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

[Always.Learning]

28 minutes ago, mozes said:

Thanks for your great post. I enjoyed reading it, awesome system!

Based on many tests, I came to the conclusion that the IR is best placed just before my tX USB ultra, so my preference is exactly like yours. So now the tX is between the IR and the Brooklyn.

It seems the three of us are in agreement, then. Have others with similar systems weighed in? (It's been a while since I've tried to catch up on this thread.)

[Always.Learning]

3 hours ago, feelingears said:

@Always.Learning Nice work listening and reporting on the combinations. 

 

It was useful to read the comparisons.  Do you listen for any combination that seems to add up to more than the sum of the parts? 

 

 Totally subjective question, I know, but I feel that if your system is resolving enough (and yours seems to be!), you will hear subtle improvements as tipping the scale one way or the other for what you like to hear in an audio system.  At least, that is my experience.  It seems to me that the right cable with the right component and power supply (and power cables) add up to a lot. 

 

I suppose all of this is just tuning a system to taste, so I'm curious if you have any thoughts to share about that. Thank you.

 

 

@feelingears  Thank you for the compliment!

 

My process for improving my system is multi-pronged.

 

First, I try to listen to a lot of music, in a lot of different contexts. I personally attend a good deal of chamber music concerts, recitals, jazz concerts, and the occasional pop or rock concert. I try to listen to other people's systems and have been fortunate to develop friendships with folks who care about audio in Puget Sound. I will be attending RMAF but generally prefer the more relaxed, quiet, real world environments of people's homes. 

 

Second, I try to read relevant websites and other sources of information for products that make a big difference in areas where I think my system could be improved. For the last year, that's mostly been in the digital realm, as I feel the advances in digital over the last couple years are rather large. Then I try to apply a critical lens to this information, looking for reviewers and individuals who have wide exposure to a good number of products and who also appear to be discerning. That sounds pretty subjective and I suppose it is. I put a lot more faith in people who have actually listened to products at length and who are willing to compare them with other products. I attribute some of my success in this area to my work as an attorney where I was paid to apply analytical and critical reasoning skills to large quantities of writing. But there's no substitute for long experience in reviewing the reviewers, whether they are amateurs or pros. After a while, you develop a sense for people who know what they are talking about. 

 

Third, I look for products that appear to provide good bang for the buck. That might be an Iso Regen for under $500 or it might be something a lot more expensive like a Chord DAVE. When I bought the DAVE, about 1.5 years ago, I thought I was killing three birds with one stone and thus getting good value (the three birds were a state of the art DAC, a killer headphone amp, and immunity to upstream sources -- I think I got the first two more or less right, but the third has turned out to be wildly inaccurate). Although I've spent way more on various upstream digital "improvers" and power supplies than I ever thought I would, those products have elevated my sound way beyond what I was getting when I was playing files from a laptop straight to the DAVE, and I still think DAVE represents good value. 

 

Fourth, I try to audition products at home in my system. You can't do this with every product (turntables, cartridges, and speakers are a challenge) but you can do it with quite a few. If it means I pay a restocking fee if I don't like the product, well, that may be worth it. If it means I resell the product at a modest loss, that's ok too. But there are quite a few sellers, commercial and non-commercial, who are willing to let you audition a product in your home without penalty if you just ask them pleasantly and courteously and/or you offer to put down a refundable deposit. 

 

Fifth, when I audition products or insert a new component in a system, I try to listen over a longish period of time before reaching any definite conclusions. I will generally postpone critical listening for weeks if possible. Sometimes the best A/B comparison is where you've listened to A for a long time and then insert B, then go back to A relatively quickly. 

 

Sixth, I think any great system needs a great foundation in terms of three things:  power, vibration control, and room tuning. Taking just one of these areas -- power -- I have experienced rather startling improvements by upgrading my dedicated circuits, paying attention to the circuits and outlets I'm using with each component, and using good power cords and a good power conditioner. All of the hard work that goes into component selection and matching won't pay off unless you address these foundational issues. 

 

Last and not least, I try to remember that it's about the music. In the right context, I can get goosebumps listening to my crappy car radio. You don't need megabucks to get goosebumps, you just need to be mindful and open to experience. 

 

Those are some of the key things that come to mind -- hope you find it useful. 

[Always.Learning]

@feelingears and @Johnseye:

 

I think Johnseye makes an excellent point:  it's too easy to lose the forest when focusing on individual trees when auditioning a component. That's why I like to insert a component and do as much relaxed listening as possible before doing the nitty gritty comparisons. Part of this is just paying attention to your body as you listen -- are you relaxed, receptive, flowing with the music, tapping your toes, etc. Or are you disengaged, tense, thinking about other things?

