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

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, Advieira said:

The conclusion should be the ULTIMATE C.A.P.S. v.5 (or A.S.P.S v1). 🤗

 

Yes, well this site's CASH List (see link at bottom of every page) also needs a name change and updating (half the products on it are NLA), though I don't think that's where the C.A.P.S. builds were listed. 

 

Sorry for the OT...

[Superdad]

20 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

Has anyone compared using the USB 3 ports direct to the NUC board vs the optional USB 2 ports?  Or has anyone compared USB v2 to v3 in general?

 

Signal integrity (seen on eye-pattern) is generally a bit better from USB 3.1 chips--even when just doing USB 2.0 480Mbps high-speed--as the internals of those more modern chips have to be very carefully designed so they can achieve USB3 SuperSpeed.  But they do vary, and the SuperSpeed power circuitry can generate a bit of excess noise and current bounce on the ground-plane.  Do NUC BIOS adjustments offer the ability to turn off USB3 SuperSpeed?  That would be a good thing.

[Superdad]

17 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I have high hopes for the EtherRegen. It would be great if it simplified network topology and improved SQ.

 

You're not the only one with high hopes my friend!   It darn well better do both 'cause between development and first production run close to 6 figures in $$ will have gone into the launch...

[Superdad]

19 minutes ago, andervt said:

I recently tested SPS-500 vs Ultracap LPS-1.2.

I also this time found the SPS-500 superior of the LPS-1.2.

 

Terje:

You ought to disclose in your signature that you are a member of the trade. That is a rule on this web site.

 

And the fact that you are also a reseller of SOtM products brings questions of bias.  http://www.andervikaudio.no/andre-produkter/

 

By the way, plenty of other comparisons between the SOtM sPS-500 and the UpTone UltraCap LPS-1.2 have been made and published--here in this thread and elsewhere--with quite the opposite results.  So we invite readers to try for themselves.

 

Regards,

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

33 minutes ago, andervt said:

The owner of the LPS power I tested is dissapointed with the result since he bought the power based on this thread.

 

Uh oh.

If you are referring to Geir T.'s purchase of an UltraCap LPS-1 and LPS-1.2, the facts do not at all agree with your above assertion!

 

Geir's original LPS-1 was delivered to him on November 15th, 2016.  This giant thread was not started until January 1, 2017.

 

Geir ordered the new generation UltraCap LPS-1.2 on February 20th, 2018.  He was among the first 150 purchasers of the new model (excluding the 100 people who ordered LPS-1s at the end of 2017 and received the very first LPS-1.2s at no additional charge).

 

Only a couple of passing mentions of the LPS-1.2 were made in this thread at the beginning of 2018. It would be a stretch to say those influenced him. And certainly no discussion of NUCs with our supplies were ever made back then as there was pretty much no discussion of NUCs in this thread at that time.

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

You may want to study the exceptions to the norm - people like @Superdad, @PeterSt - who manage to navigate the forums while declaring their industry affiliation...

 

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

And btw - even then it's incredibly hard.

 

It can be hard--and I have taken my lumps.   The trick for me is avoiding posting about listening impressions and just sticking to the facts.  Even then I mange to bother some people...

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Here, came in during typing of this:

 

 

As if the devil plays with it (as we say it over here). Not even opened yet (but knowing the contents). Possibly you won't understand. Quite a few others will. @Superdad most certainly will.

 

Hi Peter:

I received the same e-mail tonight but I knew it was coming 6 months ago when Gil B. left the company and we had a long talk.  It's really quite okay as we have good supply, and if ever we run low we can call up the very nice Mr.Xuanqian Wang at Auralic.  They bought 10K pieces and e-mailed me with an offer for some about 18 months ago.  Of course we could move beyond into a more intelligent direction...  

[Superdad]

4 hours ago, austinpop said:

What surprised me was that when used for DC cables, silver cables did not affect treble energy. Rather, I got a more expansive image, deeper bass, and better overall clarity. It's almost like a small PSU upgrade. 

 

Would not want to generalize about such unless the cables you were comparing were otherwise identical.  I doubt they had the same topology, dielectrics, wire gauge, and stranding.  All of those are likely to have larger impact than metallurgy.

