Building a DIY Music Server

Nenon · February 14, 2020

11 hours ago, vhs said:

Great Post, Nenon!

Sharing my build with you as shown in the pic below. 🙂

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. Can you share more details?

What clock are you using? I see some external grounding (an external grounding box?)? What is the red board? A relay?

Thank you.

Nenon · February 14, 2020

9 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Ultra clock?

Yes, PinkFaun ultraOCXO. That's the best clock I could find on the market. If anyone knows anything better I can use, please let me know.

Nenon · February 14, 2020

36 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

What about this one?

https://www.fidelityaudio.co.uk/c4-reference-low-jitter-clock-1548-p.asp

Their signature model should be available in the next month or so.

https://www.fidelityaudio.co.uk/c5-signature-low-jitter-clock-4461-p.asp

This is out of my realm, so apologies in advance if they won't work for your application.

Thank you. Never tried them, but I have been following the development of the C5 and waiting to be released. Those don't look like OCXO clocks, but that does not mean they are bad. A well implemented TCXO clock could be a lot better than a bad implemented OCXO clock. My guess is their clock has worse specs than the PinkFaun ultraOCXO, but that does not mean much.

The reality is how I will implement the clock would make a bigger impact than how good the clock is. I may get the best clock available, and if I feed it with bad power and use long wires, it may be even inferior to the crappy oscillator my motherboard uses, with overall worse result regardless of how much I have spent.

But I am aiming to use the best clock I can and implement it to the best of my abilities. Unless the clock is on the PCB right next to the chip, it's always a compromise.

Nenon · February 14, 2020

30 minutes ago, adamaley said:

Which Pink Faun unltraOCXO clockspeed are folks selecting?

It depends on the application. The main clock on my AMD motherboard is 25MHz. It's 24MHz on my Intel motherboard. My I2S bridge uses the 24.576 MHz. The USB bridge uses a 20 MHz clock.

Nenon · February 17, 2020

On 2/16/2020 at 5:49 AM, Blackmorec said:

Well this has been an excellent week for me regarding matters audio, both thanks to this forum. I was introduced to the music and artistry of Anoushka Shankar and I tried a pair of  Mundorf Silver Gold DC cables (NMSGs) very kindly built and supplied by Nenon.

For the past 30 or more years, an argument has raged between objectivists and subjectivists about the degree to which cables can impact sound quality.  The argument was already hot during the late Analog era, but the advent of digital data streams added more coal to the fire. How can a cable possibly affect a bit stream, especially one that is filtered and retimed downstream of the cable, resulting in a so-called bit-perfect stream arriving at the DAC? Well unfortunately I don’t have that particular answer and all I have is yet more anecdotal evidence that cables do indeed have an effect of SQ. Objectivists may claim that confirmation bias is responsible and I will admit to being positively disposed to these NMSG cables. So if you think that conformation bias is what’s responsible for what I hear, that’s fine by me, but for those who’ve proven for themselves that cables make a difference, read on.

Nenon has already described in detail how his DC cables are built, which are essentially a JSSG360 screened twisted pair of Mundorf Silver Gold wires with Oyaide plugs to order.  I have already described my system, but for completeness, it comprises a highly optimised network based on a dedicated 500Mbps 5GHz wi-fi band,  Sean Jacob’s DC3s LPSs and Synergistic Research Atmosphere X ethernet cables throughout, feeding an Innuos Statement and Devialet 440 Expert Pro CI DAC and amps. The network is essentially ethernet cables with wi-fi isolation between the dedicated router and hi-fi room.

My system employs 4 DC3 LPSs, so 4 DC cables....DC3 to Modem and Router are Sean Jacob’s extremely competent twisted pair with ferrite filter while the DC3 to TPLink RE650 wi-fi receiver/ethernet and DC3 to AQVox SE were recently upgraded from Sean Jacob’s cables to a pair of Ghent Audio Neotech JSSG360 7N UPOCC cables. In its initial state with 4 SJ cables handling the network’s DC, my system sounded awesome....tick all the hi-fi boxes of extended shimmering tremble and deep mellifluous bass, soundstage based entirely on the recording venue and its ambient clues. There was nothing about the sound I didn’t like. PRaT was SOTA, timing was exquisite, detail sounded ‘complete’, clarity and purity were reference level and listener involvement was of the highest order.  In other words there were no sonic problems to solve and the music was entirely thrilling or moving, depending on genre. Initially I also had a rather competent analog front end, but this digital system eventually trounced the analog set-up so thoroughly that it got traded, no longer worth the fuss and bother of playing LPs.

As I discuss these new DC cables, the first very valid question must be of course; ‘how much can 2 DC cables powering upstream network components actually affect sound quality?” Intuitively I and probably most of you would likely believe “not much”, but that is absolutely not my experience. In fact, “a great deal” is far closer to what I hear.  Why?  No idea, other than the fact that the digital stream is in fact modulated DC so any DC characteristics that do contribute to sound quality will likely make it through the stream, along with the timed bits.

So let’s discuss the NMSGs.

The cables are solid core, beautifully easy to form and hold their shape 100%. There is no springiness at all so its just a matter of smoothly bending them to fit the exact installation requirements, curving smoothly around other cables and orientating the plugs perfectly, with no strain. LIke all cables, I have noticed some running-in anomalies. I normally listen to my system at a volume setting of -14.5dB. With the new NMSGs I need to increase that to -9dB to achieve the same SPL. Some may say its lower noise and distortion that means I can listen louder, but that’s not what’s happening. I noticed exactly the same thing with the Neotechs...the missing 5dB returning after about 2 weeks of being constantly powered up. I also notice a slight attenuation of dynamics and perhaps slightly less treble shimmer and sparkle....I’m pretty certain that like the Neotechs, this will all return in due course.

Running-in deficits not withstanding, the NMSGs significantly outperformed the Neotechs although I can’t really report any typical audiophile improvements..... frequency extremes were already extended and rich in timbral detail, soundstage was, as mentioned, as big or small as what is on the recording, there is NO listening room identity, only the recorded venue and music is 3 dimensional, and sounds like its being played by the instruments....so from an Audiophile perspective, not much room for improvement. However there were some major improvements, just that they related entirely to the music rather than to its presentation.

The first thing you notice is that the music gains in finesse, inner detail, inner warmth, ease and ‘humanness’. Things like mouth and breath sounds became a lot more complex, detailed and real.

