Building a DIY Music Server

[baconbrain]

Fyi, attached are the recently released Taiko Audio Product Summaries for those interested ….

 

TACDA & TACDD DAC & Interface Summary_v15.pdf

 

Taiko BPS Summary_v3.pdf

 

Taiko Network Card & Switch Summary_v18.pdf

 

Taiko Router Summary_v7.pdf

[Gavin1977]

Update on the choke group buy - manufacturer is still awaiting prices for some components.  Will provide another update next week.

 

Thanks

[BCRich]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know the spacing of the Mounting Hole’s on the Taiko Rectifier? A cut sheet maybe.

Thanks….Mike

[baconbrain]

16 hours ago, BCRich said:

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know the spacing of the Mounting Hole’s on the Taiko Rectifier? A cut sheet maybe.

Thanks….Mike

 

Mike, you can reach out to Taiko directly under the address [email protected]

 

My guess would be that they can provide you with the info and are normally pretty quick in responding.

[BCRich]

 

1 hour ago, baconbrain said:

 

Mike, you can reach out to Taiko directly under the address [email protected]

 

My guess would be that they can provide you with the info and are normally pretty quick in responding.

Thanks, I managed to accomplish what I needed to do.

[baconbrain]

I posted a question to Taiko the other day regarding the timelines for the availability of their USB Card to non-Extreme owners. Here the response:

 

The USB card availability for DIY hinges on other new product releases from our side. Please note we cannot make our USB drivers available for DIY for multiple reasons, but we will make our TACDA / TACDD drivers available.

 

 

[JackJohnson316]

I have some questions about ram. Since I run my OS (Euphony Stylus) on ramroot, and my music is played from ramroot, I'm wondering if tinkering with my ram will make a sound quality improvement? I currently use Apacer industrial ECC ram. 

 

-Do ram coolers heat sink products make a difference? (heat, vibrations, etc)

 

-Does adjusting the ram speed make a difference? (is faster, slower, or matching the cpu speed better?)

 

-Does adjusting the ram voltage make a difference? (better lower or higher voltages?)

 

-Do I need to fill all of my ram slots in my motherboard for optimal playback? I currently have two of the four ram slots filled.

 

Thanks

[baconbrain]

On 2/23/2023 at 6:54 PM, JackJohnson316 said:

I have some questions about ram. Since I run my OS (Euphony Stylus) on ramroot, and my music is played from ramroot, I'm wondering if tinkering with my ram will make a sound quality improvement? I currently use Apacer industrial ECC ram. 

 

-Do ram coolers heat sink products make a difference? (heat, vibrations, etc)

 

-Does adjusting the ram speed make a difference? (is faster, slower, or matching the cpu speed better?)

 

-Does adjusting the ram voltage make a difference? (better lower or higher voltages?)

 

-Do I need to fill all of my ram slots in my motherboard for optimal playback? I currently have two of the four ram slots filled.

 

Thanks

 

Thanks for addressing the topic. These are all very good questions and unfortunately it is an area which I have not yet really explored. Without wanting to sound like a Taiko Audio Fanboy, the following is a brief overview of their focus areas pertaining to RAM and improving SQ:

 

—————————————————————————————————

Addressing memory modules:

One of the largest disturbances on server music playback quality we found is DRAM refresh. The charge on DRAM memory cells weakens over time therefor it needs to be refreshed in pre-set time intervals. During the refresh period all memory operations halt. Memory current draw peaks during refresh, a single memory dim can easily draw 2.5A or higher during the refresh cycle. This is the main reason for DIY community feedback that fewer, or lower speed, dimms sound better, which can be true except you're seriously limiting bandwidth as you have more then just a single memory channel in modern high performance systems.

