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


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Most important: please realize this thread is about bleeding edge experimentation and discovery. No one has The Answer™. If you are not into tweaking, just know that you can have a musically satisfying system without doing any of the nutty things we do here.

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20 hours ago, Dutch said:

To complicate things further; there’s many ways to connect up storage, beyond the two which are named here.

 

- SATA

- mSATA/m.2

- USB

- Thunderbolt

- firewire

- PCIe

- m2 PCIe

 

And of course there’s the different types of storage SSD (SLC/MLC/3d NAND, ...), 2,5/3,5” mechanical HDD’s, eMMC, SDC, USB thumb drives, optical, ...

 

I’m sure I forgot a boatload.

 

So good luck in comparing them all/finding consensus! :)

optane?

floppy disk (LOL)

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On 3/2/2019 at 11:11 AM, sandyk said:

However, improving the PSU area to help prevent this getting back into the main PSU will markedly improve this area.

 

...

 

 That is why I regulate my PC's +12V supply down to 2 separate, much less noisy and isolated +5V supplies for my OS and Music internal SSDs.

Sandy, both of us mentioned using fully external supplies for the SSDs and HDD and still prefered HDD.

My drive supply has its own dedicated transformer, the isolation must be very good there.

These devices will still have to share ground directly with PC so how much isolation can you really get?

 

2 hours ago, the_doc735 said:

SSD - HDD   ...with one half in favour of ssd and the other in favour of HDD, does it really matter that much? Is it just a negligible thing (nit picking)?

internal/external drive  ...does it really matter?

vbus powered or external/independent power   ....does it really matter?

SSD or HDD is the least neglible of those 3 imo. plugging a SSD or HDD into a laptop with USB adapter the HDD is still preferred.

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6 hours ago, numlog said:

Sandy, both of us mentioned using fully external supplies for the SSDs and HDD and still prefered HDD.

My drive supply has its own dedicated transformer, the isolation must be very good there.

These devices will still have to share ground directly with PC so how much isolation can you really get?

 When using additional external PSUs you are increasing the chances of stray earth loops.

 The voltage regulators that I am talking about are very low noise types such as the 40uV from ebay or better and share the same EARTH reference in the PC/server as the they use the internal +12V supply rail...

Neither are the choice of filter capacitor types and values used in the external PSUs are necessarily a good choice, with many PSUs these days using very low ESR filter capacitors which will exaggerate HF detail.

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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On 3/2/2019 at 6:11 AM, sandyk said:

That is misinformation.

 In fact, some years ago at a  Computer Audiophile Symposium organised by Chris Connaker , SSD was preferred over HDD, with HDD sounding a little " muddy sounding" in comparison according to Chris IIRC.

 Both SSD and HDD inject wideband noise back into the main PSU, with SSD having a wider bandwidth RF/EMI due to it's faster Data rise and fall times. However, improving the PSU area to help prevent this getting back into the main PSU will markedly improve this area.

 That is why I regulate my PC's +12V supply down to 2 separate, much less noisy and isolated +5V supplies for my OS and Music internal SSDs.

HDD Electrical noise.jpg

Thank you! I thoiught I was reading some fake news here. I have never heard of HDD beating SSD. It has been advised on many websites of products that SSD is superior to HDD (with the noise from it etc). I have never heard of HDD better than SSD even if SSD may not be superior.  I also have my OS inside an internal SSD being powered by separate LPS which seems to work really nicely. (but I have not compared with being all supplied by same 19V PS, as for some reason it appears the OS won't boot properly this way).  My music is stored in the same SSD as the OS but I also can play music from an external HD which is a regular HDD (spinning). The entire music file is loaded in the RAM before playing anyway so there is no difference between storing music as internal SSD or external HDD and I am sure no difference with external SDD either. Since there is no active retrieval of the music data from the storagte while music is played, the storage device should not matter. I am not sure about the network playing though. in any case, loading entire file into RAM (100% buffer) is presumably the best way to play the music as the PC is not doing anything else except decoding the music file.  Again this may or may not apply to network/roon playback. I am talking about playing music directly from a SSD in the same PC. 

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1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 When using additional external PSUs you are increasing the chances of stray earth loops.

 The voltage regulators that I am talking about are very low noise types such as the 40uV from ebay or better and share the same EARTH reference in the PC/server as the they use the internal +12V supply rail...

