Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[austinpop]

48 minutes ago, tapatrick said:

Hi Rajiv,

I've tried your suggestion and set min CPU frequency to 1400 and max to 2400Mhz on my NUC7PJYH. When I check CPU readings in Euphony all 4 CPUs are at 1.5Ghz. This does help reduce harshness, and needs more listening but I must say I'm enjoying Stylus with it's fuller sound. .. Thanks! 

 

I just reread this.

 

If your frequency is pegged at 1.5GHz, that’s the base frequency of the Pentium J5005. Do you have Turbo Off? If so, the BIOS will cap the frequency to the base frequency. If you really want to vary frequency up to the peak 2.8GHz, turn Turbo and Speed Step on.

[tapatrick]

8 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

I just reread this.

 

If your frequency is pegged at 1.5GHz, that’s the base frequency of the Pentium J5005. Do you have Turbo Off? If so, the BIOS will cap the frequency to the base frequency. If you really want to vary frequency up to the peak 2.8GHz, turn Turbo and Speed Step on.

Thanks. I’ll hopefully have some more time at the weekend to test this properly. There are so many variables to play with these days!

[RickyV]

When I installed euphony turbo and hyper threading where off. Now I can only switch on hyper threading. When i switch turbo on it looks like it cuts the power off, the white and the green led on nuc board turn off and only the green led comes up.

 

Oh and how should I set real-time performance tuning

 

by the way I am still getting use to the new system but so far I am really liking what I hear.

[austinpop]

58 minutes ago, RickyV said:

When I installed euphony turbo and hyper threading where off. Now I can only switch on hyper threading. When i switch turbo on it looks like it cuts the power off, the white and the green led on nuc board turn off and only the green led comes up.

 

Oh and how should I set real-time performance tuning

 

by the way I am still getting use to the new system but so far I am really liking what I hear.

 

What's the power supply? Do you have this set: Power > Primary Power Settings > Low Power Enabled? 

[RickyV]

51 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

What's the power supply? Do you have this set: Power > Primary Power Settings > Low Power Enabled? 

 

The power supply is a diy studer900, should be good for 2,5 amps. I did try a different power setting, it was on the middle setting and put on the high setting.

[austinpop]

1 minute ago, RickyV said:

 

The power supply is a diy studer900, should be good for 2,5 amps. I did try a different power setting, it was on the middle setting and put on the high setting.

 

Weird. I've not had an issue, even leaving it in Low Power mode.

[RickyV]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Weird. I've not had an issue, even leaving it in Low Power mode.

 

Well don’t understand but for now I have switched off the turbo. I have tried with a 19 v laptop power brick and it worked. I guess my power supply doesn’t have enough juice, but I don’t think so. Will try tomorrow with nuc in low power.

 

What about the hyper threading and real-time performance tuning setting? On or off

[austinpop]

10 minutes ago, RickyV said:

What about the hyper threading and real-time performance tuning setting? On or off

 

In the good old days, before custom frequency was an option on AL or Euphony, I would run with both off.

 

Now I run with everything wide open: Turbo On, HT On, RT Perf On, and tune the max frequency.

 

AL actually allows you to also play with CPU governors, whereas Euphony is unchangeable to “Performance.”

 

This turns out to be an excellent PSU quality test. The better the PSU, the higher you can set the max frequency. As Roy has posted, he doesn’t have to even have to constrain max frequency with his SR7, whereas I with my HDPlex 400 Linear ATX do.

[Balázs]

On 5/30/2019 at 10:22 PM, austinpop said:

This turns out to be an excellent PSU quality test. The better the PSU, the higher you can set the max frequency. As Roy has posted, he doesn’t have to even have to constrain max frequency with his SR7, whereas I with my HDPlex 400 Linear ATX do.

 

All of us who aren't lucky enough to own an SR7 should try a quality power cord with the PSU. I connected an AudioQuest Dragon HC 1.5m to my HDPlex 400 (that drives my dual box Euphony source). It's worked magic on the SQ. 

[Nenon]

1 minute ago, Balázs said:

 

All of us who aren't lucky enough to own an SR7 should try a quality power cord with the PSU. I connected an AudioQuest Dragon HC 1.5m to my HDPlex 400 (that drives my dual box Euphony source). It's worked magic on the SQ. 

 

+1

Yep, this cable does miracles everywhere you plug it. Computer linear power supplies seem to benefit quite a bit from good power cords in my system. The AQ Hurricane is another alternative that works excellent - still expensive but not as much as the Dragon. They also scale with the power supply - I bet a SR7 with a Dragon would sound even better. 

