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

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5 minutes ago, Cooler said:

 

This is very interesting, can you share with us your thoughts?!

+1

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Since there are many folks here are using Roon with NUC running Audiolinux, so what about the jRiver?

 

How did you find jRiver with NUC mentioned here?

 

Also curious to know is there a superior benefit in SQ from Roon over jRiver, because if so I will switch to Roon eventually.

 

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18 hours ago, mozes said:

I made this comparison twice and Jriver always sounded better than Roon. This is on a single PC configured as a player.

 

15 hours ago, bit01 said:

@beautiful music, @mozes

My sentiments too - running off a Win7 PC and using the uRendu into a DAC, I find J River MC 23 SQ to be better than my ROON trial. .

Thank you both for this feedback.

 

And this is good to know as well.

 

This is raised a question that AFAIK we need only one NUC running Audiolinux GUI Ramroot with diskless as we can't use Headless version with jRiver upon to Piero information and this NUC will connect to NAS eventually.

 

Is there any missing information or am i wrong with something else?

 

Also i'm thinking that maybe Roonserver+Roonbridge running in a separate NUC's will be better than the single NUC running jRiver, is this right or not?

 

 

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2 hours ago, Dev said:

 

I had the Bridge-1 and indeed found the USB sounds better when the card is removed. The DS even sounds better with the I2S input if you take the trouble of getting a DDC along with quality psu - another device in the chain in the name of SQ ?

 

I can't wait to load their new firmware snowmass....

When the Snowmass will be release?

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9 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

supposedly next week.

Looking expectantly for your feedback about this update.

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On 11/5/2018 at 4:36 PM, greenleo said:

AudioLinux Installation Guide 2:

 

Preparation:

** Continue from the end of Guide 1.  **

1. Unplug the USB disk.  Note: After the burning, Windows can't recognize it and hence can't eject it.

2. Insert the USB disk to a PC (power off) which you want to run the AudioLinux GUI mode

3. Power on the PC, get into the UEFI, from the boot menu, choose the just created USB disk as the boot device and boot.

4. Wait a relatively long time until you see a Windows environment (see the image below).  In the process, some text comes out from the screen.  Error message may come out but don't worry.  Wait until Windows environment comes out.

 

Steps to mount a local drive

1. Click the Start here folder (it may lag few seconds depend on the speed of your computer and the USB disk)

2. Click the local Drive that contains your music files

3. Input the password audiolinux0 as the password to mount

4. Check the mount is complete.

5. (As an example) Launch HQPlayer

6. Add you library, set the settings of HQPlayer and play your music by HQPlayer.

 

End of guide 2.  Enjoy!

 

Note:

1. After reboot, the mount of the local drive is gone.

2. Linux is pretty stable, you may leave for tens of days.  Hence 1 won't introduce much problem.

3. Auto-mount of a drive is possible but needs using terminal, issue commands, and editing the file fstab.  It's better for the users to read the instructions and follow.  The boot may not be possible if fstab is wrong (as stated in the official site.)

4. In principle you may do the RAMBoot.  However it's better to set up everything properly before using RAMBoot.

 

Thank you @greenleo for your efforts but in order to mount my drivers i faced a problem from time to time but not always, actually when i opened the Start Here Folder sometimes i can't see my local drivers and sometimes i see my local drivers but when i'm trying to mount it, the popup message came as hereunder image.

 

So what do you think about my issues?

 

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Thank you @greenleo for your efforts and if someone can chime in as well to post an installation guide for Headless (Command Line) Version we will be appreciated.

 

 

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38 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I am almost done with setup.  I purchased two licenses of Euphony.  One for server one for endpoint and set them up in the middle of the night.  I will be testing later today using Roon.  On Euphony.  I will then boot the endpoint on Audio Linux and listen some more.  The server will need and AL rebuild on a new Optane stick or something.  This will take a couple of days to see how things go...

 

Looking expectantly for your findings.

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27 minutes ago, romaz said:

It's been a long time and so forgive me if I have a lot to say.  As I indicated in one of my last posts back in 2018, I wouldn't post again unless I felt I had something meaningful to offer.  I have received a lot of inquiries about the status of my audio setup and I apologize as I have not responded to most of these inquiries due to time constraints.  To be honest, since I started this thread back in 2017, my system has been in continual flux but the time has come hopefully to settle down for awhile and so I felt it was finally time to share the status of my setup and to offer some personal observations based on my comparison testing.  This marks my first public post since CA became Audiophile Style.  I miss just being able to say "CA" and having the audiophile community know what I am referring to.

 

As always, what I have to share are personal observations and opinions based on my sensitivities and personal preferences.  I have no financial motivations.  I have 2 systems at home and what works well in one system doesn't always work well in the other.  In other words, YMMV.

 

As for my 2 systems, they are as follows:

 

In my home office, I have a pair of near field desktop monitors that were custom made for me by Louis Chochos of Omega Speaker Systems based in Connecticut.  They cost me <$2k and they remain one of the highest value purchases I have ever made.  They are comprised of Louis' high efficiency, crossover-less Alnico drivers and excel in delicacy, nuance, and tone.  I am continually amazed by how well these drivers express the subtlest textures.  I used to own a pair of custom made Voxativs that were even more resolving and oh so velvety smooth but also a tad bright and not ideally suited for long term near field listening and so those are now gone.  Paired with a fast JL Audio Fathom F110 V2 subwoofer and driven directly by a Chord Hugo TT2 / Hugo M-Scaler, I find this Omega setup to be very transparent, highly resolving, non-fatiguing, and transfixing.  I own or have owned many fine headphones over the years (SR-009, HD800/HD800S, HE-1000 V2, Abyss 1266, LCD-4, Focal Utopia, Dharma D1000, TH-900) and when my children were living at home before they moved off to college, I found myself forced to headphone listening at night but my headphones have been collecting dust for some time because I have found my Chord DAC directly driving these Omegas to be that much more engaging, even at low listening volumes. 

 

With my youngest son having moved out of the house and onto college late last year, my big listening room is where I do most of my listening these days.  This room has been home to a lot of different speakers over the years and for most of the previous year, I was using a pair of large Martin Logan Renaissance 15A hybrid electrostats.  Typical of line source, dipole speakers, these Martin Logans cast a giant ambient sound stage and are wonderful for recreating large venue performances at full scale.  Driven by a Pass Labs X350.8 amp and XP-22 preamp, this setup excelled in beauty but ultimately lacked in resolution and transparency even when fronted by my Chord DAVE DAC with M-Scaler.  These giant electrostat panels, while very fast and with exceptional clarity, created a softly focused image and so point sources like a solo cello or a solo vocalist sounded too diffuse, too tall, and too wide for my tastes, regardless of speaker position.  As I made tweaks in my upstream setup, I could hear changes, however, I could hear these changes much more succinctly with my inexpensive Omegas and so for someone who values transparency, this drove me nuts.  Imaging and focus improved considerably with a switch from Pass Labs amplification to a more resolving Luxman M-900U/C900U and ultimately to Soulution amplification.  Imaging and focus further improved dramatically when I moved from a Shunyata Triton V3 to a Sound Application TT-7 line conditioner by Jim Weil but despite these improvements, I eventually came to the realization that I was not meant for line source speakers like electrostats or planars like my brother's Maggies.  Don't get me wrong, these are wonderful types of speakers with tremendous appeal but my time with the Martin Logans have better educated me as to the type of listening I prefer and so I have moved on to point source speakers once again in my large listening room, specifically the Wilson Alexia 2s.

 

I offer the above details for the following reason.  It's important to understand the context by which my observations and opinions are based and the priorities that I value as your priorities may be different.  I'm guessing that we all claim live music as our reference and yet it's interesting to see how we each vary in our approach to achieving the recreation of a live performance.  Because today's technologies remain incapable of faithfully reproducing a live musical performance and because we each are constrained by a budget, it helps to know what type of listener you are to understand which compromises you should accept above others.  My goals, simply stated, are resolution and transparency in the absence of harshness.  I aspire to beauty, organic, natural, and musical just like everyone else but these qualities are more in the eye (or ear) of the beholder and are not easy to define.  I tend to run from things that are described as warm (meaning slow), thick, heavy, euphonic, or lush.  Not that I don't like warm or lush, I just don't want everything sounding warm and lush if warm and lush aren't in the recording.  Just not me.  I find that if you can successfully address harshness at every step in your chain, there's usually no need to embellish or to colorize.

