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Building a DIY Music Server


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3 hours ago, Nenon said:

There is no comparison between the Sonore products and the custom DIY servers we are building. But our hand built servers are quite more expensive too. 

 

 

Oh yes, not even price comparable really nor the effort.  Also took some fiddling to make my cooling quiet enough to stick the PC near everything.  Not entirely happy about SMPS next to hifi stuff, but I do have 6x https://ifi-audio.com/products/ac-ipurifier/ in place which really do make a difference.

 

On another note, has anyone tried purchasing an EMI/RFI sensor?  I have tried one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071WPV8YK/ but I think its time to find something even better.  Quite the eye opener in terms of observations.

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3 minutes ago, Foggie said:

Aren't these comparisons of the extreme and similar a bit skewed?  99.9% of the people will never have / afford such a device. 

Agree.
 

 

4 minutes ago, Foggie said:

I am genuinely curious though and have toyed with the idea, just haven't found a conceivable way to test the "theory". 

 

I think there has been an advancement in recent tech; I was previously a endpoint type till JCAT XE + Ryzen 2900X came along.

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  • 5 months later...
6 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

USBridge Sig was the very first but it's only good for Compute Module 3 Lite

 

Don't get too excited, it was alright "for its price point" but easily beaten by other ARM streamers with quite some ease.  

 

6 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

At last we'll have something with x86 instead of ARM, could that actually meet / beat ASUS WS C621E SAGE or what?

 

It's not all about power... there's something going on with modern x86 architectures that no ARM device to date I've heard can match whatsoever.  And I was for quite a while feeding the x86 system with a "dirty" SMPS (but USB card powered externally) and it was still night/day.

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27 minutes ago, seeteeyou said:
Quote

You‘ll enjoy the USBridge Sig! I‘ve got mine, along with the Shanti LPS. The combo beats my Aurender N100H hands down (this unit costs 3,000 €!)! In my system, Roon sounds very sweet with this unit!

 

 

https://darko.audio/2015/09/aurender-n100h-music-serverstreamer-review/

 

The Aurender is a 2015 unit.  2015 !  Ofcourse it beats the Aurender.... I'd be sad if a new 2019 design didnt.

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  • 2 months later...
4 minutes ago, Nenon said:

The Taiko ATX is a game changer in my opinion. Cheaper and better in most cases, especially for this dual Xeon server build... I would not be surprised if it makes all other high-end ATX power supplies obsolete in the future. Time will tell. 

 

It's particularly interesting for those of us who upsample using HQPlayer, which can be particularly current heavy.  This design already appears much more power efficient too.

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10 minutes ago, Nenon said:

 

It can do 40A continuously on the 12V rail if that's of any use to you.

And it's 99% efficient. Depending on the input voltage and the load, it can get up to 99.3% efficiency. In fact the most inefficient component I have in the prototype is the transformer. 

 

 

Absolutely heavenly.  Some linear designs barely get to 50% efficient.

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19 hours ago, Nenon said:

The last comment I want to make is that no matter how advanced the SMPS technology becomes, to me a well designed LPS is still the best option for powering low current devices. I do power my USB card on my server with a Sean Jacobs DC4 LPS and that makes a hell of difference.

To be honest what very high quality SMPS options do we have at low voltages?  The likes of Benchmark Audio have been using SilentSwitchers to achieve this with SMPS, but they're often not implemented in any high (1a+) current form nor do they get much attention on the whole.

 

So yes certainly for now LPS is the way to go.

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Have any of the Solarflare SFN8522 or similar users tried https://github.com/Xilinx-CNS/onload ?  As described it allows Linux apps to bypass the core networking stack for Onload's ultra high performance and highly configurable network stack instead.

 

Installing is relatively easy, simply clone + run /scripts/onload_install provided your Linux distro has the necessary build tools.

 

I've installed the latest version to find another uptick in SQ, especially in musical transients / flow.  This was in AudioLinux, using the standard latency profile and LTS 5.4 RT kernel.

 

There are many other profiles, some will even allow you to cache/buffer more in-memory (throughput profiles), amongst other things.  Highly customisable.   https://github.com/Xilinx-CNS/onload/tree/master/scripts/onload_profiles

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1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:

Can OnLoad also be set in Windows? As far as I know, this only works on Linux.

Linux only.  Uses some of the newer kernel features (express data path) as well as eBPF to essentially "intercept" network calls and push them down its own accelerated/optimised path.  

 

It was pretty easy to install, so well worth a try should you be tempted.

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6 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

I was happy to get it to run well. According to the manual, I have set the network card adapter to the lowest possible latency. Have a look at this: DSD 256 x 48. The sound is fantastic.

 

I would also try the "max throughput" option as that invokes a certain amount of in-memory caching/batching.  I'll be trying that myself sometime this week.

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1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:

Yes, with the JCAT Optimo 3 Duo. An absolutely excellent LPS. And yet, powered by the motherboard, the Solarflare 8522 card is so much better.

 

I have pondered whether its worth buying another one of these Solarflare cards and seeing if we can externally feed it DC, given how good it is from just motherboard power alone.

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Just now, StreamFidelity said:

 

I think that runs contrary to low latencies. The manual says:

 

There are three metrics that should be considered when tuning an adapter:
• Throughput
• Latency
• CPU utilization
Transactional (request-response) network applications can be very sensitive to latency whereas bulk data transfer applications are more dependent on throughput.
...
Turning off interrupt moderation wants:
- generate the most interrupts
- give the highest CPU utilization
- give the lowest latency
- give the biggest reduction in peak throughput.

 

Yes, however in doing so it will have a different processing behaviour to the latency profile so worth a try.  In my case it'll only take a few mins to switch over.  

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1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:

Linux scared me off too. I don't know about it. if I then read through the numerous Linux installation problems with the HQPlayer, I don't feel like doing it. Solarflare provides the appropriate Windows drivers. Except for OnLoad, everything can be used.

 

1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:
10 minutes ago, MarcelNL said:

I also toyed with the idea of installing an SFP based network card, but I'm dreading the fight with Linux...

 

 

For the Solarflare cards, recent kernels already have a (slim, non-onload) network driver installed ready to go.  

 

FWIW I find HQPlayer embedded to be absolutely rock solid under Linux, dont have to tweak it for weeks at a time, but yes can understand there's a bit of a learning curve.

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57 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

I don't have the plus version. And I'm just noticing that this card doesn't support OnLoad at all. One less reason to switch to Linux. 😄

 

Here is an overview: 8000 Series 10/40GbE Network Adapters

 

 

 

https://www.xilinx.com/publications/product-briefs/SFN8522-product-brief.pdf 

 

"Capabilities such
as ultra-low latency, Onload® kernel bypass, class-leading clock synchronization accuracy providing MIFID II readiness,
ServerLock® NIC-based firewall, SolarCapture® and more, can be enabled to run on any SFN8500 adapter on the network,
making this the one Ethernet adapter to deploy across your data center or cloud infrastructure."

 

OnLoad is available to all 8500 series it seems, looks like website's wrong.  It's not a hardware feature per say, its a software feature designed to work with Solarflare cards.

 

Looks like you might have to dust off a USB memory stick and give Linux a try someday @StreamFidelity 🤣

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