Building a DIY Music Server

[Gavin1977]

1 hour ago, gererick said:

Presumably whether or not one can or cannot disable the GPU in the operating system depends on the operating system. 

 

For example, per Nenon, Euphony is a closed operating system and changes are not possible.  Euphony is the best-sounding operating system, in my setup.  Regardless of GPU enabled or disabled.  And Euphony sounds best with a powerful processor, which I am guessing rules out a lot of NUCs.

 

Then there is the question of whether (i) motherboards that allow the PCH to be disabled sound better - after the PCH has been disabled - than (ii) other motherboards that do not allow the PCH to be disabled.  The motherboards in clause (ii) may have other SQ advantages that more than offset.   

Have you tried Gentoo Player... worth a go 🙂

[beautiful music]

7 hours ago, lmitche said:

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I think some more detail is important. A well tuned and powered NUC can be very hard to beat.  A major reason that a NUC sounds so good is that they are based on a System-On-a Chip(SOC). NUC SOCs are designed for laptops, and are intended to be powered by batteries, and automatically switch off unused circuits to conserve power during laptop operation. An example of this is support for temperature-compensated refresh (TCR) which reduces SODIMM power utilization on some models when enabled in BIOS. Likewise the reduced distance between components within the chip reduces latency, and impedance adding to SQ.

 

Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX and ATX motherboards most often use two chips, the processor and Platform Controller Hub (PCH) that do the work of the one chip in a NUC. Some motherboards allow the disablement of the PCH and doing so greatly enhances SQ and puts these boards on, at least, an even footing with a SOC based NUC. Lastly many Intel processors for the consumer market include on board GPUs. Most AMD Ryzen and Xeon based solutions do not. The absence of a GPU is audible, and on Intel chips disablement of the GPU through software is possible as a GPU and monitor is not required for music playback. This works on NUCs as well.

 

From what I read, Emile's Taiko Audio Extreme appears to have a NUC based competitor in the Grimm audio MU1. It will be interesting to see how this competition between these two Dutch companies shakes out.

 

That's quite interesting things Larry.

 

Curious to know what is your Server+LPS configuration now and what is the specification of the more powerful Server that you compared it to your NUC server?

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, gererick said:

Presumably whether or not one can or cannot disable the GPU in the operating system depends on the operating system. 

 

For example, per Nenon, Euphony is a closed operating system and changes are not possible.  Euphony is the best-sounding operating system, in my setup.  Regardless of GPU enabled or disabled.  And Euphony sounds best with a powerful processor, which I am guessing rules out a lot of NUCs.

 

Then there is the question of whether (i) motherboards that allow the PCH to be disabled sound better - after the PCH has been disabled - than (ii) other motherboards that do not allow the PCH to be disabled.  The motherboards in clause (ii) may have other SQ advantages that more than offset.   

I would expect that the Euphony people can add GPU disablement as an option.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, beautiful music said:

 

That's quite interesting things Larry.

 

Curious to know what is your Server+LPS configuration now and what is the specification of the more powerful Server that you compared it to your NUC server?

Luckily, I have several Intel and AMD server machines and many NUCs along with a truly ridiculous number and variety of linear power supplies. The number of network boxes, wifi, copper and fiber is embarrassing. All this stuff can be used in single machine or server / endpoint configurations. Roon running on a heavily modified version of Audiolinux is my daily driver.

 

My goal is not to build or own a Rolls Royce. A BWM is good enough for me.😁

 

 

[beautiful music]

4 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Luckily, I have several Intel and AMD server machines and many NUCs along with a truly ridiculous number and variety of linear power supplies. The number of network boxes, wifi, copper and fiber is embarrassing. All this stuff can be used in single machine or dual server configurations. Roon running on a heavily modified version of Audiolinux is my daily driver.

 

My goal is not to build or own a Rolls Royce. A BWM is good enough for me.😁

 

 

 

What's the best NUC did you find so far and how did you power it?

[gererick]

There probably are not a lot of instances where Euphony has added a bios option at a customer's request.