The music is mesmerising, almost hypnotically so, sending shivers of pleasure down your spine.

The harp in Andreas Vollenweider’s Cosmology sounded lively, vibrant and sparkling, with gorgeous decay, that extends down into complete silence....what makes this all the more amazing is that you can sense the silence even while other instruments are playing.

The system seems to have far greater, finely delineated spacial resolution, which makes the soundstage all the more engaging, precise (not etched) and clear, so you can easily follow 2 or more closely related instruments by virtue of their spacial differentiation. This is especially important when sounds differ markedly in amplitude....loud sounds don’t swamp quiet sounds because they are positioned differently in space so don’t interfere. When you increase spacial resolution you hear more low level detail and greater low level detail creates a greater feeling of reality as sounds are revealed that you would normally only hear live.

The soundstage itself is also affected. Lower noise and greater low level detail give the entire sound stage a presence, a shape, texture, dimensions, even when there are no instruments playing....the size and shape of the recording venue becomes easier to hear...there’s atmosphere and air ....space that has a presence...an ‘eyes closed’ illusion that you’re sitting listening in an entirely different space with no relation whatsoever to your room.

The music itself has greater bounce and buoyancy.....with more shape and body to the instruments. Instruments positions are very precisely defined in terms of depth and height within the soundstage. Again this makes individual instruments far clearer in the mix, without any analytical characteristics.

With the NMSG cables, the music has an inner glow and a richness. The music sounds like it is energising the venue....grand piano for example can have a beautiful percussive hammer strike, after which the music blooms out and expands to energise the room, before decaying according to how long the sustain pedal is held. Timbral detail (tone and texture) has always been excellent but with the NMSGs it now remains stable and present down to absolute silence. That soesn’t sound like a big deal, but it again makes things sound more realistic.

Rhythmic flow often feels like a strong undercurrent, subtle but powerful and irresistible, pulling you along with it. Instruments sound beautifully consolidated, woven together to form a glorious whole. Even when they’re only subtly involved in the mix, their contribution can be powerfully intoxicating.

Then there’s the music’s ability to generate feelings. We often speak about emotions, but this goes well beyond that as the feelings are unique to the music....the music changes how you feel, and how you feel changes how you hear the music.....amplifying its atmosphere and your reaction to it.

Take for example Malia’s Celestial Echo. Extremely atmospheric, extended bass with beautiful warmth, tremendous finesse....very pure, very precise, beautifully timed. The bass is round and bounces from note to note.Tomtoms ‘pop’ with dynamic accuracy, even when played quietly. The system creates acoustics that literally play with your mind, making you feel spaced out, because that’s precisely what you’re hearing and experiencing in your ‘head space’

In my system at least, the NMSG cables make the music live and breathe....they bring the music to life. Songs I wasn’t that fond of suddenly blow my mind with their detail, depth and presence. The spatial precision results in improved clarity, purity and the fundamental rightness of the sound. The music creates an atmosphere, which generates feelings that you ‘hear the music through’.

For example the music may make you feel spiritual and other worldly, so your feelings reinforce  the music....which is why the listener involvement is so incredibly high....the music and your inner feelings become inextricably linked. I hope I’m explaining this clearly?

Last week I was introduced to Anoushka Shankar’s album Rise. The music, predominantly Sitar, Voice and Pecussion sounds exotic, eastern and literally soaking in spiritual essence. It is beautifully resonant with super long note decay. The music is highly atmospheric....with some tracks having a rhythmic undertow of riptide proportions . On one track the musician playing tabla percussion sounds like he’s only five or six feet away from the listening chair......its not loud, but includes all the clues to make the music extremely ‘present’ and intimate. The music and instruments suit each other perfectly and the pace of the music and development of the Sitar’s notes are so beautifully coordinated they’ll bring tears of joy at their sheer beauty.

Another album that demonstrates the NMSG’s prowess is Jan Garbarek’s Legend of the 7 Dreams. Voy Contando is spacious, airy, hauntingly beautiful. There’s a simple drum beat.....but what makes it very special is the astounding clarity and complexity. The system weaves magical spells in the air, with instruments floating in huge spaces that always puts me in mind of northern larch forests and huge open, cold and lonely wilderness.

At some time I’ve got to stop upgrading my system and instead just enjoy fully what I have. I sense that time may be just around the corner. Nenon is kindly making 2 more cables for my Modem and Router. With the right recordings my system can already present the music in a way that rocks or moves every fibre of my being, takes over my consciousness and creates my mood. More than that I don’t need.

What I find truly amazing about this is that this final touch, the last step that convinces me that I’ve reached the place I want to be sonically, is brought about by 2 DC cables. Even I can sympathize with the objectivists who would poopoo such subjective nonsense....how do 2 DC cables add the atmosphere, the finesse and the beauty that I’m reporting here?

So 5 days in and 2 more cables on the way we’ll see where this leads...suffice to say, if you’re pursuing audio perfection and you’re able to solder competently, you should make at least one of Nenons NMSG cables. I’m pretty certain you’ll very much like what it brings.

Finally, to close this initial assessment a big thank you to Nenon who went to a lot of trouble to buy, build and ship these cables for me to try.  They are certainly a surprisingly key component in reaching my own personal sonic nirvana.

Big THANK YOU to @Blackmorec for taking the time to write this review.

The best thing is none of us has any financial benefit to promote this cable. Hopefully that makes us somewhat trustworthy. We are just trying to spread some awareness.

I have published everything you need to know to be able to make those cables yourself in this thread already. If you can't solder, you can probably find someone who can do it for you. I have tried many different wires, materials, geometries, shieldings, etc. This includes Neotech 7N pure copper, Gotham, VHAudio starquad and many more. The only other cable that might be very close to this is the AudioSensibility OCC Solid Silver. I have not had it in my system. But a member who has both reported he liked the Mundorf better

4 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

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.

I think adding 1% gold to pure silver would still have just a little bit less resistance than pure copper. But that's just on primitive calculation using resistance coefficients of 1.6 for silver, 1.7 for copper, and 2.4 for gold. With these coefficients, we end up with:

100% pure silver - 160

99% silver / 1% gold - 160.8

100% pure copper - 170

It seems like the resistance would still be less than pure copper. But of course we are looking at just one variable of something quite complex that no one really understands why it even makes a difference. @Blackmorec powered up his network devices with this cable, not his streamer. Granted, the effects of powering the CPU are even bigger. But I was able to hear differences between DC cables or even different shields powering up my cable modem. I have absolutely no explanation about that.

