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

[lmitche]

1 minute ago, matthias said:

 

Hi Larry

 

how do you couple your devices to the Daiza platforms?

Do you use the stock feet or special ones?

Emile mentioned on WBF to not use any compliant material for the feet and most stock ones are compliant.

Thanks

 

Matt

I am not sure what compliant means in this context. Can you please explain?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[matthias]

2 minutes ago, lmitche said:

I am not sure what compliant means in this context. Can you please explain?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

 Any material that is compressible like rubber, felt and other damping materials and therefore can act like a spring.

Emile recommends hard material with small contact area between the devices and the Daizas.

 

Matt

[Blackmorec]

4 minutes ago, lmitche said:

I am not sure what compliant means in this context. Can you please explain?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

Compliant means soft or ‘reshapable’.  Rubber feet are compliant, Sorbothane is very compliant. 

 

When it comes to footers and platforms, its important to know that for vibration to pass from one material to another, the 2 materials should be quite similar in stiffness and density.  Such a matching would be considered low impedance, vibration could pass easily between the 2 materials, so the devices would be coupled, vibrationally.  A high impedance interface is something like Sorbothane together with say Aluminium or Steel. In this case the vibrating Aluminium/Steel being low compliance would have a pretty hard time exciting the Sorbothane and vice versa so the effect would be one of isolation.....the device’s internal vibration would remain within the device, but the Sorbothane would isolate the device from external vibration. 

Obviously based on the note from Taiko, their Panzerholz platform needs to be coupled to the device its protecting, thereby acting as a sink for the device’s vibration. 

[ray-dude]

12 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Obviously based on the note from Taiko, their Panzerholz platform needs to be coupled to the device its protecting, thereby acting as a sink for the device’s vibration. 

i have my DAC on a Daiza as well. I have the body of the DAC resting on three small ceramic tiles (vs the rubber feet) to get that direct coupling.  
 

Alas, tuning a mechanical system can be an iterative process. For example the weight of the DAC will impact coupling and resonance frequencies as well, so weights on top of the DAC could also have an impact, depending on which vibrational frequencies are having an audible impact in the DAC. 
 

Conceptually, the goal is to drain vibrational energy away, and/or shift it to frequencies that are less impactful. For us EE types (vs ME types) it has been helpful for me to think of the mechanical system as a circuit, that is coupling through a transducer (capacitors, clocks, wires, etc) to the electrical system in the DAC
 

 

[MikeyFresh]

13 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

Conceptually, the goal is to drain vibrational energy away, and/or shift it to frequencies that are less impactful.

 

Or converted to tiny amounts of heat as with constrained layer damping.

[austinpop]

42 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

Alas, tuning a mechanical system can be an iterative process.

 

You sayin' Daiz'an art to it?  

 

Doesn't Emile sell Daiza panzerholtz footers to enable rigid coupling between the component and the Daiza platform? Or did you find ceramic tiles to sound better?

[ray-dude]

Thankfully it is Fathers Day, so all dad jokes get a pass (my kids are suffering today too

 

i have the panzerholtz footers on my Extreme, but I did not look into footers for my Chord DAVE.  that would be worth a quick listen (I can hear the impact of mechanical changes pretty quickly with the binaural tracks you’ve been sampling Rajiv...that holographic sound stage is very sensitive)
 

Previously I had a stack of an Acoustic Revive platform to Black Ravioli pads to rubber footers to DAVE. When I added roller balls to get horizontal isolation, that had a huge impact, but the BR pads actually made things worse. I got best sound when the roller balls were rigidly coupled to the Acoustic Revive base, and my DAC was rigidly coupled to the horizontally isolated base. 
 

The Daiza by itself is pretty good. On my list is to revisit horizontal isolation with the Daiza, but I haven’t gotten there yet. 

 

[Forehaven]

Yowsa!  400 E for just the smallest one.  Too rich for my blood

[Exocer]

58 minutes ago, Forehaven said:

Yowsa!  400 E for just the smallest one.  Too rich for my blood

I concur.

 

All, what are some known cheaper alternatives with good Hdplex H5 synergy?