With the EVO we started focussing on reducing the amount of refresh intervals and refresh period time with quite significant advances in playback fidelity. For this to work you need a higher then average selection of memory chip quality, close chip matching and keep temperatures as low as possible. For the EVO we bought virtually all available consumer level dimms and selected those in which we could get the lowest memory refresh rate / length. As it turned out quality varies from dimm to dimm, so on top of that we started cherry picking the best of the bunch.

For the Extreme we took this a few steps further, these dimms have factory pre-selected A-grade memory modules, all dimm components (memory chips, capacitors, resistors etc) are matched to within a 1% tolerance and selected for low current draw. The side effect of this is refresh rate burst current is reduced by almost 50% and operating temperatures are much lower allowing lower refresh rates. Combined with power supply filtering this allows us to use 12 memory dimms with a very high combined bandwidth at very low refresh noise levels.

 

—————————————————————————————————

 

Given the variety of RAM Modules, Mainboards, and BIOS versions we use within the DIY Community, it is probably difficult to come up some recommended setting which would be beneficial to all but I would also welcome any experiences, suggestions, or best practices from others in this area.

 

BB

 

[drjimwillie]

I have been doing my homework since I asked the question about the  Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 CARD Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card (PCIe 4.0/3.0)

from the posted FAQ, I found this chart interesting. 

I have been accumulating parts for this build for a while, and I was worried that I may not have purchased the correct motherboard.
So I dug it out of the pile 

 

it looks like I did😎

I also checked the specs to make sure that it has 48 lanes. It does.

What I find interesting is that it tells you which PC i.e. slot to use depending on which CPU you want it associated with and it tells you the limits of how many cards it will read. 
I thought this info would be good to share  

[drjimwillie]

On 2/15/2023 at 9:28 PM, di-fi said:

Good news for Intel 660p owners regarding low power consumption:

 

Intel 660P (1TB) vs. SK Hynix P31 Gold (2TB)

50GB Copy - Average Power Consumption: 2.31 vs. 2.28 Watts (equal)

Idle power consumption also seems equal with ASPM/LPM enabled. (If you know how to/can set that up). ASPM/LPM disabled doubles Intel 660p's power consumption.

 

Note: I assume the more power consumed the more heat produced. I ignore other factors in this comparison.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-660p-qlc-nvme,5719-2.html

I am wondering about peoples opinion on which M.2 to use?

 

Larry’s SK Hynix Gold P31 or the Intel 660p?

Larry, did you listen to both of them? 
 

Then it seems like the question is, does anyone know how to enable the ASPM/LPM. 
 

So I looked into it:

ASPM is active state power management 

Here is what I found, although it is on windows 11

 

[drjimwillie]

LPM is link state power management

 

 

although I am not quite sure how applicable it is because it seems to be a setting for laptops.  

 

[baconbrain]

1 hour ago, drjimwillie said:

 

 

it looks like I did😎

I also checked the specs to make sure that it has 48 lanes. It does.

What I find interesting is that it tells you which PC i.e. slot to use depending on which CPU you want it associated with and it tells you the limits of how many cards it will read. 
I thought this info would be good to share  

 

I can confirm the following for the Xeon SP CPU:

 

PCIeX16_1  4 M.2 recognized 

PCIeX16_3  2 M.2 recognized 

PCIeX16_5  4 M.2 recognized 

 

I assume that the actual number of M.2’s recognized will vary depending on what components are populating the remaining PCIe slots and their channel requirements. 

 

 

[di-fi]

21 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

Then it seems like the question is, does anyone know how to enable the ASPM/LPM. 

Hi, when I quoted a few posts ago the test results (NVMe SK Hynix Gold P31 or the Intel 660p) they happened to present those results with ASPM /LPM enabled and without (published on a site that has nothing to do with audio(phile) performance). So ASPM/LPM might have nothing to do with performance for music files. I would not worry about it.  Maybe it could give an extra edge but audible?
Bottom line; Intel 660p (and possibly the newer Hynix Gold) are liked by many here and both have extreme low power consumption and low temperatures that many are convinced is an advantage for playing audio files. That’s all I concluded from those test results, nothing about audible quality. I would trust recommendations from users on this forum.