 

Moving on, here's a story about listening that some will find interesting.  There are 2 types of listening that most of us do.  There is critical listening where we focus on what we are hearing hoping to dissect the qualities of a performance, recording, or some piece of equipment and then there is pleasurable listening where the goal is to relax and to escape.  Given the choice, I'm sure most of us would prefer the latter.  Almost a year ago to this day, I hosted Rob Watts (who needs no introduction), Jay Luong (lead reviewer for AudioBacon.net), and Jim Weil (owner of Sound Application and designer of SA's line conditioners) in my home for a series of listening tests.  What I respect about these 3 gentlemen is that they are each highly educated and accomplished electrical engineers but also passionate music lovers.  It has been my experience that most engineers aren't true music lovers, don't know how to critically listen, or worse, they're closed-minded with fixed ideas about how digital electronics are supposed to sound based on theory alone.  Not these gentlemen.  

 

Rob had come all the way from Wales and brought along prototypes of M-Scaler and Hugo TT2 for us to listen to and for the better part of 5 days, we conducted a series of critical listening tests.  We did a lot of listening, both sighted and blinded, to Rob's prototypes, to different DACs, amps, cables, line conditioners, and speakers.  While it was a lot of fun to hang out with these individuals, our listening sessions were often more tedious than enjoyable.  We listened to select portions of Mahler's 1st symphony so many times that I couldn't listen to this symphony again for months.  What I found fascinating but not surprising is that while we each heard differences, we heard them differently and had different preferences.  Jim Weil had a strong aversion to anything bright.  Rhodium and silver-plated copper are Jim's enemies and he could sniff them from a mile away.  Jay Luong was especially sensitive to tone and timbre and would gladly trade detail for warmth.  Rob was particular to depth.  An organ that was 30 feet away had to sound as if it was 30 feet away.  Everything else was secondary and so not surprisingly, his DACs excel in depth accuracy.  My sensitivities are more toward transient response and the air and space around voices and instruments.  I also crave variation over harmony.  Even 2 Stradivariuses should never sound exactly the same and a system that makes them sound exactly the same simply isn't transparent enough.  We are who we are and so gear will speak differently to each of us.

 

Single box server vs server + endpoint

 

There are compelling examples to support either strategy.  In the perfect world, I would love to have the convenience of a single box solution but I have yet to hear a single box solution that I prefer over a multiple box solution.  With multiple boxes, there is the option for finer level tuning which I will discuss further but ultimately, it comes down to how well each box can be powered.  If all I can come up with is a single good PSU, than a single box server is all that I will aspire to.

 

The Endpoint

 

Those who have followed this thread from the beginning know that its original goal was to figure out ways to improve endpoints like the sMS-200 or microRendu.  It's amazing how endpoints have evolved since January 1, 2017.  The concept behind the endpoint was to create a low noise rendering device to interface with the DAC that isolates against noise generated by a powerful computer server.  Low noise was the rationale for using low power processors like ARM-based CPUs and even Celerons.  It was also the premise behind the avoidance of other noisy components like SSDs and switching power supplies.  While some of these principles have passed the test of time, others have not, at least not to my ears.  Low power CPUs are not necessarily what sound best.  How else can I explain how an i7 NUC board with its noisy switching regulators can sound better than an ARM-based sMS-200ultra or ultraRendu?  How else can I explain how an i7 NUC can sound better as I ramp up CPU clock frequency?  It's completely counter-intuitive but it suggests that aside from noise, there is performance to consider and sometimes performance requires power and sometimes performance is more important than low noise.  To my ears, an i7 has the potential to sound more spacious, fuller, and more dynamic than a Celeron or ARM-based CPU and the number of physical cores, CPU frequency and size of the CPU cache seem to matter.  The downside of the i7 is that they are potentially more challenging to power well.

 

Thus far, I have tested 5 NUC boards comprised of either a Celeron, i5, or i7 CPU and ranging from 2-cores to 4-cores and from 2MB of standard CPU cache to 8MB of SmartCache.  The best sounding board I have heard thus far is the NUC7i7DNBE based on an 8th generation i7 that I first discussed a few months ago.  

 

I am open to the idea that a more powerful, non-NUC device could sound even better as an endpoint but once again, powering it would be the challenge.  Here is the Asrock IMB-1215 which will be released to the U.S. in a few months.  

 

 

It is a mini-ITX board that can accommodate an 8th or 9th generation i7 and with an open PCIe slot that can be powered by a single 19V rail and so I find this board to have intriguing possibilities.

SOtM has reportedly designed an i7-based motherboard from the ground up with high level clocks that can be powered by a single 19V PSU.  I very much look forward to trying out this board.  

 

The NUC7i7DNBE when purchased as a board are more difficult to come by and also more expensive at a price of around $650 USD.  Ironically, the NUC7i7DNKE NUC kit, which houses a NUC7i7DNBE board within a standard Intel chassis are much more readily available and cost $100 less.  I just purchased one a few weeks ago and it took all of 5 minutes to explant the NUC7i7DNBE board from the chassis.

 

The NUC7i7DNBE has the option of being powered by a 12-24V PSU and higher voltage DEFINITELY sounds better to me.  Bigger and more dynamic.  It also has the option of being powered via either a 2.5mm x 5.5mm barrel connector or 2x2 mini Molex connector.  With 2 NUC7i7DNBE boards on hand, I was able to recently do a direct A/B and powering via the 2x2 Molex connector sounds very slightly better.  

 

 

As for power supplies, I could not successfully power a NUC7i7DNBE board with a single LPS-1.2 at 12V even though my Kill-a-Watt meter suggests this board never consumes more than 8 watts during bootup.  I could get it to post to the BIOS screen but even with Turbo and Hyperthreading turned off and with only 4GB of RAM installed, I could not successfully boot into AudioLinux from a USB stick.  I purchased a special serial Y-cable from Ghent Audio and this allowed me to combine two LPS-1.2s and this worked.  The cable that I had Ghent make for me is comprised of high quality Neotech 18g 7N OCC copper and so I spared no expense to get it as I was very excited by the prospect of being able to power the NUC with 24V using two LPS-1.2s set at 12V each.  

 

Unfortunately, for reasons that remain a mystery, I could not get this to work.  Each time, one of the LPS-1.2s would start to blink red during the boot process and turn very hot.  I own three LPS-1.2s and regardless of which one I swapped in, one of the LPS-1.2s would start to blink red and it was not always the same LPS-1.2 that would give out.  When I kept one LPS-1.2 at 12V and switched the other to 9V (12V + 9V = 21V), this somehow worked and the NUC booted just fine.  19V (12V + 7V) also worked.  The problem with using two LPS-1.2s in serial is that they don't sound good at all and this was very disappointing.  In fact, I found better SQ powering the NUC with the 19V rail from my HDPlex which came as a surprise.  It appears that using 2 or more LPS-1.2s in serial is not a good thing to do.  The NUCi7DNBE also likes headroom and the LPS-1.2's 1.1A of headroom is a limitation.  To hightlight the importance of headroom further, a 12V SR4 sounds very good powering this NUC but a 12V SR7 with its greater headroom sounds even better.  

 

Beyond headroom, the avoidance of any voltage drop is also very important and a 12V DR (double regulated) SR7 sounds better yet although I am getting my very best SQ with this NUC powered by a 19V SR SR7 rail.  With this NUC powered by the 19V rail from an HDPlex 400W ATX LPSU, while the SQ is not in the same league as an SR7 or even the SR4, it is much less harsh than the stock 19V switcher that Intel provides and so the HDPlex is more than just a passable option.  The JS-2 or a bespoke PSU from either Sean Jacobs or Adrian Wun at TLS could be even better options but at a cost.  As I stated above, the downside of the i7 is that they are potentially more challenging to power well but I do feel the rewards are there.