[guiltyboxswapper]

1 hour ago, Forehaven said:

Yowsa!  400 E for just the smallest one.  Too rich for my blood

 

Cheaper than swapping components / boxes 😉 for my amps the change was not subtle, for example.  Can try standard sizes at home on trial.

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, matthias said:

 Any material that is compressible like rubber, felt and other damping materials and therefore can act like a spring.

Emile recommends hard material with small contact area between the devices and the Daizas.

 

Matt

 

4 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Compliant means soft or ‘reshapable’.  Rubber feet are compliant, Sorbothane is very compliant. 

 

When it comes to footers and platforms, its important to know that for vibration to pass from one material to another, the 2 materials should be quite similar in stiffness and density.  Such a matching would be considered low impedance, vibration could pass easily between the 2 materials, so the devices would be coupled, vibrationally.  A high impedance interface is something like Sorbothane together with say Aluminium or Steel. In this case the vibrating Aluminium/Steel being low compliance would have a pretty hard time exciting the Sorbothane and vice versa so the effect would be one of isolation.....the device’s internal vibration would remain within the device, but the Sorbothane would isolate the device from external vibration. 

Obviously based on the note from Taiko, their Panzerholz platform needs to be coupled to the device its protecting, thereby acting as a sink for the device’s vibration. 

 

4 hours ago, ray-dude said:

i have my DAC on a Daiza as well. I have the body of the DAC resting on three small ceramic tiles (vs the rubber feet) to get that direct coupling.  
 

Alas, tuning a mechanical system can be an iterative process. For example the weight of the DAC will impact coupling and resonance frequencies as well, so weights on top of the DAC could also have an impact, depending on which vibrational frequencies are having an audible impact in the DAC. 
 

Conceptually, the goal is to drain vibrational energy away, and/or shift it to frequencies that are less impactful. For us EE types (vs ME types) it has been helpful for me to think of the mechanical system as a circuit, that is coupling through a transducer (capacitors, clocks, wires, etc) to the electrical system in the DAC
 

 

 

3 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Or converted to tiny amounts of heat as with constrained layer damping.

 

In my industry, Financial Services, we have Chief Compliance Officers that ensure that an institution has processes and procedures that "comply" to government regulations. These people are not flexible in any way. Strangely the term regulatory compliance is lately being replaced with regulatory adherence, which is closer to the meaning here.

 

Anyway, obviously I missed the "adherence" memo from Emile so thanks for filling me in. Based your input above, a maple block was placed between my DAC and the Daiza platform. Lastly the feet of my endpoint on the mid-sized platform were removed.  Weights are placed on both boxes. Coincidentally both boxes contain clocks.

 

The impact was immediate, more coherence across the spectrum, punchier bass, and the removal of congestion on some previously problematic test tracks.

 

The drums and bass in Patti Smith's new single "Jubilee" has real punch now.

 

On the last third of Cecile McLoren Salvant's, "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", on the Woman Child album, with the frenetic bass and drum play it can be difficult to separate the instruments. That is greatly improved now.

 

The last Third of Dixie Chicks new single "Julianna Calm Down" is much more transparent as well. It can be horribly congested when  things are setup wrong.

 

So many thanks to all of you for this Fathers Day gift. Enjoy the day.

 

Larry

[bobfa]

During the evolution of this thread there has been some interesting discussions on power supplies.  I am building a new server for my system and I found something interesting.  I have been using an HDPLEX 400 PS to run my Xeon server.  When I built out my AMD Ryzen 7300 board I have found that it might be a bit too much for the HDPLEX.  (still fussing with turning stuff off in the BIOS).  

 

During this shortage of parts from China, etc. I ended up with a really overkill PS for one of my systems and just for the fun of it, I put it on the server.  I do not want to comment a lot on this yet, but it is interesting.  This 1600w supply barely gets warm and in ECO mode I have not had the fan come on yet.  

 

 

Here is the test setup.  The big HDPLEX runs the Motherboard and the little HDPLEX runs the USB chain and the OpticalModule

 

I grabbed the EVGA supply and hooked it up just because!

 

Extended testing

 

 

So has anyone else taken one of this 80plus Platinum supplies and tried it???  I would love to compare notes.  

