The true experimental tweak thread

[austinpop]

40 minutes ago, Cornan said:

This little bugger have annoyed me for 6 hours now! ?

 

 

The TP-Link TL-RW902AC have been anything but cooperative! Set to client-mode it hi-jacks my router and completely ruin my whole WiFi connection, giving me hell to get everything working again. For the first time in a very long time I'm forced to give up. I will put it in a drawer for sometime and hopefully it will behave when I'll take it out next time. I'll need a brake. My family need a brake! ?

It took me roughly 1,5 hours to get everything in the same working order after disconnecting it. I hate network problems! ?

 

I agree! Network problems are the worst.

 

I spent 24 hours of hell this week when my broadband modem stopped working due to a firmware push by my ISP.

 

I had to accept a rental router for now, which has a built-in PSU, so can't connect it to an LPS until I find a new broadband modem that works. And yeah, my family did not appreciate the lack of internet at all.

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3 hours ago, mozes said:

Mission Accomplished!

Tidal now sounds as good as redbook locally stored music

 

Well some of you know that I have been annoyed by that fact that my local music always sounds much better than Tidal. Of course here I am talking about CD rips vs Tidal (non MQA) to keep it apples to apples.

So I decided to take no prisoners and to do everything possible to fix this as I knew that there must be a lot of noise in my network. I won't bother you with all the details and the endless trail and error attempts. Instead, I will share my network configuration that made Tidal sound as good as local music (within 2-3% accuracy to my ears ) 

My ultimate network setup is attached for your reference.

 

I learned many things during this journey and I think I am now convinced that changes you make upfront in the network does have an impact on the sound, even if it is far away in the chain and you have a wireless bridge in the path.

 

I will highlight that my biggest surprise was when I replaced the wall wart of the modem with VR mini, this had by far the biggest improvement in Tidal SQ. I didn't expect this at all.I ended up using a great LPS for only $90 (Astron RS-4A) which gives almost 97-98% of the VR performance!

 

The second biggest boost that I got was removing the metal cases on the Cat 7 connectors, again I didn't expect this (Thanks @Cornan)

The third biggest gain came from the D-Link switch with the grounding of its chassis and then it also went to another level when I grounded the unused ports, this gave me a big smile!

Another key improvement I got was when I put two isolators in series (Baaske-->RLI-1) (Thanks @lmitche )

 

Now I am over the moon with Tidal, and I know now for sure that there is more noise on ethernet beyond anything that we may expect.

 

Hope this helps others

 

Moussa, truly inspiring. Congratulations!

 

Once my Ultra stack settles in, I think this is the area I'm going to tweak next. I like the way you set your goal to have Tidal sound as good as local. That is a great proxy for tuning your end to end network and audio path.

[austinpop]

31 minutes ago, Cornan said:

I am over the moon with Tidal as well, especially when I got to taste the fruits of MQA. Now, nothing can stop me from robbing that fruit tree! I have 100% decided to order the Mytek Brooklyn DAC (in silver) this week! ?

 

Nice!!

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Whoa - congrats, Micael!!

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2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Micheal, did you know one can disable the GI on the ISO Regen? There is a switch for that!

 

There's a switch for that.™

 

Applies to so many things in audio!

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21 minutes ago, Cornan said:

I am sending my TH900 to Forza Audioworks in Poland tomorrow and will get it back in a couple of weeks. A bit more expensive than I planned (€438) due to some additions (built-in micro sockets, dual Furutech tele plugs & better cable), but I am expecting to be thrilled when I get them back plus I will be able to change to single end or buy other cables if I want.

 

It will look something like this but with better and thicker black cables (Noir Hybrid HPC)! ?

 

 

 

 

May the Forz-a be with you soon!

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18 minutes ago, Cornan said:

I got some time to finish off my AQVOX- Edward Scissorhands edition today! ? If you look closely you can see that did it a bit different to my D-Link DSG-105. Instead of running all wires to the back of the unit I made plug-to-socket connections. The first and the last plugs (socket 2 & 7) have short wires to the GND screw in the back. The red silver wire goes to the Entreq Minimus grounding box.

 

 

I will wait to give it a full try until my Brooklyn and Fostex arrives. My current Beyerdynamics t50p is simply not fit for the job, but it surely sounds better than before. Just got a notice that the Brooklyn was sent from Thomann/Germany today.  ?

 

Håly schøt! 

 

Is that a daisy chain? Brilliant!

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Cornan said:

Not yet! It is still on the way from Germany. I am expecting it to arrive tomorrow or latest Friday. It will be fun, even though I cannot enjoy it until I get my Fostex's back from Poland. ?

 

Perfect time to burn it in by streaming to it 24x7 for a few days! I like using ocean sounds white noise, and I know Tidal has a bunch to choose from. 

 

I have found Tidal doesn't seem to like you streaming things in a loop and cuts the stream at some point after a few hours. Not sure if this is true if you mark the track "offline". Or just use some local music files in a loop.

