Popular Post austinpop Posted January 17, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 17, 2020 Loving this thread, Brilliant stuff! bobfa and Nenon 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted January 20, 2020 Share Posted January 20, 2020 I have an i7-8700T, so 6 cores/12 threads. I settled on this a while back: 0-3 RoonServer 4-7 stylus 4-7 gstp 8-11 RoonServer and gstp are used when using Roon+StylusEP. Stylus and gstp are used when using Stylus. I will try giving gstp even more resources and see if that helps. LJONESATL 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted June 9, 2020 Share Posted June 9, 2020 1 hour ago, Nenon said: completed my tube SET monoblocks a couple of weeks ago Nice work! Enjoy them. Nenon 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 5 minutes ago, Nenon said: I share mostly success stories, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes with my experiments. Here is a behind the scenes failure story... Tried to replace the clock on one of my Buffalo switches, and the switch board is fried. The problem is I don't know why. I had someone else remove the clock, so that might be part of the problem. Also USPS was quite brutal with this package as it can be seen by the bended port. Well, one less precious Buffalo in this world. That specific buffalo breed is nearly extinct! I will sacrifice another one, and hopefully it would work out next time. Sad to see the loss of one these noble creatures. "Oh give me a home... Where the Buffalo roam... ..." dctom 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted August 5, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted August 5, 2020 My completed Ode to your Wounded Switch Oh give me a home Where the Buffalo roam And the Fauns and the LPSes play Where seldom is heard A discordant note And the highs are not muddy all day. Submitted with a big OAudio, Nenon, flkin and 4 others 7 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted September 22, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 22, 2020 56 minutes ago, dctom said: Now after around 8 months of development, following all the advice and suggestions, I am getting terrific results - so I owe a lot of thanks to all the many contributors. Very glad to hear that you are liking the results! Your server system has many common elements to what I was previously enjoying, so I am not at all surprised. 8 minutes ago, RickyV said: Have you experimented with server straight to the dac? I would highly recommend you try bypassing your NUC entirely, and going straight to the DAC. This is based on one key assumption I'm making regarding your use of HQPlayer. You said your were upsampling to DSD256 and PCM384. My assumption is that you're only doing DSD-to-DSD and PCM-to-PCM, in which case the CPU load on the server even with upsampling should be low. If, on the other hand, you are running at high CPU utilization doing PCM-to-DSD conversion, then the following does not apply. Assuming the low-CPU use case is true, do try the direct path and see what you think. When you do, keep in mind that the USB ports on the Z390 Gaming ITX/ac mobo don't all sound the same. I found the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports sound better. Feel free to do some trial and error and pick the best by ear. For me, the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port directly under the Ethernet port sounded best. Give it a try. Finally, if you do find the server direct path to sound better, with more dynamics, then you could apply the cost of the NUC towards a tX-USBultra. Or sell the NUC and DC3, and get a Phoenix. Exocer and RickyV 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted October 1, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted October 1, 2020 4 minutes ago, Nenon said: I think Chris started with 4 Buffalos. Then he sent two of them to PinkFaun for clock upgrades. And he has 2 Buffalos and 2 PF Buffalos now. Let me be the first one to say it out loud.... this is crazy! :) We passed crazy 4 switches ago! Exocer, motberg, lwr and 1 other 1 1 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted October 6, 2020 Share Posted October 6, 2020 On 10/5/2020 at 8:06 AM, dctom said: When commenting on your SGM you mentioned you are using it with HQP and naa. Is that a naa within the Extreme itself (2nd cpu) or an external naa? Yes, on the same machine. The idea came up as a way to exploit both CPUs, since HQPlayer 4 Desktop seems to not recognize the 2nd CPU. So we're running HQPlayer on one CPU (logical CPUs 0-19), and NAA on the other CPU (logical CPUs 20-39), using Process Lasso to assign CPUs. This boosts SQ noticeably, but may only apply to machines like the Extreme. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 7 minutes ago, rando said: This boosts SQ noticeably compared to what exactly. Let me spell this out for you: config 1: HQP directly connected to DAC via ASIO driver config 2: NAA alloted to CPU0, connected to DAC via ASIO driver HQP alloted to CPU1, connected to NAA. Music playback directly via HQPlayer. No Roon, No TAS. Config 2 sounds better than config 1. 