 

Bob

 

 

[lmitche]

35 minutes ago, bobfa said:

During the evolution of this thread there has been some interesting discussions on power supplies.  I am building a new server for my system and I found something interesting.  I have been using an HDPLEX 400 PS to run my Xeon server.  When I built out my AMD Ryzen 7300 board I have found that it might be a bit too much for the HDPLEX.  (still fussing with turning stuff off in the BIOS).  

 

During this shortage of parts from China, etc. I ended up with a really overkill PS for one of my systems and just for the fun of it, I put it on the server.  I do not want to comment a lot on this yet, but it is interesting.  This 1600w supply barely gets warm and in ECO mode I have not had the fan come on yet.  

 

 

Here is the test setup.  The big HDPLEX runs the Motherboard and the little HDPLEX runs the USB chain and the OpticalModule

 

I grabbed the EVGA supply and hooked it up just because!

 

Extended testing

 

 

So has anyone else taken one of this 80plus Platinum supplies and tried it???  I would love to compare notes.  

 

Bob

 

 

 

Hi Bob,

 

Over here an EVGA 1600 watt T2 was used for years powering a i7-6700k rig used for Hqplayer upsampling. When the split power idea was still in it's infancy, a jumper allowed the EVGA to power the CPU without connection to the 24 pin ATX. The latter was powered by a 200 watt Hdplex with the 19 volt output powering a 250 watt Hdplex DC to DC ATX. 

 

The SQ jump from the "split" was immediate and obvious. Splitting the power lets one use a kill-a-watt to measure power demand from the motherboard and CPU separately. By doing this I learned that the combined 12 and 19 current demand was "safe" for the Hdplex with restricted BIOS settings and native playback, so the EVGA was no longer used. Since then the 6700k has become an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 and the 12 volt ATX power has been moved to a Sigma 11 power supply. I'm still doing native playback with Roon.

 

I haven't tried the EVGA in two years, and never with the AMD rig. I can do so if you like and let you know my impressions. It would surprise me if it sounds better then what I have today, but you never know.

 

Larry

[bobfa]

8 minutes ago, lmitche said:

 

Hi Bob,

 

Over here an EVGA 1600 watt T2 was used for years powering a i7-6700k rig used for Hqplayer upsampling. When the split power idea was still in it's infancy, a jumper allowed the EVGA to power the CPU without connection to the 24 pin ATX. The latter was powered by a 200 watt Hdplex with the 19 volt output powering a 250 watt Hdplex DC to DC ATX. 

 

The SQ jump from the "split" was immediate and obvious. Splitting the power lets one use a kill-a-watt to measure power demand from the motherboard and CPU separately. By doing this I learned that the combined 12 and 19 current demand was "safe" for the Hdplex with restricted BIOS settings and native playback, so the EVGA was no longer used. Since then the 6700k has become an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 and the 12 volt ATX power has been moved to a Sigma 11 power supply. I'm still doing native playback with Roon.

 

I haven't tried the EVGA in two years, and never with the AMD rig. I can do so if you like and let you know my impressions. It would surprise me if it sounds better then what I have today, but you never know.

 

Larry

I did this as a lark and a stopgap until I can figure out the next steps.  I would say that "color me surprised" that is sounds pretty good. It may be better than the hdplex 400 on its own.     Right now I have a big decision to make as to what powers this thing going forward and I needed something that did not feel like it was hotter than I like it.

 

Way too many options to test right now.  I have to target this better.

 

So I have power that sounds good, does not make fan noises.   Good place to be in the middle of this project.

 

If you time and want to test please let me know.

 

bob

 

 

[Hauser]

Back when Seasonic brought out the 520FL, it gained a following for its performance with audiophiles along with some notoriety for coil whine.  They have recently superseded  this model with the PX/TX seres of fanless PSUs.  These, and the similar Silverstone supplies have low ripple and being fanless, have overspeced and high quality parts that may suit them to audio applications.

 

Martin.