 

intel 660p 1TB for us$48 (sold)

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/334742454563?oid=195413610772

[Gavin1977]

Anyone know what the recommended/max current rating is for the SATA connector on Taiko DC-DC?

 

Thanks

[MarcelNL]

I suggest asking Taiko, I suspect the 12V and 5V are part of the rails used in the EPS and 24 pin but it's not specified...

 

 

[Nenon]

7 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Anyone know what the recommended/max current rating is for the SATA connector on Taiko DC-DC?

 

Thanks

 

It's all at the bottom of this image:

 

You have 5A for the +5VSB, which is dedicated to the SATA and 45A for the shared +12V rail. 

[flowcharts]

A couple random notes that may or may not be helpful:

• The Samsung PM893 recommended by Antipodes is better than an 870 Evo, and it was pretty obvious.  I'm not in a place where I can ditch SATA yet, so this was a nice upgrade considering.  More natural tonality overall.
• My boot drive is a Samsung 980 Pro-- I went ahead with updating its firmware today given all the news recently, and ended up with black screens and failed boots for a while after before a full power down/ULPS discharge, and disk repair fixed it.  I guess that's a pretty good sign to start looking at the Revelation SSD more seriously.
• After the firmware mini-crisis, I took everything apart and rebuilt, giving myself an opportunity to reapply thermal paste.  Last time I really gooped up the Streacom riser & heat pipes, which made it hard to properly align, and probably caused uneven mounting pressure on the CPU.  This time around, very thin layer of Noctua NT-H1 made things much easier to align and screw down.  The CPU is running 3-4 degrees cooler now on average. 
• The next cooling experiment will be to plop a big Hifi 2000 Dissipante heat sink down on top of the Streacom riser, and make a top plate with a corresponding cutout.  Hopefully this will drop the CPU another 5-10 degrees, and ease my patience waiting for the rumored full height HDPlex case.
• While everything was apart, I applied Furutech Nano Liquid to the CPU, along with a few other connections.  This probably should've felt like the riskiest event of the day, but everything went smoothly.  It usually takes a couple days to settle, but I'm optimistic.  Of course with applications like this, do so at your own risk, ymmv, etc.

[MarcelNL]

Samsung 980 Pro firmware news? Can you tell me more?

Never knew an NVME SSD had firmware that can be upgraded to begin with.

 

[rafa]

2 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

Never knew an NVME SSD had firmware that can be upgraded to begin with.

Every SSD since the begin they started to make them years ago. And is critical to function

[Gavin1977]

Choke purchasing details now live:

 

 

[flowcharts]

@MarcelNL there were reports of supposedly fine 980 Pros with firmware 3B2QGXA7, mostly 2tb variants, dying sudden deaths/getting put into read only mode.  Iirc it primarily impacts drives manufactured around 2021.  Samsung released a firmware fix that can be updated via Samsung Magician.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/support/guides/critical-samsung-ssd-firmware-update/ 

[MarcelNL]

hmmm, need to see how I can update that one...prettu sure that Magician cannot cope with Daphile (or vise versa)

 

edit; just checked and saw that I still have an 970 evo plus, at some point I bought the 980 pro but got the 970 going again and returned the 980 pro.

 

 

[flowcharts]

If you have a spare m.2 slot in another (more standard) computer, that would be the way to go. In retrospect that's approach I should've taken. 

[MarcelNL]

43 minutes ago, flowcharts said:

If you have a spare m.2 slot in another (more standard) computer, that would be the way to go. In retrospect that's approach I should've taken. 

yeah, yet I don't have any computer with NVME slots just a bunch of laptops with regular SSD...I think I have a USB to NVME adapter lying around somewhere....problem is, after moving house the location is UNK and the next question is if that works for a firmware update. Will dig around and try...

[flowcharts]

USB won't work for a firmware update unfortunately