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Balázs said:

 

All of us who aren't lucky enough to own an SR7 should try a quality power cord with the PSU. I connected an AudioQuest Dragon HC 1.5m to my HDPlex 400 (that drives my dual box Euphony source). It's worked magic on the SQ. 

 

1 hour ago, Nenon said:

 

+1

Yep, this cable does miracles everywhere you plug it. Computer linear power supplies seem to benefit quite a bit from good power cords in my system. The AQ Hurricane is another alternative that works excellent - still expensive but not as much as the Dragon. They also scale with the power supply - I bet a SR7 with a Dragon would sound even better. 

 

Agree with you guys on power cable quality. I started out using a Pangea AC-14MkII SE on my HDPlex 400W ATX LPS. But shortly after, I switched over to a Cardas Clear 1.5m, and that was a very nice SQ bump, including a reduction in harshness.

[Johnseye]

3 hours ago, Balázs said:

 

All of us who aren't lucky enough to own an SR7 should try a quality power cord with the PSU. I connected an AudioQuest Dragon HC 1.5m to my HDPlex 400 (that drives my dual box Euphony source). It's worked magic on the SQ. 

 

I'm sorry, but a $7000 power cord on a $800 PSU?  Is that correct or did I miss something?

[Balázs]

2 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

I'm sorry, but a $7000 power cord on a $800 PSU?  Is that correct or did I miss something?

 

No you didn't.

 

First, I didn't say you must use an expensive power cord. I was talking about using a quality power cord. I just happen to have a quality one which is undoubtedly very expensive. You must find the sweet spot in your system.

Second, most of us use the HdPlex 400 because it is the only LPSU that can power a PC motherboard (ATX/EPS) directly - not because it was the best LPSU available which it isn't. @romaz mentioned that an LPSU with the same funcionality made by e.g Sean Jacobs would cost around $3.500 - $4.000. Although I can easily accept that such an expensive LPSU would top the HdPlex 400, even this one could benefit from a good quality power cord.

Third, a quality power cord is not the only way to improve the LPSU. Linear voltage regulators like the HPULN-PS, also improve a lot - they are rather difficult to use in case of powering 24 pin ATX.

 

And yes, you should take a lot into consideration before running to the next AQ dealer with your Amex Black Card in your hand 😉

 

 

[TheAttorney]

With my head still spinning from all the server options available on these threads, I've decided to go for the KISS approach to replace my W10/Roon laptop as music server. This will be:

 

A single box server with USB out to my existing HMS->DAVE DAC. I've settled on Euphony Stylus running on 7i7DN Porcoolpine fanless box (thank you @bobfa for the posts and links). With Porcoolpine setup just like bob's example, e.g using a 32GB Optane in the M.2 slot. My moto for this exercise will be "ditch the spaghetti" or at least as much as possible - and I'm prepared to sacrifice some SQ in order to get compactness, simplicity and conveniance.

 

With that in mind, I intend to start with Porcoolpine's stock USB output and use its default WiFi (using up the M.2 2230 slot and with external antennas) to connect to my broadband router on the other side of my house). Both of these points are less than ideal for SQ, but I did a "proof of concept" test by installing Euphony+Stylus on USB stick on a (different) laptop -> USB -> HMS -> DAVE and comparing to my existing W10/Roon -> bridged mR -> IR -> HMS -> DAVE.

 

And the Stylus version won easily on SQ, although only after I had cleaned the direct USB output with my trusty ISORegen. This was not a like-for-like comparison, but was enough of a POC for me to imagine that a NUC server would give even bigger improvements.

 

My remaining question is regarding Optane drives: There are many options around, but most of them won't fit into the M.2 2280 slot of DN-boarded NUCs. I'm starting with a 32GB pure Optane to be the Euphony/Stylus boot drive (and with an external filestore drive), but to continue the KISS principle, it would be more elegant to use the H10 drive with a combined 32GB Optane + up to 1TB NAND, thereby keeping everything within the same box.

 

So my H10 questions are:

1. Can one boot Euphony/Stylus from the 32GB Optane partition, which then reads the music files from the NAND partition? 

2. Or is it better to put everything on the NAND partition and use the Optane as accelerator (which is after all its originally intended purpose)?

3. How would a H10 drive compare SQ-wise with Optane + external drive?

 

Solution 2 seems to be the most elegant to me, but it'snot clear if adding the NAND SSD onto the Optane card will make that drive as noisy as a typical SSD?

