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

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, nbpf said:

It is both possible, easy and actually very cheap if a user accepts that the replay of a track or of an album only starts after that track or album has been completely transferred to the DAC's local memory. It is just a matter of waiting a little bit, like when we were

using a CD player and we had to wait for the tray to close for replay to start.

 

 Then try and explain why the same bit identical tracks saved in different storage media, can still sound different when played from System Memory !

[diecaster]

The DAC needs to be a close to a real-time device. It can't take a lot of time buffer full tracks. Imagine picking tracks to play randomly and having to wait a very long time to hear the first note every time you pick a new track. Not very practical. Nor is it really necessary. A 1 second buffer is an eternity to a computer.

 

Even with normal latency computers, the ability of Ethernet to flood the DAC with data requires the DAC to tell the end point to slow down. I haven't looked at the traces but that has to be happening since even a 100Mps Ethernet network has much more data bandwidth than the DAC could possibly use.

 

This is why I have major doubts in regards to these low latency RAM-based OS solutions. The latency on the computer side is trivial compared to the throttling the DAC does to the data flowing to it. 

[diecaster]

6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Then try and explain why the same bit identical tracks saved in different storage media, can still sound different when played from System Memory !

 

This is just plain false. You keep trying to sell this as fact when it is only a few people's opinion. It's as bad as flat-earthers....

[nbpf]

15 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Then try and explain why the same bit identical tracks saved in different storage media, can still sound different when played from System Memory !

What shall I try? Why should I explain what? What have your requests to do with my post?

[greenleo]

9 minutes ago, diecaster said:

 

This is just plain false. You keep trying to sell this as fact when it is only a few people's opinion. It's as bad as flat-earthers....

Are you sure?

 

If what you quote is true, then CD transferred to a DAC (assume bit-perfect) and USB to a DAC (again assume bit perfect) and a "better" USB cable to a DAC (again and again assume bit perfect) should sound identical.  But this is not the experience for quite a few users that I know.

 

Also, there are users I know who spent an crazy amount of money, mind you only 500 USD, to rip CDs in order to have "better" sound tracks SQ wise.

 

I do not want to argue but to learn.  Have you ever tried and compared?

[nbpf]

15 minutes ago, diecaster said:

The DAC needs to be a close to a real-time device. It can't take a lot of time buffer full tracks. Imagine picking tracks to play randomly and having to wait a very long time to hear the first note every time you pick a new track. Not very practical. Nor is it really necessary. A 1 second buffer is an eternity to a computer.

Shutting down data transfer at replay time might be unpractical but it is logically necessary if one wants to achieve replay that is by construction completely independent of data transfer! I fully agree that there are ways of nearly achieving this goal without compromising responsiveness.

[diecaster]

30 minutes ago, greenleo said:

Are you sure?

 

If what you quote is true, then CD transferred to a DAC (assume bit-perfect) and USB to a DAC (again assume bit perfect) and a "better" USB cable to a DAC (again and again assume bit perfect) should sound identical.  But this is not the experience for quite a few users that I know.

 

Also, there are users I know who spent an crazy amount of money, mind you only 500 USD, to rip CDs in order to have "better" sound tracks SQ wise.

 

I do not want to argue but to learn.  Have you ever tried and compared?

 

That's not what he is talking about........and not what I am talking about.

[romaz]

1 hour ago, diecaster said:

The DAC needs to be a close to a real-time device. It can't take a lot of time buffer full tracks. Imagine picking tracks to play randomly and having to wait a very long time to hear the first note every time you pick a new track. Not very practical. Nor is it really necessary. A 1 second buffer is an eternity to a computer.

 

Even with normal latency computers, the ability of Ethernet to flood the DAC with data requires the DAC to tell the end point to slow down. I haven't looked at the traces but that has to be happening since even a 100Mps Ethernet network has much more data bandwidth than the DAC could possibly use.

 

This is why I have major doubts in regards to these low latency RAM-based OS solutions. The latency on the computer side is trivial compared to the throttling the DAC does to the data flowing to it. 

 

I'm not disagreeing with your logic and yet the observations are consistent.

 

To this day, no one understands the physiology behind why Pepto-Bismol is effective for diarrhea and yet it works.

[romaz]

4 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Wow... So many broad statements about things you obviously know very little about!

 

None of these topics suffer from approximation, and you should restrain from making conclusions based on either your limited testing or understanding. 

 

Ouch.  Enjoy your new DAC.

[sandyk]

59 minutes ago, diecaster said:

 

This is just plain false. You keep trying to sell this as fact when it is only a few people's opinion. It's as bad as flat-earthers....

 Try telling this to many of the participants in this thread, including the OP ! They are implementing changes that according to people like yourself can't possibly result in any SQ improvements.

  Try looking at the images I have supplied in My Profile . The comparison videos that the images came from were even located in the same folder of the USB memory stick.

[sandyk]

59 minutes ago, greenleo said:

If what you quote is true, then CD transferred to a DAC (assume bit-perfect) and USB to a DAC (again assume bit perfect) and a "better" USB cable to a DAC (again and again assume bit perfect) should sound identical.  But this is not the experience for quite a few users that I know.

 

 It is for members like Diecaster, mansr, esldude,ralf11 etc.  Their Expectation Bias won't let them hear any differences !

 They are so sure they are correct that they refuse to even try many of the things suggested in threads such as this one.

Quote

I do not want to argue but to learn.  Have you ever tried and compared?  - greenleo

 A very good question !

[kyrill]

100% is not necessary. That purity is in no sense all sense input has "noise" or impurities  Our brain filters it out in "constructing" our experience out of it. A good example is our vision. even people with 20/20 vision what actually falls on our retina is a far cry from  a good camera image.