Neither are the choice of filter capacitor types and values used in the external PSUs are necessarily a good choice, with many PSUs these days using very low ESR filter capacitors which will exaggerate HF detail.

the characterisitic sound of the SSD remained even when using various power supplies for the SSD, including  internal 5V and internal 12V regulated down to 5V like you recommend. I believe it has to be the SSD.

 

I still use SSD for OS and recently discovered the best SQ could be achieved by using seperate SATA controller for the HDD (PCIe card) and SSD (internal MoBo SATA). the SATA SSD was able to outperform NVMe SSD in this configuration, I suspect a large of advantage of NVMe drives is seperation from SATA storage drives rather than increased speeds.

 

And I should mention the regulators used are TPS7A4701 with some effort to improve filtering , low ESR tantalum caps were removed the regulator boards, relatively large aluminium polymer caps were added to outputs. it sounds  better like this but Im not sure that will have the same effect as what describe,

 

1 hour ago, Chopin75 said:

 I have never heard of HDD better than SSD

Until recently you mean, there a 2 recent posts saying so.

Most of what you will read about it is only speculation/subjective reports, just because it goes against popular opinion doesnt make it fake.

As you point out its all plays back from RAM so storage should sound identical, but most will agree it doesnt.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, numlog said:

the characterisitic sound of the SSD remained even when using various power supplies for the SSD, including  internal 5V and internal 12V regulated down to 5V like you recommend. I believe it has to be the SSD.

 

I still use SSD for OS and recently discovered the best SQ could be achieved by using seperate SATA controller for the HDD (PCIe card) and SSD (internal MoBo SATA). the SATA SSD was able to outperform NVMe SSD in this configuration, I suspect a large of advantage of NVMe drives is seperation from SATA storage drives rather than increased speeds.

 

Until recently you mean, there a 2 recent posts saying so.

Most of what you will read about it is only speculation/subjective reports, just because it goes against popular opinion doesnt make it fake.

As you point out its all plays back from RAM so storage should sound identical, but most will agree it doesnt.

 

12 minutes ago, numlog said:

Response: 

Chopin75: "Certainly there are exceptions, and as Sandyk said both SSD and HDD can cause noise. I can't really tell the difference in my system as stated before due to the way my OS works, playing all in RAM. Different people have such different systems that it is hard to compare.  The variable qualities of each SSD vs HDD, and how the drive is being powered may also affect the sound...etc.... ""

 

 

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15 minutes ago, Chopin75 said:

What I mean is that, I am using Euphony OS which allows one to load entire track into RAM (meaning extract the entire music file from storage) and the local software player is within the same OS where euphony is stored.  You basically select 100% buffer and then the entire track is loaded. The local software player I use is Euphony's own"Styles". I can also use HQplayer embedded which also do the same RAM playback. You are correct that many players can do this, nothing special. The Euphony also allows one to retrieve music files that are not stored in the same local SSD where the OS is. This basically mean the tracks are also loaded into the local SSD wherever it is stored from an external  drive and even network drive, if that makes it clear? 

ok, thanks for explaining. XXHE also has the feature of copying to OS drive to decompress lossless or lossy files before RAM. by default it will play uncompressed files (WAV,AIFF) from their source, so using WAVs can let you test the differences in sound between pre-RAM storage. You can install XXHE on the HDD itself to have it decompress and copy to RAM from there (this sounds best). 

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i have syn. ds218+ NAS/dedicated server, w/LPSU & SOtM filters. running DSM 6.2.1 and roon server.

I have Sonore microrendu 1.4 upgrade w/LPSU, running sonicorbiter O/S (linux) & roon.

 

Is there any ACTUALLY AVAILABLE NUC PC's to replace my server and endpoint player, that would be a significant upgrade in sound quality, to "the above".

 

Also,  does the microrendu load O/S to RAM, and can music files be loaded into RAM 100%?

 

Many thanks!

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1 hour ago, the_doc735 said:

i have syn. ds218+ NAS/dedicated server, w/LPSU & SOtM filters. running DSM 6.2.1 and roon server.

I have Sonore microrendu 1.4 upgrade w/LPSU, running sonicorbiter O/S (linux) & roon.

 

Is there any ACTUALLY AVAILABLE NUC PC's to replace my server and endpoint player, that would be a significant upgrade in sound quality, to "the above".

 

Also,  does the microrendu load O/S to RAM, and can music files be loaded into RAM 100%?

 

Many thanks!