 

[bobfa]

39 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

With my head still spinning from all the server options available on these threads, I've decided to go for the KISS approach to replace my W10/Roon laptop as music server. This will be:

 

A single box server with USB out to my existing HMS->DAVE DAC. I've settled on Euphony Stylus running on 7i7DN Porcoolpine fanless box (thank you @bobfa for the posts and links). With Porcoolpine setup just like bob's example, e.g using a 32GB Optane in the M.2 slot. My moto for this exercise will be "ditch the spaghetti" or at least as much as possible - and I'm prepared to sacrifice some SQ in order to get compactness, simplicity and conveniance.

 

With that in mind, I intend to start with Porcoolpine's stock USB output and use its default WiFi (using up the M.2 2230 slot and with external antennas) to connect to my broadband router on the other side of my house). Both of these points are less than ideal for SQ, but I did a "proof of concept" test by installing Euphony+Stylus on USB stick on a (different) laptop -> USB -> HMS -> DAVE and comparing to my existing W10/Roon -> bridged mR -> IR -> HMS -> DAVE.

 

And the Stylus version won easily on SQ, although only after I had cleaned the direct USB output with my trusty ISORegen. This was not a like-for-like comparison, but was enough of a POC for me to imagine that a NUC server would give even bigger improvements.

 

My remaining question is regarding Optane drives: There are many options around, but most of them won't fit into the M.2 2280 slot of DN-boarded NUCs. I'm starting with a 32GB pure Optane to be the Euphony/Stylus boot drive (and with an external filestore drive), but to continue the KISS principle, it would be more elegant to use the H10 drive with a combined 32GB Optane + up to 1TB NAND, thereby keeping everything within the same box.

 

So my H10 questions are:

1. Can one boot Euphony/Stylus from the 32GB Optane partition, which then reads the music files from the NAND partition? 

2. Or is it better to put everything on the NAND partition and use the Optane as accelerator (which is after all its originally intended purpose)?

3. How would a H10 drive compare SQ-wise with Optane + external drive?

 

Solution 2 seems to be the most elegant to me, but it'snot clear if adding the NAND SSD onto the Optane card will make that drive as noisy as a typical SSD?

 

I would let Euphony “drive” the Optane with their e-cache methodology.  I have been using a combination of either external HD storage or NAS for music .

 

Did you read my reporting and others about using an even more powerful computer?  I found a company that builds custom silent machines called Totally Silent PC’s.  I have not talked with them about about different motherboards, etc..

 

 

[Chopin75]

1 hour ago, TheAttorney said:

With my head still spinning from all the server options available on these threads, I've decided to go for the KISS approach to replace my W10/Roon laptop as music server. This will be:

 

A single box server with USB out to my existing HMS->DAVE DAC. I've settled on Euphony Stylus running on 7i7DN Porcoolpine fanless box (thank you @bobfa for the posts and links). With Porcoolpine setup just like bob's example, e.g using a 32GB Optane in the M.2 slot. My moto for this exercise will be "ditch the spaghetti" or at least as much as possible - and I'm prepared to sacrifice some SQ in order to get compactness, simplicity and conveniance.

 

With that in mind, I intend to start with Porcoolpine's stock USB output and use its default WiFi (using up the M.2 2230 slot and with external antennas) to connect to my broadband router on the other side of my house). Both of these points are less than ideal for SQ, but I did a "proof of concept" test by installing Euphony+Stylus on USB stick on a (different) laptop -> USB -> HMS -> DAVE and comparing to my existing W10/Roon -> bridged mR -> IR -> HMS -> DAVE.

 

And the Stylus version won easily on SQ, although only after I had cleaned the direct USB output with my trusty ISORegen. This was not a like-for-like comparison, but was enough of a POC for me to imagine that a NUC server would give even bigger improvements.

 

My remaining question is regarding Optane drives: There are many options around, but most of them won't fit into the M.2 2280 slot of DN-boarded NUCs. I'm starting with a 32GB pure Optane to be the Euphony/Stylus boot drive (and with an external filestore drive), but to continue the KISS principle, it would be more elegant to use the H10 drive with a combined 32GB Optane + up to 1TB NAND, thereby keeping everything within the same box.

 

So my H10 questions are:

1. Can one boot Euphony/Stylus from the 32GB Optane partition, which then reads the music files from the NAND partition? 

2. Or is it better to put everything on the NAND partition and use the Optane as accelerator (which is after all its originally intended purpose)?