 

I've been involved in analog cable development since the 1970s--and we went through a great number of variations, including a lot of single-variable blind testing. For analog interconnects and speaker cables I happen to prefer fine-strand, silver-plated copper with Teflon insulation in star-quad configuration.  Here is the brochure sheet of the cables we developed at Hovland over 20 years.  The MusicGroove2 became a famous tonearm-to-preamp cable--used as a reference by Michael Fremer for many years--and we sold the design for it to Bob Graham for $10K when we closed down.

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Over here bridges usually have two endpoints...

 

And yet there exist some lovely bridges to nowhere:

[Superdad]

@austinpop, What sort of connectors and cables do you now have running those 3 clock lines from your tx-USBUltra to your NUC?  And how long are they?

[Superdad]

5 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

The USB clocks aren't subclocks afaik. 

 

And remember gents: The actual clock rates in the chips (USB, Ethernet, the processor, etc.) are mostly generated by PLLs internal to them—with not a huge regard for jitter.  They are at rates vastly higher than what the XOs you are supplanting run at.  

[Superdad]

22 minutes ago, EnjoyTheMusicNow said:

This does beg a question. Has anyone asked SOtM to mod their SMS200 with an SFP port in place of the RJ45 connector?

 

Trust me, that’s not a “mod.”  That would require a whole redesign of the circuitry on the board and addition of some chips.  No way could that ever be done as a mod. (I witnessed nearly every step of John’s redesign of the ultraRendu to produce the opticalRendu—it was not trivial! )

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, bobfa said:

Put 20 hours into just listening to music.

 

Words for all of us to live by--EVERY week!  

 

Sadly, because my desk is in my studio, and because playing my system draws me in and I would not get work done, I don't play it during the day. And by the time the evening comes around I am anxious to get out of my chair and away from the office. 

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, Dutch said:

This is not Facebook.

 

Brilliant!  

Chris ought to make that a banner at the top of the entire forum. 

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

For now, I am using 12V, because I don’t yet have a suitable PSU to go higher.  According to @romaz, 19V - assuming the same PSU - sounds best to him so I would suggest giving that a try.

 

But, but Amir just published that none of this power supply stuff makes any difference and that we are all delusional.  

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/do-you-need-linear-power-supply-for-dacs.7021/page-6#post-160389

Guess you gents will all need to give up your fancy power supplies—and I’ll have to cancel everyone’s orders and take a job at the grocery store.

[Superdad]

@scan80269: Hi Sam. Great to see you back!  Seems likes it’s been a year.  You must be busy at work.

I’m still using and enjoying the Singxer SU-1 you extensively modded for me.  Tried taking it out of my system last week—running my NUC (finely built by @lmitche)>ISO REGEN directly into my Holo Spring L3.  Took about 30 seconds to hear how complying flat and unengaging the DAC is without it.  So back to the I2S input via the SU-1.  Makes me think about experimenting with other HDMI cables (using a 12-inch Wireworld now—whatever model the yellow one is).

 

Do call or drop me a line some time and we can catch up. 

[Superdad]

9 hours ago, bobfa said:

@SuperdadI wonder if I can flip that end plate on the ISORegen so the text is upright?

 

Sure, why not.   USB ‘A’ side cutout of ISO REGEN end panel is centered in both axis.

Just use a T8 size Torx driver bit.

[Superdad]

4 hours ago, luisma said:

Hi Miki, the copper bar is anchored to a concrete wall correct? these anchors are how long? is that concrete wall one of the house walls?

 

I'm asking because at some point in my life I was an electrician and one of the tasks I was used to perform was grounding houses in Europe.

 

Not sure what he has that bar tied to, but Ufer grounding is great. When I added the shop addition and upgraded all our house utilities we used the rebar network in the new foundation to give our entire house a new Ufer ground.  Sure beats the thin 6-foot copper rod rotting that was rotting in the ground for 30 years.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufer_ground

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, guiltyboxswapper said:

These posts genuinely beg for a "reference LPSU that can be delivered within a reasonable timeframe" thread.

 

Well we build and deliver about 25 JS-2s each month.  Choke-filtered, dual-rail, user-adjustable output voltages, true 7.4 amp continuous (@12V). Even ranked by @austinpop as performing above SR4 on a actual audio component:

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/contributors/my-quest-for-a-new-dac-part-1-the-mytek-brooklyn-dac-with-uptone-js-2-power-supply-r716/

“What impact did an external PSU make on the sound quality of the Brooklyn+?