 

Of course there could be many reasons for the latter, and that's why you need to listen for longish periods of time to cycle through your moods and ups and downs. When I'm in this relaxed state of mind, I'm not trying to pinpoint differences or worry about how much bigger or smaller the soundstage is (unless it's just popping out at me). I'm really more concerned about the overall gestalt -- is the music drawing me in? In critical listening mode, that's when I start thinking in terms of the usual audiophile labels and I'll be much more conscious about precise differences. 

 

Feelingears asks if I focus on specific attributes of sound more than others or if I have an "orderly process" for comparing components. Other than what I said above about the overall approach, I don't necessarily have an "orderly process."

 

Of course I have my personal biases, as all of us do, and most good pro reviewers will explicitly disclose those biases over time. My musical/sonic priorities are these:  

• I want/need to understand the musical intent of the performers -- this is paramount.
• Listening should be an emotional experience; if I find that I’m thinking too much about the “sound,” then that’s an indication something is off.
• Tone is critical, in terms of color or timbre, but especially in terms of density and substance.
• Immediacy and presence are close cousins to tone; I want to hear performers in the room in terms of immediacy, but the stereo system should recover all the air and ambience of the venue when appropriate.
• Resolution is important, but not at the expense of a natural, fatigue-free listening experience.

Through the years, my analog system has generally bettered my digital system in each of the above areas, though of course it all depends on the quality of the recording, source file, vinyl pressing, etc. 

 

In the last year, however, I feel that digital has made great strides, and with the help of CA, and this thread in particular, digital is sounding better than ever, rivaling vinyl in general and sounding better in some respects, though yielding a different presentation.  
 

 

[Always.Learning]

48 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Received my Paul Hynes SR7 the other day.  Unfortunately I couldn't wait around in the USA any longer and am back here in Costa Rica.  I won't be able to test it out on my system for another year. 

On another note, had to send back my NUC and S-clk EX board to SOtM.  Hopefully we can resolve this issue. 

For now I'm really liking my SQ in my current system below.

Such a bummer; first, you wait a long time to get the Hynes, then you wait another year? On the other hand, you will be in Costa Rica, which certainly has its benefits. 

 

As someone else who is waiting on a Hynes PSU, I'm curious:  When did you order and pay for your SR7?

[Always.Learning]

3 hours ago, limniscate said:

Have you actually heard the DAVE with the Blu mk.2?  I didn't really think the DAVE was that good, but the DAVE with the Blu mk.2 is pretty astounding.

I heard a direct A/B of DAVE with and without Blu2 at RMAF. I have to agree with Eric, the differences were obvious and musically significant. An M Scaler is probably in my future (but not near future!).

 

I also heard a direct A/B of the SOtM master clock in and out of a nice system with Magico speakers in the SOtM room. While I think the master clock could make a nice difference, the differences were nowhere near as profound as the differences I heard with the Blu2. Just my two cents. 

[Always.Learning]

For those of you waiting for or contemplating a Paul Hynes power supply, I have an update on my saga. I finally received an SR5DR48 that was custom built for my Crayon phono stage and replaced an SMPS external power supply. The six-month waiting period and problems communicating with Paul are detailed on a separate thread, but suffice it to say that this story has a happy ending.

 

The Hynes supply has made a profound difference in my LP playback. I was expecting to hear certain improvements that I've heard when upgrading power in other areas, such as new dedicated circuits or better power cords. Those areas are dynamics, bass response, and transient fidelity. Well, I easily checked all of those boxes, especially bass quality and quantity. But what surprised me was a very notable increase in solidity or tonal density of the music. The music is simply more corporeal, and therefore more engaging. This supply cost me over $1200, but when added to my $6000+ phono stage, I have to say it is a very, very good investment. 

 

For those waiting for Paul to build and ship your supply, your patience will be rewarded. 

 

 

[Always.Learning]

It's been ages since I posted on this forum, but today in a different thread I posted a few thoughts on my sonic impressions of the new operating system for the SOtM sMS-200. Some folks here might find it of interest:

 

 

At the end of this post I raise questions about how competitive SOtM is right now with a NUC/AL approach to server and renderer. I see that today we have a couple people posting on this very topic (although nothing appears to have been said about updates to the operating software for the sMS-200). I'd love to see more such comparisons -- I think the new SOtM software might inspire a few people to revisit earlier conclusions. 

