Building a DIY Music Server

[beautiful music]

On 6/21/2020 at 10:37 PM, Nenon said:

You are absolutely right. And the Extreme is a great value when you consider all the parts inside, the time you would save, the support you get, etc.

 

I am not so sure about this. I actually think if anything was compromised on the Extreme, it might have been the power supply. But I don't know much about the design, and it would not be fair to make any conclusions. So far I have not seen any compromises on the Extreme, and maybe if I learn more its power supply I would change my mind :). We know Emile is full of surprises!

But I can comment on what I see and if I was to do some educated guesses and speculations, here is what I think. I'll break this down in 3 parts - capacitors bank, transformer(s), and number of rails.

1. Capacitors bank.

What I see is 14 electrolytic Mundorf Mlytic AG capacitors (those are the big capacitance caps) and 3 small value film capacitors (2 Duelund and one Mundorf in a special tankwood stand). Let's focus on the electrolytics as they provide the high capacitance. Those Mundorf Mlytic AG go from 1000 uF to 47000 uF. The most commonly used values in DC LPS are 10,000 uF, 22,000 uF, 33,000 uF, and 47,000 uF. They are typically 30 mm or 35 mm in diameter. I have seen Sean Jacobs using different values in his power supply. He uses four of these per DC rail in his DC4 (and in some DC3's). I don't think he uses the largest values, and I believe this is done for a reason (not related to cost).

A perfect DIY server has 6 rails - 3 rails for the ATX, 1 rail for the EPS, 1 rail for the Network card, and 1 rail for the digital output card (i.e. USB). So, going with 6 x DC4 rails, you will end up with 24 of those Mundorf Mlytic AG capacitors. That's actually a lot more than the Extreme (14). I am not considering the value of the capacitors here. I think Sean is using 10,000 uF by default, but I also think if you need more capacitance he would be able to accommodate it. Whether the end result would be better or worse, I don't really know. I am strictly comparing the capacitance in a vacuum. 

 

2. Transformer(s)

Taiko Extreme uses one 400VA transformer. That's probably not the best transformer for the Extreme. I do believe the transformer is a weak point here.  I power up my dual Xeon server with two 400VA transformers that I believe are of better quality, but I don't want to judge by the cover. Taiko has the transformer geniously installed in a tankwood enclosure - that's brilliant! 

I also always find the transformer to reduce the sound quality when installed in the same chassis as the motherboard. But the Extreme has a thick copper panel between the two. I have tried multiple different panels - they helped but did not completely fix the problem - but I have never done such thick copper panel or the many holes on the Extreme designed to help with EMI/RFI. Let's assume Emile has nailed this down, and that has no negative impact in the Extreme. 

But what if you were to go with 6 rails of DC4? Per Sean's web site, the DC4 is limited to 3 rails: "If you require more than 3 outputs, then you will need to order multiple DC4 units". So, that means you actually need to get two DC4 power supplies for 6 rails. 

That is 2 x 600VA transformers! Again, much (3 times) more than the Extreme. You don't get the tankwood enclosure, but the DC4 has some vibration damping... probably not as sophisticated as on the Extreme though. 

 

3. Number of rails

From our past experiments, we know that the more isolated our server components are with different linear power supply rails, the better. A separate rail for the EPS makes a big difference. A separate rail for the USB makes even bigger difference. And so on. That's why my perfect build has 6 separate DC rails. That has always been better in all my tests. The problem with so many DC rails is heat dissipation. 

I have no idea what Taiko Extreme does for power supply, but I honestly see one rail only. If the Extreme was using many rails with linear regulators, I would expect to see those regulators exposed to the heatsink with adequate space between them, to provide proper cooling as they need to dissipate quite some heat. I don't see anything like that there. If I was to speculate big time, the Extreme is using one rail and the everything is handled by switching mode regulators. Again, Emile is full of surprises, so is it possible that he has discovered something that works better than multiple rails of LPS? Why not... I would not be surprised at all. 

 

All I wanted to say is that although that bank of capacitors looks very impressive, there are DIY options than can give you much more capacitance. But the important part here is the end result. Taiko Extreme has set a new bar and our DIY experiments are not even close at that point. We all need to get back to work :). 

 

Thank you @Nenon for highlighting some points of the difference between Sean Custom PSU and Extreme internal PSU.

 

I would like to add also that the regulators playing some roles in the performance of PSU, when i took a look to to SR7DR or SR7T i figure out that Paul didn't use a fancy Capacitors like Mundorf in his PSU so eventually his regulators played the biggest effect in his PSU.

 

I think Roy or Rajiv talked about Paul methodology when he is designing his PSU but i'm not sure where is the link. 

[beautiful music]

Here is article from Paul about the importance of PSU which i found it useful:

 

 

[OAudio]

On 6/21/2020 at 8:37 PM, Nenon said:

You are absolutely right. And the Extreme is a great value when you consider all the parts inside, the time you would save, the support you get, etc.