 

As for clocking, not surprisingly, this makes a significant and worthwhile difference.  I had the TLS DS-1 on hand for a few months and it's single OCXO reportely replaced 3 clocks on this board (system, Ethernet, USB).  

 

 

While much has been made about the mediocre performance characteristics of the Connor-Winfield OCXO that Adrian at TLS likes to use for all of his products, the removal of 3 noisily powered clocks from this board and replacing it with a cleanly powered clock even if that clock is of suspect performance has paid significant dividends.  I had a stock NUC7JYH board with its Celeron J4005 CPU on hand and it is the very same board and CPU that Adrian used for the DS-1.  Direct A/B revealed a significant uptick in detail clarity and spaciousness with the DS-1.  Compared against my stock NUC7i7DNBE, this superior detail clarity was still very much evident although I found the i7 NUC to sound more spacious still.  Regardless, I heard enough to know that it would be worthwhile to send my i7 board to SOtM for clock replacement and indeed, it has been worthwhile.  To have replaced the 4 replaceable clocks on this board has resulted in a notable decrease in harshness resulting in cleaner transients, better definition, more accurate timbre, and a greater sense of space.

 

 

However, the benefits of clocking have to be placed in proper perspective.  To my ears, the power supply still makes the bigger difference.  I have the benefit of having 2 NUC7i7DNBE boards on hand (one is stock and the other has been reclocked) and this has allowed me to make careful A/B comparisons.  With the stock i7 NUC powered by a 19V rail from my SR7, I am getting better SQ overall than the SOtM-modified NUC powered by the 19V rail from the 400W HDPlex.  If forced to choose, the choice would be easy.

 

The Server

 

With my inaugural post on this thread, I had described my observations about how LAN bridging resulted in increased transparency of the endpoint to the upstream server.  While the mechanism for why this improves transparency remains unsettled, with bridging, it was clear to me that the quality of the server mattered.  With the release of the SOtM sNH-10G switch last year, I reported that I was no longer able to differentiate between the Zenith SE and my noisy 12-core Xeon-based Mac Pro when either one was used as a Roon server.  But that was before AudioLinux came into the picture which allowed me to play with CPU frequency settings and this has made all the difference.  The Zenith SE houses a powerful and low noise PSU but it is mated to a very weak Celeron while my Mac Pro utilizes a noisy switching PSU mated to a much more capable 12-core Xeon with a giant CPU cache.  Without any OS manipulation of the CPU, cursory A/B comparisons between the two yielded no significant difference to my ears suggesting that the sNH-10G had effectively blocked the higher noise that was being generated by my Mac Pro.

 

But what would happen if I pushed my Mac Pro's CPU clock from it's base idle frequency to max turbo levels?  Of course, this is the beauty of AudioLinux and it has proven to be a very useful learning tool.  With higher CPU frequency, dynamics goes up but at the expense of subtlety and nuance and with progressively increasing harshness and the sNH-10G is incapable of completely isolating against these changes.  I have read commentary that the upcoming opticalRendu will supposedly be completely immune to the virtues of the upstream server.  I suspect this is probably the goal of the upcoming EtherREGEN also.  Well, I believe this is both naive and wishful thinking and so people will need to adjust their expectations appropriately or else they will be disappointed.  

 

I say this because I currently have 2 SOtM sNH-10G switches in my possession and I can tell you that while 1 switch makes a very big difference, 2 switches make an even bigger difference.

 

 

What is nice about these switches is that they have both standard RJ-45 Ethernet ports as well as optical Ethernet ports and so with these switches connected by a single-mode fiber optic cable, here is what I found.

 

 

With the optical cable compared against a 50+ foot Blue Jeans Cables CAT6A Ethernet cable, the noise floor with the optical cable was noticeably lower and there is a clear preference for the optical connection.  With the optical cable compared against a 22-foot Belden CAT6A cable with JSSG360 shielding that was made for me by Ghent, the gap was smaller but there was still a slight preference for the optical cable.  With the optical cable compared against a heavily shielded 1.5m SOtM dCBL-CAT7 cable, the noise floor was equivalent (at least to my ears) but tonality with the SOtM cable sounded more natural.  The optical cable sounded a touch thin and bright in comparison and so in this instance, the copper Ethernet cable sounded better.  Regardless, in each and every comparison, optical or otherwise, if I varied CPU frequency, I could hear differences in the server.  The server still ABSOLUTELY matters and this is because it's not just about noise, there is also the matter of performance and it would appear that RoonServer likes horsepower.  At this time, the delta I am hearing from my best server setup to my worst server setup is about the same as the delta I am hearing from by best endpoint setup to my worst.  In other words, my current stand is that the server matters as much as the endpoint.

 

CPU

 

My testing has shown me that modern CPUs are preferable to older generation CPUs  A few generations ago, an i7-4790 yielded a TDP of 84w with 4-cores/8-threads, 8MB of SmartCache and CPU turbo speeds reaching 4GHz.  Today, an i7-8700T yields a TDP of only 35w but offers 6-cores/12-threads, 12MB of SmartCache and CPU turbo speeds reaching the same 4.0GHz.  Basically, more performance with less noise and A/B comparisons between these 2 CPUs reveal exactly that.  An 8700K houses potentially even greater performance with a max turbo rating of 4.7GHz using better binned parts according to Intel and so I decided to compare this against the 8700T.  

 

 

Ultimately, it didn't seem to matter since I heard no benefit clocking either of these CPU beyond 3.8GHz when powered by the HDPlex 400W ATX LPSU due to harshness but who knows what would happen if I had a better ATX PSU on hand?  I have explored such a PSU with both Adrian Wun of TLS and Sean Jacobs but the cost of a "no compromise" ATX PSU from these gentlemen will run somewhere in the $4-5k range. Regardless, the CPU matters and if I were to build another server, I would probably go for a standard i7-8700 since they're more readily available and less expensive then either the 8700T or 8700K.

 

Motherboards

 

My testing has shown me that the motherboard matters also.  Borrowing a page from Pink Faun's book that gaming boards can sound better, I decided to compare a standard Asrock Z370M-ITX/ac motherboard against an Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard.  

 

 

First of all, I only looked at Intel boards since it wasn't clear to me that an AMD board was compatible with Optane memory.  Second, I specifically targeted the Z370/390 chipset because these chipsets were capable of running the latest generation i7s (both 8th and 9th gen).  The Z390 board happened to be designed for gaming meaning they were engineered to be overclocked.  As such, this gaming board has an 8-layer PCB with a whopping 8oz of copper to maximize conductivity and to enhance the ground plane.  This board also has beefier heat sinks to improve heat dissipation and a more robust VRM (voltate regulator module) to make sure the CPU is never starved of current.  While the differences weren't large, the gaming board had more substance to the sound stage with greater authority to its presentation but not to be completely outdone, the Z370 board had a touch better finesse and subtlety.  The point is that even these more minor differences were easily audible in the server.

 

SSD vs Optane

 

Just for kicks, I decided to compare a 58GB Optane card against a Samsung 500GB 960 EVO NVMe SSD in the M.2 slot of the Asrock board.  This was a very brief comparison because it didn't take long to realize how much more harsh the SSD sounded even with all of my isolation schemes in place.  It's amazing how many commercial music server manufacturers continue to use SSD drives in their servers as if powering an SSD cleanly somehow addresses this harshness when it does not, at least not to my ears.  I suppose you get used to the harshness over time but an SSD is about the worst thing I can imagine putting into a music server with the super fast NVMe drives sounding the harshest of all.  As some may recall, in previous testing, I found the older, slower SATA II SSDs (especially the SLC variety) to sound less harsh then the newer, faster SATA III SSDs although the faster SATA III SSDs made music sound more alive and more immediate and so there was a trade off.  It would appear that the Optane cards have the best of both worlds and so hats off to Larry for introducing us to the Optanes.