3. How would a H10 drive compare SQ-wise with Optane + external drive?

 

Solution 2 seems to be the most elegant to me, but it'snot clear if adding the NAND SSD onto the Optane card will make that drive as noisy as a typical SSD?

 

Solution 2 may be best in terms of speed of getting the files loaded. The ecache can work just as well where ever the source but gets a bit cranky at times and takes longer to load/sink into euphony etc... 

Probably not much difference in sound except that external drive can be noisy. I can’t comment on different compartment of optane would make a difference ? 

[TheAttorney]

The H10 in general seems a great storage solution in the KISS single box world (as long as 1TB is enough).

I guess no-one has yet tried this though to see (hear) if practice matches theory in terms of how the noise performance compares.

In an ideal world, the Optane front-end would hide the noisier SSD back end, but we all know that practice doesn't allways follow theory.

 

Unless someone's already done such comparisons, I'm aiming to start safe (with the tried and tested Bobfa's approach), then see how bleeding edge this DIY-averse guy wants to take this.

 

Regarding faster,  better servers than the i7DN NUCs - I'm sure there are, but I've been waiting over 2 years for the "A novel way" dust to settle down, and every week there's something better, but not necessarily simpler.

[austinpop]

5 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

The H10 in general seems a great storage solution in the KISS single box world (as long as 1TB is enough).

I guess no-one has yet tried this though to see (hear) if practice matches theory in terms of how the noise performance compares.

In an ideal world, the Optane front-end would hide the noisier SSD back end, but we all know that practice doesn't allways follow theory.

 

Unless someone's already done such comparisons, I'm aiming to start safe (with the tried and tested Bobfa's approach), then see how bleeding edge this DIY-averse guy wants to take this.

 

Regarding faster,  better servers than the i7DN NUCs - I'm sure there are, but I've been waiting over 2 years for the "A novel way" dust to settle down, and every week there's something better, but not necessarily simpler.

 

The whole local storage question still remains a matter of compromises. We have disparate data points from folks who have tried different approaches:

• @romaz in his experiments feels conventional NVMe SSDs to be particularly harsh sounding
• Others have had good success with HDDs in an external enclosure, with both USB and the drive separately powered with 5V and 12V PSUs.

The rationale for Optane was based on the fact that you need something to boot the OS, and the Optane SSD (note - we're not talking about using it as a cache, just a small SSD) has the potential to be less harsh because of these metrics - per specs:

• Idle power: 8mW
• Active power: 2.5W

The rationale as the OS drive is based on the fact that the drive is either always idle after boot - say in the case of AL with ramroot, or mostly idle, since over time the OS drive has very low I/O utilization. So power consumption is closer to the idle value, and by implication, harshness is lower. Music drives are different, since their utilization (and hence the %time they are active and in active power mode) is higher.

 

In contrast, the quintessential "noisy" SSD, the Samsung EVO 860 is rated:

• Idle power: 50mW
• Active power: 4.5W

With these bounds, the specs of the H10 are interesting:

• Idle power: 12-13mW
• Active power: 5.3-5.8W

Based on specs alone, I would be inclined to trust the H10 more as an OS drive, and less as a music drive. At which point, the whole point of H10 becomes moot in a music server.

 

Bottom line - I don't see anything with H10 that tempts me to change my own strategy, which is:

• Optane M10 32GB SSD OS drive
• All music on a NAS somewhere else on the network.

With that said, if some curious mind has the means and stamina to conduct a listening comparison with various storage strategies, you'd be doing us all a service. I'm prepared to change if a better sounding solution emerges.

 

[TheAttorney]

Thank you all, the fog is gradually lifting 🙂.

 

BTW, if drive power consumption is a guide to SQ, then the new M15 Optane adds another variable:

It has faster read/write/latency figures than the M10, and its power consumption is <5mW idle and 3.8W active.

 

So Idle consumption better than the M10, but Active worse. How than affects SQ will probably depend on the music app used.

 

Edit: I'm guessing the Active consumption is greater primarily because it's faster and so shifting more data per second.

[davide256]

17 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

The whole local storage question still remains a matter of compromises. We have disparate data points from folks who have tried different approaches:

• @romaz in his experiments feels conventional NVMe SSDs to be particularly harsh sounding
• Others have had good success with HDDs in an external enclosure, with both USB and the drive separately powered with 5V and 12V PSUs.