 

I am not so sure about this. I actually think if anything was compromised on the Extreme, it might have been the power supply. But I don't know much about the design, and it would not be fair to make any conclusions. So far I have not seen any compromises on the Extreme, and maybe if I learn more its power supply I would change my mind :). We know Emile is full of surprises!

But I can comment on what I see and if I was to do some educated guesses and speculations, here is what I think. I'll break this down in 3 parts - capacitors bank, transformer(s), and number of rails.

1. Capacitors bank.

What I see is 14 electrolytic Mundorf Mlytic AG capacitors (those are the big capacitance caps) and 3 small value film capacitors (2 Duelund and one Mundorf in a special tankwood stand). Let's focus on the electrolytics as they provide the high capacitance. Those Mundorf Mlytic AG go from 1000 uF to 47000 uF. The most commonly used values in DC LPS are 10,000 uF, 22,000 uF, 33,000 uF, and 47,000 uF. They are typically 30 mm or 35 mm in diameter. I have seen Sean Jacobs using different values in his power supply. He uses four of these per DC rail in his DC4 (and in some DC3's). I don't think he uses the largest values, and I believe this is done for a reason (not related to cost).

A perfect DIY server has 6 rails - 3 rails for the ATX, 1 rail for the EPS, 1 rail for the Network card, and 1 rail for the digital output card (i.e. USB). So, going with 6 x DC4 rails, you will end up with 24 of those Mundorf Mlytic AG capacitors. That's actually a lot more than the Extreme (14). I am not considering the value of the capacitors here. I think Sean is using 10,000 uF by default, but I also think if you need more capacitance he would be able to accommodate it. Whether the end result would be better or worse, I don't really know. I am strictly comparing the capacitance in a vacuum. 

 

2. Transformer(s)

Taiko Extreme uses one 400VA transformer. That's probably not the best transformer for the Extreme. I do believe the transformer is a weak point here.  I power up my dual Xeon server with two 400VA transformers that I believe are of better quality, but I don't want to judge by the cover. Taiko has the transformer geniously installed in a tankwood enclosure - that's brilliant! 

I also always find the transformer to reduce the sound quality when installed in the same chassis as the motherboard. But the Extreme has a thick copper panel between the two. I have tried multiple different panels - they helped but did not completely fix the problem - but I have never done such thick copper panel or the many holes on the Extreme designed to help with EMI/RFI. Let's assume Emile has nailed this down, and that has no negative impact in the Extreme. 

But what if you were to go with 6 rails of DC4? Per Sean's web site, the DC4 is limited to 3 rails: "If you require more than 3 outputs, then you will need to order multiple DC4 units". So, that means you actually need to get two DC4 power supplies for 6 rails. 

That is 2 x 600VA transformers! Again, much (3 times) more than the Extreme. You don't get the tankwood enclosure, but the DC4 has some vibration damping... probably not as sophisticated as on the Extreme though. 

 

3. Number of rails

From our past experiments, we know that the more isolated our server components are with different linear power supply rails, the better. A separate rail for the EPS makes a big difference. A separate rail for the USB makes even bigger difference. And so on. That's why my perfect build has 6 separate DC rails. That has always been better in all my tests. The problem with so many DC rails is heat dissipation. 

I have no idea what Taiko Extreme does for power supply, but I honestly see one rail only. If the Extreme was using many rails with linear regulators, I would expect to see those regulators exposed to the heatsink with adequate space between them, to provide proper cooling as they need to dissipate quite some heat. I don't see anything like that there. If I was to speculate big time, the Extreme is using one rail and the everything is handled by switching mode regulators. Again, Emile is full of surprises, so is it possible that he has discovered something that works better than multiple rails of LPS? Why not... I would not be surprised at all. 

 

All I wanted to say is that although that bank of capacitors looks very impressive, there are DIY options than can give you much more capacitance. But the important part here is the end result. Taiko Extreme has set a new bar and our DIY experiments are not even close at that point. We all need to get back to work :). 

@Nenon

 

A few thoughts, its possible you may be looking at something a little different then you are expecting.

 

Caps.

 

The M-Lytics will be 47k uf. The server is described elsewhere as having approximately 0.7f in total. Maths says approx 47k uf per cap give or take. They can be difficult caps to apply in such large size for servers, personally I have found they slow musical response and its difficult to keep life and air in the music using them. Credit and respect to Taiko if they have found a way to apply them without these issues. 