The other thing I tried was different pure silver wires with different gauges and purity. None of those silver cables sounded good to my ears (as DC cables).

I've had similar results with silver wires for analog signal. Way back in my audiophile journey I thought that I could buy silver wire for jewelry from ebay and make interconnects that would sound as good as some of the top cables out there. Wrong! Then I thought maybe I need to be buying better purity silver, and I bought 9999 silver. This did not sound good either. After trying many different silver cables for analog signal, I found one silver cable that sounded excellent (after 1000+ hours burn in time). And it was not from the eBay's jewelry department. It was a meticulously perfected wire by a high-end audio company. That tells me there is a lot more than the resistance of the wire. And I guess whatever Mundorf is doing with this wire is just right. I also think that the 1% gold might be just enough in the mix to "fix" some of the brightness associated with silver.

But be careful how you read all these reviews and comments. So far everyone who tried this wire was impressed. Most of the people, just like @Blackmorec replaced their Neotech 7N copper cables from Ghent. But you need to have a resolving system to hear those differences. That wire is not going to fix other bottlenecks in your system, and unless you are at the point where you've done almost everything else and trying to squeeze out the last few bits of performance, your money can be better spend somewhere else. It's hard to quantify exactly how much difference DC cables make - in my system, I would say subjectively that the difference is somewhere between a power cord and a fuse. If you can't hear differences between power cords and fuses, don't waste your money on this cable.

Nenon · February 17, 2020

On 2/2/2020 at 9:02 AM, adamaley said:

Any feedback from the owner? Hope he/she is loving the musical fruits of your labor. Any idea what they had before and how it compares?

He just told me he is about to post some feedback. Keep an eye for it.

Nenon · February 18, 2020

19 hours ago, gererick said:

The prior digital source going into my TotalDAC D1-Direct DAC was new on 10/13/19. So the technology being replaced is almost brand new. It is a two-box setup built for me by a CA contributor. Power to the prior server was an HDPlex 200-watt LPS. I will be putting this prior setup up for sale soon. It is no longer in use, though it was quite good.

The prior server and endpoint were designed to sound best with lower-power-use, with the philosophy that lower power consumption means less noise which means better sound. The prior server had an 8 core AMD Ryzen 2 processor and a mini ITX mother board. The prior endpoint had an Intel Core i7 8650U Quad-Core processor and motherboard. The prior endpoint was powered by my Sean Jacobs supply at 19v. It now powers Nenon’s server’s CPU, at 12v (voltage is easily adjustable on the SJ PS)

For a setup with high power consumption, power supplies are ostensibly in shorter supply with longer waiting times. I don’t think the Sean Jacobs PS is in short supply and it is very, very good especially with the dual-regulation.

Roon software was moved to Nenon’s server. I had the full Euphony software on the endpoint of the prior two boxes; it was also moved to Nenon’s server. So Nenon’s server has both Roon and Euphony, and it is simple to switch back and forth.

My listening comparison is mainly with Roon playing on the prior server and Euphony on its endpoint, versus Euphony Stylus playing on Nenon’s server. My friend Bob and I also listened to Nenon’s server with Roon Core and StylusEP for an apples-to-apples comparison (same software on different hardware), which I’ll summarize later.

The comparison was not a quick A/B, because the Nenon’s server and power supply needed break-in, as did all of the cables. They probably have 300 hours+ of burn-in now. The Pink Faun USB card with the ultra OCXO clock has considerably less break-in than this, as it had a soldering issue near the DC jack that Nenon easily fixed.

The comparison is not a straight two-box to one-box comparison. For example, Nenon’s server has Mundorf silver/gold wire inside the server, in the DC cables, and in Nenon’s power supply, built from Sean-Jacobs-supplied components. Nenon’s server has six DC inputs and wires, five coming from

Sean Jacobs / Nenon equipment, and they were all JSSG360’d, while the prior server was supplied by an HDPlex via stock DC cables, not JSSG360’d. I don’t think the HDPlex PS is dual regulated (not sure), but the four outputs from Nenon’s / Sean Jacobs PS are dual regulated, as is the SJ PS that powered my endpoint which is now powering the Intel i9-9900K. My network card is powered by an LPS 1.2.

My prior server had a 19v input, plus a 12v input for the CPU. The 19v input went inside the prior server to the HDPlex DC-ATX, which then converted the 19v to 3.3, 5 and 12v, I believe. This converter is a $62.50 part. Soon after the prior server was installed, I contacted Nenon about his surplus power supply that he’d built from SJ components (he had advertised it for sale), because I thought it made more sense to have the conversion done outside of the server, which then led me even further than that to having Nenon replace everything I had just bought. Crazy stuff, but it worked out extraordinarily well in the end, and I am extraordinarily pleased with the final result.

Between my two prior boxes, I had a long run of Cardas ethernet cable. That is gone in a one-box setup. Between the prior endpoint and my DAC, I had two Lush^2 cables, an Uptone adapter, an ISO Regen, and an upgraded SOTM Tx-USB Ultra (and two LPS 1.2’s). The SOTM was being master clocked by a Mutec Ref 10. Now the only thing between my server and DAC is a 0.3 meter Lush^2.

With Nenon’s server, the Pink Faun USB card with the ultra OCXO clock and the SJ PS makes the aforementioned unnecessary, and I will be selling all but one of the two Lush^2 cables.

I am somewhat hearing impaired, so I can’t hear high frequencies well. I asked my friend Bob over, so the below is mainly his description that I agree with. We heard the same things, but it seems appropriate to have a second pair of ears given my hearing.

When Bob listened a few weeks ago, he said the system now sounded like vinyl but maybe needed to burn in as it was lacking in the bass region (which I agreed with). It turned out to indeed need to burn in.

Yesterday, Bob and I listened again. We didn’t listen for long, and only listened to two parts of two tracks. The first was the first couple of minutes of Hotel California on Hell Freezes Over (live) with much of the listening focus on the bass drums. The second was Warren Zevon’s Please Stay, from his last album/CD, The Wind.

These were Bob’s words, to the extent I could keep up with my pen.

Sounds really nice.

Really sounds lovely.

Sounds more fleshed out.

More micro detail.

More decay.

More texture of the drums.

More accurate.

More natural.

Very organic.

Very natural.

