A crowd funded motherboard(s) for audiophiles - Part 2

[marce]

13 hours ago, lmitche said:

Yes, I know, a camel is a horse designed by committee . . . .

 

Nevertheless the truth is most projects benefit from a collaborative approach, where the key is to be open to others ideas with a willingness to find compromises that make sense.

 

It would be great if you can suggest one or two board houses for a bespoke design.

If you want a board designed there are plenty of bureau's. But what I would do is look at some Chinease/Aisian manufacturers for a bespoke design, that would be the cheapest way.

[marce]

4 hours ago, lmitche said:

Yes, yet another reason to wait. Things are screwy, including the reporting of similar issues with AMD products that may have been fake news.

We are suffering with the new Windows updates to plug this hole in current processors. all the CAD software is running slower due to even more Windows overheads!

[Lebouwsky]

On 15-3-2018 at 10:48 AM, lateboomer said:

I have implemented the supermicro X10SBA powered with lps and both the storage SATA SSD and USB audio card also powered with lps in last weekend. For the first time I can clearly say the sound achieved is as good as or even better than my competent cd transport which heavily modified with lps. It also beats my another lps powered Asrock J3455B-itx motherboard with about 10% improvement.

That is great to read. Are you running WS2016 with AO?

[lateboomer]

I am running Daphile on a 16GB USB 3.0 thumb drive, and music storage is on lps powered and heavily noise-filtered Samsung EVO 850 500 GB SSD on Supermicro board. Where else at Asrock board, Daphile is on its own Ext4 partition and music storage on seperate exFat partition with largest allocation block. I believe putting the OS on the SSD with its own partition gives the best sound so I am still trying to figure out how to do it for Supermicro board. 

 

I think the shortcoming of majority of pc music as compared to advanced cd transport or vinyl is the mid cannot "go down" enough or not enough decay or extension to make it sounds very analog. I have no issue with dynamic and transparency, but without fuller mid from top to bottom and steady center image you don't feel the singers are very "committed" in the presentation as analog. But with this Supermicro and more importantly specially tweaked lps for each computer sections, the presentation is totally analog and musical.

 

I wish I know how to use good recording mic to record down the sound and post it here as proof. There is why I am also very tempted to try out the P10S-M board suggested here to compare with Supermicro. :-)  Anyway, I think your avatar is very cool.

[LTG2010]

43 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

I believe putting the OS on the SSD with its own partition gives the best sound so I am still trying to figure out how to do it for Supermicro board. 

 

Try switching from AHCI to IDE mode in BIOS

[Lebouwsky]

2 hours ago, lateboomer said:

I am running Daphile on a 16GB USB 3.0 thumb drive, and music storage is on lps powered and heavily noise-filtered Samsung EVO 850 500 GB SSD on Supermicro board. Where else at Asrock board, Daphile is on its own Ext4 partition and music storage on seperate exFat partition with largest allocation block. I believe putting the OS on the SSD with its own partition gives the best sound so I am still trying to figure out how to do it for Supermicro board. 

 

I think the shortcoming of majority of pc music as compared to advanced cd transport or vinyl is the mid cannot "go down" enough or not enough decay or extension to make it sounds very analog. I have no issue with dynamic and transparency, but without fuller mid from top to bottom and steady center image you don't feel the singers are very "committed" in the presentation as analog. But with this Supermicro and more importantly specially tweaked lps for each computer sections, the presentation is totally analog and musical.

 

I wish I know how to use good recording mic to record down the sound and post it here as proof. There is why I am also very tempted to try out the P10S-M board suggested here to compare with Supermicro. :-)  Anyway, I think your avatar is very cool.

What is stopping you from putting the os on ssd. You can use separate ssd’s or create a second virtual drive in one ssd with partition manager. That way you can use the ssd filtering on both the os as the library.

 

The X10SBA has a ractangluer 4 pin molex to power your (second) ssd. If you power the mb from the square 4 pin molex with clean power that same 4 pin ractangluer molex output from mb is not bad at all.

 

I also experimented with (different) OS on usb stick. OS on filtered ssd sounds best to me. WS 2016 sounds so good, you won’t believe it untill you’ve heard it. Audiophile Optimizer lifts it to the stars.