 

Looking at the thermal design and power supply.  Whilst the case has heatsinks that are proberbly ~ 0.5k/w dissipation on each side, there is no dissipation acessable directly from the power section of the design. It may be that heat conduction is through the base of the case to the heat sinks but this may not be not very efficient. If the at least the main rails were powered  by multiple linear supplies dissipated heat would be 40 to 60 watts + or - from linear supplies. It' clear the CPUs are well catered for by the side finned heat sink but looking at the thermal approach my money is not on linear supplies. Based on the thermal packaging and layout of the visible supply elements, I would go out on a limb and guess that there could be buck convertors under the caps, even a DC ATX - which SGM servers have used previously. If you know how to modify them well and apply them optimally their sound quality can be much better than people generally realise so I would not regard this as a limitation if they are used.

 

Transformer.

 

If the thermals do point at bucks for the main high power rails then 400va would be a good size for the power requirements of the server. The choice would be helped by the CLC input filter which will increase the power factor of the supply easing the life of the transformer. I find the sweet spot for server transformer sizing a VA of 2 to 3.5 times the stable VA total draw of the server (consumed + disipated power). Go large and sound becomes slow and stolid.

 

Multiple transformers need careful thought and design if the key aim is to maximise sound quality. The issue is that the power factors of linear regulators that supply key server rails tend to be  low leading to high peak currents in transformer secondaries, particularly when using very large capacitances. Where dual transformers are used it can lead to each transformer having a different distortion caracteristics under their respective low power factor loadings which in turn can apear as differential noise between the rails which are supplied by the different transformers. It took a long time and a lot of work to pin this down. An example sound quality impact might be if you have ever been suprised that you get a better sound powering say a clock from the servers main trafo rather than its own dedicated "clean" transformer, there could be many possible causes but look carfully in this direction first. 

 

OAudio.

 

 

[novaca]

On 9. 6. 2020 at 18:29, Nenon said:

Když už mluvíme o společnosti Apacer, ukončili výrobu nových modelů RAM, které používaly čipy Samsung s frekvencí 2666 MHz, protože Samsung přestal vyrábět některé součásti. To je docela nešťastné, protože to byla nejlepší znějící paměť. Zde je seznam starších modelů Apaceru (stále využívajících špičkovou paměť RAM Samsung a stále širokou škálu teplot, ale 2400 MHz):

ECC DDR4 DIMM 4GB: 75.B93GZ.G000B (doporučeno pro většinu sestavení serverů)

ECC DDR4 DIMM 8GB: 75.CA4GZ.G000B

 

 

In the current situation you would choose 2x 75.B93GZ.G000B or 1x (or 2x) D31.23245S.001 (which should be 8GB variant of D31.23185S.001)
Thanks

[RickyV]

On 6/14/2020 at 5:26 PM, RickyV said:

Sorry moving this over to Nenon’s DIY server thread I thought I was in.

 

I narrowed the experiments down to two. One SJ will go inside my nuc case now I know it will fit in there.

So the experiment will be with what that regulator will be fed.

1 raw unregulated DC but with CRC capacitor filter like @elan120 has done.

2 the same as point 1 plus an other SJ regulator.

These components will be in an external case.

 

I have ask Sean about dual regulation and he told me that one module already has a coupled dual regulating devices. He also said that there is still some quality to be gained by using two modules. We will see what that brings.

I have enough AC in my transformer to give each regulator 5v of voltage drop.

Also bought 2m of 1mm mundorf silver and gold wire to connect everything 👍.

 

I did some comparisons between my new Sean Jacobs DC3 regulator and my dual Newclassd regulators. For this comparison I made a test setup so I could easily switch between the two regulators keeping everything else the same. So after only some 30 hours of burn in/ listening time of the dc3 I switched back to the Ncd’s. And in my opinion the Ncd’s are a little less refined as the SJ. The SJ seem to be more musical, have a little better stability a little better resolution and a little better balanced sound. I inserted “a little” everywhere to emphasize that it is only a little but it is a noticeable difference and all those differences make the DC3 for me the better regulator.

 

 Next will be to build the DC3 into my NUC case and use the internal power connection again, with the use of the mundorf wire.

 

[internethandle]

@Nenon have you ever attempted something like this motherboard memory power bypass that was discussed some time ago in the Irish Tir Na Hifi forum? They were using LT3045 regs back then and PHD supplies etc. to directly power the RAM sticks. Something I haven't seen done before or since.

 

Here's the thread:

 

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3267&start=90

 

Some pics from the above page:

 

 

[Ben-M]

13 hours ago, internethandle said:

@Nenon have you ever attempted something like this motherboard memory power bypass that was discussed some time ago in the Irish Tir Na Hifi forum? They were using LT3045 regs back then and PHD supplies etc. to directly power the RAM sticks. Something I haven't seen done before or since.

 

Here's the thread:

 

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3267&start=90

 

Some pics from the above page:

 

 

Not that the method is the same, but separately and directly powering the ram was a top flight modder's mod back 4-5 years ago on the JPlay forums. Everyone who did it said it was a critical mod, but I never saw it catch on with any "commercial" music PC offerings and it seems to have drifted out of the limelight now. 