[tims]

9 hours ago, lmitche said:

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I think some more detail is important. A well tuned and powered NUC can be very hard to beat.  A major reason that a NUC sounds so good is that they are based on a System-On-a Chip(SOC). NUC SOCs are designed for laptops, and are intended to be powered by batteries, and automatically switch off unused circuits to conserve power during laptop operation. An example of this is support for temperature-compensated refresh (TCR) which reduces SODIMM power utilization on some models when enabled in BIOS. Likewise the reduced distance between components within the chip reduces latency, and impedance adding to SQ.

 

Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX and ATX motherboards most often use two chips, the processor and Platform Controller Hub (PCH) that do the work of the one chip in a NUC. Some motherboards allow the disablement of the PCH and doing so greatly enhances SQ and puts these boards on, at least, an even footing with a SOC based NUC. Lastly many Intel processors for the consumer market include on board GPUs. Most AMD Ryzen and Xeon based solutions do not. The absence of a GPU is audible, and on Intel chips disablement of the GPU through software is possible as a GPU and monitor is not required for music playback. This works on NUCs as well.

 

From what I read, Emile's Taiko Audio Extreme appears to have a NUC based competitor in the Grimm audio MU1. It will be interesting to see how this competition between these two Dutch companies shakes out.

HI @lmitche - OT, but you mention laptops in yout post; any thoughts on how to improve a bog standard laptop for audio use (other than software i.e. fidelizer). 

What about replacing the laptop's switched PS with a linear supply? Will this improve anything?

[lmitche]

5 minutes ago, beautiful music said:

 

What's the best NUC did you find so far and how did you power it?

I prefer the i7 NUCs based on the NUC7i7DNB boards. The design is a couple years old now. The newer NUC lines are a bit of a mess at the moment and I have no experience with them. There are no obvious substitutes for the older product line.

 

IME a PH SR4 is one of the best LPSes for a NUC I7.

[lmitche]

25 minutes ago, tims said:

HI @lmitche - OT, but you mention laptops in yout post; any thoughts on how to improve a bog standard laptop for audio use (other than software i.e. fidelizer). 

What about replacing the laptop's switched PS with a linear supply? Will this improve anything?

This is indeed OT, so quickly, a well tuned OS and good lps will probably greatly improve the SQ of a laptop.

[lmitche]

34 minutes ago, gererick said:

There probably are not a lot of instances where Euphony has added a bios option at a customer's request.

Euphony has added many features that came from ideas first discussed in these pages.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 hours ago, lmitche said:

4 hours ago, tims said:

HI @lmitche - OT, but you mention laptops in yout post; any thoughts on how to improve a bog standard laptop for audio use (other than software i.e. fidelizer). 

What about replacing the laptop's switched PS with a linear supply? Will this improve anything?

This is indeed OT, so quickly, a well tuned OS and good lps will probably greatly improve the SQ of a laptop.

 

I could be missing something but, just unplug the AC adapter and run from battery. A separate docking station with extra battery IIRC might be also possible

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I could be missing something but, just unplug the AC adapter and run from battery. A separate docking station with extra battery IIRC might be also possible

 

A previous, HP, laptop gave the best sound, I found, when the battery was partially discharged, and the adapter was plugged in and running with a decent output current, recharging that battery.

 

My take on what was going on, is that the battery alone didn't have the stability, and current drive to run the circuitry with as little noise as possible - next, if the adapter was plugged in, and the battery was sitting at 100%, the adapter was merely ticking over, delivering only a light current; its internal circuitry wasn't geared to deliver low noise in this situation - the final option was to make sure the adapter was working hard, topping up the supply, and the battery then acts as an effective smoothing capacitance. Anyway, this is what worked on that particular machine - YMMV.

[Gavin1977]

Question - I definately prefer faster processors.  But what would likely sound better... a 9700T or underclocking its faster unlocked counterpart 9700k to within the same power envelope? 

 

T vs K...

