Building a DIY Music Server

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1 hour ago, Nenon said:

 

And I think the Sage motherboard and dual Xeons would be better than all of them. But so challenging... 

Hi Nenon,

Have you tried the board with a single Xeon processor? It would consume a lot less power and would use half the ram.

Not sure if euphony needs the extra processor power, would be interesting to here of any sound quality penalties.

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13 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

I have no intention to underestimate the work presented here, on the contrary if somebody wants to have the most extreme copper accessories for cooling 3647 sockets, I can surely assist him.

It's really nothing that difficult to accomplish.

I'm stuck here looking at 2 giant Noctua 14 inch fan coolers, so if you could provide us with a solution you'll have a  customer here.

The good thing about Nenons solution is that it used the hdplex coolers to raise the pipes above the heatsink (1 side) on the Asus c621 Sage motherboard. I'm not sure that Larry of HDPlex will sell the coolers seperately, meaning the need to buy another 3 cases.

Also you can adjust the heat pipes horizontally which make bending them easier, if you are a few mm out you can move the pipes to suit your case before clamping the top on.

The Taiko extreme cooler seems designed for that specific case.

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4 hours ago, Nenon said:

They are tuned completely different. One sounds better playing music from a NAS. The other does not sound good from NAS and needs local storage.

Try Audirvana 3.5 on your Windows setup, it plays from ram like euphony, way better sounding than Roon.

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34 minutes ago, matthias said:

I dare to say when Emile puts all his genius into designing a superlative SMPS for the Extreme it might be outperforming his best LPS.

From what I can see of the pictures of the Insides of Extreme published, it's already using buck converters and not linear regulators and I'm assuming this DC - ATX is based on that system?

High powered linear regulators need high heat dissipation and there do not appear to be any regulators fitted onto the heatsinks. placing them below would mean they heat up the base and the rest of the components above. Well I'm just guessing I would be interested to know.

I'm currently using a C-L-C Filter with HDplex 800 DC-ATX. An 'Audiopile' DC - ATX would be perfect.

 

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50 minutes ago, RickyV said:

The rest of the power supply of the extreme is transformer, rectifier, choke, capacitor bank, atx regulators.

Hi Ricky, I think it's a C-L-C filter, transformer- rectifier bridge, capacitor, choke, capacitor, regulators.

There appears to be a large mundorf capacitor and bypass capacitor connected to the bridge before the choke, the choke migt be a dual choke, ie connected both to positive and 0V, well I suppose the aim is not to mimick the Extreme, but that's what I would suggest.

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10 minutes ago, RickyV said:

Mmmm I don’t know, mimicking could be useful but you still need to listen, voicing like Nenon is doing.

I wasn't suggesting mimicking :) I was suggesting a C-L-C filter with dual choke, that's what I ended up with after L-C and single choke, The increased supply line noise rejection was very easy to hear, anyway look forward to seeing what @Nenon ends up with.

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29 minutes ago, Tatomek7 said:

Before you entered Taiko ATX, did you use one or two EPS 8-pin inputs? I still have HdPlex 800 converter and didn't succeed to boot MB with two separate rails from HDPlex converter. Waiting for Taiko one maybe it's worth to try again?

The board runs fine with the 800W HDPlex. Either one or both 8 pins will boot but both for best sound. Plus   24pin. Most likely not enough current to HDPlex.

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3 hours ago, matthias said:

You can feed the Taiko DC-DC ATX as input within a big voltage range so you need no regulation for the LPS.

The ultra high switching frequency of the Taiko in the MHz range does not need further regulation.

Voltage range and switching frequency don't correlate with the conclusion that no further regulation is required.

Simply put a DC - ATX by Taiko or HDPlex etc, will not require regulation because there are 'the Regulator'.

Unregulated DC in- Regulator- Regulated DC out.

Only in audio especially DIY we have been feeding the HDPlex, etc with regulated DC,or daisy chaining regulators, giving us dual or triple regulated results.

What is important for sound quality is the 'Quality' of the power supply going into the DC to ATX. Hence we have had good results feeding the HDplex with a SR7 or DC3 or supercapacitor supply. A poor quality unregulated or regulated supply will not yield good results with the Taiko DC-ATX.

'Unregulated' is also a slightly misleading term. If we look at Extreme smoothing section there's a huge amount of capacitance, 700,000 mf on a single rail, compare this to 20,000/40,000 on a DC3/DC4 (different design implementation) therefore a large amount of smoothing and ripple reduction, and a huge super store of instantaneous current, one of the reasons I suspect for the descriptions of big dynamics, bass impact, scale, etc. In guess this is an ideal match for fast acting regulators.

Second a huge choke input, again more filtering and smoothing, plus a stabiliser for current fluctuations (acts like a regulator).

Wether the Taiko DC-ATX will sound best with an unregulated or regulated supply is speculation at present we'll see soon enough, but @Nenon's description speed, clarity, dynamics from 'unregulated' supply and space and depth from DC4 (due to lower noise and lower resultant jitter Imo) is what I'd expect. Of course there is always the requirement of budget restrictions. Greatly looking forward to testing the Taiko DC-ATX to get a hit of those dynamics. :)

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2 hours ago, RickyV said:

Apperently there is something else besides latency that influences SQ.

It might be the Ram refresh rate, tRF-c, the slower the refresh / longer the cycle, the better the sound. You can adjust this in some bios, but I couldn't find a setting in Sage bios.

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4 hours ago, Nenon said:

The server is powered by the unregulated LPS I am sharing for DIY (around $1000 in parts) and the Taiko ATX (1250 Euro).

