic, however, should be as small as possible. 😉

[StreamFidelity]

11 hours ago, amolan said:

Anyone have some tips about how to setup ? also I notice the increase of latency using latency Monitor, I tried to change some parameters as per the manual shows but no luck, using the basic default config it`s sound amazing already.

 

One of the most important settings is to avoid busy cores. Look in the manual:

 

Quote

 

RSS Base Processor

For a Solarflare network adapter, the RSS base processor is 0 (zero), which means it starts processing on CPU core 0 which is also the default processor for all other general Windows processes and will likely be the default for all other network adapters in the server.

To avoid this unnecessary contention, set the adapter RSS base processor to another processor on the NUMA node the Solarflare adapter is assigned to.

 

 

The same applies to LatencyMon. I always only take the last two cores. 😉