 

Attach a pair of cheap headphones to the headphone outs and run at a low volume - this will burn in the amp stage too.

 

I found my Codex needed several hundred hours of burn in to achieve its best SQ, and I believe the Brooklyn is similar.

 

Good luck!! Can't wait to hear your impressions.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, Cornan said:

Yay! Look what arrived today! ?

 

 

Ofcourse I had a listen after figuring out the DAC handshake with battery injection. Full MQA sounds marvelous compared to normal FLAC on my Beyerdynamics T50P, but these headphones do not tell me the whole story. I prefer to make judgements when my rewired Fostex TH900 have arrived. I can just tell you that it certainly sounds better than on my Pioneer U-05.

 

I was a bit surprised by the size of it though. I thought my Pioneer U-05 was rather small, but I was wrong! ? I added a couple of pictures to compare the two.

 

So far the handshake only works with the charger connected, so I connected the charger to the Peaktech 2240. I will look for other solution eventually, but right now I am just happy to enjoy as much as possible with my plain vanilla headphones! ?

 

Congrats! Looking forward to your impressions.

[austinpop]

22 minutes ago, Cornan said:

One Aucharm Audio grounding box ordered as well. It will be fun to see what could be gained with it and the 3pcs mini grounding boxes in the mix! ?

 

Cool.

 

It'll be interesting to find out what you hear comparing the cheap and cheerful Aucharm compared to the pricey Entreq!

[austinpop]

On 5/25/2017 at 10:51 PM, mozes said:

I decided to play a bit with my eBay grounding box so I built an AC plug grounding cable. I grounded the power distribution box of my analogue gear (Naim) and I didn't notice any effect. Then I grounded my power distribution box that powers the power supplies of my digital gear and WAW, unexpectedly  immediate improvement in everything! so happy I made this discovery in my system. Still I want to try grounding the available wall receptacle where the analogue power distribution box is plugged.

For now the grounding box will be kept where it is, digital could be noisier than analogue or it could be more sensitive to clean power, whatever it is, I trust my ears

 

Thanks for reminding me to try this, Moussa! I had received my additional AC pug grounding cables from the eBay seller a while back, but in all the excitement of the Ultra gear, I never tried it.

 

Well, last night, I used these AC plug grounding cables to connect my 2 eBay units to the following locations:

1. I have a PS Audio Dectet strip attached to an outlet on PS Audio P5, into which my Meanwells for the LPS-1s are connected. I attached one grounding cable to an outlet on this Dectet.
2. I attached the second eBay unit to the generic strip into which my Windows 10 bridged Roon Core machine is connected.

It definitely improved the SQ! This is the first time I've heard these eBay grounding boxes to make any SQ impact at all, so this was a very pleasant surprise.

[austinpop]

8 hours ago, Cornan said:

 

Awesome Rajiv! I was almost wondering if you have sold them off before realizing their benefits to sq. ?

 

Nope I kept them, hoping to continue experimenting. I'm glad I did.

 

The first two spots I tried them yielded no results, but third time's Aucharm.

 

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Cornan said:

Yippie! I just got notice from Forza Audioworks that my Fostex TH900 is rewired and will be heading back to Sweden tomorrow. I cannot wait to try them out!  

 

Great to hear! ??

 

Speaking of headphone cables, I've had my eye out for quite some time for a good price on a used Cardas Clear cable for my HD800. Well, I finally found one last week and it showed up Saturday.

 

i was already very happy with my Moon Audio Black Dragon balanced cable. I remember how much better it sounded relative to the stock cable.

 

The Cardas Clear added another similar quantum leap! I'm amazed at how a cable can sound so much more detailed and rich and warm all at the same time!

 

So I hope your new cables give you similar goose bumps!

[austinpop]

BTW - I finally ordered a B&K Precision 1604A and will try it out serially at my two candidate locations - my W10 bridged Roon Core server, and my network closet to power the modem, router, and possibly NAS.

[austinpop]

1 minute ago, Cornan said:

 

Congrats! I am sure you'll find that it improves sq. I cross my fingers it is silent enough as well (ie. no transformer hum)! ?

 

Yup, that's the big question.

 

Have you heard of any D.C. blockers like your ATL, but suitable for NA - i.e. 110V?

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Cornan said:

 

Sorry, my knowledge in 110v DC blockers is unfortunately non-existant. I would'nt hesitate to ask Aleksandar Tsankov [email protected] at ATL Hi-Fi if he can make one for you though. He was extremely helpful with my special order.

 

Thanks for the reference. Let's first see how bad (if any) the hum is.

 

I also measured the power draw of everything at my network closet with a Kill-a-watt, including NAS and backup drives. With everything up, I was getting these numbers:

• Steady state readings
  • Watts: 100
  • PF: 0.79
  • VA: 125
• Peak reading - this is always hard to say, as you have to try a bunch of use cases. For me, I tried NAS startup, shutdown, and backup to drive the most load. Even so, the highest I saw was:
  • Peak VA: 145

I've sent a note to B&K support, but their data sheet says they can burst to peaks of 2A for "short intervals." Based on this, I'm reasonably optimistic that I should be OK, but I'll see what they say.