 

I have read comments about how running AL in memory doesn't result in much improvement in SQ except for a slight improvement in smoothness.  The point here isn't just running AL in memory for the sake of latency but also to be able to completely avoid using an SSD in the server.  The Optane seems to be a nice compromise if capacity, low latency, and low noise are desired since Optane behaves more like RAM than an SSD.  For those with a large Roon database who are looking for a brisk user experience with Roon, an Optane drive may be preferable to a USB stick for the Roon database.  For sure, it would be preferable to an SSD.  From a SQ standpoint, is an Optane drive preferable to having more RAM (16, 32, or even 64GB)?  I'm not sure although according to Intel, a 58GB Optane drive only consumes 3.5w and so it would appear to draw much less current than RAM as a 3.3V device.

 

RAM

 

I haven't done much testing with memory to see what is ideal.  Apparently, Sound Galleries has found that RAM timing matters with respect to SQ but they are keeping mum about what they found to be the ideal RAM timing for their servers.  It made sense to me to target low latency memory and I have had good success as far as compatibility with Kingston's HyperX DDR4 for either Asrock board and for the i7 NUC but I haven't yet played with RAM timing.  As I previously posted, I have not been able to distinguish any difference in sound between 4GB vs 8GB or single channel vs dual channel memory and I believe these findings are supported by the findings of others.  I have been asked about using as much as 64GB of memory in the server.  I have to wonder what the benefits of using large amounts of memory are except for the purposes of a RAM drive to store music since AudioLinux doesn't even occupy 4GB when ramrooted.  According to Crucial, both DDR3 and DDR4 memory consume about 3 watts per 8GB.  That means 16GB consumes 6 watts and 64GB consumes 24 watts.  As 1.2V devices, that represents quite a bit of current draw.  In fact, 24 watts is more than the whole i7 NUC board consumes and while RAM isn't as noisy as an SSD, I have to guess that this amount of consumption is going to result in increased noise in the ground plane.  While storing or caching music files in RAM seems to lead to a slight increase in SQ with AL (a touch more smoothness), I would have to guess that any gains made would likely be offset by the noise created by that much RAM.  I think even 16GB offers no SQ advantage for 2-channel audio, even with OS's that pre-fetch all streaming music into memory (i.e. Euphony).

 

Ethernet - JCAT Femto Network Card

 

I've already provided my experience with optical Ethernet in the SOtM sNH-10G switch and I suspect it would apply to a LAN card one might use in a server also.  With long runs of cable, optical seems to provide an advantage but with short runs, optical has potentially no advantage or actually sounds worse.  This suggests to me that much of the noise that optical is mitigating is coming from the Ethernet cable and not the server and that with short runs of Ethernet cabling or with well-shielded cabling, the higher amounts of jitter that optical creates now becomes its Achilles' heel.  Regardless, even in the best case scenario where optical imparts a benefit (i.e. when compared against a 50+ foot run of Blue Jeans Cables CAT6A), the improvement pales in comparison to what I am hearing with the JCAT Femto Network card.  The JCAT card is a game changer.

 

 

I looked at other cards, specifically TLS's LAN card with OCXO but I decided to go with the JCAT card because it had 2 Ethernet ports that I could bridge and because it was the only card I could find that I could independently power with an outboard PSU.  Adrian at TLS told me his network card had redundant linear regulation on board and so bus power should sound as good as an outboard PSU but I refused to believe it.  It just so happens that the JCAT card has the option of either being bus powered or being powered by a 5V outboard PSU and so it was easy to do this comparison.  No surprise, this card when powered by a 5V SR4 sounds incredibly better than bus power.  What did come as a surprise is that the LPS-1.2 is not a good choice for the JCAT card.  To power both Ethernet ports, you need to feed this card at least 1.5A according to Marcin although the LPS-1.2's 1.1A is enough to power one of the Ethernet ports.  The problem here is you not only lose the option of bridging but SQ was just not great because the LPS-1.2 sounds like it's working too hard just to power the one port.  The noise floor is low and articulations are clean and clear but they sound weak and thin.  Even the 5V port from the HDPlex sounds better overall.

 

Not to knock the LPS-1.2 since I regard this PSU very highly and in fact, I own 3 of them but I find that components that draw anywhere close to it's max rating of 1.1A aren't going to sound that great powered by the LPS-1.2.  Also, there are some components that just benefit tremendously from headroom.  A good example is the sNH-10G switch.  The LPS-1.2 powers it fine but it doesn't power it great.  This switch really scales with a 12V DR SR7.  At a minimum, I would suggest an SR4, otherwise, you may feel underwhelmed with this switch.  I imagine the upcoming EtherREGEN will be a better match for the LPS-1.2.

 

Chassis - HDPlex H3 V2 

 

 

This proved to be an excellent chassis in many ways for my intended build.  First, it is a fanless chassis capable of dissipating 80w of heat according to HDPlex.  Testing with an i7-8700K running for extended periods at a fixed 4GHz showed that this case could handle that level of CPU just fine.  At no time did CPU temps climb beyond 65 degrees C, however, at that speed and at those temps, harshness was quite evident.  Second, and more importantly, the design of this chassis allowed for the utilization and easy comparison of different outboard ATX power supplies.  The key word here is outboard.  Despite the greater impedance that comes with having to use long umbilical cabling with an outboard PSU, I have found digital components to be very sensitive to vibration and to house a large vibrating transformer in the same chassis as the server is fundamentally against my design philosophy and among the chief reasons I struggle with single-box servers, at least on theoretical grounds.  My former Innuos Zenith SE did a good job isolating the impact of it's large 300VA transformer on the rest of the server but as we know, when it came time to build their no-compromise Statement server, Innuos felt they had to separate the PSU from the main chassis.  If there is a downside to the H3, it's build quality is not to quite to the same level as the fanless cases by Streacom but, nonetheless, it is a solid chassis and nowhere as resonant as many of the Akasas.  Like with all my digital gear, I find that this chassis benefits from good vibration dampening footers as they result in cleaner transients with tighter image focus.

 

One mistake that I did not make with this server that I made with my previous server is the use of EMI paper.  With my previous server build, for those that recall, I lined the whole chassis with EMI paper with the idea that if a little is better, a lot is better still.  Well, I found that too much EMI paper kills the sound and has the potential to sound lifeless and overly damped.  It turns out playing with the harmonic frequencies even at frequencies beyond the audible frequencies (>20kHz) has a very audible effect and so with this build, I have purposely shied away from using EMI paper.  If another used Tranquility Base shows up on Audiogon, that is what I will preferentially target.

 

PSU - HDPlex 400W ATX LPSU

 

I was so impressed by my i7 NUC endpoint with its clocks replaced and powered by a 19V SR7 that I wondered what it would sound like to have the same i7 NUC with the same clocks replaced and powered by a 19V SR7 as the RoonServer.  Well, I tried this and it resulted in an exceptionally clean sound with wonderfully crisp and clear articulations and incredible detail resolution but somehow, compared against the either the 8700T or 8700K, the i7 NUC as a RoonServer lacked soul.  The more powerful machine sounded more dimensional, airier, fuller, more authoritative, and more real.  I went back and forth because each had its appeal but ultimately, the more powerful machine won out as my preferred Roon server.  

 

This led me to wonder how much of what I was hearing was the more powerful CPU vs the PSU.  Was the HDPlex 400W ATX PSU really that good?  I decided to power the i7 NUC with the 19V/10A lead from the HDPlex and even using a custom JSSG360-shielded OFC DC lead made for me by Ghent, compared against the 19V SR7, the HDPlex was a fairly significant step backward.  Noise floor was higher, bass sounded bloated and ill-defined, mids sounded a bit muffled, and treble sounded rolled off.  Not to say the HDPlex sounded horrible (as I previously mentioned, the HDPlex is actually more than just passably good), it's just the 19V SR7 is that much better. 

 

This outcome is a good example of performance being more important than low noise.  When I first described my experience with an unmodified NUC (with AudioLinux) sounding better than a microRendu or sMS-200, people wondered how devices that were built from the ground up for audio playback with high level clocks and low noise regulators could be bested by a cheap NUC.  My only explanation is that low power CPUs like ARM-based processors leave a lot of performance on the table and with Roon Core or RoonServer, I believe this all the more true.  It turns out horsepower isn't beneficial only for upsampling with HQP.  I'm sure this comment will stir a lot of debate and even heated comments but unless someone can propose a better answer, this is what I'm going with.  