 

I always thought it was an interesting sounding mod. 

 

[/edit]

I followed the link, Sligolad, Nige2000, and some others. Those are all the same guys that were blazing that trail on the JPlay forums before. Even if back in 2018, nice to see they're still using the Teradak Linear ATX power supplies from the group buy we were all in 2014/2015. 

[Nenon]

17 hours ago, internethandle said:

@Nenon have you ever attempted something like this motherboard memory power bypass that was discussed some time ago in the Irish Tir Na Hifi forum? They were using LT3045 regs back then and PHD supplies etc. to directly power the RAM sticks. Something I haven't seen done before or since.

 

Here's the thread:

 

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3267&start=90

 

Some pics from the above page:

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Ben-M said:

Not that the method is the same, but separately and directly powering the ram was a top flight modder's mod back 4-5 years ago on the JPlay forums. Everyone who did it said it was a critical mod, but I never saw it catch on with any "commercial" music PC offerings and it seems to have drifted out of the limelight now. 

 

I always thought it was an interesting sounding mod. 

 

This is interesting. I thought about it at some point but never tried it. It would obviously require a careful study of the motherboard design to figure out how to cut the ATX power and how to feed the RAM with a LPS without impacting the sensor / protection triggers. 

 

This would be quite difficult / costly to do on the Asus Sage motherboard I am using now. It has a quite complicated design, and I have 12 DIMMs. Already destroyed one CPU by accidently shorting two memory pins. With a $650 motherboard price and $550 per CPU street price, a few mistakes can make this experiment quite costly. I am not willing to do that. But it's probably worth trying on a cheaper and less complicated motherboard.

 

At this stage, I think that full linear power regulation is not necessarily the best thing in the world. While a linear power supply is the most important component in the digital source, I find a mixture of linear regulators and switching regulators to sound better.

Perhaps that has nothing to do with linear vs. switching regulators but more with low powered vs. high powered processing. High power processing requires... as you can guess - more power. And it is practically impossible to provide the required Amps of low voltage (i.e. 1V let's say) fully linear regulated.

 

Imagine having to provision 100W at 1 Volt of linear regulated power to the CPU? That would be 100A of current. And let's say you are using regulators that need to drop 5V. That would be 500W of heat dissipation for your linear regulators. Passively cooling 500W of heat dissipation? Not sure what it takes to do that, but in my mind I imagine a heatsink the size of a speaker :). The good news is RAM does not require that many watts.

 

I am yet to hear a fully linear regulated computer or streamer that sounds better than some of our DIY attempts with high powered CPUs that use quite a few switching regulators. There are companies like Sonore, SOTM, etc. that try to do that, but those are in my opinion far away from what we are achieving with our DIY experiments here. But again, that's not comparing apples to apples. In fact every time I have replaced a switching mode power supply with a good linear regulated LPS, I have heard an improvement. So that experiment is definitely worth a try. 

 

Please post here if you try this. It would be nice to see a step by step guide and what the outcome was in sound quality. There are quite a few people here that can do it. 

 

[RickyV]

2 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

 

This is interesting. I thought about it at some point but never tried it. It would obviously require a careful study of the motherboard design to figure out how to cut the ATX power and how to feed the RAM with a LPS without impacting the sensor / protection triggers. 

 

This would be quite difficult / costly to do on the Asus Sage motherboard I am using now. It has a quite complicated design, and I have 12 DIMMs. Already destroyed one CPU by accidently shorting two memory pins. With a $650 motherboard price and $550 per CPU street price, a few mistakes can make this experiment quite costly. I am not willing to do that. But it's probably worth trying on a cheaper and less complicated motherboard.

 

At this stage, I think that full linear power regulation is not necessarily the best thing in the world. While a linear power supplies is the most important component in the digital source, I find a mixture of linear regulators and switching regulators to sound better.

Perhaps that has nothing to do with linear vs. switching regulators but more with low powered vs. high powered processing. High power processing requires... as you can guess - more power. And it is practically impossible to provide the required Amps of low voltage (i.e. 1V let's say) fully linear regulated.

 

Imagine having to provision 100W at 1 Volt of linear regulated power to the CPU? That would be 100A of current. And let's say you are using regulators that need to drop 5V. That would be 500W of heat dissipation for your linear regulators. Passively cooling 500W of heat dissipation? Not sure what it takes to do that, but in my mind I imagine a heatsink the size of a speaker :). The good news is RAM does not require that many watts.

 

I am yet to hear a fully linear regulated computer or streamer that sounds better than some of our DIY attempts with high powered CPUs that use quite a few switching regulators. There are companies like Sonore, SOTM, etc. that try to do that, but those are in my opinion for away from what we are achieving here. But again, that's not comparing apples to apples. In fact every time I have replaced a switching mode power supply with a good linear regulated LPS, I have heard an improvement. So that experiment is definitely worth a try. 

