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

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19 minutes ago, limniscate said:

True, we'll have to see if the SOtM with LPS-1 or Paul Hynes sounds better. 

Indeed, you raised a good point but bear in mind that this will cost more and more despite there were some wishes from SOtM to release a bargain reference clock.

 

Rick did you know is the prototype reference clock is a highest level or the mid one?

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25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

The 1000SQ isn't as optimized as the custom builds discussed here. We had a roundtable discussion in the SOtM room with Lee and May, where Roy actually sketched out further suggestions. We'll see if SOtM act on these and enhance their 1000 servers to the level where it can truly be a replacement for what folks like Roy, Elvia et al. have done.

May I know what is the Roy suggestions for 1000SQ?

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1 hour ago, mozes said:

Interesting, also what about HQP upsampling to 768Khz with Mojo? I wish I tried that when I had the Mojo

Looking forward to your observations.

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3 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

I am going to put a big fat asterisk on this comparison, due to the following...

 

I've discovered that any time my Cybershaft OP-14 is powered cycled, it can take a loooong time to achieve optimal SQ. Why is this relevant? Well, when I did this NB comparison at my dealer's, my OP-14 had been off for a couple hours. We did all our listening within a 2-3 hours of its being powered on again. I think we gave it about an hour to warm up.

 

Since then, I have found that it can take a good day (or at least overnight) for the SQ to improve and settle any time I power cycle the Cybershaft. When I get the NB in house for an eval - in November, after the USB firmware update - I am going to let everything settle in for at least a day before doing any listening.

 

So please don't make any buying decisions, or sweeping pronouncements, from my initial impressions. I hope to get a deeper look when I get it in house.

Looking expectantly for your feedback and impression.

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On 10/28/2017 at 7:49 AM, MikeyFresh said:

 

I shared that concern and decided to make a slightly different version of this without any actual adaptors, even though my Meanwell is not right before a rendu. So a little more like the Groundhog approach.

 

My parts arrived today:

 

 

I used a high pressure crimp on a ring terminal with 14 gauge stranded wire. The ring terminal had to be slightly modified using a Dremel tool as the inner diameter of the ring was a bit too tight to fit around the Meanwell's DC plug. 

 

 

This tweak has a positive effect on my system, very similar to as described above by @austinpop in phase 1 of his experiment, primarily I noted improvement in dynamic contrast and low-level detail, and a noticeably larger airier stereo image when grounding the Meanwell this way.

 

Big thanks to @JohnSwenson!

Can you post please from where did you bought these stuff?

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10 hours ago, mozes said:

Thanks Rajiv!

I find every small change now makes a very noticeable impact. For example I just replaced the 50cm SMB cable between my tX-USBultras to a 6inch cable and there you go a significant leap in SQ way beyond my expectations. Then I replaced a 1 meter SMB cable between the tX and bridge with a 12 inch cable and again another nice boost with Tidal. These changes are not subtle, it only takes 2 sec to realize the improvement! 

Still I am still familiarizing myself with the new chain. 

  If anyone says that their DAC is immune to anything upfront,  my answer is come and listen to my Dac with my server and without!

Congratulations Moussa, but I don’t know how do you replace the SMB with cables.

 

if you don’t mind, can you post more photos in order to get a clear idea of what you did?

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2 minutes ago, mozes said:

Maybe I wasn’t clear, I just replaced the SMB cables with shorter ones.

How much the long of SMB cables you eventually tried?

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2 hours ago, mozes said:

I found the shorter the better. 6 inch is the shortest I can get.

And for Lush USB cable, is there a recommendation for a specific length?

 

or within 1.5m it will be ok 

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Anyone know the power specification of Zenith SE MK2

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AFAIK from Roy for his opinion of the barrel connectors, it has a high impedance so he is trying "hard wire" the DC lead directly to his server.

 

So does anyone know how to "hard wire" the DC lead directly to the server?

 

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Can someone help how to set tX-USBUltra in 6.5v - 8.5v in 1.3v board, I got an image from May for how to set tX-USBUltra but does that mean in order to close R342, I have to make a bridge between those highlighted points in hereunder image?

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2 minutes ago, elan120 said:

The picture you show here is for sCLK-EX board version 1.2 and 1.3 jumper setting, not for tx-USBUltra.  Did you looking for voltage output setting for sCLK-EX board or tx-USBUltra?

tX-USBUltra

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17 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

Take the little black bridging connector off JP341 and slide it onto the connectors adjacent to R342. There is a photo floating around somewhere.

Could you elaborate with photos 

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13 minutes ago, elan120 said:

Did you have a picture from May showing the jumper setting for tx-USBUltra instead of the jumper setting pictures you show for sCLK-EX board?

Nope this is the only picture I have from May

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7 hours ago, LTG2010 said:

Take the little black bridging connector off JP341 and slide it onto the connectors adjacent to R342. There is a photo floating around somewhere.

My unit was set to 12v so I think there is not a jumper in my board, here is my question, can I use the jumper that had been used in HDD?

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1 hour ago, welldone said:

As May from SOTM said to me that LPS1 is not juicy enough to power Tx USBUltra.

Now, my Tx USBUltra has been feeding by a LPS1, and i really want to get your information about this.

 

Can anyone here using USBUltra with LPS1 share your own experiences?

In fact i set my tX-USBUltra with 1.3v board to accept power range (6.5-8.5v) which let me to use LPS-1.

 

My power supply LPS-1 got warmer but i don't know if it is not juicy to power tX-USBUltra or not as i haven't another power supply, if someone here have LPS-1, sPS-500 and tX-USBUltra maybe he can give us a clear idea for our queries.

 

*Sorry i don't see the answer from Jean-michel6

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20 minutes ago, jean-michel6 said:

Hi I have both SPS-500 and LPS-1 and also a Tx USB ultra and a dx USB hd ( with an sCLK ex clock board inside) .