[Nenon]

EDIT: I was asked in a private message and posted here by accident. Here is the question:

Quote

 If I want to put together a build with a full size ATX motherboard but only 1 processor (I want 3 PCI slots for USB, network and optane storage) and I wasn't rulling HQPlayer, what motherboard and CPU would you recommend?  I think I would like to get all my music inside the box instead of having it on a NAS and my Supermicro mobo with Xeon only has 2 slots.

My answer that I mistakenly posted here can be seen below. The context is a full size ATX motherboard. 

 

This is my best ATX build so far: 

  On 4/15/2020 at 1:56 AM, Nenon said:

 

My new build is:

- ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero full size ATX motherboard 

- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU

- Apacer ECC RAM

- Upgraded motherboard clock with PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock

- The new JCAT XE USB card

- JCAT NET Femto card

- PinkFaun I2S Bridge with ultraOCXO clock

- Optane card for the OS

- HDPlex H5 Case

- HDPlex 800W DC to DC ATX Convertor

- Gaia feet

- Mundorf Silver Gold DC wire all around

- Euphony OS

 

 

I made that carbon fiber plate with two connectors that I quite like. One connector goes to the CPU / EPS and the other to the HDPlex.

 

On the other side I just drilled a hole on the plate and installed a connector to power the OCXO clock. I will be adding a grounding post this weekend as well. 

 

And of course vibration isolation with Gaia feet:

 

 

There were three big questions I wanted to answer with this build.

 

I will be honest with you and tell you upfront that I did not spend enough time to apply the typical systematic approach of testing. Here is why - I am doing this as a hobby and when I hear that something I did convincingly sounds better, I am not interested to go back and forth and study how much better it sounds. I wish I spent a little more time with each small change, but I had too many thing going on. 

 

Let's start with the motherboard. Does it sound better than the mini-ITX motherboard? Yes, it does. But I don't think we should make the conclusion that every full size ATX motherboard sounds better than its mini-ITX sibling. That's not true, and I have seen the opposite. But this particular ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero sounds a little better than the ASUS ROG Strix X470-I Gaming mini-ITX motherboard. Not much better, just a little. 

 

After adding the PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock, this motherboard sounded much better than the mini-ITX model. Not all OCXO clock upgrades are up to my taste. They all seem to help with details, but some of them make the sound too sterile, too clinical, even lean in some cases. That's kind of what I expected by replacing this motherboard clock. But my expectations were wrong, and I was pleasantly surprised. The effect was quite different than what I thought. The first thing I noticed was a lot of air between the instruments. There was also more layers, more depth, and the bass became tighter and more real. It was immediately noticeable, but after a week I decided to go back to the stock motherboard clock just to double check. I did not listen for long with the stock clock. It was all confirmed immediately and I switched back to the ultraOCXO clock. Another thing I noticed was that the PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock improved a lot the USB output of the motherboard. Especially the USB ports that are connected to the chipset sounded a lot better with the clock. I think for the first time I actually preferred the USB ports that go through the chipset than the ones that don't. But ultimately I preferred the new JCAT USB XE card. More on that later. One little detail - this clock requires really good and clean power. The cleaner, the better. And good DC wires. My Mundorf silver/gold DC cables came to rescue again. 

 

Having said all that, it's hard for me to answer the second question. 

I don't know. It's a different motherboard with ultraOCXO clock. It definitely sounds better, but how much of that has to do with the fact that I did not have to use a PCIe extension cable, and how much was due to the different hardware? I have no idea. 

 

I was also wondering how the passive cooling on the HDPlex H5 chassis compares with the Streacom. I was thinking to install two identical motherboards and run some tests to see how efficient in heat dissipation each case was. Well, I will leave that test to someone else. A lot of IT youtubers out there do those experiments. I just don't have the time. 

But I think it's obvious that the HDPlex H5 passive cooling is much better. Streacom on the left, HDPlex on the right:

 

Streacom has 4 copper pipes. HDPlex has 8 copper pipes. Streacom has a tiny aluminum mounting plate. HDPlex has a massive copper piece with a big aluminum heatsink going on top. Streacom's pipes are flattened and they lose performance this way. HDPlex are not and go inside groves in the heatsink. And the HDPlex heatsinks on the chassis are bigger, at least compared to the Streacom FC9. Plus the HDPlex supports full size ATX motherboard with vertical PCIe cards and no risers.