7 minutes ago, rando said: Something else falling further outside the design prospective? I have no idea how to decode this sentence. OAudio 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted October 17, 2020 Share Posted October 17, 2020 1 hour ago, Nenon said: - Using Schroder on HFC cables is a no brainer. It works very well. Highly recommended. Very true. In fact, I have had multiple queries from folks asking if I would break up the Schroeder HFC CT-2 digital cables I have for sale, and sell them individual CT-2 cables. I suspect I would actually make more on the sales this way! But I really want people to hear just how good this Schroeder config can sound. And @Nenon is spot on regarding connectors. Nenon 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted December 10, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 10, 2020 2 hours ago, lmitche said: I am interested in the 80 - 20 rule of music server sound quality. It would be sad to see people think that great digital playback can only be achieved with exotic power supplies and music servers that cost as much as a new car. Larry, I completely hear where you're coming from. In the first few years I was on CA, this was my posture too, and it paid rich dividends, as there was so much improvement to be had with modest expenditure. My trajectory changed — and I must stress this is unique to each person — when I realized 2 things. First, as I scaled further and further along the "exotic" axis, I was not only able to hear and appreciate the impact, I realized this was giving me the emotional connection to the music in a way that I never had before. Second, I'm of a certain age, where it's unclear how many good "listening" years I have left before my listening abilities degrade, so this is why I've allowed my budget and system cost to grow. Not everyone would make this calculation. It's really important for people coming to these thread understand the guiding principles of people who are posting. Some people consider DIY to be synonymous with the principle of "optimization at moderate cost," but others view it as a way to go to the bleeding edge and beyond. The approaches are different, and perhaps it behooves us to periodically clarify which principle we're following. hallithorst, mikicasellas, lwr and 7 others 5 4 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted January 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 8, 2021 I love the direction this is going! I anticipate this being one of the most important threads on AS in 2021. MarcelNL and genvirt 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted January 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 9, 2021 This is a cataclysmic development. I suspect this will break the Internet today! genvirt, Exocer, ASRMichael and 1 other 4 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted January 15, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 15, 2021 @seeteeyou You are the Earl of URLs! Respect. 87mpi and ASRMichael 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted January 28, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 28, 2021 On 1/27/2021 at 3:20 AM, Nenon said: No, not at all. First, I don't really buy into the whole concept of a well isolated endpoint from the server. The idea sounds really good and logical but never worked well for me in practice. It's just like the concept that DAC manufacturers have been trying to convince us for years - the USB input is galvanically isolated and reclocked, so the quality of the server does not matter. No need to explain to the people following this thread that a well-designed source (server/endpoint/whatever you want to call it) makes a big difference. There is a really good reason servers like Innuos, Taiko, PinkFaun, Antipodes, etc. exist and cost so much. Arguably, they could make as much difference as a DAC (yes, even when connected to that same DAC with galvanically isolated USB input and reclocked signal). Anyone with a resolving enough system who has switched from a Mac MINI or a laptop to one of these well designed servers has experienced that. So, if a galvanically isolated USB input with a reclocker does not work, why do we think that we can "isolate" a server from the endpoint and make the endpoint immune to the server quality? From all my experiments, the conclusion has always been the same: "we can't". I've tried everything I could think of - fiber ethernet, fiber ethernet with state of the art clocks, fiber ethernet with state of the art clocks and state of art power supplies... and state of the art switches... and network cards.... and cables... and power conditioners... and state of the art motherboard clocks, powered by state of the art power supplies and cables... and different transceivers... and so on and so on. I don't know exactly why ethernet isolation does not work, just like I don't know exactly why a galvanically isolated and reclocked USB input on a DAC does not work as expected. But here are some examples that may give us a hint. Let's talk about an endpoint for a second - the last computer that is connected to the DAC. It may be receiving a data stream from the network (i.e. from a Roon Core) or playing music locally. 1. In many cases, my experience with local music playback has been that disconnecting the network cable leads to a sound quality improvement shortly after the disconnect. That suggests that some noise is getting into the server from the network. 