 

Please post here if you try this. It would be nice to see a step by step guide and what the outcome was in sound quality. There are quite a few people here that can do it. 

 

Who knows what is underneath the Extreme’s mega capacitor bank, a HDpex 800w DC-atx maybe.😀 We can see there is not much room even for the old SGM 2015 EVO regulator’s won’t fit but the Extreme has only one rail choke filtered power supply.

The only thing we can do is “linearize” the atx and the 12v cpu voltages and the motherboard has to do the rest.

[mikicasellas]

I would like to improve the quality of the power that is supplied to my server ( CPU, MOBO, JCAT XE USB, ER ), in my mind there are multiple permutations and im trying to find out where could be the sweet spot: where to put each LPS and IF it could be benefit from another one in the mix without bleeding too much $.

 

These are my actual LPSUs:

 

HDPLEX 200W

PH SR4T 19V

DXP-1A5DSC Ultra Low Noise

DXP-1A5DSC Ultra Low Noise

 

 

 My server is built as follows right now:

 

1- AMD 7 3700X processor ( powered directly from HDPLEX 200W )

2- Asus Rog Strix X470-I Mobo ( powered from HDPLEX 200W thru a HDPLEX 800 DCATX converter )
3- 8GB Apacer Industrial RAM

4- Octane M10 32 GB

5- HDPLEX H5 Fanless case

6- Ghent JSSG360 internal and external cables

7- JCAT USB XE card ( 9V from Paul Hynes SRT4-19V and then DXP 7V input and 5V output )

8- UPTONE EtherRegen ( 12V from HDPLEX and then DXP 10.5V input and 9V output )

 

 

A ) - Powering JCAT XE USB, CPU, MOBO and ER with my actual PSUs:

 

SCENARIO #1A:

HDPLEX 200W powering ER & JCAT with DXPs

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly 

PH SR4T "try" to power MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

 

SCENARIO #2A:

HDPLEX 200W powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly & MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

PH SR4T powering ER with DXPs

 

 

B ) - Powering JCAT XE USB, CPU, MOBO and ER with adding a PSU (SJ, PH, KECES to mention some):

 

SCENARIO #1B:

HDPLEX 200W or PH SR4T powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W or PH SR4T powering ER with DXPs

HDPLEX 200W powering MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

SEAN JACOBS, PAUL HYNES or else PSU with a 12V 5A output for the CPU

 

SCENARIO #2B:

PH SR4T powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W powering MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

DUAL SEAN JACOBS, PAUL HYNES or else PSU with a 12V 5A output for the CPU & ER with DXPs

 

This is so far what it comes to mind, some of you have experienced various of these combinations

 

Suggestions are welcome where to best start... it does not have to be all at once but i can start building up as my money allows until server is at its best.  I appreciate your feedback

 

Thanks and keep safe !!

 

 

[internethandle]

5 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

 

This is interesting. I thought about it at some point but never tried it. It would obviously require a careful study of the motherboard design to figure out how to cut the ATX power and how to feed the RAM with a LPS without impacting the sensor / protection triggers. 

 

This would be quite difficult / costly to do on the Asus Sage motherboard I am using now. It has a quite complicated design, and I have 12 DIMMs. Already destroyed one CPU by accidently shorting two memory pins. With a $650 motherboard price and $550 per CPU street price, a few mistakes can make this experiment quite costly. I am not willing to do that. But it's probably worth trying on a cheaper and less complicated motherboard.

 

At this stage, I think that full linear power regulation is not necessarily the best thing in the world. While a linear power supply is the most important component in the digital source, I find a mixture of linear regulators and switching regulators to sound better.

Perhaps that has nothing to do with linear vs. switching regulators but more with low powered vs. high powered processing. High power processing requires... as you can guess - more power. And it is practically impossible to provide the required Amps of low voltage (i.e. 1V let's say) fully linear regulated.

 

Imagine having to provision 100W at 1 Volt of linear regulated power to the CPU? That would be 100A of current. And let's say you are using regulators that need to drop 5V. That would be 500W of heat dissipation for your linear regulators. Passively cooling 500W of heat dissipation? Not sure what it takes to do that, but in my mind I imagine a heatsink the size of a speaker :). The good news is RAM does not require that many watts.

 

I am yet to hear a fully linear regulated computer or streamer that sounds better than some of our DIY attempts with high powered CPUs that use quite a few switching regulators. There are companies like Sonore, SOTM, etc. that try to do that, but those are in my opinion far away from what we are achieving with our DIY experiments here. But again, that's not comparing apples to apples. In fact every time I have replaced a switching mode power supply with a good linear regulated LPS, I have heard an improvement. So that experiment is definitely worth a try. 

 

Please post here if you try this. It would be nice to see a step by step guide and what the outcome was in sound quality. There are quite a few people here that can do it. 