Non-digital. You do not get that flatness. It sounds like real, live music.

I mean, you got a winner.

The bass does not have as much weight or emphasis, but it sounds more accurate.

Then we played the same portion of the same track using Roon Core + StylusEP. Again, Bob’s words, and again, which I again agree with.

More digital / harsher / more etched.

With Euphony Stylus, it sounds like somebody singing.

With Euphony Stylus, you were just listening, you weren’t coming up with stuff.

Roon is a little more forward with the bass drums.

The drums are louder, and heavier, but you are losing the micro detail.

Roon does have a little bit more of an impact.

But it doesn’t have the same depth, resonance or decay.

Roon is flatter, it doesn’t have the fullness. It’s flatter sounding.

It is my understanding, in speaking with Nenon, that Euphony Stylus performs better in a high-power situation, i.e. a processor that uses a lot of power. I have read some posts where listeners like the way Stylus sounds, but they stick with Roon because it is a better user interface. On Nenon’s server, you can throw the ‘user interface’ preference wherever. It just sounds far better on Euphony Stylus, far far better. It is not close.

Then we listened to Please Stay, as discussed above. Again Bob’s words, which again I agree with.

Very natural.

Everything sounds natural especially the voices.

I then discussed the parts of the song when Emmylou Harris comes in to join Warren for the chorus. On the prior setup, it was still mostly Warren singing those parts; you could barely make out Emmylou’s voice even being present. Now, her presence is not only distinct from his, it is just as loud as his – there is no difficulty hearing her whatsoever. And it makes the song much more beautiful (not just that item, but that item really stood out versus the prior setup). This was my observation, with Bob agreeing with me. Bob replied that before, you could barely distinguish the background singer, now there is a distinct female background singer. It sounds totally different, much more like it should sound.

I live in the NY area between the Bronx and Connecticut, and have hosted a couple of Westchester Audiophile Society gatherings. Perhaps in connection with one of those, I can do another hosting which would include some folks from this site. I am not sure how to do that safely (strangers and all), but feel free to PM me if you might be interested. I am close to an I95 exit.

Below is a picture of my setup. Nenon's builds are shoved toward the back of the rack because the DC cables are short. The Sean Jacobs power supply for the CPU is next to Nenon's server on the second shelf with the blue light. Both Sean Jacobs power supplies are plugged into a Topaz isolation transformer with .0005 pf interwinding capacitance, and that isolation transformer is plugged into a long Tripp Lite power strip that everything else is plugged into, and that power strip draws power from another .0005 pf Elgin transformer. As I understand it from the mains isolation transformer thread, each of these has 146 dB of common mode noise reduction, so the SJ power supplies are getting clean power, and they cost only a few hundred (or less) on eBay. The Tripp Lite also has a High Fidelity Cables MC-1 Pro Helix Plus plugged into it, and a Prana Wire Ruby grounding plane hard wired to it..

Thank you for taking the time to write this review @gererick. I am glad you like the overall result. Give it another 3 months, and it would open up even more. Everything is still burning in and as you have already noticed it keeps improving. The big Mundorf caps, the big toroidal, the OCXO clock, and the silver/gold wires in teflon all take good couple of months to break in. This computer will shine at its best around around mid-April.

Nenon · February 18, 2020

8 hours ago, Energy said:

My question for @Nenon is whether or not it is possible to use two different 12V power supplies of 10A if there are two 8-Pin connectors used for EPS or will the combination cause a short?

My guess is that the two EPS connectors are connected in parallel. It's easy to check with a multimeter.

If the two connectors are in parallel, and you use two power supplies, you are essentially connecting two power supplies in parallel. It is hard to predict how well that is going to work. You can think of it as connecting two batteries in parallel. It would not cause a short (unless you do something wrong). But you may not get 20A if that's your goal.

1 hour ago, adamaley said:

To those like, scared of replacing clocks on their motherboards, it appears Pink Faun has a new service to do the mods for you:

Or you can wait for my guide. I have done some good progress on it and have been trying to give it the usual level of attention to details. Short wires, good power, and vibration control are not easy problems to solve when you change the clocks as an afterthought, rather than implementing them on the motherboard as part of the original PCB design. All three are very important key items.

Nenon · February 19, 2020

4 hours ago, mikicasellas said:

I'm just waiting for the HDPLEX 800 DCATX which is supposed to arrive next week and will begin with the build...

That would be another journey for me when setting BIOS the right way, ONLY Euphony Stylus or Euphony Stylus Ep - ROON will be in this machine.

Im still deciding which PCIE USB card will be using with this server.

Exciting times 😊

Nice! Excellent choice of components. Don't forget you may need a new BIOS for the Ryzen 7 3700X.

If I was starting a new build now, and if I did not have piles of parts I have been testing with just laying around, and if I was using USB output, and if I was not in a hurry... that's a lot of IFs... I would probably wait to see what JCAT is cooking.

I have been testing the JCAT Signature LAN Cable GOLD. It's really good. I am using it from my etherREGEN to my server. And it immediately became a main part of my system. It's one of these things that you put with huge disbelief (like the Stillpoints Ultra 6 under my speakers), and you realize right away that this is not going out of there. And you can't un-hear what you have heard. Damage done forever :). I have been been trying to avoid high-end LAN cables. The most expensive one I own is AudioQuest Vodka. I also have some cheaper ones - Supra, Cable Matters, etc. The AQ Vodka was better than the rest. But this JCAT is on another level. Granted, I don't have anything more expensive than the AQ Vodka, so I can't compare it with other expensive LAN cables.

I gave some feedback about the LAN cable to @Marcin_gps from JCAT, and he told me that he is planning to release a new USB card soon. He called it a "game changer". He also said that the existing USB card is not going anywhere.

But if you are in a hurry, you can't go wrong with the JCAT USB Card Femto or the PinkFaun USB Bridge with ultraOCXO clock. I've written about both of these cards before.

Nenon · February 19, 2020

1 hour ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi fellow Audiophiles

I thought I would share my recent upgrades, before I do, I would like to say a big thankyou to Nenon and Sean Jacobs for their input into my build. To be honest the forum in general also.....

Upgrades

Dr Sean Jacobs 7 Rail Linear Power Supply.