I know for sure music files can be 100% loaded into RAM, depending on the software you use. Euphony OS can. I think HQplayer also can, perhaps J Medial Player too. Audirvana cannot, at least the MAC version cannot. Not sure about OS running in RAM. Audio Linux can do that as I heard from this forum. 

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Does anyone have experience with different CPUs?

 

The previous CPU was a 6600K, finding an ''upgrade'' without wasting money on specs that might actually degrade SQ is gonna be difficult.

I think my old CPU sounded best at its normal clock speed of 3.5GHz, was forcing it to operate at a non ''native'' clock speed with underclock causing it to sound worse or is it simply that faster CPUs sound better?

 

Does hyperthreading and/or number of cores matter?

 

AMD? At least at some point AMD was known for having a large number of virtual and intel with a few powerful physical cores.

AMD doesnt have integrated graphics, that could be a good thing since it means simpler chipset ,simpler CPU and less hardware on the MoBo.

and IME with the 6600k SQ is better using a GPU instead of integrated graphics.

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Sandy was speaking more on the technical side of things when responding to ''SSDs are too noisy for audio use''

 

both types of drives have levels of measurable electrical noise, and if greater care is taken with the SSD it shouldnt be anymore of a problem than it is for the HDD.

 

But is this really a electrical noise problem? subjectively I would describe the SSD as ''noisy'' but I have no idea whats actually going on in the circuits (where as sandy does to a much greater extent), others are likely using the term subjectively aswell.

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Interesting intro to USB4 ... 40 Gbps, will be based on Thunderbolt protocol and use USB-C connectors.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14048/usb4-specification-40-gbps-type-c-tb3

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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6 hours ago, numlog said:

Does anyone have experience with different CPUs?

 

The previous CPU was a 6600K, finding an ''upgrade'' without wasting money on specs that might actually degrade SQ is gonna be difficult.

I think my old CPU sounded best at its normal clock speed of 3.5GHz, was forcing it to operate at a non ''native'' clock speed with underclock causing it to sound worse or is it simply that faster CPUs sound better?

 

Does hyperthreading and/or number of cores matter?

 

AMD? At least at some point AMD was known for having a large number of virtual and intel with a few powerful physical cores.

AMD doesnt have integrated graphics, that could be a good thing since it means simpler chipset ,simpler CPU and less hardware on the MoBo.

and IME with the 6600k SQ is better using a GPU instead of integrated graphics.

I use AMD Ryzen 2700x 8-core ! so it does not need much hyperthread. According to pinkfaun, this is the chip they recommend for Music playback. It runs things very smoothly, runs DSD256 beautifully, including upsampling from PCM to DSD256 via HQplayer.. It appears Pinkfaun recommends lower hyperthread with more core is better.   I also think the lack of video card may be better if you plan to run headless, so it won't be a source of possible interference. But you may need a separate video card for setup using the screen. 

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2 hours ago, sandyk said:

Yes, being mechanical devices that have their motors normally powered from an existing +12V supply rail, (especially the large capacity types) they are then highly likely to have less precise timing, and will also inject their motor current demand variations back into the +12V supply as well. This +12V supply may also be shared with other devices such as another HDD or even an Optical device.

 

There is another fly in the ointment here too. Many people augment the internal PSU with external Linear power supplies which have capacitive coupling back through the transformer to A.C. mains earth. (This is more of a problem with USB though) 

The existing would be using the 0 volts lead back to the internal PSU 's " earth plane" via fairly short leads, perhaps via a couple of 4 pin molex connectors. When you add an external linear PSU you then increase the 0 volts ( earth reference) lead length from the new PSU via it's relatively long 0 volts lead back to perhaps an earth reference derived from a 3 pin plug via perhaps an up to 1.8M long AC cable, plugged into (hopefully) an adjacent socket on the same powerboard. You may also have another variable where the 0 volts lead of the new linear PSU can be either  " floating" or connected to mains earth. This may result in additional RF/EMI pick up from external sources

 

Use an added low noise  internal voltage regulator powered by +12V from the existing PSU, then the earth resistance may then be almost the same length back to the internal PSU's 0 volts plane, or just a few inches longer than previously.

 It's ALWAYS a good idea to keep the  0 volts earth references as short as possible, which is another reason why it's best not to " daisy chain" added LT3045 (etc.) voltage regulators. This applies to both Digital and Analogue areas.

 

Alex

I wish you was my personal adviser in my house man! Electronics doctor saviour! Fix me up Doc!

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