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

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, RickyV said:

Do you know what’s the difference between the HSA-1A and B amp?

And do you have an idea when the amp is delivered for review?

Not sure of specific differences other than what's shown in these images. Price goes from $3,900 to $4,500 as well.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

13 minutes ago, Nenon said:

P.S. @The Computer Audiophile - that's the server I brought to Minneapolis (as well as my latest DIY server) during my trip in the beginning of May and offered to leave it with you for the weekend if interested, but perhaps you missed my private message back then. In a way I am glad you did not listen to it, because it might have had impact on the CAPS :). 

Hi Nenon, sorry for not getting back to you, but times were quite crazy and I was in no position to accept your kind offer. Perhaps there will be another time :~)

[The Computer Audiophile]

I believe the Chord DACs run at or near 100% of their FPGA capacity and are pushed to their limits. I wonder if pushing the Extreme to its limits would cause the Chord DACs to back of this limit internally and change the sound. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, MarkusBarkus said:

 

That’s an analog phone :~)

[The Computer Audiophile]

Topic split.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

16 minutes ago, sunny_time_99 said:

Hello and thank you for your question. 
At first I would like to give only marginal information about my power supply unit. With over 6 years and 
currently over 600 comparative 
power supplies built, the development path was complex and expensive. I am just self-taught and a hobbyist 
who wants the best power supplyfor his hobby. I had a well-defined goal that has now been achieved. Since 
2016 I have been using active rectification, a material selection that has been tried and tested over countless 
hours, a CLC Filter, an active filter element that is placed in front of the regulator attenuates the 
noise floor by an additional 50-60db, a modified high-performance regulator (mostly LC58xx). I have recreated 
almost every circuit concept (so far there are more than 45 variants) and subjected it to extensive listening
tests. My current power supply consists of the essence. The 
amazing thing after this trail is how easy the circuit is at the end. What I am going to present here in a few
days is not a cheap or low budget project - only the mini PC is. I have been using the Futro for 6 years now and
have replaced it with a NUC7i7 for a about a2 years periode and 
run it with Euphony. For 2 years I liked it better and I had 4 NUC7s to compare the software and hardware 
modifications. Basically I have the same device several times, because only then can modifications actually be 
tracked and optimized. 

As an audio PC, the Futro has many advantages:

- Fanless design

- Favorable price (leasing returns, often available for a few euros)

- Made in Germany !!! Although it now operates under Fujitsu

- Only one power supply unit (20V) required

- modifications are easy.

 

 

@Tanomek7, I've tried almost every power supply on the Futro - including the original power supply, of course. But it is just as unsuitable in terms of sound as the original power supply unit of the NUC. You need al lot of magic until a smps sounds really good.

I would like to present a solution here that clearly beats a NUC7i7DNHE e.g. with SR7 in all cases. So it should be clear that it should not be a low-budget project.

Please, please, if you want to implement this method, do not try any ZeroZone power supplies, Chinese cheap products, Farad3, HDPlex, or comparable power supplies. They just don't do it! There will be no magic at the end. If you want to implement this path, please only use the best power supplies on this planet.

To answer your question further, I use the Neutron Star 2 (3 works too, but I still have 4 unemployed Neutron Star 2, the Neutron Star 3 has no direct advantage through my power supply.) I supply the Neutron Star from the 20V of the futro. The maximum voltage is 24V DC for NS2 and NS3, so that's not a problem. In addition, I use an active filter element and a 10,000uF capacitor in front of the Neutron Star in order to achieve decoupling from the computer. There will be a voltage drop about 1V, so the NS2will run at 19,xx V. There are different stages of expansion, with one NS2 it starts – at the momet I am going with 2 Neutron Stars in my Futro, in a card reader, 2x to supply the Futro internally and later also the USB / Ethernet adapter from Ugreen, which I use. The nice thing is that all 4 devices are supplied with 25MHz. In the last few years I have converted a number of Futros in different versions for friends.