 

 

Absolutely don't blame you for not wanting to tackle that mod with such a pricey mobo. Mobo soldering/mods in general seem sort of fraught with potential for catastrophe, especially if you don't know what you're doing, but even sometimes if you do! (I remember, in terms of those who don't know what they're doing, when Paul Pang used to send out his clock mods as a kit for customers to DIY mod a motherboard, which he stopped doing because so many people would "brick" their motherboard with improper soldering, Paul Pang's other customer service/QC issues notwithstanding). 

 

The idea that switching + linear regs in combination could sound better makes sense to me, overall, just in the sense that computer audio oftentimes does not make sense, in my experience, in terms of a strategy one would think would sound better ends up not sounding so great. That's more often true with music servers than in other areas of audiophile tinkering/tweaking, seemingly. Hence Emile's strategy of tweaking then listening incrementally, I guess.

 

The same Irish forum (Tir Na Hifi) used to have a user named Jesus Cheung who would post an enormous amount of Windows OS tweaks. Anyway, his approach with OS modification/tweaking reminds me of that same tweak then listen strategy, in the sense that if he disabled something in Windows or made a registry edit or deletion or what have you, he would "cancel" the tweak if he thought it sounded worse. It seemed like a recipe for insanity to me -- I would just advocate in the same thread for disabling/deleting as much as possible with the ethos of reducing CPU load/mobo electrical activity, sort of a la the cics Memory Player guys from back in the late 2000's over at Computer Audio Asylum (who famously somehow got Windows XP down to something like 50 to 80 MB for its ISO).

 

@Ben-M yeah nige in particular was a DIY monster -- would make up his own USB isolators and such, did a lot of tinkering with the Soerkis kits. The forum is largely dead there now but he's still periodically doing some insane SD card player modifications at the moment. They all also seem to like wtfplay. 

 

 

[Nenon]

27 minutes ago, mikicasellas said:

I would like to improve the quality of the power that is supplied to my server ( CPU, MOBO, JCAT XE USB, ER ), in my mind there are multiple permutations and im trying to find out where could be the sweet spot: where to put each LPS and IF it could be benefit from another one in the mix without bleeding too much $.

 

These are my actual LPSUs:

 

HDPLEX 200W

PH SR4T 19V

DXP-1A5DSC Ultra Low Noise

DXP-1A5DSC Ultra Low Noise

 

 

 My server is built as follows right now:

 

1- AMD 7 3700X processor ( powered directly from HDPLEX 200W )

2- Asus Rog Strix X470-I Mobo ( powered from HDPLEX 200W thru a HDPLEX 800 DCATX converter )
3- 8GB Apacer Industrial RAM

4- Octane M10 32 GB

5- HDPLEX H5 Fanless case

6- Ghent JSSG360 internal and external cables

7- JCAT USB XE card ( 9V from Paul Hynes SRT4-19V and then DXP 7V input and 5V output )

8- UPTONE EtherRegen ( 12V from HDPLEX and then DXP 10.5V input and 9V output )

 

 

A ) - Powering JCAT XE USB, CPU, MOBO and ER with my actual PSUs:

 

SCENARIO #1A:

HDPLEX 200W powering ER & JCAT with DXPs

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly 

PH SR4T "try" to power MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

 

SCENARIO #2A:

HDPLEX 200W powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly & MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

PH SR4T powering ER with DXPs

 

 

B ) - Powering JCAT XE USB, CPU, MOBO and ER with adding a PSU (SJ, PH, KECES to mention some):

 

SCENARIO #1B:

HDPLEX 200W or PH SR4T powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W or PH SR4T powering ER with DXPs

HDPLEX 200W powering MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

SEAN JACOBS, PAUL HYNES or else PSU with a 12V 5A output for the CPU

 

SCENARIO #2B:

PH SR4T powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W powering MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

DUAL SEAN JACOBS, PAUL HYNES or else PSU with a 12V 5A output for the CPU & ER with DXPs

 

This is so far what it comes to mind, some of you have experienced various of these combinations

 

Suggestions are welcome where to best start... it does not have to be all at once but i can start building up as my money allows until server is at its best.  I appreciate your feedback

 

Thanks and keep safe !!

 

 

 

I personally don't find mixing many different power supplies to give the best results. You are mixing multiple grounds from different power supplies, and that is not necessarily a good thing. The ground plane in a power supply plays a big role. You can build two power supplies from the same schematics, for example, one with neat star grounding and one where the ground goes all over the place, and typically the one with the better grounding technique would sound better. You can imagine what happens when you mix 2, 3, or even 4 different power supplies, each with its own ground.

 

Have you considered selling all of these and getting a single multi rail LPS? PHD and SJ can do that. It would be more expensive but that would be my recommendation. 