The rationale for Optane was based on the fact that you need something to boot the OS, and the Optane SSD (note - we're not talking about using it as a cache, just a small SSD) has the potential to be less harsh because of these metrics - per specs:

• Idle power: 8mW
• Active power: 2.5W

The rationale as the OS drive is based on the fact that the drive is either always idle after boot - say in the case of AL with ramroot, or mostly idle, since over time the OS drive has very low I/O utilization. So power consumption is closer to the idle value, and by implication, harshness is lower. Music drives are different, since their utilization (and hence the %time they are active and in active power mode) is higher.

 

In contrast, the quintessential "noisy" SSD, the Samsung EVO 860 is rated:

• Idle power: 50mW
• Active power: 4.5W

With these bounds, the specs of the H10 are interesting:

• Idle power: 12-13mW
• Active power: 5.3-5.8W

Based on specs alone, I would be inclined to trust the H10 more as an OS drive, and less as a music drive. At which point, the whole point of H10 becomes moot in a music server.

 

Bottom line - I don't see anything with H10 that tempts me to change my own strategy, which is:

• Optane M10 32GB SSD OS drive
• All music on a NAS somewhere else on the network.

With that said, if some curious mind has the means and stamina to conduct a listening comparison with various storage strategies, you'd be doing us all a service. I'm prepared to change if a better sounding solution emerges.

 

 

I continue to prefer fast SDXC cards to HD or SSD...HD playback reminds in the treble range of bookshelf KEF's I owned in the 90's where the treble of the soft dome tweeter

was noticeably damped on transients. Nonetheless the treble for SDXC media can occasionally irritate 😣

 

The discussion about power has me wondering if SDXC card use can be forced into a lower power mode that would be better behaved? The stock power usage

of SDXC storage media appears to be similar to Optane memory

 

From Wikipedia

" The power consumption of SD cards varies by its speed mode, manufacturer and model.

During transfer it may be in the range of 66–330 mW (20–100 mA at a supply voltage of 3.3 V)...
Modern UHS-II cards can consume up to 2.88 W, if the host device supports bus speed mode SDR104 or UHS-II. Minimum power consumption in the case

of a UHS-II host is 720 mW"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#SDXC

 

[bobfa]

Part of this is convenience.  I have the master of my library on my computer, a copy on my NAS, and backup on external drives, cloud.  I am “evaluating” a HD on the server for sound quality differences between it and the NAS.  I have no conclusions yet.  

 

It is almost like the Euphony Stylus vs Roon.  Roon integrates streaming as a true partner to your library.  Euphony gives you access. 

 

Balancing, cost, performance, U/I, etc..    I have found that a 32GB Optane stick is a perfect balance for me.   It is like the pre-built NUC from Simply NUC.  Or the Sonic Transporter. 

[rickca]

@TheAttorney for now your H10 questions are moot since the H10 is currently an OEM only part.

From https://www.anandtech.com/show/14249/the-intel-optane-memory-h10-review-two-ssds-in-one

Initially, the Optane Memory H10 will be an OEM-only part, available to consumers only pre-installed in new systems—primarily notebooks. Intel is considering bringing the H10 to retail both as a standalone product and as part of a NUC kit, but they have not committed to plans for either. Their motherboard partners have been laying the groundwork for H10 support for almost a year, and many desktop 300-series motherboards already support the H10 with the latest publicly available firmware.

[tapatrick]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

The discussion about power has me wondering if SDXC card use can be forced into a lower power mode that would be better behaved? The stock power usage

of SDXC storage media appears to be similar to Optane memory

I have been thinking about the SDXC card slot too on my NUC... having been convinced by the superior sound of Euphony Stylus and am wondering what to do when my euphony  trial runs out. Being able to unplug the usb drive when using AL was a big plus and as I only stream from Tidal I'm trying to work out how not to add a noisy drive back into the mix to spoil the simplicity... choices  choices... 

[TheAttorney]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

@TheAttorney for now your H10 questions are moot since the H10 is currently an OEM only part.....

Initially, the Optane Memory H10 will be an OEM-only part, available to consumers only pre-installed in new systems....

 

Yes, and as far as I can tell from email correspondence with SimplyNUC, I could have the H10 pre-installed in a Porcoolpine.

However, as result of recent posts here, I'll be sticking with the 32GB Optane, which will be an M10 or M15 depending on what SimplyNUC have on hand at the time.

[rickca]

19 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

Yes, and as far as I can tell from email correspondence with SimplyNUC, I could have the H10 pre-installed in a Porcoolpine.

I didn't realize that SimplyNUC can include an H10 in a custom build.  My apologies, then, for dismissing your questions as moot.  They are good questions.