4 Rails for CPU & ATX

1 Rail for Pink Faun USB with OCXO Ultra Clock

1 Rail for JCAT Ethernet

1 Rail for EtherRegen Switch (See back of LPS, Sean put a 0v ground switch)

3 Individual transformer inside, all rails spread out over the 3 transformers

Cables - Ghent CPU & ATX & Neotech Cables for all other rails (Note Sean does not supply CPU or ATX cables)

Symposium Svelte Shelves & Symposium Rollerblocks & Couplers

FYI See photo the LPS is sitting on the top shelve

Pink Faun USB with OCXO Ultra Clock

More GIK Acoustic Panels. (Note Window behind listening position is now covered in 2 red GIK panels. I put a frame round them for aesthetics.

Uptone EtherRegn Switch, Due in 2 weeks (hopefully)

New Sablon USB Cable (Upgraded from Curious USB) had a wow moment!!

8gb Apacer ECC RAM

8gb Apacer RAM for my NAS or storage device, details on that below

Optane 32gb running Euphony

Small amount of SOTM EMI sheet on chips only

Am I now finished? simple answer is NO!!, so what's next??

I'm currently running an i7 7700T in turbo mode, this processor is not fast enough for running HQplayer with the settings I want to use. I can run in DSD 64 but 128. So I would like to upgrade my Mobo and CPU at some stage, to be honest I am awaiting Nenon new build later in the year running dual Xeon, failing that an i9 9900k

The above will require a dedicated 12V 10A Linear power supply

OCXO Ultra for MOBO? again awaiting to see how Nenon gets on

Planning replacing my HDPlex case with Turemetal UP10

Then onto Router and Modem, this is at the bottom of my list, as I'm currently planning local files only

So will I be finished after that? I tell myself so, but probably not. I have been following Romaz for the last year, he has recently bought Extreme with the view no more DIY would be required, guess what? he seems to have the itch again to push the Extreme as far as it can go by trialling JCAT cards etc, I would do the same to be honest!! This did tell me something, it's just an expensive hobby that may never end!!

Note the above is a one box solution, no end point.

Regarding my NAS or Storage device.

I have effectively turned my The Linear Solution DB-7 NUC (previously end point) into a NAS/Storage device. I already had 2 LPS feeding the DB-7, 1 for the NUC and 1 for OCXO board. So I thought I better get the most out of it as It would be a struggle to sell, anyway, enough said about that!.

The DB-7 is running full version of Euphony running SMB server. I recently bought M.2 Nvme 1TB for it, so all my music is stored there. I do find the SQ far better than running from my Thecus NAS. (1 feature I would like from Euphony is to run the software without having to run one of the programs/options (Stylus EP etc), This would mean only SMB services running.

One last thing, I've got an old style HDPlex case, you'll see I am using 2 PCIe cards, I was not keen on using a riser, so got someone to modify the back of the case. The JCAT sits in nicely, although I did need to wedge in top of the card with the case with small piece. Now it firmly in place.

Happy days few photos of my dedicated listening room. (Garage conversion)

Really cool stuff Michael! Thank you for sharing.

The biggest advantage of your build compared to the build I did as part of this post is that you have a full size ATX chassis that you can easily use to try out different motherboard CPU combinations. And I don't see you taking advantage of that ;). In the build I made, I optimized the power supply for shortest possible cables, lower output impedance, heat distribution, etc. But the disadvantage was that it is a static build and you can't do much once it's done. If I wanted to change the motherboard and the ATX connector on the new board is even an inch further, the cables would not reach... Your build looks like it was made for experiments with different motherboards. And I highly encourage you to do that, especially since you use HQPlayer and need more powerful CPUs.

Sean typically oberbuilds his 5A power supplies and they can easily handle 10A non-continuous power. I can tell you from experience that his 5A LPS easily feeds an Intel i9 9900k without HQplayer. I don't know what will happen if you add the extra HQplayer processing. But maybe you can try an Intel i9 9900k or an AMD Ryzen 7 3700x without HQPlayer. You might be surprised how good a one-box Euphony sounds with those two CPUs (make sure you set CPU Isolations, ramroot, cache, and all the good stuff in Euphony).

Speaking of Euphony, I noticed something really interesting a few weeks ago. My network is highly optimized now, Qobuz can sound better than local files if the recording is better, and my system became extremely transparent to any network changes. I noticed a difference in the sound quality when my browser was open at the Euphony interface and when it was closed. Apparently when there was traffic between my laptop/tablet and Euphony, that traffic was impacting the sound quality. The time lapse indicator for the track is updated by constant network communication between the Euphony server and the client interface. If I close the web browser I could hear an improvement. I open the web browser, and I could hear some degradation. This was only noticeable when streaming Qobuz. I could not hear any difference playing local files .Again, my network is highly tweaked now, my server is the only device on a dedicated VLAN... those are not differences I could hear before (and Qobuz did not sound so good before). I contacted Željko from Euphony, and he added a new setting in the latest Euphony version. It's called "Song pos. update" and you can set it to never. You guys give it a try and tell me if you can hear difference. I could not until recently... The track I was listening to for these tests was J.S. Ondara - Tales Of America - Lebanon.

Back to Michael's post. There will always be improvements to make. Even if you have the Extreme, we will always be curious what a $5K power cord can do. Once we have that, we would be curious what a $10K power cord can do. The original Extreme was released with two Intel Xeon Silver 4114 CPUs. Those are 10 cores / 20 threads with 13.75 MB cache and 85W TDP. Shortly after that an Intel Xeon Silver 4214 was released with 12 cores / 24 threads 16 MB cache and the same 85W TDP. It's a drop-in replacement that gives you 4 more cores / 8 more threads, more cache, etc. Would that be an improvement? Who knows... Would I be curious to try it? Hell yeah!

So @ASRMichael the other test I would do if I was you would be the Mundorf silver/gold wire for the CPU/EPS connector.

Nenon · February 26, 2020

Given that you have a pretty powerful CPU, the 4A the SR4 provides might be better on the JCAT. Your CPU would benefit from a power supply with more headroom. But the SR4 specs say that it supports 20A transient... so it may work fine on the CPU as well. You will have to experiment.

Also, it's hard to comment on a single piece / parameter in a bubble. The power supply strategy is something that in my opinion needs to be planned before you start building the PC. It's the foundation and the single most important component of a music server. What would you be powering up the JCAT USB with if you use the SR4 for the CPU? And what would you be powering up the CPU with if you use the SR4 for the JCAT USB?

Nenon · February 27, 2020

It was quiet here for a moment, but @Energy dropped a bomb.