Users with 19V power supplies can rest assured. Most of the Futros also start with 19V

 

 

A little more patience…. Sunny

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello @sunny_time_99, are you a manufacturer or affiliated with the industry in any way?

[The Computer Audiophile]

16 minutes ago, austinpop said:

System Update May 2021

 

I figured this was a good time for me to post a system update, since my last post on the topic was almost 6 months ago: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?do=findComment&comment=1092344 Another reason to post is because I can now talk about PGGB, a topic that was confidential until a few weeks ago!

 

One of my goals with buying the Extreme was to get off the HW upgrade hamster wheel, and to a large extent, this has turned out to be the case. Yes, there have been some further accessory purchases, like SR Orange fuses, or Daiza isolation platforms, but I don't count those as major. My topology has held very steady, and continues to look like this.

 

 

 

Dispensing with the Network

 

While the diagram still shows my "baroque" stack of 3 switches, I have honestly stopped focusing on the network, and for max SQ, switch off the network after I hit play. This is the best SQ, every time! While I still need the network when I stream from Qobuz (hence the continued presence of the switch stack), this is now non-critical listening for discovery. So I've stopped focusing on minutiae like the Finisar transceiver de jeur. 

 

So what have I been up to in the last 6 months?

 

I know there was concern in some quarters that having purchased an endgame music server like the Extreme, I'd be hanging up my DIY hat. To some extent, that is true, as I was always at best a reluctant DIYer, where DIY means building things myself. But it certainly is not true for my penchant for experimentation, tweaking, and discovery! It's just found other outlets!

 

PGGB

 

One of the reasons for my relative silence has been my participation in the (until recently, confidential) development of PGGB. I won't repeat my posts on this topic in the PGGB thread. See for example: 

• https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/62699-a-toast-to-pggb-a-heady-brew-of-math-and-magic/?do=findComment&comment=1126331
• https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/62699-a-toast-to-pggb-a-heady-brew-of-math-and-magic/?do=findComment&comment=1127759

This came at exactly the right time for me. With my system sounding the best it ever has, it opened the door to this new axis of improvement. We are still discovering the extent to which PGGB improves SQ on other DACs, and the reports on the thread are very encouraging. On the DAVE, as part of my Extreme chain, it has been an absolute game changer. Would I have heard the dramatic improvement I did on my previous chain? Probably, but perhaps not to the same extent? I don't know. As we all know, SQ improvements are a bootstrap process.

 

Focus on Extreme Software

 

One of the less-recognized strengths of the Extreme, but no less important than the hardware IMO, is the extent to which its software is continually improving. I can confidently say that the Extreme I bought last summer is not the same in my system today. Yes, the hardware is mostly the same (except for the new Taiko USB card - see below), but the sound quality is light years ahead due to software enhancements. This is the result of Emile's delivery of improvements in OS tuning, certainly, but even more so, the delivery of the Taiko Audio Server (TAS), and USB driver enhancements. More on USB later, but the SQ improvement wrought by TAS over Roon cannot be overstated. And the fact that these were free upgrades makes it even sweeter!

 

There is a lot of cool tech embedded in TAS. Emile has been very generous (or perhaps wise?!) in involving experimental and DIY-oriented customers like @romaz, @ray-dude, and myself in the early development and alpha and beta testing, and being quite open about the approaches taken. Since this is confidential info, I can't really discuss it, but I will say that working this closely with Emile has only reinforced my conviction that I picked the right music server platform, as his entire approach aligns closely with my own philosophy.

 

USB Improvements Continue, Part 1: the Taiko USB card

 

One exception to the "no new hardware" statement above is that I did purchase the new Taiko USB card. How could I not?! Having been involved and aware of the tech Emile was putting in, it was sure to be a slam dunk, and indeed it has been. My impressions are here in this post: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-cr%C3%A8me-de-la-cr%C3%A8me.27433/post-713747

 

USB Improvements Continue, Part 2: Bypassing Amanero with the AudioWise SRC-DX bridge

 