[Always.Learning]

Just now, auricgoldfinger said:

 

I'm planning to do this comparison in the next few weeks.  I've been waiting for the Eunhasu updates to stabilize and become more usable.  4.54 seems to be a worthwhile starting point.

 

Fantastic -- I'd love to hear your impressions.

[Always.Learning]

For two weeks now, I have been listening to a Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply hooked up to my Chord DAVE. It replaced a Sean Jacobs DC3, so I had already modified my DAVE to remove the stock SMPS. I bought the ARC6 used; a new one with the proper connections to a DAVE will cost you $10,000 USD. 

 

Admittedly, that is a lot of money for a power supply, especially one that powers a DAVE, which can be bought on the used market for somewhere around $8000 USD if current listings are to be believed. Nevertheless, if you own a Chord DAVE and if you have the funds, I am hard pressed to think of another change for the same money that will improve your sound this much. 

 

I’ll try to be succinct. The first words to enter my mind, approximately ten seconds into my first listen, were space and bass. That was followed quickly by vibrant. Then “resolution monster.” You don’t strain to hear these changes. They practically hit you in the face. Maybe it’s a cliché, but the ARC6 makes every single track sound new and better. Every single one. I’ll just quickly summarize my listening notes:  deep black silence, easily heard improvements to bass in both quality and quantity (actually measurable), vivid colors, tonal density and richness, serious magnification including a lot of newly intelligible vocals, beautiful and true timbres, and powerful, controlled micro- and macro-dynamic swings. 

 

Here is a brief overview of my system:

 

10 AWG dedicated lines > Shunyata Everest > Shunyata Sigma v2, Alpha v2, and Sablon Prince power cords > Taiko Extreme > PGGB files played by TAS and Roon; Qobuz and Tidal streaming > Shunyata Omega USB > SRC-DX > HFC 3D CT-2 SPDIF > Chord DAVE (Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply) > Crayon CFA 1.2 integrated amp > Devore Gibbon X speakers > cables from WyWires and HFC > HiFiMan HE1000 > vibration control from Stillpoints, Soundecks, and EVPs > Finite Elemente rack > acoustic treatment from Stillpoints Apertures, DAAD Acustica Applicata, A/V RoomService 123

 

Now I have not heard other replacement power supplies for the DAVE, so I can’t compare solutions from Farad or others. What I can do is give you a sense of the magnitude of the change I am hearing with other changes to my system. I certainly can’t think of any other power supply that has made anywhere near this impact, including the Farad Super3, Uptone LPS 1 and 1.2, and Uptone JS-2. None of these powered my Chord DAVE, but none had nearly the impact on the devices they did power. Paul Hynes made me a one-off custom power supply for my phono stage, but its impact is also dwarfed by the ARC6. Probably the closest is the Sean Jacobs DC3, but going from DC3 to ARC6 (I skipped the plain vanilla DC4) is quite clearly a larger leap than DAVE solo to DAVE plus DC3 (not that the DC3 is chopped liver – it is a huge and worthy upgrade for a fraction of the price, if you can find one). 

 

In terms of overall system upgrades, perhaps the closest and most apt comparison is to the Taiko Extreme, which, not coincidentally, employs a heroic power supply. The Extreme and the ARC6 bring some of the same things to the table:  increased tonal density and vibrancy, dynamics, bass quality and quantity. The overall magnitude of change in my system has been roughly similar. The Shunyata Everest, combined with a nice selection of Shunyata Sigma and Alpha power cords, was another great upgrade that transformed my system and did so across both digital and analog. But the sonic impact was not as great. 

 

If I were advising someone on what to buy and when to buy it, I would prioritize an ARC6-DAVE combo over an Extreme or similarly priced server. This is especially the case if you already have a DAVE, but even if you don’t, a used DAVE plus ARC6 is going to cost you maybe 65% of what an Extreme will cost you (and that’s with a Euro that has declined a lot relative to the US dollar in recent months). All of this assumes that you already are using something better than an off-the-shelf computer as a music server. 

 

Apart from the Extreme, I can’t think of any other change to my system that has been this dramatic, save for speakers. But I put speakers into a separate category, one that is highly personal. 

 

Actually, if you own a Chord DAVE, I can think of one change that will give you greater bang for your buck:  PGGB (see remastero.com and various threads on this website for more info). For a comparatively minimal investment, and assuming you can dedicate an appropriately powerful computer to remaster albums in your library, PGGB provides an incredible sonic lift. The combination of an ARC6-DAVE and music that has been PGGB’d is sublime. I have a nice vinyl setup (TW Acustic Raven, Raven tonearm, Miyajima cart, and Crayon phono stage) and PGGB albums sound better than all but a vanishingly small percentage of the same music on vinyl (and that was true before the ARC6 upgrade; the chasm has only grown since then). 