The only things I hate about the HDPlex is that you need to remove the entire backplate to install PCIe cards. Maybe it's convenient for one card, but try doing 4 PCIe cards at the same time when you also have 3 DC connectors with soldered wires on the plate... not fun! But some people think that's the best thing about this case. I won't repeat the conversation that happened previously in this thread regarding that. Between the two cases, my preference is the HDPlex case now, but that's mainly because of the full size ATX support. The HDPlex has thinner bottom and top covers - that's not good for vibration treatment. 

 

Okay, what's next? JCAT USB XE Card. It's really good and keeps getting better and better over time. I really like it, and it's an easy recommendation. I can't tell how it compares with the PinkFaun USB bridge with ultraOCXO clock, but (besides the PF) I can tell you that it's better than any other USB card I have tried. It would be interesting to do an A/B comparison between the PinkFaun with ultraOCXO and the JCAT card.  

 

Let me touch on CPU choices a little bit. Emile from Taiko has done an extensive research on CPUs and shared some of his results on another forum. My understanding is that he has tried pretty much every CPU he thought might have a chance no matter the price. And interestingly enough he did not like the sound coming out of the AMD CPUs he tried. Romaz also built a computer with an AMD Ryzen 9 that has 105W TDP in a Streacom FC9 chassis. I don't think the Streacom chassis is up to the task to cool down a 105W TDP CPU. At that point you need to start reducing the voltage / speed on the CPU just to keep it cool enough. That in my opinion diminishes the sound quality. And even when my chassis get somewhat hot, I can hear degraded sound. The HDPlex is a better choice, but as far as AMD CPUs go I don't think we can go higher that the 65W TDP of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU I am using. 

 

Emile is a genius. We all know that. And it seems like he has resources we can only dream about. But I feel like it's difficult to compare CPUs and have a definitive conclusion about the sound of each CPU. Is it possible that the same CPU sounds very different in his system with his power supply and his choice of motherboard with his tweaked operating system than it sounds in my system with my power supply and my choice of motherboard and completely different operating system? I think the answer to that question is yes. Not only it is very possible, but it's also very likely. I really like the way this new server turned out. It's better than my previous AMD build, which I quite liked. It might be better them my previous Intel builds. It certainly sounds different and probably different people would have different preferences. 

But regardless of that, Emile's test sharing is very useful. Ultimately, there is only one way to find out, so here it is:

 

This is the ASUS WS C621E Sage Extreme motherboard with two Intel XEON SILVER 4210 CPUs that the Taiko Extreme uses inside an HDPlex case. It would be interesting to complete this build and compare with my other builds. Granted, I won't have the million small tweaks Emile has put in the Extreme, but I will apply all the stuff I have learned during my builds. Not trying to reach the Extreme but just to explore another route. I have a custom order Apacer RDIMM RAM coming in several weeks. Between now and then there is a lot of challenges I need to overcome. Don't ask me how I am going to passively cool down those CPUs for example. I don't know. There is no adaptor for the fclga3647 socket in the HDPlex or Streacom kits. I will have to build my own. I have several different Dynatron coolers coming my way as well as various cooling pipes and a pipe bending tool. Ideally, the CPU that is closer to the front of the chassis would be cooled by the left heatsink and the second CPU would be cooled by the right heatsink. That would be a heck of a project. 

Read more  

 

I think that the choice of motherboard/CPU @StreamFidelity has picked for his latest build is also good if you want to go with a consumer Intel CPU.

 

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

[dminches]

45 minutes ago, Nenon said:

This is my best build so far:

 

 

I think that the choice of motherboard/CPU StreamFidelity has picked for his latest build is also good if you want to go with consumer Intel CPUs.

 

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

 

Can you post the Apacer part number for the RAM you used?

 

[LTG2010]

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.