 

Some will ask why I didn't go with the 200W HDPlex LPSU when this server consumes no more than about 50 watts max and more typically about 30 watts.  First, I wanted as much headroom as possible.  After speaking with Sean Jacobs, he was very much in favor of over-provisioning any ATX PSU he would design for me to avoid core saturation.  In fact, his design incorporated a 300VA transformer even though I told him I was expecting my server to only consume about 30-35 watts.  Second, I wanted to avoid a DC-ATX converter.  Having purchased and tried the HDPlex 400W DC-ATX converter already back in 2017, I was less than impressed with its performance even when powered by the 19V rail from my SR7.  Sean was also willing to share a few things about what he had learned regarding ATX PSUs (as we know, Sean designed the PSU for both the Zenith SE and the Statement).  According to Sean, the 5V rail is extremely important and requires high current for optimum performance (ideally 4-5A) even if you're not planning on powering any 5V devices such as an SSD.  Apparently, many parts of the motherboard utitilize this rail and unfortunately, the 5V rail on the 200W HDPlex outputs only 2A.  Even if I wished to bypass a DC-ATX converter and create special cables to directly power a motherboard, 2A of output, at least according to Sean, would be less than ideal.

 

As I started doing my listening tests with the HDPlex 400W ATX LPSU, I compared it against a Corsair RM650X ATX PSU.

 

 

I specifically chose this 650w Corsair because it had comparatively low ripple noise measurements and very good voltage stability and indeed, before the arrival of the HDPlex, I was quite impressed by its performance.  I wasn't sensing any of the fatiguing harshness I had heard with my Mac Pro or HP workstation.  Against the HDPlex, the Corsair was no match, however.  Noise floor was even lower but the sound signature was also fuller, more dynamic, and harmonically richer.  

 

As I was building servers for others, I had the good fortune of having 2 HDPlex 400W ATX LPSUs on hand and so I got a chance to use both at the same time.  

 

 

I used one HDPlex to power the motherboard via the 24-pin ATX connector and the other HDPlex to power the CPU via the 8-pin EPS connector using custom shielded cables made for me by Ghent.  This resulted in further significant improvement -- even better low end dynamics and a more substantial sound stage.  Is it worth another $800 to buy a 2nd HDPlex?  I have to say that it's a very tempting proposition and something worth considering because the difference is there.  Because I had an older 200W HDPlex on hand, I decided a few days ago to try powering the CPU from the 12V lead of this HDPlex using the same custom XLR cable that Ghent made for me and unfortunately, with the 8700K, the 400W HDPlex sounds more dynamic by itself.  I'm sure that a bespoke ATX PSU built by Sean or Adrian would be even better but for $800, I am very impressed with the HDPlex 400W ATX LPSU.  

 

X Factor - Furutech Nano Liquid

 

 

This needs to be filed under the "needs to be heard to be believed" catergory.  I received a tip awhile back from a trusted friend to give the Furutech Nano Liquid contact enhancer a try.  Those that know me know that I use a full loom of High Fidelity Cables everywhere except for USB and that's only because High Fidelity Cables don't make USB cables.  Anyway, as good as HFC cables are, I was very impressed by how this Furutech contact enhancer, which is basically a proprietary formulation of silver and gold particles suspended in squalene oil, resulted in an even smoother, richer, and more liquid presentation.  Yes, I know, it wreaks of voodoo but I loved what I was hearing.

 

For my initial server build using the 8700T CPU, I decided to cautiously apply this contact enhancer to the CPU, RAM, Optane card, JCAT card, and the ATX and EPS connectors.  Upon completion of my build, I immediately tried powering on this server but it wouldn't power on.  My first thoughts were that this contact enhancer had somehow caused a short or ruined the board but I decided to wait 24 hours to see what would happen.  To my relief, after 24 hours, the board powered on but the board was only seeing one 4GB RAM stick and not the other.  I switched around the sticks and it became clear that the RAM itself was not the problem but slot 2 on the motherboard was somehow not functioning or at least not detecting RAM that was inserted into this slot.  Was this a defect in the board or a result of the Furutech Nano Liquid?  I'm not sure but I wasn't bummed long because the SQ I got from this server was beyond what I was expecting.  Was it the CPU, the JCAT card, the HDPlex ATX PSU, or the Furutech liquid that was responsible for the magnificent sound?  It was impossible to know for sure.

 

I was asked to build a second server for a friend similar to this first server.  With this second server, I strongly suggested the Asrock gaming ITX motherboard and the i7-8700K.  As I mentioned above, I believed this particular motherboard should, in theory, sound better than the first board because it had more layers in the PCB, more copper in the ground plane, better heat sinking, and a more robust VRM.  Because the 8700K was structurally identical to the 8700T, they should operate similarly but because the 8700K used better binned parts, I reasoned that the 8700K could potentially perform better or at least more durably since I would intentionally be running this CPU well below it's rated peak capability of 4.7GHz.  Not wanting to risk the same headache, I elected not to apply the Furutech Nano Liquid to this build, at least not initially.  The machine powered up fine and with what I thought were appropriate expectations, I was quite let down by what I heard.  It sounded very dynamic but there was a dryness and a harshness to the sound that I wasn't hearing with my other server.  I quickly moved back to my other server and this was immediately confirmed.  My other server sounded smoother, more liquid, and harmonically more pleasing.  

 

Despite 100 hours of burn in, the new server failed to come close to what I was getting with my other server and so I had to let my friend know these findings.  I told him I couldn't say for sure but I didn't think it was the 8700K that was the culprit since I was getting the same temperature readings based on the frequency I was running compared against the 8700T.  I postulated that it had to be either the motherboard that was the culprit or else the Furutech Nano Liquid was the missing X-factor.  I offered him the option of applying the Furutech Nano Liquid but he would have to accept the risk that this liquid could damage his motherboard.  He agreed and so I tore down this machine and started over, this time more copiously applying the Nano Liquid to the CPU, Optane card, RAM, JCAT card, and ATX/EPS connectors.  Since I was given the green light, I figured if we were going to go down and be forced to buy a new motherboard, we might as well go for a home run.  Well, after application of this Furutech liquid, this server did improve...dramatically...and it was noticeable immediately.  If I have to guess, it is with the CPU where this liquid makes the most difference.

 

Operating System - AudioLinux vs Euphony

 

It would be a gross understatement to say that I was merely pleasantly surprised when I first heard a NUC running AudioLinux in RAM and I have Adrian of TLS to thank for this.  What is just as impressive is how open-minded and responsive Piero has been to suggestions and so it has been amazing to see how AudioLinux has evolved in such a short amount of time.  Rajiv and I had asked Piero to allow us the ability to specify CPU frequency and the ability to tune the CPU frequency has been extremely educational.  It also allows for the utilization of just about any CPU since the user is no longer tied to just the base frequency or the peak turbo frequency of a CPU.  Regardless of whether you're using an 8700T, 8700, or 8700K, you can dial in almost any frequency from 400MHz all the way to >4GHz and so with just about any CPU, it becomes a matter of the number of physical cores and the size of the cache.

 

As you go up in frequency, dynamics improves but it is at the expense of subtlety and nuance and at some point, harshness will set in.  I have found that harshness sets in sooner with lower quality PSUs.  With the HDPlex, I can push to 3.8GHz with the 8700T/K before the harshness gets unacceptable.  With the SR7 powering the i7 NUC, I can push as far as the i7-8650U will go (maxes out at 3.8GHz even though Intel claims it can go to 4GHz) and unacceptable harshness never really becomes an issue but this depends on the server CPU frequency.  What is fascinating is that with my large orchestral tracks, I had a preference for running the server at 800MHz which gave me my very best detail while running the NUC endpoint at 3.8GHz which gave the sound more body.  With heavily amplified rock, I found the server sounded best at 3.2GHz and with the NUC endpoint at about 2.2GHz.  It seemed that with the server running at a lower CPU clock speed, the NUC endpoint was receiving a cleaner (less harsh) signal that it could then amplify more agressively without penalty.  With the server running at a higher CPU clock speed, there was more body to the sound but as I advanced the NUC's clock speed, harshness became evident much sooner.  Regardless, to have this level of control has been amazing and I can tell you that these preferred settings apply only to my large listening room with my Wilsons and not to my smaller listening room with the Omegas.  I'm also convinced these settings would be different had I still had my Martin Logans.  