[Blackmorec]

9 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

I personally don't find mixing many different power supplies to give the best results. You are mixing multiple grounds from different power supplies, and that is not necessarily a good thing. The ground plane in a power supply plays a big role. You can build two power supplies from the same schematics, for example, one with neat star grounding and one where the ground goes all over the place, and typically the one with the better grounding technique would sound better. You can imagine what happens when you mix 2, 3, or even 4 different power supplies, each with its own ground.

 

Have you considered selling all of these and getting a single multi rail LPS? PHD and SJ can do that. It would be more expensive but that would be my recommendation. 

I couldn’t agree more! I’m not a DIY expert but I follow the DIY trends avidly and apply what I learn to optimising set-up.  Ideally you want to free up your system from the effects of noise ‘hash’ which impacts fine detail (read ambiance and the recording’s acoustic signature) spacial resolution, timbral and textural information and even timing and purity of sound (transparency).  As soon as you start mixing different power supplies, with various grounding topologies, the hash they produce is both additive and harmonic in that they’ll interact with each other  to produce yet more noise frequencies to give you a blanketing effect.  Many audiophiles use extensive grounding strategies to remove this hash, but the best way, by far is to avoid producing it in the first place. Minimising the number of different grounding strategies and ensuring a single, really good one is highly beneficial. 

[Blackmorec]

Just to be clear, my post was in reply to Mikicasellas PS questions🙂.  

Also to add one point....my post applies to both single components and entire systems 

[mikicasellas]

18 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

I personally don't find mixing many different power supplies to give the best results. You are mixing multiple grounds from different power supplies, and that is not necessarily a good thing. The ground plane in a power supply plays a big role. You can build two power supplies from the same schematics, for example, one with neat star grounding and one where the ground goes all over the place, and typically the one with the better grounding technique would sound better. You can imagine what happens when you mix 2, 3, or even 4 different power supplies, each with its own ground.

 

Have you considered selling all of these and getting a single multi rail LPS? PHD and SJ can do that. It would be more expensive but that would be my recommendation. 

 

If i keep only HDPLEX & PH SR4T by now, am i going into this type of issue ?

 

Do the DXPs contribute to this problem ?

 

Thanks

[Gavin1977]

@Nenon For your dual CPU Asus c621 build, how is it's HQPlayer performance? Can you run Sinc-M, or Sinc-L at DSD512, with some of the more demanding modulators like ASDM7EC?

[Nenon]

3 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

@Nenon For your dual CPU Asus c621 build, how is it's HQPlayer performance? Can you run Sinc-M, or Sinc-L at DSD512, with some of the more demanding modulators like ASDM7EC?

 

I don't know as I don't upsample. Those CPUs don't have super high clock speed and may not be the best for heavy Hqplayer usage.

My guess is if you push them too hard, you would run into some cooling problems with the HDPlex heatsink... And you would need a high current LPS. 

[Gavin1977]

52 minutes ago, Nenon said:

 

I don't know as I don't upsample. Those CPUs don't have super high clock speed and may not be the best for heavy Hqplayer usage.

My guess is if you push them too hard, you would run into some cooling problems with the HDPlex heatsink... And you would need a high current LPS. 

True - I’m presently using SMPS for that very reason.

[Nenon]

On 7/14/2020 at 11:10 AM, mikicasellas said:

 

If i keep only HDPLEX & PH SR4T by now, am i going into this type of issue ?

 

Do the DXPs contribute to this problem ?

 

Thanks

Sorry, I missed your question. I would not call this an "issue". But to me it's not ideal to mix multiple power supplies that all connect to the same ground eventually (i.e. the motherboard ground). 

My comment was more generic that I find the ground to be quite important and prefer not to mix the grounds from multiple power supplies. That's given all other factors are equal. If other factors are not equal, like in your case, I can't tell what's better. You would have to try for yourself. 

 

In terms of grounding, your 2A scenario looks better.

On 7/13/2020 at 4:38 PM, Nenon said:

SCENARIO #2A:

HDPLEX 200W powering JCAT with DXP

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly & MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

PH SR4T powering ER with DXPs

 

 

But I also have a feeling that your 1A scenario is worth a try. In this case, you are mixing the grounds, but it could be that the SR4T is performing better on the DCATX. I don't know, because I have never compared the SR4T to the HDPlex 200W directly. 

On 7/13/2020 at 4:38 PM, Nenon said:

SCENARIO #1A:

HDPLEX 200W powering ER & JCAT with DXPs

HDPLEX 200W powering CPU directly 

PH SR4T "try" to power MOBO thru HDPLEX 800W DCATX

 

When you power the CPU directly, the ATX connector typically does not need a lot of power. It needs around 30W in my case. 

It could be that the SR4T is a better LPS and that brings more than the multiple grounds take away. The important part is the final result, and only you can test and decide what sounds better in your system.