We can debate forever on some of that stuff. It's very easy to be convinced in a specific technology or a specific way of doing this and scratch every other option available. I haven't found this to be the right approach for me. I prefer to be open minded. Typically I would pick the technology that makes sense to me, implement it to the best of my ability and then go back to the other alternatives to try them and move on after I find what sounds best in my system.

Let me comment on some of the topics @Energy mentioned - Intel vs. AMD, ECC vs. non-ECC RAM, OCXO clocks, and the HDPlex DC to DC convertors.

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

9 hours ago, Energy said:

Furthermore it is known that ECC sounds better as it corrects on the soft/hard bits that computers tend to make. Some people on the forum has found that to be the case including myself. So between Intel and AMD, I am more lenient of the later.

On 2/18/2020 at 10:43 PM, Dev said:

@Nenon and others,

have any of you guys compared Intel vs AMD ? I think @Nenon has built both, so he must have some idea. Are there much differences between the two ? If one is starting a fresh build (and leaving the behind the price for now), is there a consensus which one sounds better ?

I've had an Intel i9-9900K and AMD Ryzen 7 3700x builds side by side in my system and might have been the first who wrote about this in the Novel thread. I can tell you that they sound different. But I cannot tell you which one is better. I think it's a matter of personal preference. I did not like the motherboard USB output on the AMD as much as I did on the Intel build. Once you take the digital output from the PCIe, it's hard to say which one is better.

Then, I did a lot of RAM chip comparisons. About a year ago I had no idea that RAM could make a difference. No, that's not the right statement. I was absolutely convinced that RAM could not make any difference at all. Silly me.

However, curiosity made me check that, and I was shocked to discover that RAM makes a significant difference. I managed to obtain some Apacer RAM for myself. And I could not believe my ears. One of the guys here convinced me to do a group RAM order, which I did, and I am very thankful that almost everybody who participated in that group buy gave me some feedback. That helped me tremendously to understand how the Apacer RAM changed the sound in different systems. There was an improvement in every system. Some systems benefited a lot more than others. There were two common denominators I noticed. First, people with more resolving systems experienced bigger impact (improvement). And second, the people who had better power supplies (cleaner power) benefitted much more from the Apacer RAM. For those who had custom double regulated SR7s or custom double regulated Sean Jacobs DC3 power supplies, it was a match in heaven. They would typically hear the improvement from the first note after swapping the RAM. The other interesting thing was that on average it took two weeks to break in and even after the break in, if you just take the RAM out and put it back in, it resets some of the settled effects and needs more break in time (not weeks but at least 2 hours or maybe a full day). Those are statistics I have collected over time thanks to all of you.

Having access to all kinds of different RAM modules, I did a lot of testing myself. I discovered two things that are important - quality and speed. For completeness I will repeat what I have said in other posts:

1. Non-ECC Apacer 2400MHz was better than the Non-ECC G.Skill 3200Mhz.

2. Non-ECC Apacer 2666MHz was better than the Non-ECC Apacer 2400MHz.

3. ECC Apacer 2666MHz was better than Non-ECC Apacer 2666MHz.

But that does not mean that the ECC RAM sounds better, because "it corrects on the soft/hard bits that computers tend to make". No, it's not better for that, even if that contributes to some degree. And here is why I am saying that. I recently discovered that the ECC RAM can work on motherboards that don't support ECC RAM, such as the Intel Z390 gaming motherboards that are popular here and I used in the build in this thread. If you install ECC RAM in that motherboard, it would work as Non-ECC RAM. I compared the same version of ECC RAM and Non-ECC RAM in the build in this thread. And the ECC RAM sounded better. Not because "it corrects on the soft/hard bits that computers tend to make". It does not correct anything, because it is working as Non-ECC RAM. My only explanation is that the ECC RAM was built better / better quality.

So for those who think the ECC RAM (working as ECC and correcting some errors that makes the sound so much better) is the holy grail and that determines what motherboard and CPU to take, please think twice. You can probably use the ECC RAM as Non-ECC, and it still sounds really good and better than anything else I have tried. So, I would not prefer AMD Ryzen just for that. Motherboards make a big difference. I have compared quite a few. The RAM is not the only factor, and I feel like it is a bad decision to plan your build around ECC RAM because it corrects something. I am not saying that correction does not contribute to the sound, but that's hard to test, and there is obviously a lot more than that for RAM to sound good=.

Power supplies.

9 hours ago, Energy said:

Lastly, for those who are using HDPLEX 200W + HDPLEX 400W/800W HiFi DC-ATX or 800W. I think the idea is ridonculous. You are essentially using a 3mV (3,000µV) device and adding it with a 10mV (10,000µV) device to have a max output noise of 13mV (13,000µV). The HDPLEX 400W ATX Linear Power Supply may be a failure in it's independent output but it's ATX modular Output is a heck of a lot better:

Just saying but 3mV beats 13mV. And look at that DC current headroom!

Well, again, none of these numbers tell us anything about how these things sound in our systems, right? They definitely don't tell ME anything about the sound. What about output impedance? What cables are you using? How long are they? How much headroom it has? How fast it can handle transients? I can keep going on and on. The only thing I agree with is that 10 + 3 = 13. Can't argue with that. And I also prefer full linear power supply with separate rails for everything as long as they are good quality - which means the HDPLEX 200W does not qualify, but more on that later.

Let's forget about the numbers for a moment and talk about actual experience comparing these products. I have done different builds. The one in this thread is one of the best power supply arrangements I have done. There is actually only one that was better than this, but I can't talk about it. I have also used a whole range or power supplies, DC to DC regulators, ATX convertors, nanoATX, etc. etc.

Generally speaking I try to stay away from the HDPlex linear power supplies. I have also done some builds with the HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX. And I was not impressed. But for someone who already had only one rail of decent power supply and did not want to spend more, that was a good budget option with possibility for upgrades in the future. So here is my experience.

1. The most important point - not everything works equally in all builds. What worked well in my low powered systems did not work well in my high powered CPU systems. Keep that in mind. Most of my experiments have been with 65W-95W TDP CPUs like the Intel i9 and AMD Ryzen 7. I will focus on those below.

2. For some reason the HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX sounds better than the HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX. I don't know why, but it does. It wasn't until I tried the HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX that I considered using a SMPS DC to DC ATX devices. Basically the 800W has been a drop-in replacement upgrade (for the HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX) in most cases.