 

This is also the beauty of the core isolation feature and being able to switch between RoonBridge and Squeezelite on the endpoint.  Core isolation in my system results in a tidier and more precise sound signature resulting in tighter focus but at the expense of bloom.  With my Martin Logans, I would have had core isolation tuned on in both the server and the endpoint but with my Wilsons, it sounds too mechanical and so I leave it on in the endpoint but off in the server.  Squeezelite is similar to my ears.  It is a cleaner and more precise presentation whereas RoonBridge can sound more uncontrolled with undersirable overhang but for certain types of music, Squeezelite can sound less natural and overly sterile.  Regardless, I like the option of being able to easily switch between the two.

 

A couple of weeks back, I decided to give Euphony a try at the recommendation of a friend who was impressed with the upgrade from version 2.0 to 3.0.  Euphony lacks the fine manual controls that AudioLinux provides and so this was an immediate red flag for me.  With Euphony, there is no option to set CPU frequency, isolate cores, or bridge LAN ports but it does give the user a polished and easy to use interface.  Where AudioLinux is a tweaker's dream, Euphony was designed for those looking for a more no fuss turnkey solution.  Having spoken by phone with Željko Vranić, one of Euphony's programmers, he said their focus was to lower OS latency as much as possible which really has been Piero's goal at AudioLinux also but it would appear that they have approached latency differently.  Željko told me Euphony makes no attempt to isolate cores or to adjust the CPU frequency since they found this made no difference.  This certainly has not been my experience with AudioLinux.  After comparing the two, at this time, I am getting better SQ with Euphony than AL, especially on the server, and I must say this comes as a surprise, especially since Euphony doesn't allow me to bridge the 2 LAN ports on my JCAT card.  As both products utilize ArchLinux as its platform, I'm confident that AL will continue to evolve and that parity will become possible but thus far, I have been unable to configure AL to match Euphony's performance.  Ultimately, competition is good for the consumer and as I now own both products, I am rooting for both to succeed.

 

I apologize for this War and Peace length post.  It's unlikely you'll see a post like this from me again as I have grown tired of doing comparisons.  Best wishes to all.

Welcome back and Thank you Roy @romaz for another great post with invaluable informations.

 

Let me say to you I love you man and best wishes.

[beautiful music]

17 hours ago, austinpop said:

As some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to buy one of the 2 SR7 units that cool_chris has put on sale. This has given me 3 rails of SR7 SR goodness to add in to my system. I also took delivery of 2 long awaited SR4-19 units from Paul, so it's been PSU heaven here at chez austinpop.

 

I did some PSU juggling, and have settled on this allocation of PSUs in my system. I've got to say, this system is now in a state where the desire for further tweaking has reached a new low. It is sounding breathtakingly good.

 

 

One observation I want to highlight in my topology is this: the TLS OCXO switch as shown further improved the SQ of the system. over and above what I had with the sNH-10G switch. I also tried just a Netgear GS105 in place of the TLS, and the TLS definitely adds more SQ over and above just the base isolation provided by the GS105 with JSGT. Once the EtherRegen come out, it will be very interesting to see how it compares instead of the sNH-10G in the topology above, with and without the TLS switch upstream.

 

Hopefully in the next few weeks, my SR7MR3DRXL build #17 will arrive. My intention there is to replicate @romaz's approach. I'll use the SR7DR-19V/10A rail to drive an HDPlex DC-ATX converter to supply ATX to my server, and another SR7DR-12V/6A rail to supply EPS. The third DR rail will go wherever it sounds best, most likely the tX-USBultra, and I'll juggle other PSUs accordingly.

 

Once that is in place, I would seriously wonder how this compared to a Pink Faun 2.16X or SGM Extreme system. 

 

Due to my unexpected PSU bounty, I will likely be selling an SR4-19 and a couple of LPS-1.2s soon. Watch the buy/sell forum, or you can PM me.

 

 

Thank you @austinpop for this updates, Just out of curiosity, how did you find the HMS with SR7 vs the supplied SMPS? 

[beautiful music]

8 minutes ago, romaz said:

My single- and dual-stage regulation power supplies from @[email protected] arrived a few weeks ago and I felt I owed it to Alex to comment on just how good these power supplies have been in my system:

 

 

First of all, the attention to detail and the build quality of these units are superb.   Second, they do exactly what I hoped they would do -- noise floor drops and dynamics and control improve.  They've improved everything I've connected them to including various cheap SMPSs I had lying around, a PowerAdd battery, an sPS-500, LPS-1.2, SR4, and SR7.  While the improvement was smallest with a DR SR7, considering the low asking price for these units, even with the DR SR7, I would consider purchasing one.  As the photo depicts, I have purchased 5 and I now have more on order. 

 

The greatest beneficiaries among the PSUs that I've tried are the PowerAdd battery, sPS-500, and LPS-1.2 and for these PSUs, the dual stage regulation models especially are transformative.  For these PSUs, the DXP-1A5DSC should be considered "must haves" imho. 

 

Using a PowerAdd battery set to 16V and a DXP-1A5DSC with the pre-regulator output set to 15V and the final regulator output set to 13.5V, the drop in noise floor and the improvement in dynamics and control with my Hugo TT2 is just unbelievably better when compared against the PowerAdd by itself or against the stock 15V SMPS.  It's like a completely upgraded DAC with this little device even though this DAC is powered internally with supercaps.

 

My LPS-1.2s have taken on new life as well.  My units have largely gone unused as of late because with any components that draw close to their max rating of 1.1A, I have found these quickly lose steam (likely due to voltage sag) and in some instances, like with the etherREGEN, the LPS-1.2 is only barely better than the stock SMPS.  Presently, I'm using one of my LPS-1.2s at 9V feeding a DXP-1A5S set to 5V which is then feeding my Monoprice SlimRun USB 3.0 optical extender and this combo not only provides me complete galvanic isolation between server and DAC but the addition of even the single-stage regulation power supply dramatically improves dynamics.  

 

What about the SR4 and the new SR4-Turbo (SR4T)?

 

 

Because of the greater 2A headroom of the SR4s, these PSUs don't run out of steam as quickly as the LPS-1.2 and the SR4-Turbo especially maintains its composure with much more gear including any of the JCAT cards and most network switches that I've tried.  The standard SR4 + DXP-1A5DSC (dual regulated) is roughly the equivalent of an SR4-Turbo by itself but an SR4-Turbo with this same dual regulated module takes it very scarily close to a DR SR7 with respect to dynamics for low power devices like the etherRegen or JCAT's latest XE USB card.  At close to 400 GBP, especially with such a good exchange rate, I cannot recommend the SR4-Turbo more highly.

 

Where an SR7 continues to have an edge even over an SR4-Turbo + DXP-1A5DSC is with tonal density and color saturation.   There also remains a relaxed and more effortless quality to the SR7 that sounds more natural and pleasing to my ears.  Clearly, headroom matters even for low power devices.  When you add the DXP-1A5DSC to a standard SR (single regulated) SR7, just like with the other PSUs, it sings bigger and bolder and blacker.  It is still not exactly equivalent to a DR SR7 but to my ears, its 50-60% there.

 

Are there downsides or limitations to Alex's units?  Yes, presently they cap out at 15V and 1.5A of output and this is due to the limitation of the LT3045s and so don't expect these units to power a big motherboard or high-power CPU.  Alex is working on SR units that can output up to 20V and DR units with a final output of 15V and up to 2.1A and so this opens up the possibility of powering an i7 NUC with a PowerAdd battery. 

 

The big challenge of course is heat.  The internal parts used including caps, etc. are rated for >100 deg C.  According to Alex, the LT3045 has a max input voltage of 20V (absolute max of 22V) but he recommends, based on the heat dissipation abilities of the chassis that is used, that you don't go beyond 4w of heat dissipation for an SR unit and 6w for a DR unit.  That means for an SR unit with a desired output of 5V/1.5A, if your feeding supply is 7V, that amounts to 3w of heat that will need to be dissipated (2V x 1.5A = 3w) and so this should be acceptable.   If your component only draws 0.5A, then your feeding supply can go as high as 13V for an SR unit.   Hopefully, the math here is clear.  Should you do something stupid and go significantly overboard, Alex has assured me that there are thermal safeguards in place that will prevent you from frying whatever gear you're powering.  I think these recommendations are probably conservative because my units are barely warm to the touch. 

