Building a DIY Music Server

[TheAttorney]

On 1/21/2020 at 11:18 PM, Nenon said:

Perhaps that's the winning formula for a quad core CPU then. 0 gstp 1 stylus 2-3

 

 

I recently tried both the above and 0 gstp 1-2 stylus 3 with my standalone, no DSP,  Stylus on my 4 core NUC7i7DN, but I still went back to my long term  0-1 stylus 2 gstp 3, which sounded more natural and focused (one man's "airy" is another man's "bright"). However, the differences were quite subtle to my ears.

 

The original reason for choosing my long term setting was because, when looking at the CPU load/temp display, Stylus took up the least CPU load, then gstp, with "everything else" taking up the most. Therefore it made sense to allocate more cores to the thing that took the biggest load. But with so many variables, it's no surprise that others get different results.

[TheAttorney]

On 2/16/2020 at 11:49 AM, Blackmorec said:

... and I tried a pair of  Mundorf Silver Gold DC cables (NMSGs) very kindly built and supplied by Nenon. 

 

 

I'm a fan of "silver with a bit of gold" cables, based on past experience of Siltech phono cable and Toxic headphone cables.

But one thing puzzles me regarding use as a DC cable:

 

Adding say 1% gold to a silver cable is known to increase its resistance by a proportionally much larger amount. I can't track down the exact values at the moment, but I remember that it increases resistance to significantly higher than copper. A while back, some "sound scientists" were giving the Toxic designer a hard time on this topic.

 

And for DC power supplies it's understood that lower resistance is better (all else being equal). So if this silver gold DC cable sounds so good, then there must be something else going on that trumps the negative aspects of increased resistance?

[TheAttorney]

I've found a link (not the original one I had in mind) to a thread about silver/gold resistivity: here

 

It's on the audiotruth site, which is enough said for many if us. But it does claim that resistivity is not linear to the % gold added.

But apart from that, this Mundorf wire is likely to be top of my list for the next time I decide to make another DC cable 🙂

 

[TheAttorney]

6 hours ago, Nenon said:

Let's start with RAM and Intel vs. AMD...

 

A great post that answers so many questions, but I can still think of a few more on RAM 🙂:

 

1. Is 2 better than 1? E.g. is 2 x 4GB better than 1 x 8GB?

(Some say 2x is better because of load balancing. OTOH it may result in slightly greater power consumption and noise. And greater cost). 

 

2. Is it a bad idea to mix 2 slightly different memory specs?

In particular, a 2400 Apacer and a 2666 Apacer in adjacent slots.

 

3. How big a SQ step is the 2666 above a 2400 Apacer, compared to a 2400 Apacer above a typical non-industrial RAM?

And same question for ECC above non-ECC?

I'm guessing there are diminishing returns here.

 

Thank you

[TheAttorney]

On 1/9/2022 at 4:46 AM, Nenon said:

This is a QSA silver fuse. It retails for $5000.
 

Did you try any of the "cheaper" colours before settling for the silver?

I wonder how the red or black-red would have fared in comparison.

[TheAttorney]

8 hours ago, skyline said:

 

I have owned 3 QSA fuses up to the Red. 

The question is do you like their house sound after the novelty wears off.

Because it’s a really strong house sound that is unmistakeable.

Well, I've not seen any consensus on QSA "house sound". Some say it (particularly the yellow) is forward and dynamic. Others say it is natural and effortless. And that the violet and above are more natural than the yellow. Nenon and Romaz have raved over the silver without specifying any particular house sound.

 

I'm also interested in the QSA wall sockets, which seem to be better VFM than the fuses for the same colour.