FORGETTING the Digital to Analog conversion part, what is BEST Digital source?

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1 hour ago, barrows said:

My preference for Ethernet distributed audio over a local server is not based on bias of any kind, it is solely based on experience.  Sonore started by building custom servers, and we took that approach as far as it could go.  To get better performance we realized that we needed to get the consumer computer parts well away, physically and electrically, from the audio system, this is the entire reason for the existence of the Rendu products; to achieve better audio performance than ANY server possibly can.  There is just no way a full server can achieve the much smaller noise footprint of the Rendu products, not bias, or opinion, this is simple measurable fact.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the Rendu products could also run MinimServer and act as a clean, low-power, server+renderer solution for small to mid-sized music collections. Alas, they are anyway great devices!

 

Still, I believe that a high-quality, low-power server+renderer device -- something like a Raspberry Pi + Allo DigiOne with better USB, S/PDIF and I2S outputs and some local storage -- would be a very interesting product, in particular for those users that cannot (or do not want to) have a network player wired to their LAN.  

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50 minutes ago, sandyk said:

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It could be interesting to see what percentage of C.A. members actually use Ethernet for Audio compared with USB, Coax /Toslink etc.

 

Wireless for control yes but ... no way to get an ethernet cable into the living room in my specific case. Thus, the only way I could take advantage of a network player would be to have it wired up to a small server, a Raspberry Pi 3, for instance, that also acts as an access point for the player.   

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10 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

I have a wired connection in every room in my house....just curious why you coldn't run a wire?

I could run a wire but it would have to cross a corridor and go all along two walls of the living room. The alternative would be to run the cable all along the corridor back to the entrance and then, from there, to the living room. This is about 20m and would be a mess because on one side of the corridor I already have the heating pipes and some electricity cables and the other side is interrupted by two doors ... it's a very old flat. That said, I do not see the point of running a wire. If I decided to buy a Rendu or a similar device, I would anyway wire it up to a server in direct mode as suggested in the "A novel way ..." monster thread in this forum. 

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2 hours ago, barrows said:

The entire reason of the existence of the Rendu products is to get the cheaply specified and constructed, noisy, consumer computer gear away fro the audio system.  The Rendu are purpose built products for high end audio, NOT re-purposed general use computer like the Raspberry Pi.  the reason for this is to build the lowest noise endpoint possible, allowing for the lowest noise contamination of the audio system.  For best performance you do not want consumer computer gear near the audio system, no hard drives, no commercial grade computers, only purpose built, ultra low noise devices.

Using local storage near the audio system is always going to be a compromise in performance, this is specifically why the Rendu products use Ethernet.

You have misread my post: I wrote "something like a Raspberry Pi + Allo DigiOne with better USB, S/PDIF and I2S outputs and some local storage" not "a Raspberry Pi + Allo DigiOne". There are a number of devices, e .g., from Melco, Aurender or Naim, that implement a server+renderer with local storage and allegedly very clean USB or S/PDIF outputs. The Magna Mano uses a Raspberry Pi and has been compared favorably to the SOtM sMS-200. I am quite confident that Sonore could build a server+renderer with local storage that is as good or better than such devices. I might be wrong, of course.

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1 hour ago, barrows said:

@beerandmusic, guessing is really not the way to go.  ...

There are three possible modes of audio system noise contamination from the commercial computer gear:

1. Direct, this would be noise traveling for the computer gear to your audio system over a wired connection, like in the case of a laptop directly connected to the audio system via USB.

2. Airborne, this would be airborne RFI broadcast by the computer gear and picked up by the audio system.

3. Noise put out onto the AC by the computer gear, coming into the audio system on its AC power cable.

..

What is wrong with

1. Isolating the commercial computer from the audio system via a USB to S/PDIF isolator like a Mutec MC-3+ USB, Schiit Eitr, etc.

2. Using a low-power commercial computer in a die cast aluminium case.

3. Powering the low-power commercial computer with a linear power supply like JS-2, Teddy Pardo, etc.

? It is well possible that solutions of the kind outlined above are, under fairly general conditions, in average worse than solutions based on wired Ethernet and large (in comparison with the size of the devices) physical distance between the server and a low-power optimized network player. But, in absence of detailed comparisons, this is in the best case a claim, not an established fact.

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29 minutes ago, barrows said:

What about Ethernet on the exterior?  That is what I did.  Easy solution for a lot of people which may seem in obvious at first.