 

Is there an advantage for using a larger spread?  Yes, it sounds better.  According to Alex, larger spreads result in less ripple.  With the DR SR7, for example, Paul is using a spread of 7V and those who have compared an SR vs DR SR7 knows just how much better the DR sounds.  If you're unsure as you place your order, it's probably best to discuss your plans with Alex.  In my case, I am using a 12V rail from my SR SR7 to feed a DXP-1A5DSC with a 10.5V pre-reg and 9V final output to then feed an etherREGEN and the results are simply stunning.  

 

As for the quality of the DC cabling used, not surprisingly, they make a big difference.  I use the 16AWG OCC copper with JSSG360 shield that Ghent sells and they pair exceptionally well with Alex's units.

Really appreciate Roy for coming back with your new experiments.

 

Keep posting as much as you can, thanks in advance.

[beautiful music]

 

10 minutes ago, Middy said:

I made that mistake but got out of it with Alex's help. Its a fantastic design double regulated but do order the double for a lot less trouble later. In getting the voltage correct and having to fit it. I have mine with my original LPS1 feeding my Qutest. I did see a lot of interest pre Christmas across the audio web sites, so the price of popularity is patients...and other issues..

 

Take care

 

Dave..😷😁

 

 

 

 

If you are meaning you powered Chord Qutest DAC, out of curiosity what is the power cable did you use since the input power plug of Qutest is microUSB and this connector is very rare to find.

[beautiful music]

9 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

India pale ale? Just kidding.

 

I too have a couple of those adapters, as well as one Ghent DC29 made with the male microUSB plug on one end and Oyaide 2.1mm DC on the other:

 

 

Thanks MikeyFresh.

 

Did you power your Qutest DAC with LPS1 as well or what?

 

If so curious to know how did you find LPS1 vs stock SMPS? 

[beautiful music]

33 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

I think it’s fair to say you can’t call anything a bargain until you compare both, otherwise we would be saying the Innous Statement is a bargain against the Taiko Extreme! Would be interesting to see head to head! Until then I won’t be judging 

+1

[beautiful music]

20 minutes ago, FredM said:

 

The Grimm MU1 in action, on top of a rather exclusive platform 😉

 

 

 

I'm with @RickyV don't leave us here hanging without further information.

[beautiful music]

4 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

The left half of this photo DEFINITELY outshines my JCAT USB XE early impressions post :). 

Extreme waiting you to buy it and compare it to your best Server you can build😉😁.

[beautiful music]

50 minutes ago, HeeBroG said:

Anybody know why there are x2 power DC power cables into DAVE?

One for digital supply of Dave and one for analog part

[beautiful music]

2 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

Is @romaz getting this by any chance?

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/236162336799519/permalink/952557981826614/

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum/topic/141102-sean-jacobs-dc4-lps-powering-my-dave-and-mscaler/

 

 

 

 

Maybe he has SR7DR for his Dave but I'm not sure.

[beautiful music]

On 3/5/2020 at 12:10 PM, Gavin1977 said:

Good question - I have used both the provided wall wart and a spare 9v rail from my SR7.  Other peoples experience may differ, but I couldn't personally hear much difference with either senario.  To my ears (prior to deploying the EtherRegen), providing an SR7 rail to the NUC provided a good uplift, to the tx-USBultra I'm not so sure (but adding the hardware in the chain did make a noticable difference).  YMMV.

 

Based on this, my feedback in post #15908 was based on stock power supply to both Etherregen and tx-USBultra, plus SR7 to NUC only - namely because I couldn't hear an appreciable difference with tx-USBultra being powered by linear or not.  Etheregen is stated not to really benefit from a linear power supply, and equally I don't have a 5v linear to hand so this was not tested.  I did a number of switch outs - Etherregen only, tx-USBultra only and of course Etherregen + tx-USBultra.  I had a noticable preference towards just Etherregen in the chain only and excluding the tx-USBultra.

 

I was partly trying to evaluate what an upgrade path from NUC/SR7/Etherregen/tx-USBultra combination might sound compared to Etherregen/eRED-dock.  I don't have an eRED-dock, but it has given me a flavour of what might be expected.  I think @jean-michel6 might be onto something as per his post.

 

As I say, my next test, in a similar vein, will be Etherregen plus Chord 2go.  I just hope the 2go delivers and it keeps the dynamics of the SR7 powered NUC.  I did try Allo USBsignature (with and without Shanti), sounded good, but lacked dynamics IMO compared to SR7/NUC and was a definite step behind this combination.  So far I have a preference towards higher powered CPUs fed with very clean power as opposed to low power raspberry Pi's etc... which links in with some earlier discussions.

 

 

Out of curiosity, did you receive your Chord 2go if so how did you find it vs your NUC?

[beautiful music]

3 hours ago, ray-dude said:

 

About 11k words in my write up (!)  Pretty remarkable step up from my dual i7 NUC setup.

 

Couple more weeks of listening tests to go to finish that up, but here is a sneak peek

 

 

I think it deserves 26k words 😉.

[beautiful music]

6 hours ago, adamaley said:

 

Sorry, allow me to correct myself. I got the Prime Titanium 750W, but it is not fanless. It has a hybrid mode, that keeps the fan off until it hits somewhere close to 70% of a temperature threshold. I was initially going to go with the full fanless option but decided against it because once the DC4 LPS arrives, I would like to be able to replace the 7 year old noisy Corsair in my workstation where I do a bit of gaming with the Seasonic.

If this was to have been a permanent power solution for my build, I would have gone completely fanless. Apologies for the confusion.

 

In the attached image you can see the hybrid switch for the power supply.

 

Please share your thoughts and opinion of DC4 when it arrived.

 

[beautiful music]

4 hours ago, bodiebill said:

 

This week I received a Keces P8 with dual rails 9V/12V and 18V/19V (both 4A) plus USB 5V (1A). This enabled me to try quite a few permutations, applying the SR4 and the LT3045 boards where they had the most positive effect. For now, for my HQPe server - NAA endpoint setup, after only one day of breaking in the Keces, I have decided on:

• XT Power battery 5V for the server's JCAT net card FEMTO
• Paul Hynes SR4 19V for the MikroTik 305 SFP/RJ45 switch
• Keces P8 19V for the endpoint PC with HDPLex 800W DC-ATX converter
• Keces P8 9V => LDOVR DXP-1A5DSC (LT3045) => 7.1V for the ISO Regen
• iFi Power 9V into MPAudio DLS-HPULN (LT3045) => 7V into Chinese PS (LT3045) => 5V for the Elfidelity USB card

The latter (Elfidelity card) sounds clearly better than direct from the Keces P8 5V USB, probably because of the double (serial) LT3045 noise reduction.

 

As 19V supplier for the endpoint PC the SR4 sounded only very slightly better than the Keces. The SR4 made a clear difference on the MikroTik switch.

 

I also tried powering the endpoint CPU/EPS seperately with the SR4's 12V, but this did not give a clear improvement compared to the Keces powering the motherboard + the CPU via the HDPlex 800W.

 

I have ordered a 6V Chinese LPS to be able to further simplify and increase the possibilities 🙂

 

Fyi, for what it is worth...

 

Curious to know what is your endpoint PC configuration.

[beautiful music]

On 5/15/2020 at 5:22 PM, Peter Avgeris said:

I see here that quite a few guys have experimented with this Startech SFP network interface card. I would just like to add my two cents here.

 

First of all, this card carries the Realtek 8168 B/E etc chipset, which costs really nothing. Cents of a dollar. On top of this, this Startech NIC requires the addition of a SFP module to function. And the impact of these modules to the final SQ has been already demonstrated by a lot of guys. For my set up I need 4 cards, one in my NAS, two inside my audio server and one on my audio endpoint.