[Always.Learning]

This thread isn't nearly as active as it used to be but it still seems like the appropriate place to post impressions for a mod to the Chord DAVE's power supply. If you scroll up this page, you will see my impressions of what happens when you replace DAVE's stock power supply with, first, the Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply, and later, the Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply. In short, the ARC6 is one of the most transformative changes I have made to my system in nearly twenty years of system building.  

 

The subject of this post is another mod from Sean Jacobs. Sean makes a small capacitor board that fits very neatly into the space formerly occupied by DAVE’s switch mode power supply. The idea is to lower impedance even further than the ARC6. The cost of the board is $500 and @Nenon helps put these together for Sean in the U.S. and sells them in the U.S. It requires some minor surgery on your DAVE but no soldering or other special skills. 

 

To cut to the chase, I am very pleased with what I’ve been hearing. It’s only been three days but the changes were easily heard within the first hour. I don’t think there is much of a break-in period with these. Describing those changes is a bit of a challenge – on the one hand they are subtle and on the other hand they are musically important. One word that comes to mind is ineffable, which sort of means indescribable. Nevertheless, here are some other adjectives that come to mind: inviting, relaxing, beautiful, beguiling. There is a slightly lusher sound but no real softening of transients.

 

The caps board achieves this without doing any harm to the DAVE – ARC6 signature qualities: transparency and resolution, time domain precision, recovery of ambient information, transient response, microdynamics, image depth and imaging/soundstaging in general, speed, and purity and accuracy of timbre.

 

Indeed, the caps board takes one of these qualities – transparency – and manages to recover even more significantly musical detail than before. Normally, a change in one’s system does not achieve both a more relaxed sound and increased detail. That is definitely what is happening here, however. I can see more deeply into recordings, particularly of dense music. Greater detail emerges across the frequency spectrum, and is especially welcome when disentangling music with substantial bass.

 

The other change that is worth highlighting, I think, is a decrease in digital glare, especially when dynamics peak. When I first started using the Sean Jacobs ARC6 DC4 to power DAVE, I was floored by the new muscularity and vibrancy that it brought to the table. On certain recordings, however, I felt there was an excess of treble energy. Granted, some of these recordings were problematic to begin with. Over time, as the ARC6 settled in and burned in, the excess treble energy lessened but was still there on a relatively small number of recordings. A further improvement occurred when I replaced a Shunyata Alpha NR v2 power cord with a Sablon Prince.

 

The caps board goes further, reducing glare, hardness, excess treble energy, whatever you want to call it. This is evident on recordings as diverse as Cecile McLorin Salvant’s “The Window” (female jazz soprano), Lou Reed’s “Rock ’n Roll Animal” (explosive electric guitar), and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on period instruments.

 

My conclusion: if you own an ARC6 DC4 or are thinking about getting one to power DAVE, spend the extra $500 for the caps board. It complements the ARC6 without taking anything away from the DAVE – ARC6 combo. Truly an outstanding value.

[Always.Learning]

Feel free to forward on my mini-review to Sean, @Fourlegs. And thank you for participating in the listening tests -- you landed on some really sweet sounding caps. I am also very happy listening to my DAVE these days, thanks in large part to the efforts of Sean Jacobs and folks like you. 

[Always.Learning]

Let us know what you think after you've had some time to listen, @happybob.

[Always.Learning]

7 hours ago, Fourlegs said:

 

I have emailed Sean with your mini review and he was very interested. I think the subtle top end detail provided by installing the Cap Board in the Dave was a large factor in me preferring my ‘pimped’ Dave compared to the Rossini Apex in my recent listening comparison.

Yes, I read your review and it sounded like the top end of the two DACs was a critical factor in your preference for DAVE. I would agree that the caps board's reduction of digital glare in the top end is critical but I also find that the caps board fleshes out a little more detail across the frequency spectrum and this is very welcome in the mid to upper bass range. 

[Always.Learning]

@muski:  I am almost certain that one needs to buy a Sean Jacobs power supply before or with the caps board. One reason is that it cannot be installed in the DAVE without first removing DAVE's original SMPS power supply. Another is that Sean Jacobs, and his U.S. helper, @Nenon, are doing this mainly as a service to existing DC4 ARC6 owners. I will say again, however, that the ARC6 is just incredible.