[Cooler]

On 2/15/2020 at 7:45 AM, vhs said:

Lan Cable (Roon Server to Uptone eR): Supra Cat8 (13m) w/Telegartner Cat8.1 RJ45

Hi @vhs, Im curious, why you decided to use supra cable (i know its very good ethernet cable), but 13 meters!, instead of optic fiber, especially when you have eR?

[Gavin1977]

NUC's allow you to directly set a maximum current limit for the processor in amps in the UEFI BIOS (under the performance screen).   Being able to set max current is really useful, as it means you can easily define performance around the capabilities of your linear power supply, and not risk damage to it.

 

Looking at the ASUS Z390-I ROG Strix Gaming manual, I can't see any reference to this feature.

 

Do any of the motherboards being examined here support this functionality?

[Gavin1977]

@Nenon  What Happens ot sound quality if you disable one of the processors?  Just interested in the dual vs single processor argument.

 

Would also be interested in how the number of operational cores also affect sound 4 vs 10 vs 20?

[RickyV]

17 hours ago, Nenon said:

EDIT: I was asked in a private message and posted here by accident. Here is the question:

My answer that I mistakenly posted here can be seen below. The context is a full size ATX motherboard. 

 

This is my best ATX build so far: 

  On 4/15/2020 at 1:56 AM, Nenon said:

 

My new build is:

- ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero full size ATX motherboard 

- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU

- Apacer ECC RAM

- Upgraded motherboard clock with PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock

- The new JCAT XE USB card

- JCAT NET Femto card

- PinkFaun I2S Bridge with ultraOCXO clock

- Optane card for the OS

- HDPlex H5 Case

- HDPlex 800W DC to DC ATX Convertor

- Gaia feet

- Mundorf Silver Gold DC wire all around

- Euphony OS

 

 

I made that carbon fiber plate with two connectors that I quite like. One connector goes to the CPU / EPS and the other to the HDPlex.

 

On the other side I just drilled a hole on the plate and installed a connector to power the OCXO clock. I will be adding a grounding post this weekend as well. 

 

And of course vibration isolation with Gaia feet:

 

 

There were three big questions I wanted to answer with this build.

 

I will be honest with you and tell you upfront that I did not spend enough time to apply the typical systematic approach of testing. Here is why - I am doing this as a hobby and when I hear that something I did convincingly sounds better, I am not interested to go back and forth and study how much better it sounds. I wish I spent a little more time with each small change, but I had too many thing going on. 

 

Let's start with the motherboard. Does it sound better than the mini-ITX motherboard? Yes, it does. But I don't think we should make the conclusion that every full size ATX motherboard sounds better than its mini-ITX sibling. That's not true, and I have seen the opposite. But this particular ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero sounds a little better than the ASUS ROG Strix X470-I Gaming mini-ITX motherboard. Not much better, just a little. 

 

After adding the PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock, this motherboard sounded much better than the mini-ITX model. Not all OCXO clock upgrades are up to my taste. They all seem to help with details, but some of them make the sound too sterile, too clinical, even lean in some cases. That's kind of what I expected by replacing this motherboard clock. But my expectations were wrong, and I was pleasantly surprised. The effect was quite different than what I thought. The first thing I noticed was a lot of air between the instruments. There was also more layers, more depth, and the bass became tighter and more real. It was immediately noticeable, but after a week I decided to go back to the stock motherboard clock just to double check. I did not listen for long with the stock clock. It was all confirmed immediately and I switched back to the ultraOCXO clock. Another thing I noticed was that the PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock improved a lot the USB output of the motherboard. Especially the USB ports that are connected to the chipset sounded a lot better with the clock. I think for the first time I actually preferred the USB ports that go through the chipset than the ones that don't. But ultimately I preferred the new JCAT USB XE card. More on that later. One little detail - this clock requires really good and clean power. The cleaner, the better. And good DC wires. My Mundorf silver/gold DC cables came to rescue again. 

 

Having said all that, it's hard for me to answer the second question. 

I don't know. It's a different motherboard with ultraOCXO clock. It definitely sounds better, but how much of that has to do with the fact that I did not have to use a PCIe extension cable, and how much was due to the different hardware? I have no idea. 