 

I find the price of Startech NIC ridiculously expensive, that does not make sense for a massively commercially released product, specially when the heart of the NIC costs cents. So before throwing 1.000+ Euros into the bin, I decided to make a little research.

 

Back in the old days, light transmission was never better that the copper interfaces. I am sure you remember the old optical interface vs. the coaxial interface. It seems that for small distances (and not 100s of meters in length) the copper solution might outperform the optical. So I did a little research to figure out what was better in Startech NICs. It should not be the light interface, to my instinct, it is the chipset that should make the difference, at least up to +90%. So I performed a search in order to find a reasonably priced NIC, with copper interface, good old trusted Ethernet copper connector, of course equipped with the same Realtek 8168 chipset, as this is the beating heart of the Startech adapter.

 

So I found out that there is a ridiculously cheap solution that would outperform many of the highly priced network adapters around. The exact description of the model is TP-Link 3468 v.3, it comes in both tall and narrow mounting bracket and it sells for 6-9.5 Euros. Yes! Less than 10 Euros for a NIC that carries the same beating heart as the Startech device does! I need four cards, so I got some more. Seven pieces in total. I also told of this story to a friend living in Germany. He got the same cards as well.

 

To his surprise (and mine, too!) this card was found to greatly outperform well known commercial applications that cost in excess of 400 Euros per piece. A couple of seconds of a heads-up battle was enough to tell the winner without the slightest hesitation. And if you consider that here we have no extreme power supplies, no extra clocks or oscillators, nothing but the core, then this device has a truly great potential to be the absolute winner! Although Realtek devices are considered to be real crap things for servers (due to lack of drivers, support, etc.), it is found that for audio applications, they really outperform probably everything out there!

 

So, before spending 1000s of Euros in NICs, please do me a favor and spend a mere -20 Euros for a pair of this 'crappy' (!) NIC! I am pretty sure that you will be surprised (at least!). This little thing surprised me to the point of thinking of manufacturing a final product for the HiFi community, equipped of course with truly exotic power supplies and premium oscillators, that would cost less than 100 Euros as a final product, all included! Although my tube amplifiers cost ridiculously high amount of money, with exotic iron double c cores, etc, in excess of 100k Euros, at the same time I am a strong believer of doing your best effort for the lowest price you can.

 

FYI, this lovely little crap is currently breaking in. It is found to be extremely close to the Startech NIC equipped only with the flagship Planet module (all else are clearly inferior!), so damn close that properly breaking it in might tell this the final winner. So damn close! I will inform you further.

 

 

Can you post a link and what is the difference between V.2 and V.3?

[beautiful music]

 

4 hours ago, auricgoldfinger said:

I recently added a modified Melco/Dela S100 switch to my system.  My experience follows.

 

 

Background

 

My first audiophile switch was a modified consumer-grade Linksys SE3008.  SOtM changed capacitors, replaced the switching regulator with a linear regulator, and enabled the switch to be re-clocked by the sCLK-EX board in my tX-USBultra.  Later, the sCLK-EX was re-clocked by their sCLK-OCX10 master clock.  As others have noted, the result was a nice improvement in sound quality.

 

At some point, we were told that a particular Netgear switch could shunt upstream noise to ground, so I added one before the modified SE3008.  Although I could never hear any difference, I left it in place.  Much later, I tried a Cisco Catalyst 2960.  I heard no change, so I removed it.

 

I purchased the SOTM sNH-10G audiophile switch a few months after it was released.  To be honest, I was put off by the price and was skeptical of its value.  I knew from prior experience with my tX-USBultra and sMS-200ultra that I could get much better sound quality using 20AWG solid core Neotech silver wire with JSSG 360 shielding rather than the generic 22AWG stranded silver offered as an upgrade by SOtM.  The Neotech upgrade increases openness, transparency, and detail.  Importantly, it also adds body to the sound signature.  Consequently, my sNH-10G does not suffer much from the thinness that others have noted.

 

Along the way, I acquired a Mutec REF 10 to re-clock the tX-USBultra and sNG-10G.  The REF 10 is a marked improvement over the sCLK-OCX10.

 

I purchased an EtherREGEN soon after its release to chain with the sNH-10G.  During this time, I removed the Netgear switch from my network and noticed an uptick in sound quality.  I ran this configuration for a few months before deciding to part with the EtherREGEN and try a re-clocked Melco/Dela S100 instead. 

 

The S100 modifications were made by Pink Faun.  They replaced the 25MHz oscillator on the S100 board with their Ultra OCXO clock module.  They also removed the internal power connectors and soldered those wires directly to the board.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they created a 5v input to SEPARATELY power the clock module.  In other words, the modified S100 requires two power supply rails:  a 12v rail for the switch board and a 5v rail for the clock module.

 

I would like to give credit to @seeteeyou for the idea of modifying an S100 and to @Nenon for giving me his thoughts and suggestions during my due diligence process.

 

Topology

 

A simplified representation of my system excluding grounding and power is as follows (apologies for the lack of an easy-to-read flow chart):

 

NUC7i7DNKE Euphony/Roon Server > Viablue EP-7 Cat 6a > SOtM sNH-10G SE

Synology DS218j > Viablue EP-7 Cat 6a > SOtM sNH-10G SE

Linksys WRT 1900 ACS router > Viablue EP-7 Cat 6a > SOtM sNH-10G SE

 

SOtM sNH-10G SE* > Single Mode Fiber > Modified Melco S100** > Synergistic Research Galileo UEF Ethernet > NUC7i7DNHE StylusEP > Habst USB Ultra III > tX-USBultra SE* > Synergistic Research Galileo UEF USB > Chord Hugo M-Scaler > Synergistic Research Galileo SX Digital BNC (2) > Chord DAVE > 12AWG 16-wire UniCrystal silver custom headphone cable > HE1000se headphones

 

* Re-clocked by Mutec REF 10 (Habst Digital BNC)

 

** Powered by a Farad3 12v and a JCAT Optimo Duo 5v rail.  A 100Mbps port is used to connect to the NUC7i7DNHE endpoint.

 

(Note:  A particular Finisar SFP recently has become popular for its added transparency and air.  In my system, I found the perceived improvement to be the result of a recessed midrange.  I went back and forth several times to confirm this impression.  In my system, for this particular application, the Planet Technology SFP is clearly superior.)

 

Listening Impressions

 

In a nutshell, the modified S100 has profoundly affected my listening experience.  I have implemented many changes during the past few years, upgrading sources, all types of cables, signal regeneration and re-clocking, power, grounding, and RAM.  In a few instances, a tweak or modification resulted in the perception of having acquired an upgraded version of a particular piece of gear.  Others were less dramatic but provided welcome improvements in sound quality.  None had the transformative effect of the modified S100.  Replacing my DNA Stratus headphone amp and Auralic VEGA DAC with the Chord DAVE was the most significant upgrade that I have made to my audio system.  The modified S100 is probably the second most important.

 

I am not a professional reviewer, and finding the words to properly describe what I am hearing has been challenging.  To begin, the background is very black.  Low level detail is jaw dropping.  I hear much more subtle elements in voices and instruments.  Reverberation and decay are more apparent.  The sound signature is smooth with an extended high frequency response that is not the least bit fatiguing.  Images and soundstage are more focused and coherent.  The acoustical space is more easily discerned.  Tonality, density, and resolution are outstanding.

 

I consider the sNH-10G to be my baseline switch.  Adding the ER modified the sound, primarily adding body while sacrificing some of the transparency, detail, and spatiality which are the hallmarks of the sNH-10G.  The net result was to tune my system rather than take a major step forward.  Replacing the ER with the modified S100 is an entirely different experience.  As I have attempted to describe above, the modified S100 elevates the sound quality to dramatic new heights.

 

 

 

Thanks Brian for your feedback regarding this new experiment.

 

Just out of curiosity did you tried to use one NUC after adding additional switches.

 

Also it will be fun if you post some photos of modified S100.

[beautiful music]

46 minutes ago, nonesup said:

I have received my Finisar, but I would like to make the comparison with Planet Tech. Could you tell me the exact Planet Tech model that I have to order?

 

Can you please post the website link that you bought your Finisar from it?