From a power consumption i think that my dxUSB hd draw slightly more current than than the tx USB ultra .

The dx USB  accept 7~9v PS.

 

My dx USB hd run with the LPS1 which has no problem to drive it , i try the SPS-500 on this unit but i prefer the LPS-1 because it is a little bit more dynamic . 

 

For the tx USB ultra i have not try the LPS1 because my unit is set up for 9V and it won't run with the 7v LPS1 , i xill ask sotm to see which jumper should be modified .

There is three possible PS voltage for the tx USB ultra  6.5~8.5V , 9V , 12V  if yours is 6.6 to 8.5 you should be fine with the LPS1 as long as you do not the 5V on the USB connector from the tx USB ultra to power an other device

 

Indeed i asked before for how to set the tX-USBUltra to accept the power range (6.5-8.5v) in my previous post from a week ago.

 

Because you have a 9v, you can move the jumper from certain location to another as specified in image from May which i attached in my post.

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15 minutes ago, welldone said:

Thanks @jean-michel6 and @beautiful music

My TX UsbUltra input power range is 6.5~8.5V, and LPS1 is being set at 7V to feed Tx USBUltra. Do hope that it will be fine.

Did you listen to your tX-USBUltra with LPS-1 or not yet?

 

Did you face a problem with those things?

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5 minutes ago, welldone said:

Actually, i've got some problems with my chain in these days.

I had purchased Tx Usbultra several months ago. I’ve been putting it into the below chain:
Sms200->Wireworld starlight 7 Usb cable->Tx Usbultra-> Curious Usb cable->Dac Chord 2qute.

Both Sms 200 and Tx Usbultra are being powered by Rendu Lps1.
There has been noise in my system when i play music recently. And I’ve not experienced this kind of thing so far.
When i take Tx Usbultra out of my chain, noise is disappeared accordingly.

May from SOTM recommend me to double check the USB cable and power consumption of LPS1.

Even the problem has been solved when i replace Starlight 7 with another one, i've not known what the specific reason is here.

 

Did you use two LPS-1 or only one to power both sMS-200 & tX-USBUltra?

 

Because i have a doubt that it can serve those devices. 

 

So i'm just running only tX-USBUltra with my LPS-1 at this moment.

 

 

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Anyone have an idea if i can power both iSORegen and tX-USBUltra (7v) with single LPS-1 using Y-cable

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3 hours ago, ElviaCaprice said:

 

Did he?  You asked but he never answered?  I never saw a full comparison..  

In fact, this is the only mention he made about his sCLK-EX server in comparison to the Zenith or DCS.

 

"I'll get a few things out of the way. Both of these units (DCS and Zenith) are excellent and the consensus was unanimous that in my system as stated, either of these units is a large gap better than a Windows 10 laptop on batteries running Roon. It was also a unanimous consensus that my current server build is better than either of these units but in different ways. For those not aware of the details of my current server build, here it is:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...reaming/?page=153&tab=comments#comment-724987"

 

 

That was it for the comparison and I would say that Roy still chose the sCLK-EX Server over these other two components.

I think I can also safely conclude that the trifecta will be better than the Zenith SE (solo USB to DAC)

 

Now could one modify the Zenith SE with an sCLK-EX for the ultimate server?  Guess I'll never know, seeing the price of this server is out of my game plan.

I think I'll wait for an audiophile mobo at a reasonable cost before any further server upgrades.  Meanwhile the $100 JETWAY NUC is serving me just fine.

 

 

This is the answer i got it from Roy as well for his thoughts regarding to both Zenith SE and his custom server

 

"" With the Zenith SE combined with the tX-USBultra + Ref10, this combination is extremely close to my custom server. Because I need a 2nd server for my other listening room, I have purchased a Zenith SE""

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anyone know how much the impedance of (barrel connector) and (Oyaide connector)

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21 minutes ago, jean-michel6 said:

Interesting information which shows that the zenith SE is a good product and the tx-USBultra a very good ad on to many systems .

 

One question keep puzzling me about Roy server system , he had obviously tick all the good thing's to get probably one of the best one board server system . Do you know which player he is using to run his system . Is it Roon ?

 

 

 

I'm not sure if he is using Roon or Tidal.

 

But Zenith SE raised a curiosity what is the specification of it's linear power supply.

 

Does it surpasses the Paul Hynes SR7 performance!!!!!!!

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2 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

 

It's more likely to be a big deal for gamers according to this post

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/13948-article-computer-audiophile-pocket-server-caps-v3-lagoon/?page=5&tab=comments#comment-192067

 

Actually Roy was throttling the speed of both CPU and RAM to 800 MHz so they're synchronized to the same frequency. And then we could also tweak the PLL with ClockGen

 

http://www.sisoftware.eu/faq/pll-ic-clock-generator/

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Tweak/ClockGen.shtml

 

Maybe we could dial something down a notch for the sake of lower power consumption?

 

BTW, someone is gonna share something to slim Windows 10 down with NTLite soon

 

https://www.ntlite.com/community/index.php?threads/w7-and-w10-presets-downloads.135/

https://www.ntlite.com/community/index.php?threads/w7-and-w10-presets-questions.154/

 

And then there's also another one here

 

https://www.ntlite.com/forum/discussion/1364/tutorial-for-creating-a-700-mb-windows-10-iso-and-install-in-a-vm

 

In that case, Windows 10 could be installed on SD cards with the lowest power consumption (28mA read / 55mA write) ever

 

https://www.mouser.com/access/?pn=922-603989

 

Nice stuff @seeteeyou thanks for sharing these information 

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I would like to know if tX-USBexp board can be incorporate in tX-USBUltra case.