 

I had on hand 3 external PSUs that could power the Brooklyn+ adequately at 12V DC. After trying them all, along with the built in SMPS (switching mode power supply), here is my ranking, in terms of decreasing sound quality:

1. Uptone Audio JS-2
2. Paul Hynes SR-4
3. SOtM sPS-500
4. built-in SMPS

I had done a similar comparison of PSUs powering the SOtM tX-USBultra, and found the SR-4 delivered the best sound quality. While the SR-4 had really shone on the tX-USBultra, on the Brooklyn DAC+, it was the JS-2 that pulled ahead, and by quite a margin. Compared to the JS-2, the SR-4 (and the sPS-500) seemed to lack dynamism, and sounded polite and unexciting.”

 

And I never request payment earlier than one week from a guaranteed shipment date.  

 

By the way, I’d put the nice (and completely silent) R-core trans we use up against any toroidal any day. The difference is obvious right away.  

 

But sorry, despite many requests, we have no plans to produce a big multi-rail ATX supply or to offer custom build services.  

[Superdad]

25 minutes ago, Nenon said:

One of the differences was that while his transformer was oversized, it was still much smaller than the toroidal I used. 

 

Of course.  I was just referring to an apples-to-apples comparison of similar VA-rated toroid versus R-core—swapped into the same supply. I did just that during development of the JS-2 and it was not even close.

[Superdad]

9 hours ago, Ricardo007 said:

What is the rationale for chosing port 1 for the incoming data flow (for example from a router) and port 8 for the outgoing data flow to streamer if any or does the choice of ports indifferent?

 

I did not do any SQ comparisons.  I chose to use ports that were far apart to avoid having the two devices use ports that might be sharing a magnetics module (these are typically 2~4 port packages).

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, AnotherSpin said:

Thank you, Rajiv. Little more on NAAs.

 

After loads of careful comparisons (related to AL, Roon, server, etc., my current system nirvana chain:

 

Headless 2012 quad-core i7 Mac mini (powered by JS-2), booting AudioLinux from thumb drive with HQ Player Embedded and Roon Server >>

Cisco Catalyst 2960 100Mbps switch >>

Custom NUC (powered by UltraCap LPS-1.2) set to low speed running AudioLinux and NAA >>

ISO REGEN (LPS-1.2) >>

Lush^2 USB cable >>

Heavily modified Singxer SU-1 (LPS-1.2) >>

I2S over HDMI to Holo Spring Level 3 >>

Intact Audio 47-position Slagle/Elnaformer autotransformer level control (currently the copper version; silver wound version on may desk waiting to be wired in).  

Player/control via Roon from 27" iMac on my desk.  Music storage dives also on desktop--shared/watched via SMB with Roon.

 

A huge thanks to @lmitche (nuckleheadaudio.com) for many hours of patient work getting all the Linux stuff working and tuned (with a bunch of his own special tricks) and for making various sticks to make my comparison work easy and valid.

 

My SACD rip of the fabulous Ryan K. Smith/Analogue Productions remastering of Nina Simone's "Little Girl Blue" (don't even bother with the awful 24/96 download version done it Europe or any other version) continues to amaze and move me as my system advances. I only wish I had more time to listen to music. 

 

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, Monge said:

@Superdad Thanks 😀

Custom Nuc?

 

Just not an off-the-shelf NUC.  Akasa fanless case, bios tweaks, etc.  All done for me by @lmitche.

[Superdad]

15 minutes ago, austinpop said:

BTW - this is what John Swenson recently wrote on the EtherRegen thread. Recently as in yesterday. Note the phrase "the fully functional EtherREGEN simply does not exist at this point in time."

 

Happily it will (assuming no last errors) exist exactly 10 days from now.  That’s when the second round of final pre-production boards arrive for testing.

Of course the EtherREGEN has functioned in various stages and parts on John’s bench for the past year.  It is just the bringing together of ALL the key elements (isolation, clocking, power, data handling, etc.)—at the full performance level of our goals—which is at last taking place.

 

As for cables and other upstream stuff, our stance has always been that:

a) We don’t know just yet how much will cease to matter;

b) The cable on the downstream side—from the EtherREGEN to the DAC-attached endpoint—will likely become the most critical;

c) There is a chance that—as with other areas of audio system advancement—the transparency brought by an EtherREGEN may make upstream tweaks MORE apparent and not less.

 

We all just get to wait and see hear. 

[Superdad]

On 8/16/2019 at 8:57 PM, seeteeyou said:

 

 

 

Wow. That fellow’s large, hyperactive eyebrows deserve their own YouTube channel!