Hi Nenon, 

How are you powering the 12v 6pin PCIE connector on the Sage motherboard? There are 2 x12v outputs  on the Taiko DC -ATX, as opposed to 3 on the HDPlex 800.

The options seem to be:

1) 1 output for each CPU and leave the 6 pin PCIE disconnected.

2)  2 CPUs share an output and 1 for PCIE.

3) PCIE share 1 output with 1 CPU,

( It draws current from nearest CPU when left unconnected according to my mesurements).

How have you connected up?

I too discussed with Sean regarding a high current linear supply  but after experimenting ended up with a linear unregulated supply with the HDplex, so looking forward to receiving the Taiko DC - ATX.

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Got my Taiko DC-ATX today here in Brexit UK after spending 2 days in Customs and arrived with a large rip to the box, what did they expect to find inside?

Big improvement in every sense over my HDPlex 800W, mostly clarity and lack of grain and distortion, warmer and more natural througout the frequency range. No brightness basically more transparent to the source after only a few hours warmup. Cymbals are cleaner, voices more natural, you can distinguish the differing deep bass notes.

Using it to power the dual sage C621 board, with an unregulated power supply, Mundorf Caps including silver in oil bypass caps. 2 chokes and 600 Watt torroidy audio grade @ 36V ( the metal cased supreme didnt fit my case).

I might change the transformer and rectifier bridge when @Nenon releases the specs but won't touch the caps, they sound good after 200 hours but mine took 9 months to lose a slight mechanical edge and let the music  flow.

Only niggle is lack of PCIE output so I just powered the 2 CPU inputs on the board, its a great upgrade.

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19 minutes ago, RickyV said:

Very Nice but we do want pictures. 😇

You had to ask Ricky :)

Sorry, its a messy work in progress, (which as usual will never get finished)

 

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I remember reading that the JCAT XE was modified to work on Extreme, something with the power supply. After this mod the transparency increased substantially(over sage usb port) according to Emile. Don't know what the mod was? but it might be an option for JCAT and Taiko dc- atx/ Sage users, since the Taiko USB is not available.

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3 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

 

 one for example is using a standard capacitor in a wooden ring, take the whole casing off the cap and it sounds much better ( a friend of me experimented with this a lot).

 

That particular capacitor on Extreme, looks right on the rectifier circuit, and its subect to a lot of ringing. The wood I assume is to dampen that. You can use something like blutak as a cheap and easy alternative, to test the difference damping will make in that location, it shouldn't be huge but I guess that's why its called the Extreme.

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The big Lundhal Chokes are dual. Theres a number of ways to connect up but it might be like the third example: Serial connection for improved common mode rejection. eg. the first 47uf cap and bpass just after the rectifier circuit. 2 chokes on +ve and return path completely decoupling capacitor bank which would follow eg, your 160uf or 720 uf depending what supply ou are making. Its easy to try it this way and compare to 2nd choke spliting the second capacitor bank. I mean like below, but one dual choke eg Lundhal or 2 single hammonds etc.

 

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2 hours ago, RCDingen said:

So what I mean to say it's impossible to get rid of SMPS or DC to DC convertors and switching noise

DC to DC converters vary in the amount and type of noise generated. Your original post was in reference to Taiko ATX, this uses Gan FET tech. These can operate at 3 x the frequency of Mosf FET. They can switch up to 6 x faster < 1ns.  Lower loop inductance and higher efficiency and power handling. So 'noise' generated is much lower and less critical in some audio application.

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4 minutes ago, RCDingen said:

I have the HDPlex 400W ATX and the Taiko ATX and also a lineair ATX supply I still have tot test the difference.

And at the moment collecting parts for a 19V lineair power supply like Taiko.

To get the best from the Taiko ATX you'll need a 36v unregulated supply like nenon's v3. I originally used HDplex 800w and a linear power supply, the jump in quality is well worth it.

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51 minutes ago, darkfrank said:

Well I dunno if Gan are really so good to audio cuz I have tried some different brand of the GaN charger they always have bigger impact to sound (negative side) compared with the traditional charger. 

 

 

35 minutes ago, IRS2092 said:

No one talked or said anything about the HDPLEX SMPS feeding the ATX? or that's also another exception?

 

Isn't that a SMPS? or GaN = low noise and that means OK to use?

Again this is SMPS AC not DC to DC conversion, check out @Superdad explanation above for the difference.

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25 minutes ago, RCDingen said:

Why Taiko isn't using that?

I guess you mean in the Extreme? The DC to DC conversion is hidden underneath they haven't published what exactly is used, I don't think its the same ATX they are selling for DIY.

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5 minutes ago, MarcelNL said:

I recall reading in the Taiko Extreme thread at WBF that after developing the DC-DC ATX they wiuld never have used the costly linear PSU in the Extreme. Which is not to say they would use the DC-DC, perhaps that was a prelim conclusion of initial experimenst now taken to the next level. (that is how I would develop a part like that, provide something great to the DIY community and have them carry part of the R&D to take matters to the next level for the high $$ return product line.

I agree but the top part of the supply in the Extreme doesn't seem to be 36V the caps are 25V (I might be wrong) the circuit might be different to the DIY ATX.

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49 minutes ago, acg said:

rather that it seems highly unusual that it should make that sort of gross frequency response change in the bass

Windows has a much fuller/warmer balance than Linux. If using Linux and you have tweaked your equipment to balance out some of that Linux brightness, then switching to a Windows machine (Extreme) would go the other way. Especially if using a Sub woofer, some of that low bass  appearing will be exagerated.