[austinpop]

3 hours ago, lmitche said:

 

 

 

 

In my industry, Financial Services, we have Chief Compliance Officers that ensure that an institution has processes and procedures that "comply" to government regulations. These people are not flexible in any way. Strangely the term regulatory compliance is lately being replaced with regulatory adherence, which is closer to the meaning here.

 

Anyway, obviously I missed the "adherence" memo from Emile so thanks for filling me in. Based your input above, a maple block was placed between my DAC and the Daiza platform. Lastly the feet of my endpoint on the mid-sized platform were removed.  Weights are placed on both boxes. Coincidentally both boxes contain clocks.

 

The impact was immediate, more coherence across the spectrum, punchier bass, and the removal of congestion on some previously problematic test tracks.

 

The drums and bass in Patti Smith's new single "Jubilee" has real punch now.

 

On the last third of Cecile McLoren Salvant's, "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", on the Woman Child album, with the frenetic bass and drum play it can be difficult to separate the instruments. That is greatly improved now.

 

The last Third of Dixie Chicks new single "Julianna Calm Down" is much more transparent as well. It can be horribly congested when  things are setup wrong.

 

So many thanks to all of you for this Fathers Day gift. Enjoy the day.

 

Larry

 

OK one more Dad joke... where Daiza will, Daiza way!

 

Glad to hear about your good results, Larry!

[Gavin1977]

13 hours ago, bobfa said:

During the evolution of this thread there has been some interesting discussions on power supplies.  I am building a new server for my system and I found something interesting.  I have been using an HDPLEX 400 PS to run my Xeon server.  When I built out my AMD Ryzen 7300 board I have found that it might be a bit too much for the HDPLEX.  (still fussing with turning stuff off in the BIOS).  

 

During this shortage of parts from China, etc. I ended up with a really overkill PS for one of my systems and just for the fun of it, I put it on the server.  I do not want to comment a lot on this yet, but it is interesting.  This 1600w supply barely gets warm and in ECO mode I have not had the fan come on yet.  

 

 

Here is the test setup.  The big HDPLEX runs the Motherboard and the little HDPLEX runs the USB chain and the OpticalModule

 

I grabbed the EVGA supply and hooked it up just because!

 

Extended testing

 

 

So has anyone else taken one of this 80plus Platinum supplies and tried it???  I would love to compare notes.  

 

Bob

 

 

Nice test bench Bob - I have used the Corsair AX1600i (platinum), but to me it didn't sound as good as the smaller SFX PSU's from Corsair.  I am revisiting ATX SMPS because I now needing upsamplied DSD (Closed form, 1million tap) from HQ Player.  My knowledge of SMPS is pretty slim, but I do wonder if some of these smaller units sound better because there's more of a load on them, so increased duty cycle.  But perhaps this needs to be balanced with the resultant ripple and variances to line regulation.  I do wonder if a Corsair SF750 Platinum at say 16% load (still good ripple and line rejection at this output), sounds better than a v.lightly loaded Corsair AX1600i at 7.5% output driving the same notional 120w load.  It's an unexplored theory anyhow...

 

I don't have the AX1600i to hand anymore, and I also tried it using a different motherboard - however SF750 with a ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming, Intel i7 8086k and APacer WT Ram that I now have already sounds better to me than my previous DNHE NUC powered by a Paul Hynes SR7 (older model as Paul highlighted earlier in this thread).  I am awiating JCAT USB XE Card/linear power, which is makes this quite an impressive feat.

 

There are so many different permutations.  Most of this I'm experimenting with as a result of conversations with @guiltyboxswapper who has been very helpful and has moved the sound quality of my rig up a notch for me.

 

Could you provide further comment against HDPlex?

[rickca]

On 6/20/2020 at 4:07 PM, austinpop said:

I too am having trouble discerning what your question is. Does this recent post of mine, detailing the differences I heard between i7-8700T and i7-8700K, help in any way? Or are you asking a different set of questions?

Yes, of course I remember your post and it was very helpful.  It's one of the things that got me asking this question.  Quite simply, other things being equal, would a 65W i7-10700 sound the same as a 125W i7-10700K or would one of them sound better?

 

In your post, you were using different motherboards with the i7-8700T and i7-8700K.  That will make a difference, but probably not as much as the CPU.

