jean-michel6 Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 4 hours ago, MarcelNL said: I wonder if that SSD noise through the SATA cable is EMI due to the high speed data or is it electrical noise creeping into the MB (or both), do you know Nenon? My best SQ is when I simply unplug the external PSU for the SSD, I could live with an 'OCD switch' for serious listening of a few tracks/albums from Optane...that is how big the difference is for me. No way I am coughing up the dough for 2TB or so local storage in Obscene, eeerr Optane. A while ago I did some test using Daphile . I had an internal music ssd on sata and the same music library on an external hdd usb connected . I was buffering in ram the same piece of music coming from the ssd and from the hdd . The sound quality was different and always worse from the ssd ! MarcelNL 1 PCserver Supermicro X11SAA under Daphile ,Jcat pcie net card ,Etherregen,e-red dock endpoint,powered by LPS 1.2 , SPS 500 , Sean Jacobs level 3 psu, DAC Audiomat Maestro 3, Nagra Classic Amp , Hattor passive preamplifier , Martin Logan montis Link to comment
Popular Post kyoya78 Posted December 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 Hi, I was surprised to find such a great forum. I am using ASUS WS C621E SAGE + Xeon Silver 4210 + OS is Daphile, but apparently Daphile can't take advantage of two CPUs. I'm not very good at English, so it will take some time, but I'll try to read this whole thread. adamaley, OAudio, ASRMichael and 2 others 1 4 Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 I will make that comparison again, I have an external HDD with ly library and an internal SSD with PSU outside of the computer with the same files. I know that playing from memory sounded better for both options, yet that is bested by Optane. I am most interested in learning if copying from the external HDD sounds different than copying from external SSD and then how it sounds if I connect via f.e. ethernet. ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
flkin Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 Please do your experiment with all devices, external HDD, external SSD and Ethernet, connected even if they are not being used at that time. Would be quite interesting to see if there is a difference then, especially if cached in RAM memory. PinkFaun - Vinnie Rossi - YBA - QSA Lanedri - Wilson Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 3 hours ago, flkin said: Please do your experiment with all devices, external HDD, external SSD and Ethernet, connected even if they are not being used at that time. Would be quite interesting to see if there is a difference then, especially if cached in RAM memory. that is indeed what I am planning to do, there will be some lead time as for a reasonable comparison I need to find a way to connect the disks via ethernet in a somewhat better than makeshift way. Essentially I expect that the sonic profile of each device SHOULD remain, and ethernet SHOULD theoretically be transparant..but reality is different. If I just think back to comparing ethernet cables, comparing 100 vs 1000 Mbit speed, adding a switch, shielding already shielded Cat 8.1 cable ( 2Ghz bandwidth), adding LPSU to the switch, modding the switch modestly, shielding the internet router etc etc....plenty of places where the mantra 'bits are bits' is woring and real life is clearly showing that we are not yet full control of SQ here. Assuming that bits are bits, I do believe in that theoretical assumption yet am quite sure there are all sorts of effects in various layers that change final SQ. I (we?) likely know far too little about what affects final SQ, which IMO is no reason to dismiss those effects like the 'engineering brigade' usually does. My gut feeling is there are a few categories of effects on final sound quality in a network (that is until delivered in the computer system where another set of variables takes over same for the next step into the DAC, then in the DAC then to and in the AMp,to and in speakers to and in room). 1- Data transport; packets, timing, missing data, this SHOULD all be taken care of by ethernet protocols, buffers CRC etc, probably there are some parameters that should be optimized for audio data and most of this is handled by OS /Software. 2-data conversion, also handled in the digital domain but now in the computer 3-Energy to power all fo the above; PSU,speed, max current, noise, bandwidth, PSRR, voltage, precision of regulation, EMI ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
Popular Post lmitche Posted December 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 3 hours ago, MarcelNL said: I will make that comparison again, I have an external HDD with ly library and an internal SSD with PSU outside of the computer with the same files. I know that playing from memory sounded better for both options, yet that is bested by Optane. I am most interested in learning if copying from the external HDD sounds different than copying from external SSD and then how it sounds if I connect via f.e. ethernet. When comparing HDDs consider 3.5 inch as well as 2.5 inch models. The former takes 12 volts for the motor and actuator, and 5 volts for the signal carrying circuits with separate circuits for each. A quality LPS for the 12 volt USB enclosure power will positively influence SQ. Likewise USB drive enclosures power the the actuator and signal carrying circuits with USB Vbus power at 5 volts. 2.5 inch drives don't offer the same level of flexibility. With either type of HDD enclosure connection to a USB PCIE card allowing external power, like JCAT or Startech can benefit SQ. Lastly USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10gbps sounds slightly better here. Welcome to the music storage can of worms. Nevertheless, IME, music stored on 3.5 inch HDDs in a USB enclosure can sound as good as any other storage option. The modern NVME drive approach is much simpler, especially if you have a spare M.2 or PCIE slot and can avoid the PCH. Superdad and 87mpi 1 1 Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 I only have an external 'no name" PCIe USb card left, my JCat USB died.... I will likely only test what HDD/SDD I have lying around, I don't plan to test across HDD types and brands simply because I don't have more than perhaps 2 lying around. (not even sure if I have 2,5 and 3.5", the external 1.5Tb external HDD is likley old enough to be 3,5") It's either going to be NAS/server, or USB SDD /HDD for me, with a small chance for PCIe IF I can get past POST when removing the graphics card from the MB. That Pink Faun I2S card is FAT... ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