[austinpop]

10 hours ago, Cornan said:

15 min morning session with my low budget setup. Listening to A Cerulean State on Tidal by recommendation here on CA. A truly great classical (and Swedish) album! ?

 

 

 

Hey Micael,

 

I just wanted to say I really appreciate that you post the music you used in your studies! You and I have different primary musical tastes, but I've quite enjoyed listening to your selections - they have always been sonically amazing, and musically at least eye-opening. I always try to push myself to break out of my comfort zone musically, and your postings do their part in that.

 

It may be good for us to create a Tidal playlist of tracks that we use to test system changes. Keep it short to maybe 10 tracks or less. I suspect we will all enjoy seeing/hearing what we consider good test tracks. Thoughts?

 

 

[austinpop]

My B&K 1604A isolation transformer arrived today. I've deployed it at my first candidate location: powering the W10 Bridged Roon Core server. Not sure I hear a difference, but I'll give it a few days and see. The good news is it is almost dead silent. The hum is barely audible only if you put your ear next to the unit.

 

Here are my 3 demo tracks that I was using today. They're all available in MQA on Tidal, so if you feel curious to listen, make sure you select the MQA versions!

 

 

 

[austinpop]

14 hours ago, Cornan said:

@austinpop

Thanks for sharing Rajiv!

Do not loose hope with the B&K 1604A. If it makes no difference in the W10 server try it somewhere else right away. IME you should hear an instant change in SQ in a good spot, and not a subtile one. My floating IT is connected to the Brooklyn DAC (AC) and the TP-Link RE450 wireless adapter (AC). 

Great to hear that it was dead silent. It is a gamble with any IT. You´re lucky!  

 

I will be sure to check the MQA versions of your music out!

 

 

I now have the B&K powering my network closet gear - modem, router, switch, NAS, and a couple of USB drives. 

 

I did run into an issue where just plugging in my UPS to the IT was a no go. My UPS kept buzzing and beeping. I think it detects and does not like the isolation. So I removed the UPS and put in a simple TrippLite strip. After that everything worked just fine. I'm still a bit apprehensive I may be running the B&K at a highish VA, but my reasoning is that if I overdrive it, it will trip its overload switch, which I will detect as my Internet connectivity will go. So far - after about 4 hours - there've been no issues.

 

As to SQ. Well, nothing dramatic here either. If there is an improvement, it is very, very subtle. With small changes like this, I just let the change stay in place for a few days, and then remove it to see whether the absence triggers a bigger perception of SQ difference. So we shall see.

 

I suspect I may just be blessed with a scenario - newish home, standalone, suburban location, clean power - where I don't have the conditions that an IT solves.

[austinpop]

11 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Do you have a current system schematic?

 

Yup, here you go:

 

 

 

One update - the Baaske now sits between the bridged server and the reclocking switch. But as I've said, the Baaske makes zero SQ difference for me. Like you suggested, it may be a dud. 

 

Hopefully, I will try the SOtM ISO-Cat6 isolator soon, as a local CA'er has it on the way.

[austinpop]

Not everything @lmitche and @Cornan have suggested is practical for my system, but yes, I will do some more experiments.

 

I'm wondering if it's ok to plug the IT into my P5 regenerator... will research that too.

[austinpop]

6 hours ago, Cornan said:

I am soon the official owner of a turntable again!  It was´nt the Lenco B55 in the end, but this beautiful Lenco L85! 

 

 

I cannot wait to start spinning again. I will stop myself from buying loads of record. I will only invest in the music I know I will never get tired of. I think I will start with this awesome EP that is not available on Tidal https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Youth-EP-LP/dp/B0083TS8EA

 

 

But... I don't understand.... 

 

Is there a Tidal for vinyl?  ?

[austinpop]

23 minutes ago, Middy said:

I am going to try something silly to see if it does anything. I ordered a magnetizer demagnetizer. Just for my screw drivers.

Try running it up and down the cables with the demagnetizer part..

The only thread I can say this..

Thank god for Cornan....

 

Make sure you go in the right direction of electron flow! Grooming your cables thusly will make your audio shine.

 

Actually, no clue, but why not! 

 

Let us know, once you have de Gauss in der haus.

[austinpop]

Hey guys, quick interrupt.

 

We now have this feature in CA, as announced by Chris:

So @Cornan - if you so choose, you can go back and edit your original post, if you wanted to maintain an index of findings, say. It's your call, of course, but it's a nice feature.

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

I hope you've ordered an ISO Regen.  You are going to be surprised!

 

And the LPS-1.  I notice @Cornan has gone to incredible lengths in experimenting with floating supplies, and his results are fascinating. 

 

However, I do wonder how the combination of LPS-1 and ISO-R would transform his system!