You mean getting to the living room from the outside of the flat? That's an interesting idea but it would involve going through the kitchen and, from there all along the courtyard around the block at the third floor level ... or getting through my neighbor's flat to the other side of the living room ... why? I am not interested in Roon and do not need any powerful server. If I fancy to do so, I can always connect a microRendu or an ultraRendu directly to a Raspberry Pi with an ethernet cable and have the Pi serve local data to the Rendu. No need to connect the Pi to my router via cables, in this case.

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54 minutes ago, barrows said:

...

 

A lot of DAC manufacturers say their DACs are immune to source quality, indeed those same manufacturers often suggest that all the inputs on their DACs perform the same as well: Do you hear all inputs on your DAC sounding the same?

Personally, I have never heard a DAC which did not sound differently with every different source I have used with it.

Agree ... perhaps the ideal DAC is simply a DAC that does not rely on any data transfer at replay time! What about a DAC with a beefy local memory that only needs to fetch data from the environment if these do not happen to be in the local memory? 

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1 minute ago, barrows said:

With local storage, you are not going to get as clean a USB output, simple as that.  HDs are noisy, even SSDs.  Rasberry Pi is not a built for audio computer, it is a general purpose device with a much larger noise signature, it is built to be as cheap as is possible and still work, with all the component compromises which that entails (cheap noisy regulators, cheap bypass caps, or eliminating as many of those as possible, etc).

A purpose built for high end audio device is designed without the cost constraints of something like Ras Pi...  for example, the ultraRendu uses all (and many of them) ultra low noise linear regulators including LT3045 (look those up, you will not find comparable parts on a Ras Pi).  It also uses a ultra low phase noise main oscillator, you will not find that on a Ras Pi either.

I have not been suggesting using a Raspberry Pi but rather a Rendu-like device as a server+renderer. Both the micro- and the ultraRendu seem to rely on local storage: they boot from the micro SD card, not from the network. A 400GB micro SD card can store about 500 16/44.1 albums, beside the OS. That's enough for a small collection. Melco, Aurender, Naim, etc. are offering servers with more local storage and allegedly clean outputs. Perhaps not as clean as the ultraRendu output but clean enough for some people to buy them. Thus, it seems to me, there is a market for integrated server+storage+renderer solutions.  

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5 minutes ago, barrows said:

... Basically it appears you are suggesting an Ethernet DAC, I agree with that idea, but so far very few of them are done well enough (LinnKlimax DS, >$20K).  Keeping the Ethernet receiver noise out of the DAC/clock/analog circuitry requires extensive internal shielding and a totally isolated power supply for the Ethernet receiver, this adds a lot of expense.

It can be done, Linn does it, but at a cost.  Ultimately I think we can get to really good DACs in the <$10K range, with Ethernet input and awesome sound, but we are not there yet.

I was rather suggesting a completely isolated DAC. The Ethernet interface would be needed only for control, not for transferring musical content at replay time.

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14 hours ago, barrows said:

Yes.  But you will still need a low noise high quality source component to provide the best possible USB signal, not a consumer grade computer.  Remember, we want to get the consumer grade computer gear away from the audio system.

...

The problem is that there are quite different consumer grade computers and quite different high quality source components, let apart DACs. Thus, to make a specific example, I have only recently realized that the DAC I am using (the old Naim DAC) overrides the clocks of its S/PDIF sources under normal operation. Thus, for Naim DAC users, improving the clocks of the source is likely to yield no significant improvements in sound quality. By contrast, most S/PDIF DACs will take advantage from improved source clocking. There are many ways of getting "the consumer grade computer gear away from the audio system". Streaming over Ethernet is the one that is understandably most advocated by manufacturers of streamers and network players. Streaming over USB via a USB to S/PDIF isolator is another way. For users of DACs with S/PDIF inputs, the latter is, in most cases, by far more convenient.     

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On 3/24/2018 at 9:52 AM, seeteeyou said:

 

@gstew,

...
I wish that he could also make something just like this Mezzanine Power board for SDTrans384 instead

http://www.ldovr.com/product-p/mpower.htm

...

Interesting, I was not aware of the Mezzanine. Do you know which modules need to be installed on the Mezzanine to power an Allo DigiOne? And is the Mezzanine a meaningful way to power an RPi + DigiOne combo? Thanks, nbpf