lmitche Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 1 hour ago, MarcelNL said: I only have an external 'no name" PCIe USb card left, my JCat USB died.... I will likely only test what HDD/SDD I have lying around, I don't plan to test across HDD types and brands simply because I don't have more than perhaps 2 lying around. (not even sure if I have 2,5 and 3.5", the external 1.5Tb external HDD is likley old enough to be 3,5") It's either going to be NAS/server, or USB SDD /HDD for me, with a small chance for PCIe IF I can get past POST when removing the graphics card from the MB. That Pink Faun I2S card is FAT... Yeah, the GPU thing is another can of worms. Disabling GPUs in software can work well if GPUs are difficult or impossible to remove. I look forward to mainstream support of external GPUs that are easy to disconnect. Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 Daphile automatically shuts down graphics after booting and enabling the network, it is designed to run headless. The problem is rather that the MB likely thinks it needs a GPU anddoes not let me past POST... ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
lmitche Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 6 minutes ago, MarcelNL said: Daphile automatically shuts down graphics after booting and enabling the network, it is designed to run headless. The problem is rather that the MB likely thinks it needs a GPU anddoes not let me past POST... You can usually disable the "halt on F1 errors" behavior in the bios boot settings menu. Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 yeah I was going to check but need to look for the MB manual again...my browser shut inadvertedly earlier today. ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
Popular Post Nenon Posted December 18, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 10 hours ago, kyoya78 said: Hi, I was surprised to find such a great forum. I am using ASUS WS C621E SAGE + Xeon Silver 4210 + OS is Daphile, but apparently Daphile can't take advantage of two CPUs. I'm not very good at English, so it will take some time, but I'll try to read this whole thread. You should try Windows LTSC and ProcessLasso. I will be publishing a guide for tweaking Windows for this motherboard sometime next year. Planning to share everything I've learned since April. I am also working with Emile from Taiko on testing some of his technology that will most likely treacle down to the DIY market sometime next year. This coming year will be very exciting for DIY. Exocer, kyoya78, bit01 and 13 others 6 3 7 Industry disclosure: https://chicagohifi.com Dealer for: Taiko Audio, Conrad Johnson, Audio Mirror, and Sean Jacobs Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 THAT is great news indeed!! ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
Popular Post ray-dude Posted December 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 52 minutes ago, Nenon said: You should try Windows LTSC and ProcessLasso. I have been having a LOT of fun with this combo on my Extreme. My recommendation is to carefully study the block diagram. All the answers are there, and become VERY obvious as you play around with CPU affinity, memory affinity, I/O affinity, etc, and balance priorities. Stunning what an impact even the smallest tweaks make to SQ. As a hint, pay very close attention to which PCIe slots have affinity to which CPU, the UPI channel between CPUs, and the affinity of built in I/O to CPU1. As you get to next level, pay attention to the affinity of memory to each CPU. This block diagram is the roadmap to design and balance processing and playback. OAudio, ASRMichael, bit01 and 5 others 3 2 3 ATT Fiber -> EdgeRouter X SFP -> Taiko Audio Extreme -> Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE w/ Level 2 DAC -> Voxativ 9.87 speakers w/ 4D drivers Link to comment
Nsxturbo Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 As usual, anxiously awaiting your findings and optimizations Nenon! Also quite interested in what your collaboration with Taiko will yield for DIYer’s. (Hopefully, some full-size case and passive cooling options for Sage 621E owners 😉) ASRMichael 1 Link to comment
MarcelNL Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 no windows, no dual xeon, no extreme....still a good point to look at the block diagram of the MB! BTW is the M.2 slot npn PCIe on that MB? ISP, glass to Fritz!box 5530, another Fritz!box 5530 for audio only in bridged mode on LPS, cat8.1, Zyxel switch on LPS, Finisar <1475BTL>Solarflare X2522-25G, external wifi AP, AMD 9 16 core, passive cooling ,Aorus Master x570, LPSU with Taiko ATX, 8Gb Apacer RAM, femto SSD on LPS, Pink Faun I2S ultra OCXO on akiko LPS, home grown RJ45 I2S cable, Metrum Adagio DAC3, RCA 70-A and Miyaima Zero for mono, G2 PL519 tube amps. Link to comment
Popular Post Nenon Posted December 18, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 7 minutes ago, Nsxturbo said: Also quite interested in what your collaboration with Taiko will yield for DIYer’s. (Hopefully, some full-size case and passive cooling options for Sage 621E owners 😉) Emile's team is designing a chassis with CPU coolers. We'll see some drawings early January. I'll share those as soon as they are available. MarcelNL, Töki, kyoya78 and 2 others 2 1 2 Industry disclosure: https://chicagohifi.com Dealer for: Taiko Audio, Conrad Johnson, Audio Mirror, and Sean Jacobs Link to comment