One area where we DAVE users have not benefited has been the work the Taiko team has been doing in developing their own Taiko USB device driver. This began during the development of TAS, first paying attention to the buffers and bit depths that optimized the USB controllers in individual DACs. Emile then realized that even further gains were possible by implementing his own device driver to more precisely control the end-to-end latency of the USB controller. Unfortunately, this was only possible and implemented on XMOS2 controllers. Emile had been telling us for a while that the Achilles heel of the Amanero USB chipset, as found in the DAVE, is its excessive latency (over 20x higher than XMOS2). His assertion was that this was hurting transient response. It also explained why DAVE owners were preferring tiny buffer sizes (64/128) with TAS, since there was this existing latency baked into the Amanero controller.

 

All credit to @romaz for finding a way to bypass the Amanero USB controller using the AudioWise SRC-DX USB-dual SPDIF bridge, as he described in this post: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-cr%C3%A8me-de-la-cr%C3%A8me.27433/post-718858.

 

As Roy describes, you only have to listen to this bridge for a few seconds to realize how true Emile’s assertion is. Ironic, isn’t it, since DAVE is all about transient accuracy. But what this has taught me is that transient accuracy is actually a collection of things. Coherence, pinpoint soundstage, and accurate timbre are all evident even over Amanero. What you hear with a lower latency interface is leading edges and even more micro-detail. Listen to plucked strings and percussive strikes, and you’ll hear it right away.

 

Whether or not the USB controller in the bridge (CMedia) can be brought into the pantheon of devices supported by the Taiko ASIO device driver remains to be seen. Even as is, using CMedia's own ASIO driver, this bridge enhances the SQ of my chain beyond the USB path, and represents yet another advance in my system.

 

BNC cable quality still matters (sigh!)

 

Sadly, what the bridge does open, with a resounding bang, is the Pandora's box of BNC cables I'd managed to wrestle shut just under a year ago! I should have known it would not last. Sigh. Any illusions I had that BNC cable quality would not matter as much in this application (bridge to DAVE), as opposed to my previous application (MScaler to DAVE), were dashed once I started experiments. I tried a collection of BNC cable pairs, of increasing price, and SQ improved at each step:

• VH Audio Pulsar OCC Silver
• SOtM dCBL-BNC75
• Habst Digital Silver
• WAVE Storm
• HFC CT-2
• HFC CT-2 (JSSG360 shielded)
• HFS CT-2 (Schroeder, JSSG360).

I put the Habst and the WAVE Storm in italics because I didn't have them on hand this time, but this is where they placed in past evaluations.

 

Just to put this in context, even the $289 ea. Pulsar Ag cables elevated the SQ of the bridge well past the straight USB path. However, this appears to be one are where you get what you pay for. As you ascend up the price range, what I heard is:

• a more expansive and open soundstage
• Tighter, more articulate bass
• instruments snapping into focus
• and finally with the Schroeder HFC CT-2s, just a wonderful organic and natural sound.

What's Next?

 

Honestly, I don't really have anything more on the horizon. Change will come - it always does. Certainly, if @Zaphod Beeblebrox continues to make improvements to PGGB, or Emile delivers improvements on the Extreme, I will gladly take them, but I feel incredibly blessed with the sound quality I'm currently experiencing!

So much fun to read. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

16 minutes ago, Billgates307 said:

Today tryed a medical network isolator.

 

https://industry-electronics.com/baaske-medical/2005674-network-isolator-med-mi-1005-retail-lieske_683508.htm

 

this gives a big jump in SQ.

I don’t stream music, all my files are local, but still this works realy well.

darker background

bigger soundstage

more neutrality and definition

wow

and it’s a bargain.

Hope someone try’s this and confirms.

Wow, a blast from the past :~)

 

I wrote about this one 12 years ago. I'm glad it has improved your system.

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

We must keep in mind the YouTube business model. It’s all based on clickbait images to get people interested, then keeping people watching as many minutes as possible, while their attention is drawn to other videos. YouTube doesn’t care what you watch as long as you watch. People creating videos need you to watch more of their own minutes to make more money. Thus, we end up with an 18 minute video like the one posted above.