[lateboomer]

I finally able to install Daphile rt version to the SSD's partition. I also disable all usb ports except usb3.0 port, disable one lan port and disable SATA1 and moved the SSD from less ideal SATA1 to SATA0 which doesn't go through MUX switch. And most importantly, I use direct  mb's usb3.0 port for audio output instead of an old tx-usbExp card inherited from CAPS2.0. I think the usb card has a lot of filtering ferrite cores which limits the mid and cut away a lot of micro dynamic and depth. So the Supermicro board now is really lived up to its reviews and I am very happy. So now I wonder do I still need to consider ISO-Regen.

[Lebouwsky]

10 hours ago, lateboomer said:

I finally able to install Daphile rt version to the SSD's partition. I also disable all usb ports except usb3.0 port, disable one lan port and disable SATA1 and moved the SSD from less ideal SATA1 to SATA0 which doesn't go through MUX switch. And most importantly, I use direct  mb's usb3.0 port for audio output instead of an old tx-usbExp card inherited from CAPS2.0. I think the usb card has a lot of filtering ferrite cores which limits the mid and cut away a lot of micro dynamic and depth. So the Supermicro board now is really lived up to its reviews and I am very happy. So now I wonder do I still need to consider ISO-Regen.

What a great finding that the internal usb sounds better than the txusbexp. Will try it. Have you considered the txusbhubin with sclk clock? It can be attached to that same internal usb. I believe the new sound cards have improved filtering. The clock lifts it a nutch. It als has 2 usb outputs so you can attach an external ssd

[lateboomer]

Initially I felt disappointed this is no more near the performance of Zenith MK2 SE which highly praised. Then I tried to disable pcie from bios and move usb audio to mobo's usb 3.0 port, everything opened up with enough density and musicality. Then only I felt a bit relief. Another great improvement is I change the network switch from from plastic-case Tp-link to Netgear GS108 suggested by JS.  

 

I can only dream about txusbhubin at this moment. And the best I will try may be is Iso-Regen, however the old Regen and the amber Regen no more a plus for my system that makes me hesitate to try iso-regen. I also read about Intona also very good. I feel a bit perverse if the enhancement kits are much more expensive than the server. But I am very tempted no doubt.

[LTG2010]

1 hour ago, lateboomer said:

But I am very tempted no doubt.

The txUSBHubin is $350 but ideally with sclk-ex price jumps to $700. It just connects to motherboard USB bus via special cable supplied.

With all these products clean external power is essential for them to perform.

Same with tx USBexp it sounds dull and recessed without ext clean power, surprised by your finding there, when I tested there was an increase in sound quality when moving from motherboard USB, to txUSBexp then HUBin. The biggest jump was the last, but motherboard USB very good to start. Will look at that more closely as it was a brief test.

USB music output is usually the USB2 port, the one below the USB 3 port you're using, so another surprise there. 

With SOTM's USB cards even though they have 2 outputs it's only recommended to use 1 or sound quality is degraded - not ideal.

[Lebouwsky]

7 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

The txUSBHubin is $350 but ideally with sclk-ex price jumps to $700. It just connects to motherboard USB bus via special cable supplied.

With all these products clean external power is essential for them to perform.

Same with tx USBexp it sounds dull and recessed without ext clean power, surprised by your finding there, when I tested there was an increase in sound quality when moving from motherboard USB, to txUSBexp then HUBin. The biggest jump was the last, but motherboard USB very good to start. Will look at that more closely as it was a brief test.

USB music output is usually the USB2 port, the one below the USB 3 port you're using, so another surprise there. 

With SOTM's USB cards even though they have 2 outputs it's only recommended to use 1 or sound quality is degraded - not ideal.

You’re right about (last) clean power on the usb card that goes to the dac, it is the most important one of the server. And as an upgrade path, one can invest in usbhubin with sclk for $700 first and use the original clean power from motherboard to power the hubin.  The mb can be powered by a cheap power supply and be replaced by a good one later when funds are available. Unfortunately the hubin requires 9v externally and the mb 12v. If both were equal both could be powered by 1 sps500. The whole combo uses less then 50watt.

 

With good power supplies and clocks there’s no need for a fixer like iso regen.

[Lebouwsky]

I was in the impressions that the goal for an audiophile motherboard was to remove everything that has no use to minimize pollution. At least that would have bin my prefered approach. Ofcourse there are 2 camps (upsample vs low footprint) that are hard to unify, so why not split in 2 projects.