 

 

[mikicasellas]

27 minutes ago, Nenon said:

Sorry, I missed your question. I would not call this an "issue". But to me it's not ideal to mix multiple power supplies that all connect to the same ground eventually (i.e. the motherboard ground). 

My comment was more generic that I find the ground to be quite important and prefer not to mix the grounds from multiple power supplies. That's given all other factors are equal. If other factors are not equal, like in your case, I can't tell what's better. You would have to try for yourself. 

 

In terms of grounding, your 2A scenario looks better.

 

But I also have feeling that your 1A scenario is worth a try. In this case, you are mixing the grounds, but it could be that the SR4T is performing better on the DCATX. I don't know, because I have never compared the SR4T to the HDPlex 200W directly. 

 

When you power the CPU directly, the ATX connector typically does not need a lot of power. It needs around 30W in my case. 

It could be that the SR4T is a better LPS and that brings more than the multiple grounds take away. The important part is the final result, and only you can test and decide what sounds better in your system.

 

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback Nenon appreciate it 

 

Regards

[RickyV]

On 7/12/2020 at 4:26 PM, RickyV said:

 

I did some comparisons between my new Sean Jacobs DC3 regulator and my dual Newclassd regulators. For this comparison I made a test setup so I could easily switch between the two regulators keeping everything else the same. So after only some 30 hours of burn in/ listening time of the dc3 I switched back to the Ncd’s. And in my opinion the Ncd’s are a little less refined as the SJ. The SJ seem to be more musical, have a little better stability a little better resolution and a little better balanced sound. I inserted “a little” everywhere to emphasize that it is only a little but it is a noticeable difference and all those differences make the DC3 for me the better regulator.

 

 Next will be to build the DC3 into my NUC case and use the internal power connection again, with the use of the mundorf wire.

 

Finished building the SJ dc3 regulator into my NUC case.

 

This is what I took as a base for the server, a 12cm wide heatsink with a copper heat transfer block.

 

After choosing the best position for the regulator I had some room left so I added an extra LC filter to filter RF, EMI as much as possible before going into the regulator.

 

 

This is the internal power point of the NUC. Normally there is a 4pin connector there but I removed it so I could solder the 4 silver/gold mundorf wires straight to the board. So I made it in a star quad configuration with two shields separated by Teflon tape.

 

 

 

The all most finished NUC server.

 

I still have to find a spot for the power switch and I want to polish the top a little beter.

Burn-in time.

 

 

[Gavin1977]

20 hours ago, RickyV said:

Finished building the SJ dc3 regulator into my NUC case.

 

This is what I took as a base for the server, a 12cm wide heatsink with a copper heat transfer block.

 

After choosing the best position for the regulator I had some room left so I added an extra LC filter to filter RF, EMI as much as possible before going into the regulator.

 

 

This is the internal power point of the NUC. Normally there is a 4pin connector there but I removed it so I could solder the 4 silver/gold mundorf wires straight to the board. So I made it in a star quad configuration with two shields separated by Teflon tape.

 

 

 

The all most finished NUC server.

 

I still have to find a spot for the power switch and I want to polish the top a little beter.

Burn-in time.

 

 

Nice work!

[RickyV]

On 6/23/2020 at 2:23 PM, beautiful music said:

 

Thank you @Nenon for highlighting some points of the difference between Sean Custom PSU and Extreme internal PSU.

 

I would like to add also that the regulators playing some roles in the performance of PSU, when i took a look to to SR7DR or SR7T i figure out that Paul didn't use a fancy Capacitors like Mundorf in his PSU so eventually his regulators played the biggest effect in his PSU.

 

I think Roy or Rajiv talked about Paul methodology when he is designing his PSU but i'm not sure where is the link. 

 

Could you share some pictures of the inside of the PH sr7, I would very much like to see what PH has done.

Please 👍

 

[beautiful music]

1 hour ago, RickyV said:

 

Could you share some pictures of the inside of the PH sr7, I would very much like to see what PH has done.

Please 👍

 

Here are some photos posted by @Johnseye 
 

 

[Soul Analogue]

Hello from Hong Kong, 

My first post in this forum. 

I would like to chip in and share my attempt in building a PC music server, having stayed and tuned with my trusty SDtrans384 SDcard player for over two years.

I got my hands on an AMD EPYC cpu and a supermicro motherboard H11ssl-i

What I like about this motherboard is it has minimal peripherals that draws power and interfere my music playing function, all pcie and m2 slots are directly linked to CPU, no PCH!

Building a custom chassis for it...CPU to be passively cooled by a CNC aluminum block to attach to the size fins of the chassis.

and a linear power supply for all the ATX rails (3.3v, 5v, 5v standby and 12v cpu)

As you can see this project is still under development, i am not sure if it will work beautifully and sound good that surpass my beloved SDplayer

Questions and ideas are welcome!