 

So the 95W CPU sounds a lot better than the 35W CPU.  Does this mean that a 125W CPU is going to be better than a 95W CPU?  Not necessarily, right?  As you mention, the power supply quality (and wattage) is an effective constraint.  A 65W CPU is actually a lot closer to a 95W watt CPU than a 35W CPU ... especially when you put frequency limits on the 95W CPU ... because things like CPU frequency/voltage don't respond in a linear fashion.

 

I suspect that turbo algorithms used to stay within the TDP power budget strongly influence the sound quality.  These algorithms have to work a lot more aggressively on a 35W CPU than on a 65W CPU.  They certainly affect the load on the power supply.  Different operating systems and music players sound different because they do different processing.  I'm suggesting something similar is happening with the processor firmware.

 

It's complicated.    

 

 

[guiltyboxswapper]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

So the 95W CPU sounds a lot better than the 35W CPU.  Does this mean that a 125W CPU is going to be better than a 95W CPU?

 

I should add- when the Ryzen 3900x ran with stock settings (XFR, default vcore etc) it would consume 125w (wall) steady using my selected filters + modulators with HQP.

 

When dropping vcore max to 1.0v, wall consumption dropped to 80w (wall) steady, and yet it was able to achieve the same processing, albeit with absolutely slaughtered sound.  CPU clock speed was closer to 3.3ghz iirc instead of 4ghz when vcore not modified.

 

Is it possible that when power shedding / saving mechanisms contribute heavily towards degraded SQ?  If so what metrics would we investigate to help correlate this?  C-State transitions?  Current demands?

[The Computer Audiophile]

22 hours ago, ray-dude said:

The Daiza by itself is pretty good.

 

Arrived this morning via FedEx 😁

 

[Johnseye]

5 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Arrived this morning via FedEx 😁

 

 

What's your opinion so far?  Any immediate impact?

[Gavin1977]

10 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Arrived this morning via FedEx 😁

 

REVIEW!

[bobfa]

5 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Nice test bench Bob - I have used the Corsair AX1600i (platinum), but to me it didn't sound as good as the smaller SFX PSU's from Corsair.  I am revisiting ATX SMPS because I now needing upsamplied DSD (Closed form, 1million tap) from HQ Player.  My knowledge of SMPS is pretty slim, but I do wonder if some of these smaller units sound better because there's more of a load on them, so increased duty cycle.  But perhaps this needs to be balanced with the resultant ripple and variances to line regulation.  I do wonder if a Corsair SF750 Platinum at say 16% load (still good ripple and line rejection at this output), sounds better than a v.lightly loaded Corsair AX1600i at 7.5% output driving the same notional 120w load.  It's an unexplored theory anyhow...

 

I don't have the AX1600i to hand anymore, and I also tried it using a different motherboard - however SF750 with a ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming, Intel i7 8086k and APacer WT Ram that I now have already sounds better to me than my previous DNHE NUC powered by a Paul Hynes SR7 (older model as Paul highlighted earlier in this thread).  I am awiating JCAT USB XE Card/linear power, which is makes this quite an impressive feat.

 

There are so many different permutations.  Most of this I'm experimenting with as a result of conversations with @guiltyboxswapper who has been very helpful and has moved the sound quality of my rig up a notch for me.

 

Could you provide further comment against HDPlex?

I will get some time later in the week to play.  I just want to listen for a few days.  I am VERY interested in finding out how good we can go with simpler power supply implementations.  I would like to keep the PS costs down.  I need to get a watt meter just to see what the overall draw is.  I need to power this board and I am not sure how much budget I have for that. There other parts of the design that are begging for $$.  The EVGA purchase was an accident of the current supply chain problems.  I have to look at SFX power supplies etc. .  I need some direction to point myself.

[John769]

27 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

REVIEW!

 

of FEDEX ? 😄

[Exocer]

38 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Arrived this morning via FedEx 😁

 

Excited for your feedback. Pardon my ignorance on the topic but would removing the feet and placing the device directly on the Daiza further improve vibration control characteristics? (or is it the complete opposite?)