 

If I look at the very good sounding X10SBA, eventhough it is a very small mini-itx, more then 30 connections are not needed in my setup. 1 sata2, 1 internal usb, 1 external usb, 1 pcie, 1 HDMI, 1 power molex input, 1 power molex output, 1 power off, 1 operating led and 1 memory slot is all I need. 

 

Another aspect of the mb should be reduction of EMI, focus on sheelding, quality voltage regulators and thick quality connections in the mb itself.

 

Not an expert though, but a dreamer, yes. As an R&D manager the firtst things to do when starting a project are:

* setup a goal,

* set up a scope

* determin condititions

* make a plan including timeline

* identify the go/no go’s (quitting takes balls)

* be very clear about milestones in your plan

* make sure everybody knows the above and agrees.

* make sure everybody is on track at each passing milestone

 

last but not least, assumption is the mother of all f*%k ups.

[LTG2010]

37 minutes ago, Lebouwsky said:

Unfortunately the hubin requires 9v externally and the mb 12v.

Get yourself one of stanheim's lt3045, regulator boards at 9v. Set the sPS500 @ 12v with your y cable and you will get the best of both worlds for a knock down price.

[lateboomer]

I am refering to the Supermicro x10sba-l-b bought from Amazon which gives better sq with the mobo's usb3 port at the bottom, the top one is usb2 which is disabled. I use multiple ext lps with separate rails and transformers for 5v, 3.3v and 12v. Dedicated 12v to the 4pin atx molex and also separate lps to the usb card and ssd. The usb card is the old version tx-usbEXp which has only one usb port and clean lps is connected to its mulex input connector. On Supermicro the sound from the card was Very clean and quiet but the mid was lifeless and no music ambient, the vertical size of music was compressed. However, my another asrock j3455b-itx mobo it was better SQ  with the usb card and opposite to the Supermicro. That is Why i suspect the card has over the top noise filtering which is over designed for Supermicro.

[rickca]

59 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

I use multiple ext lps with separate rails and transformers for 5v, 3.3v and 12v.

What are you powering with 3.3v?  Can you give some more detail about what LPS you are using and how they are connected to the motherboard/components?

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, lateboomer said:

I use multiple ext lps with separate rails and transformers for 5v, 3.3v and 12v.

Hi lateboomer, 

 

Where did you find the wiring harness to the 24 pin connector for this?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[LTG2010]

1 hour ago, lateboomer said:

I am refering to the Supermicro x10sba-l-b bought from Amazon which gives better sq with the mobo's usb3 port at the bottom

Not disputing your findings in your own system but the USB 2 port is the one used for music by most manufacturers if you have found the bottom port better - cool.

[Quadman]

3 hours ago, Lebouwsky said:

Ofcourse there are 2 camps (upsample vs low footprint) that are hard to unify, so why not split in 2 projects.

I agree whole heartedly with the above and I have now set my up sampling sights on being able to play all of HQPlayers filters (the non-2s XTR's) and to accomplish that you need really powerful CPU's such as Ryzen thread ripper 1920x and above, intel 6950X and possibly some of the newer more powerful i9 series of chips from intel, also the intel Xeon e5-2683 v5 has been reported to play all HQP filters at 512.  All have pretty high TDP's.  The means to achieve this seems to change every 9 months or so on the releases of AMD's and Intels latests chips.  Chipsets keep changing as well and sockets for the CPU also seem to change making yesterdays board non-comatable with todays newest chips.  The AMD has stated some where that they plan to keep the sockets for some future generations of CPU's and if they can accomplish this then to me AMD seems like the best choice to go forward for the up samplers.  Not only do they offer the best performance/cost ratio they also at similar price points sound better than intel chips.

 

I have built 8 audio only PC's starting with intel 4790 chip and now up to AMD's Ryzen 7 1800x, to my ears when I compared my last PC based on the intel 6700k chip and a new build based around the ryzen 1700x the 1700x just sounded better, images more solid, separation of performers increased, wider and deeper sound stage and leading edges better defined.  During the comparison of these PC's I swapped memory as both units had different manufactures, the motherboards where different as one build used a mITX board and my 6700k was a full ATX board but PSU's, SSD's and music HDD's where the same and I attribute the biggest sonic difference to more L3 cache in the AMD chip (16mb vs 8 in my 6700k).  I then built a 1800x machine for my personal use and I am very happy with it.