3. No matter what the numbers say, an HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX powered by a really good quality power supply (i.e. Sean Jacobs DC3 in my case) sounds a lot better in my system than a directly connected HDPLEX 200W.

4. More power of the same quality sounds better and improves dynamics. My CPU is running fine with 12V@4A. But feed it with a LPS of the same quality that can deliver 12V@6A and it sounds even better. Feed it with a LPS of the same quality that can deliver 12V@10A and it sounds even better. Same is true for 15A. And that's all I have tried so far. Someone has a really good one that can deliver 30A? I would love to try it :). Why that extra power helps? I don't know. I can't catch peaks much higher than 4A with the measurement devices I have. I guess that dynamic headroom is quite important here with linear power supplies.

Based on #3 and #4, would connecting an HDPLEX 200W via it's 19V@10A (190W) output to a HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX sound better than connecting the 12V@10A (120W) + 5V@2A (10W) + 3.3V@2A (6.6W)? I don't know. I kind of doubt it. But 190W is more than 136.6W... and read #4 above. I am still kind of sceptical to be honest, but is it worth a try? Why not. You would never know for sure until you try it. Would I consider trying this with the HDPLEX 200W + HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX? No, I don't think so. Would I consider trying this with the HDPLEX 200W + HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX? Maybe... if I had the time.

OCXO Clocks.

I left that as the last topic. And this is a hot topic in my mind currently. I am not an expert here, but I am applying a similar approach as with power supplies, RAM, motherboards, etc. To repeat what I said in the beginning of my post:

Quote

Typically I would pick the technology that makes sense to me, implement it to the best of my ability and then go back to the other alternatives to try them and move on after I find what sounds best in my system.

As far as my understanding about OCXO clocks goes, it's easier to make a low phase noise OCXO clock at 10MHz than to achieve the same at 25MHz. The phase noise at specific frequency is not the only important variable and it's probably not even measured consistently between all manufacturers. The implementation of the clock is arguably even more important than the quality of the clock itself. Short path to the chip is important. I studied how PLLs are implemented recently, and they are not perfect. I have many questions and not a lot of answers yet. While I am doing studies on this, I am trying to identify what is a sales or marketing BS and what actually makes sense. SOTM for example are saying that you can replace ANY clock with theirs and it would be an improvement. They have repeatedly said that if we replace the Crystek clock on the JCAT USB card (and NET Femto), it would sound better. I wonder if @Marcin_gps knew that. They said that we should start replacing the OCXO clocks with their clocks. Well, I am not buying into all these things unfortunately.

I can't imagine that on something that sensitive as the clock, we can add connectors, long cables, an external reference clock, introduce PLL that converts the master clock frequency, and it would be all much much better than a well implemented good quality clock a fraction of an inch away of the chip with clean power and done with good care. And most of these clocks we are replacing have single ended signal, not differential. What happens with the noise those long cables catch from the outside. But hey, we are open minded people, so I am willing to give it a try. The ultimate test would be how it sounds.

But before I do that, I would start with the technology that makes more sense to me. And that is not the SOTM clocks, connectors, cables, and external master clock. My first preference is the best quality OCXO I can find, implemented with the shortest possible wires (the best silver I have found), powered by the best power supply (again with the shortest possible DC cables and regulators sitting right next to the clock), sitting on a RMI/RFI and vibration isolation. I am also a truly believer that every clock benefits tremendously from vibration isolation. Every time I posted that last year, I was shot by objective engineers, but since this is my thread and now they have their own forum, I hope that won't happen again.

And here is what I am doing.

Clock removed. Silver wires soldered.

Carbon fiber plate installed. To be replaced with much thicker one. More holes for ventilation would be added. I believe the carbon fiber has some EMI/RFI properties and also vibration treating... but even if it did not, I like how it looks. The white standoff to be replaced with black vibration isolation ones.

The clock installed with a temporary DC connector for testing purposes.

I am testing every clock on the motherboard to find out where it makes sense to have one and where it does not. A lot of listening tests ahead of me. Once I settled on all that, I would not mind trying the SOTM clock with external reference clock to see which one is better. I think that is the right way to test these things, rather than looking at the spec sheets.

Nenon · March 28, 2020

9 hours ago, Energy said:

I'm building another linear PSU of similar quality for the endpoint so I'll most likely create a public thread on how other people can build themselves one as well. It will be comprised of many different levels and options. Those who want to spend more to get more noise reduction can increase capacitance, inductance (for pi filter), boutique parts (iec, fuse, diodes, transformer, capacitor, connectors, wires, etc), or add another voltage regulator for dual regulation. I will break down the science on why each part is used for each area of the build and why it is superior. I'll also be introducing a new method of grounding that people on here hasn't used yet called Hybrid Grounding along with an infusion of John Swensen Shielding Guideline added to the mix that I call Hybrid Grounding JSSG 360°+. It utilizes a 3-Pin XLR connector as the DC connector. High frequency noise that is picked up by the shield is discharged to the shell of the connector. It's a slightly more advanced method of JSSG but can only be applied with a certain connector.

Last but not least, I will share a personal compendium that details every thought out part of an audiophile system. Even from the minute the power cable leaves the circuit breaker to upon it's arrival at the audio room and how things should be optimally connected. To give some examples...why star grounding copper rods spaced 20FT away is recommended, why 3-phase power circuit breakers are worthwhile, why using a 8-10AWG magnet wire pushed through PTFE tubing and twisted tightly counterclockwise as a powerline cable is better than Romex, how to properly use a ferrite core for audio by picking out the right mix to block high frequency EMI, how to improve a ferrite core by cutting a gap into it to reduce saturation, utilizing MuMetal sheet or iron foil to redirect an isolation transformers magnetic field, how to build a music server and power supply, or which boutique part really matters. The list goes on... I only named like a few out of 100. There will be a table of contents that will explain it all. I plan to put it on a PDF.

Looking forward to that!

By the way, you guys feel free to use this thread for any DIY hints - power supplies, server builds, etc.

I am also working on a whole bunch of new experiments that I will share soon. I have been silent for a while, but some good things are cooking that take long time!

Stay safe, everyone!

Nenon · April 15, 2020

On 4/13/2020 at 9:30 AM, beautiful music said:

@Nenon any news of your new build!!!

Also what about the new jCat USB XE card?

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.