 

I was also wondering how the passive cooling on the HDPlex H5 chassis compares with the Streacom. I was thinking to install two identical motherboards and run some tests to see how efficient in heat dissipation each case was. Well, I will leave that test to someone else. A lot of IT youtubers out there do those experiments. I just don't have the time. 

But I think it's obvious that the HDPlex H5 passive cooling is much better. Streacom on the left, HDPlex on the right:

 

Streacom has 4 copper pipes. HDPlex has 8 copper pipes. Streacom has a tiny aluminum mounting plate. HDPlex has a massive copper piece with a big aluminum heatsink going on top. Streacom's pipes are flattened and they lose performance this way. HDPlex are not and go inside groves in the heatsink. And the HDPlex heatsinks on the chassis are bigger, at least compared to the Streacom FC9. Plus the HDPlex supports full size ATX motherboard with vertical PCIe cards and no risers.

The only things I hate about the HDPlex is that you need to remove the entire backplate to install PCIe cards. Maybe it's convenient for one card, but try doing 4 PCIe cards at the same time when you also have 3 DC connectors with soldered wires on the plate... not fun! But some people think that's the best thing about this case. I won't repeat the conversation that happened previously in this thread regarding that. Between the two cases, my preference is the HDPlex case now, but that's mainly because of the full size ATX support. The HDPlex has thinner bottom and top covers - that's not good for vibration treatment. 

 

Okay, what's next? JCAT USB XE Card. It's really good and keeps getting better and better over time. I really like it, and it's an easy recommendation. I can't tell how it compares with the PinkFaun USB bridge with ultraOCXO clock, but (besides the PF) I can tell you that it's better than any other USB card I have tried. It would be interesting to do an A/B comparison between the PinkFaun with ultraOCXO and the JCAT card.  

 

Let me touch on CPU choices a little bit. Emile from Taiko has done an extensive research on CPUs and shared some of his results on another forum. My understanding is that he has tried pretty much every CPU he thought might have a chance no matter the price. And interestingly enough he did not like the sound coming out of the AMD CPUs he tried. Romaz also built a computer with an AMD Ryzen 9 that has 105W TDP in a Streacom FC9 chassis. I don't think the Streacom chassis is up to the task to cool down a 105W TDP CPU. At that point you need to start reducing the voltage / speed on the CPU just to keep it cool enough. That in my opinion diminishes the sound quality. And even when my chassis get somewhat hot, I can hear degraded sound. The HDPlex is a better choice, but as far as AMD CPUs go I don't think we can go higher that the 65W TDP of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU I am using. 

 

Emile is a genius. We all know that. And it seems like he has resources we can only dream about. But I feel like it's difficult to compare CPUs and have a definitive conclusion about the sound of each CPU. Is it possible that the same CPU sounds very different in his system with his power supply and his choice of motherboard with his tweaked operating system than it sounds in my system with my power supply and my choice of motherboard and completely different operating system? I think the answer to that question is yes. Not only it is very possible, but it's also very likely. I really like the way this new server turned out. It's better than my previous AMD build, which I quite liked. It might be better them my previous Intel builds. It certainly sounds different and probably different people would have different preferences. 

But regardless of that, Emile's test sharing is very useful. Ultimately, there is only one way to find out, so here it is:

 

This is the ASUS WS C621E Sage Extreme motherboard with two Intel XEON SILVER 4210 CPUs that the Taiko Extreme uses inside an HDPlex case. It would be interesting to complete this build and compare with my other builds. Granted, I won't have the million small tweaks Emile has put in the Extreme, but I will apply all the stuff I have learned during my builds. Not trying to reach the Extreme but just to explore another route. I have a custom order Apacer RDIMM RAM coming in several weeks. Between now and then there is a lot of challenges I need to overcome. Don't ask me how I am going to passively cool down those CPUs for example. I don't know. There is no adaptor for the fclga3647 socket in the HDPlex or Streacom kits. I will have to build my own. I have several different Dynatron coolers coming my way as well as various cooling pipes and a pipe bending tool. Ideally, the CPU that is closer to the front of the chassis would be cooled by the left heatsink and the second CPU would be cooled by the right heatsink. That would be a heck of a project. 