 

So what is the perfect board?  To me the option by jumper or bios setting to externally power PCIe slots and USB slots would be a very nice start.  Perhaps a nice molex connecter on the MB for the external PSU's to connect.  Size wise mATX at the very minimum but I have no issue with full ATX boards.  The above mentioned chips have plenty of lanes direct to CPU to satisfy almost every high power user.  The question is when to do this as CPU's change and possible sockets change as well.  If AMD can keep it's socket for new generations promise then we may have a winner.

 

 

[davide256]

4 hours ago, Lebouwsky said:

I was in the impressions that the goal for an audiophile motherboard was to remove everything that has no use to minimize pollution. At least that would have bin my prefered approach. Ofcourse there are 2 camps (upsample vs low footprint) that are hard to unify, so why not split in 2 projects.

 

If I look at the very good sounding X10SBA, eventhough it is a very small mini-itx, more then 30 connections are not needed in my setup. 1 sata2, 1 internal usb, 1 external usb, 1 pcie, 1 HDMI, 1 power molex input, 1 power molex output, 1 power off, 1 operating led and 1 memory slot is all I need. 

 

Another aspect of the mb should be reduction of EMI, focus on sheelding, quality voltage regulators and thick quality connections in the mb itself.

 

Not an expert though, but a dreamer, yes. As an R&D manager the firtst things to do when starting a project are:

* setup a goal,

* set up a scope

* determin condititions

* make a plan including timeline

* identify the go/no go’s (quitting takes balls)

* be very clear about milestones in your plan

* make sure everybody knows the above and agrees.

* make sure everybody is on track at each passing milestone

 

last but not least, assumption is the mother of all f*%k ups.

hmm, I'd call that the engineers approach for a non market driven project. Those of us that start design/ seek funding in projects for market

consumption know that the first  steps are

1) gather customer requirements

2) identify near term future technology needs that customers have little  insight into

3) prioritize 1 & 2  requirements above based on what customer is willing to pay for  and impact on purchasing decision

 

engineers of course have to inject themselves into step 3 to insure 1 and 2 are reality based

 

[davide256]

@The Computer Audiophile   

Chris, is there any way to add a list function for threads like this where information could be aggregated /updated by the thread owner. Or could the initiator of the thread have the option to add an update-able addendum to their initial note? One thing I hate about the site is having to plow through massive threads of mostly off topic banter to try to find nuggets of new information. And quite frankly I think there are individuals on this site who try to spam threads they disagree with, use lawyer white paper tactics to make a thread exhausting to wade through for useful information.

[The Computer Audiophile]

The OP already has this ability. I believe @austinpop has already done this in another thread. 

[lateboomer]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

What are you powering with 3.3v?  Can you give some more detail about what LPS you are using and how they are connected to the motherboard/components?

All lps are built by my little brother whom is also audio nut like me. Most of the time we work on the system until wee hour of 5am during weekend to improve the system. For each voltage 5v, 3.3v and 12v he uses multiple transformers with regulators and capacitors and filtering design to built separate power supply for each voltage. Then I source for 24 AWG star quad high purity Van Damm microphone cable (20 Awg is too expensive and we are cheapskate) from Funnel as dc cable which he will connect them to abandon ATX 24 pin connector which trimmed as short as possible obviously to be used as mobo power connector. 

Hope that answers everything. About the usb2 is sounding better than usb3, I have not compared them yet but thank you for the pointer. I will try it.

 

Anyway, could anyone suggest a good recording mic or system to record audio system's  sounding in a room in stereo mode? I would like to post my system's sounding here to get advice.

 

 

[davide256]

14 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The OP already has this ability. I believe @austinpop has already done this in another thread. 

Ok then. I've opened a test thread to verify

 

 

Can you send me the instructions on this so that I can test/practice?

[ted_b]

40 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Ok then. I've opened a test thread to verify

 

 

Can you send me the instructions on this so that I can test/practice?

??  The OP (like what I did in my massive Oppo/pio SACD roping thread) simply keeps edit capability. Nothing that needs testing. 

[davide256]

49 minutes ago, ted_b said:

??  The OP (like what I did in my massive Oppo/pio SACD roping thread) simply keeps edit capability. Nothing that needs testing. 

Guess I missed the memo. I do see/have used now the ability for the OP to edit first note at any time. so hurrah!