2. I have noticed that unnecessary network activity while playing music deteriorates the sound quality. 2a. Euphony / Stylus caches the track you are playing and minimizes the network activity to a minimum. During some of my tests I noticed that opening multiple web browsers pointing to the Euphony page would degrade the sound quality. That was a very interesting experiment. The more web browser windows you open (pointing to Euphony), the easier it is to hear that. At some point I remember opening 50 windows on multiple computers. It turned out Euphony was using Ajax to update the time lapse interval display every second or so. That extra network traffic was enough to cause some sound quality degradation. BTW, I reported this to Euphony and they added an option to disable that traffic. 2b. When I isolated my endpoint to its own VLAN, I heard an improvement. Isolating to its own VLAN means that any broadcast traffic from my home network would not make it to my endpoint. I have a very small home network and have used a sniffer to see how much broadcast there is. It's very little, but yet enough to have an impact. 2c. I have tweaked how the NIC interacts with the CPU. You can configure the CPU interrupts and resources the NIC driver is utilizing, essentially how the NIC interacts with the OS. It's an interesting test. You configure it to use more resources and you get lower latency, but that comes with some side effects (i.e. your server becomes even more sensitive to any extra network traffic, thus making the network chatty Roon even worse). You make it use less resources, and you are more immune to all the network activity going on, but you increase the latency and that has other side effects. i will be writing more about this in the Windows LTSC guide later this year. All that tells me that that network activity on the endpoint impacts the sound quality. Even if you have the perfect server streaming the perfect stream over the perfect network to your endpoint, the fact that the endpoint is receiving and processing network packets (while playing) is not ideal and degrades the sound quality of the stream going to your DAC. The ideal endpoint would be one that does not have a network connection at all. And this is where attention to detail in software that is designed with sound quality as top priority matters. I do expect to see some breakthrough innovations in the software in the near future. But if that is the case, why so many people buy into the server/streamer concept and after trying many solutions including a single server/endpoint device, they prefer it (in many cases by a big margin)? I think the answer is twofold. One part has to do with upsampling and the other with the quality of the server. Let's cover those two: Upsampling: Many DACs work better when they are fed by an upsampled signal. Those are typically DACs that upsample internally. By feeding them with an upsampled signal they have to do less processing. That results in less processing inside the DAC, which results in less noise, which ultimately means better sound quality. Sparing the noise that tha DAC is producing during its internal upsampling in some cases is much bigger improvement than upgrading servers/endpoints upstream of the DAC. That is of course DAC-dependant and not always the case. But for these DACs it makes perfect sense to use software like HQPlayer that does the heavy lifting and offloads the DACs extra processing (and noise). What happens when you start doing heavy upsampling on your server that is directly connected to the DAC? Well, I mentioned above what the impact of the network/ethernet processing is, but that is nothing compared to the impact of the heavy processing that HQPlayer does. The noise generated from the upsampling process on the server is in orders of magnitude bigger than the negative effect of the network/ethernet processing. It's much better to isolate the upsampling noise from the endpoint and accept the network/ethernet noise / sound quality degradation. The net result is a big improvement in this case. And this is why many people prefer a two box solution - a server and a streamer. Sounds like a good compromise... but there are people like me who just can't settle with such a big compromise and kept looking. More on that later. Quality of the server (in a single box solution): This is another aspect that we should not forget. When you have a single device that handles the server and the streamer part, it is directly connected to the DAC and its quality is crucial. Computers are noisy devices that were not designed for audio. But with a careful implementation and the right choice of software, hardware, power supply, etc. you can make a single box solution work better than anything else. You cache the tracks before playing, minimize the network activity, and take care of every detail, and you would be rewarded. There is a saying that your system is only as good as the weakest link in the system. The same applies to the digital source. I look at it as a complex chain of components that interact in a very complex way. There are different solutions for different people. For some people the benefit of the