Read more  

 

I think that the choice of motherboard/CPU @StreamFidelity has picked for his latest build is also good if you want to go with a consumer Intel CPU.

 

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

 

What about or has anyone used the i7-7700K CPU which according to taiko was a very good sounding CPU but they stopped with it because intel discontinued it. But I think you can still buy it.

[Nenon]

9 hours ago, RickyV said:

 

What about or has anyone used the i7-7700K CPU which according to taiko was a very good sounding CPU but they stopped with it because intel discontinued it. But I think you can still buy it.

 

I have learned to check everything that comes from this company about music servers. It's probably worth trying. But I am aiming higher with the dual Xeons now. 

[Nenon]

On 4/17/2020 at 6:09 PM, beautiful music said:

@Nenon I would like to know what's the power requirements for your new double Xeon Processor build?

 

A lot. Enabling the low latency BIOS profile and thinking that I can power with some of my regular commercial power supplies resulted in this

 

But hey, this is a part of the DIY process. I share success stories only, so why not reveal some challenges too. Luckily, I discovered the issue and have a solution. But it would take time!

Did I say there would be a lot of challenges with this build? I mean it :). But that's part of the fun. 

 

On 4/21/2020 at 3:02 PM, LTG2010 said:

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

 

10 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

What Happens ot sound quality if you disable one of the processors?  Just interested in the dual vs single processor argument.

 

Well, to be honest I am not very interested in that but I may try to have a quick listen with one CPU vs. two CPUs to get an idea before I get too far with the build. For one CPU there are probably other good motherboards that would work fine. 

[Ryelands]

With apologies for wandering off-topic, my approach to building a music server is rather different to Nenon's, relying as it does on elderly socket 1155 motherboards with slowish CPUs running a heavily slimmed-down Win-XP build with noise-suppressing cable geometries to power HDDs, the usual fancy PSUs and so on.

 

I am - emphatically - not suggesting that my system is better (or worse . . .) than others, let alone of much interest here but back in January my curiosity was picqued by Nenon's endorsement of Apacer RAM. Several years ago, I and other members of the Audio Asylum PC forum experimented with the effect of different RAM specs on a music server's sound quality. As I recall, we pretty much agreed that, give or take, the lower the latency, the better.

 

As socket 1155 boards use DDR3 RAM, not DDR4, it was a bit of a stretch to assume that Apacer would be better than "stock" in my setup but, as I could e-buy two 2MB sticks for about £12, why not just try them?

 

Today, as last, I did. I should explain that my 'server' connects to a Fit-PC2 'endpoint' via a 20-metre FOC, several modified LAN switches, DIY'd LAN cables that knock spots off such audio-grade bespoke designs as I've tried and other gizmos.

 

Whatever, the effect of switching the server RAM to Apacer on the system's SQ was dramatic - greatly improved clarity, a much more musical tone and so on.

 

I have no idea why but Apacer RAM definitely cuts mustard here: I'm delighted to say thanks for the tip.

 

Dave

[Downtheline]

On 2/5/2020 at 8:45 PM, Nenon said:

 

Thank you. That makes sense, because these are also the two steel enforced PCIe slots.

In that case, the plan is:

- PinkFaun Bridge in PCIEX16/X8_1

- JCAT Net Femto in PCIEX8/X4_2

- Optane in M.2_1.

- Leave M.2_2 unused.

 

Actually I need to check how M.2_1 connects. Hopefully not through the chipset. I may end up using M.2_2 instead. 

 

How does optane work on this motherboard? Still low latency for os?

[Nenon]

21 minutes ago, Downtheline said:

 

How does optane work on this motherboard? Still low latency for os?

 

It works as a regular NVME storage for the OS. The OS loads to RAM on boot. So there is very little / almost no I/O after the OS is loaded. The common believe why this particular Optane card sounds so good is because it consumes very little power while idle... and most likely that generates less noise.