[nbpf]

49 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Try looking at the images I have supplied in My Profile . The comparison videos that the images came from were even located in the same folder of the USB memory stick.

I have looked at the pictures but, to be honest, I do not understand which consequences we can draw from them. I am not criticizing you experiments, just trying to understand what the results actually are and what they could possibly imply.

 

Thus,  just to mention one example, it looks as if the first picture was spoiled by camera shake while the second one looks much better. Without further information about the f-stops, the shutter times and the stabilization mechanisms used, it is very difficult to draw any reliable conclusion, at least for me.  Perhaps I am missing something obvious.

[rafa]

2 hours ago, diecaster said:

 

This is just plain false. You keep trying to sell this as fact when it is only a few people's opinion. It's as bad as flat-earthers....

It's not few people opinion. It is a fact!

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, nbpf said:

I have looked at the pictures but, to be honest, I do not understand which consequences we can draw from them. I am not criticizing you experiments, just trying to understand what the results actually are and what they could possibly imply.

 

Thus,  just to mention one example, it looks as if the first picture was spoiled by camera shake while the second one looks much better. Without further information about the f-stops, the shutter times and the stabilization mechanisms used, it is very difficult to draw any reliable conclusion, at least for me.  Perhaps I am missing something obvious.

I will take this to a PM to avoid derailing the thread.

[nbpf]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

I will take this to a PM to avoid derailing the thread.

Great, thanks!

[Arpiben]

May I respectfully suggest the posters good at discerning audible differences to gather with people experimented in phase noise, jitter or EMC measurement? I am not expecting manufacturers to do so. It is a long run task and variables must be separated. I am pretty sure that such collaboration may help improving/understanding issues with a faster convergence.

 

As a side note, even batteries do have different phase noise characteristics whether this translates into audible differences I don't  know.  

[Middy]

Nice thing about this hobby is you only have to wait until tomorrow...

But you can still enjoy today...

[davide256]

6 hours ago, the_doc735 said:

So you object to freedom of speech and are prematurely quick to condemn other members opinions & concepts, without fair trial or hearing?

freedom of speech protects ignorance, not abusive troll behavior. @hopkins attack of @romaz was abuse with no redeeming content

[greenleo]

The shortest headless AudioLinux guide 1:

 

* No trouble shooting is included in this guide. *

 

Physical setup:

Both the control PC (Windows) and the audio PC (AudioLinux Headless) are connected to a router using LAN cables.

 

Diagram:

 

 

Software:

NAA is used in the headless Audio PC

HQPlayer for Desktop (Windows) is used in the control PC.

 

 

Steps:

A. Preparation

1. Buy the image and burn your USB disk as described before

 

B. The Audio PC

2. In the UEFI boot menu of your Audio PC, boot the USB disk. 

3. Just let it run until the prompt comes.   Type the following command to enable the NAA (Do not forget to press enter) .

systemctl --user start networkaudio

4. The prompt should come out again immediately.

 

C. The Control PC

4. Launch HQPlayer

5. File ->Setting to find your audio device.  Use the drop down menu to find your device.

 

6. Play your music and enjoy.

[LTG2010]

10 hours ago, davide256 said:

So we can be talking about SATA controller, etc. Does imply also that your OS, player software used during play should be in memory, not accessed from SSD

By cutting out the SSD noise and removal of the SSD from the equation I am also implying the whole package including the SATA interface, not just the SSD by itself, I suppose that was not clear im my post.

Playback from RAM doesn't eliminate this entirely since the OS is still active as is the SATA control and SSD power/ noise, etc.

Jriver also implement playback from RAM as a selectable option although, as I understand this is due to user demand and the developers don't actually beleive their is any sound quality benefit in its implementation.

Booting the entire OS in RAM is where the real benefit has become apparent with Audiolinux, to my ears at least.

[auricgoldfinger]

Perhaps @the_doc735 (respect!)  @Arpiben   @nbpf and @diecaster should start a new thread where they can argue over their theories ad nauseum while we continue to move forward making actual progress.  Anyone here with an interest could join those threads.  In that way, this thread can get back to its stated purpose. 

 

Alternatively, the above members could simply retreat to their ivory towers. 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

4 hours ago, romaz said:

 

Ouch.  Enjoy your new DAC.

 

I experiment as well, and I just thought it would be useful to let some people know here about the advances being made in DACs, and which are not necessarily advertised on CA. It is a different perspective, and I am not criticizing yours. 

 

However, you choose to reply explaining that that specific DAC I linked is NOS and NOS is no good because it misses out on the musical content that you somehow recreate by oversampling..

 

I call BS when I see it. Sorry for being so straight forward. 

[Narcissus]

1 hour ago, greenleo said:

 

B. The Audio PC

2. In the UEFI boot menu of your Audio PC, boot the USB disk. 

3. Just let it run until the prompt comes.   Type the following command to enable the NAA (Do not forget to press enter) .

systemctl --user start networkaudio

4. The prompt should come out again immediately.

 

Thanks once again for your contribution @greenleo   Can you please clarify,

 

"3. Just let it run until...... " do you mean the black terminal screen which comes up as soon as we boot the USB disk? Or are we supposed to open a new terminal once AL is up & running?

[tapatrick]

On 11/6/2018 at 8:45 PM, Dev said:

 

I will report back whenever its released.

its out.. :0. who says OS change don't make a difference...

 

"Ted Smith has done it again. A major breakthrough in the art of digital audio. Over this weekend we have been beta testing our newest operating system for our DirectStream DAC, Snowmass, and the reviews are flooding in:

“listening and it is scary – black background with delicate sounds, then the sax… this sound stage is just unbelievable! That track is like velvet textures on a very smooth and dark background. Man is the background black!”

https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/listening-is-scary/#comment-94814