upsampling is so big, that they can live with the negatives of a server and a streamer solution. Other people have DACs that don't benefit from upsampling and settle for the best single box solution they can get. There are also people who like the small / low powered endpoints and can't understand why we do all that instead of buying a *Rendu for example - from my experience those are people with small systems, typically with bookshelf speakers who don't need the massive scale, dynamics, and everything else a server like the Taiko Extreme can do but like the low noise, dark background, small but holographic soundstage of these devices (and I completely understand their point of view as well). There is no universal solution that works best for everyone. Here is what I do: I currently use the Chord DAVE DAC powered by a Sean Jacobs DC4 LPS. This DAC benefits from upsampling. It specifically benefits from being fed by 705.6/768kHz PCM. It also benefits from more taps, but that's outside of the scope of this post. As mentioned above a two server solution does not work for me. So I upsample my local music offline and store it locally. There are programs like HQP Pro and some others that can do that. I store the music locally on my NVME storage. Then I use HQP and NAA on the same server. I assign affinities for those processes on different physical CPUs (which also means they use different RAM modules). I have a CPU that is only responsible for the music processes (i.e. NAA in this case). The USB output is directly attached to that CPU. The other CPU handles all the network activity, OS activity, HQP part, etc. In a way, I get the best of both worlds and the net result is amazing. Going back to the question about Roon. Roon does a lot of things that harm the sound quality. It performs constant network activity while you are playing, it has constant disk I/O activity, it does some processing that swings the CPU utilization, which causes noise that is audible in a resolving system. And the list goes on... Depending on whether you use a two box (a server and a streamer) solution or a single box solution like me it has different impact. But in any case, it would not be my choice for critical listening. Having said that Roon/Qobuz is the best tool for discovering new music for me. I so use it for that. P.S. A note to myself - learn what a short reply means! A brilliant "summary!" You should really flesh this out into an article. This is what computer audiophilia is all about, in a nutshell. Jeremy Anderson, ssh, bobfa and 1 other 2 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 2, 2021 Share Posted February 2, 2021 33 minutes ago, drjimwillie said: i’ll have to see if I can get my courage together and go over there and ask nicely. 😅 Got a flame-retardant jacket? I've been down this path. It does no good. It's like a cult! 😏 drjimwillie 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 Welcome to AS, @JayM! My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted May 2, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 2, 2021 1 hour ago, Nenon said: BTW, @The Computer Audiophile - can you please give me access to delete messages here? Sorry it's come to this, but speaking from, ahem, experience, it's unfortunately necessary. Hopefully things will get back on track once the "bad apples" realize they're wasting their time on keystrokes that are destined for the bit bucket. NanoSword, lwr and Nenon 1 2 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted September 6, 2021 Share Posted September 6, 2021 2 hours ago, ASRMichael said: Does anyone know what temperatures Taiko Extreme runs at? I appreciate dual CPU and not like for like. Just interested in knowing. @austinpop I don't believe there is a native CPU temp monitor in WIndows 10 LTSC. I have not researched 3rd party tools. Has anyone else? My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted September 10, 2021 Share Posted September 10, 2021 @guiltyboxswapper You don’t sound guilty at all. In fact, you appear to be having a blast. Literally! 🙂 Really enjoyed reading about your experiments. Great Scott! My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted September 17, 2021 Share Posted September 17, 2021 That’s a gorgeous chassis!! @derBen is in Der House! Jeremy Anderson 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted May 23, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2022 3 hours ago, Nenon said: The question of the decade is how does it compare to my DIY server? The first few days were quite underwhelming. I guess Taiko products suffer through some jetlag :). But it started to get better and better after that. I am planning to give it another week and put together my thoughts on how the two compare. No, my server is not better (as expected), but how much have I accomplished with DIY is very interesting to find out. I am as interested as you guys are, so stay tuned for that. Wow, this will be fascinating, and I'm sure many of us are waiting with bated breaths! Exocer, MarcelNL and kennyb123 2 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 I love shootouts! Or is it shoots-out? 😎 Gavin1977 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
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