Nsxturbo Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 12 minutes ago, Nenon said: Emile's team is designing a chassis with CPU coolers. We'll see some drawings early January. I'll share those as soon as they are available. Great to hear. I look forward to it! Link to comment
ASRMichael Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 1 hour ago, Nenon said: You should try Windows LTSC and ProcessLasso. I will be publishing a guide for tweaking Windows for this motherboard sometime next year. Planning to share everything I've learned since April. I am also working with Emile from Taiko on testing some of his technology that will most likely treacle down to the DIY market sometime next year. This coming year will be very exciting for DIY. Just when I thought I’ve just had my last purchase!!!!!! Link to comment
Popular Post OAudio Posted December 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 3 minutes ago, ray-dude said: I have been having a LOT of fun with this combo on my Extreme. My recommendation is to carefully study the block diagram. All the answers are there, and become VERY obvious as you play around with CPU affinity, memory affinity, I/O affinity, etc, and balance priorities. Stunning what an impact even the smallest tweaks make to SQ. As a hint, pay very close attention to which PCIe slots have affinity to which CPU, the UPI channel between CPUs, and the affinity of built in I/O to CPU1. As you get to next level, pay attention to the affinity of memory to each CPU. This block diagram is the roadmap to design and balance processing and playback. @ray-dude great points. The sage archtecture diagram or equivalent for other dual CPU motherboard are very important inputs to working up affinity strategies. Another hint @kyoya78would be not to forget that that LTSB's kernel threads, many SW device drivers and other OS owned services cannot have their CPU affinities set by user performance tuning tools. These OS processes are scheduled by the OS across available cores on both CPU sockets, which can be challenging and needs consideration. Attaching your critical replay hardware (eg OS disk, USB ports) and setting core affinities to pin your music endpoint software to CPU socket 0 / NUMA node 0 is a good place to start for SQ. Setups that relay on the USB output audio stream being transmitted across the UPI channels don't sound so good. Using CPU socket 1 / NUMA node 1 to handel with less time dependant data in the replay chain such as reading in of music media from local storage and running the audio players UI can be useful. This removes the processing load of these functions from CPU 0 allowing it to better service realtime audio streaming to the USB port. Hours and hours of fun working through all this 😉 kyoya78, Exocer and ray-dude 1 2 OAudio Ltd. OAudio Supreme - music server. OAudio RealStream - digital audio components. Link to comment
ray-dude Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 34 minutes ago, OAudio said: Hours and hours of fun working through all this But SO satisfying then it all clicks, you look at the diagram, and you know exactly where to make tweaks (and then they work!) (and spot on insights, thank you @OAudio!) ATT Fiber -> EdgeRouter X SFP -> Taiko Audio Extreme -> Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE w/ Level 2 DAC -> Voxativ 9.87 speakers w/ 4D drivers Link to comment
ASRMichael Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 20 minutes ago, ray-dude said: But SO satisfying then it all clicks, you look at the diagram, and you know exactly where to make tweaks (and then they work!) (and spot on insights, thank you @OAudio!) Hi, are you tweaking the Extreme? Link to comment
Popular Post ray-dude Posted December 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2020 I can't help myself! ;) I'm on the alpha for Taiko Audio Server (the Taiko music player) and I'm doing a lot of experiments with upsampling right now. Learning a lot about how to tweak up the Extreme to different configs. Looking forward to the Taiko USB card at some point, which should be a game changer (the block diagram will show why ;). I suspect there will be a part 6 to my Extreme review at some point (one year in type of thing), once the tweaks and updates accumulate a bit more. Exocer and ASRMichael 2 ATT Fiber -> EdgeRouter X SFP -> Taiko Audio Extreme -> Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE w/ Level 2 DAC -> Voxativ 9.87 speakers w/ 4D drivers Link to comment
ASRMichael Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 1 hour ago, ray-dude said: I can't help myself! ;) I'm on the alpha for Taiko Audio Server (the Taiko music player) and I'm doing a lot of experiments with upsampling right now. Learning a lot about how to tweak up the Extreme to different configs. Looking forward to the Taiko USB card at some point, which should be a game changer (the block diagram will show why ;). I suspect there will be a part 6 to my Extreme review at some point (one year in type of thing), once the tweaks and updates accumulate a bit more. I envy you! I’m sure that’s what I’d be doing if i had an Extreme! 👍 Link to comment
OAudio Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 1 hour ago, ASRMichael said: Hi, are you tweaking the Extreme? I have servers in the late stages of development, there are single and dual socket c621 varients. SQ is comparable with the Taiko. Of the single and dual socket setups the dual socket is definatly the most felxible. As ray-dude says, it's satifying to hear SQ benefits when data paths and software processes and priorities are well setup. OAudio Ltd. OAudio Supreme - music server. OAudio RealStream - digital audio components. Link to comment
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