On 2/5/2020 at 4:55 PM, Nenon said:

The three BIG questions I would like answers for are:

1. Does this big full size ATX motherboard sound better than its smaller sibling I am currently using in their stock versions?

2. How much better Qobuz would sound (if it sounds better) when my JCAT NET Femto NIC is on a regular PCIe slot with no extension cables?

3. Last, but not least, what would be the effects of changing the motherboard clocks with high quality OCXO clocks? That's the part I am most curious about as it's something I have never done before. If time allows, I may even document the clock changing process here, but I am not promising.

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.

Quote

How much better Qobuz would sound (if it sounds better) when my JCAT NET Femto NIC is on a regular PCIe slot with no extension cables?

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.

Nenon · April 15, 2020

11 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

@Nenon amazing post - can you show us more about how you undertook the motherboard clock mod? I would also be interested your thoughts on the impact of the motherboard clock mod, vs say, adding JCAT USB & NET cards only...

The clock I replaced was under this heatsink:

Here it is:

I used my HAKKO FR301-03/P Desoldering Tool to remove the clock:

Clock is out:

Silver wires in organic unbleached cotton sleeve soldered - WBT silver solder used:

Heatsink put back in place:

You can mount the clock on the side and use longer wires. But I wanted to use the shortest possible wires. So I made a carbon fiber plate and used 4 standoffs on the four motherboard mounting holes to attach my plate to. I also added the 4 white standoffs to mount the clock:

You can see the standoffs if you zoom in on one of the previous photos:

Here it is with the clock attached before soldering the wires:

Solder the wires and add two more wires for the DC power of the clock (on the right side). The clock takes 5V DC. Installation completed:

I may redo the carbon fiber plate and add various holes to increase the airflow to the heatsink that this plate is blocking. But so far heat there has not been a problem.

1 hour ago, ASRMichael said:

Why the HDPlex 800W DC to DC ATX Convertor? Did you test it against SJ LPS?

I wanted to have a more universal platform, so I can test various power supplies, motherboards, etc. I did not do an A/B comparison, but I know from experience that more rails is better. For the ultimate set up, I would have done 8 rails (3 x ATX, 1 x EPS, 1 x clock, 3 x PCIe cards). But using 6 rails (1 x Hdplex/ATX, 1 x EPS, 1 x clock, 1 x PCIe) sounds pretty good as well. The EPS rail requires a lot of current - I would say 6A+. The HDPlex needs about 30-35 Watts in this configuration, and it can take 16V - 63V. A 22V-1.5A LPS works just fine. I am using 22V-5A LPS, which is an overkill.

Nenon · April 15, 2020

8 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

Very nice Nenon - thanks for the details. Did you try a listen with just the JCAT cards prior to the motherboard clock install? Just interested in sound quality improvements vs investment ratio.

I got the JCAT after the clock upgrade, so no, I did not. In terms of sound quality improvements vs investment ratio I would start by getting the JCAT USB XE card first. And then upgrade the motherboard clock. One does not replace the other; they are additive upgrades.

Nenon · April 15, 2020

1 hour ago, dminches said:

Since you are only using the HDPlex to power the motherboard, is your 1.5A estimate reduced because you are powering the clock externally or is that only what the motherboard really needs? I am using a Keces 20V 8A LPS for that purpose. I guess that is really overkill.

The numbers I posted were from tests I've done before replacing the clock. 28-29W was the borderline. With a video card installed I needed about 32W. So, yes, if you have 22V or more 1.5A is enough. If you power it with 16V, you would need at least 2A. And it's always good to have some extra capacity.

49 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

This discussion has me thinking once again about the quality of power supply, for example great quality single rail linear power supply (Paul Hynes or Sean Jacobs) direct into an ITX motherboard with a DC Jack, or 4 pin Molex, vs going down the above route which needs a HDPLEX DC-DC converter (wastes the advantages of these high quality supplies?).

I keep coming back to the idea of a single rail for the main MB/CPU, then power separate PCI cards from smaller separate supplies like MPAudio ones.

What do you think happens with that single rail that feeds the motherboard? The motherboard has to convert internally all the voltages with its own regulators. Essentially you have a similar circuit like the hdplex built into the motherboard, which is not necessarily better quality than the hdplex. Also, these motherboards are for low-powered CPUs. If that's your thing, you can give it a try. I am never going back to low powered CPUs after hearing what a server like this can do.

Nenon · April 15, 2020

1 minute ago, Dev said:

motherboards still will have switching regulators even if you power it from the ATX, for example, RAM needs 1.2v or 1.5v or 1.6v which isn't part of ATX. There are other components which works on less than 3.3v for which it needs step-down regulators on the motherboard itself.

No question about that.

Nenon · April 16, 2020

16 hours ago, beautiful music said:

Thank you @Nenon for this invaluable information and the double Xeon Processor build is what I'm looking for, stay safe.

This best thing I've seen on my laptop screen this week :).

Nenon · April 17, 2020

39 minutes ago, beautiful music said:

That's good to know that you finished your Xeon build🤩.

Curious to know what is your CPU isolation settings for those double Xeon processors.

Finished? No. That build will take a few months to finish. I won't be done for a while. There is so many challenges!

Nenon · April 19, 2020

55 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

Thanks Nenon - looks like a 7700k (With TDP limit set?) would be best for me then.

Of course, the mainstream is that ITX and almost all m-ATX boards come with a dedicated 12V CPU connection that must be powered for the CPU to boot. I’m just trying to get a handle on the technical reasoning why the multi rail approach reportedly sounds better, compared to a single very good quality power supply feeding a smaller ITX board that has only a DC jack or (slightly better) a 4 pin Molex onboard. I am talking about powering the CPU only here, of course I understand that step down converters are required onboard motherboards with single voltage DC input to produce 5/3.3V (but won’t matter as much if your powering network and USB cards directly with their own dedicated linear power).

Would be logical that motherboard that accept a single DC range say 12-19V would be at a disadvantage due to some step down conversation required on the motherboard. My NUC sounds pretty great - but I’ve never experimented with multi rail.

Isolating components with their own rails just sounds better. Components generate noise that contaminate the power. And if you are using one rail only, every component would suffer from the noise the other components generate. That's the simplest logical explanation. There is a lot more into it, though. The NUC sounds good but the builds in this thread are on a completely different level.

Nenon · April 21, 2020

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...

Nenon · April 22, 2020

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 · April 22, 2020

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.

Nenon · April 29, 2020

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.

Building a DIY Music Server

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