Popular Post Energy Posted February 22, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted February 22, 2020 7 hours ago, pranabindu said: Wow, what a great thread! I'm kinda new to DIY audio PC builds, so I apologize if my questions seem dumb. I got stumped trying to pick a motherboard. What audio performance characteristics should I be looking for? Chipset stats? BIOS tweakability? Once you pick a CPU, there are SO MANY motherboard options, it is overwhelming. About the video (to be able to connect a monitor, to set up what will be a headless PC): if the motherboard has a video output, does the CPU have to be rated for video, too? There is mention here of RAM "quality." To what does that refer? The latency numbers? Any specific stats I should look out for? Does the PCI-E speed (8x, 4x, etc.) make a difference in sound quality if my plan is to use the Pink Faun HDMI card? Pink Faun seems to put its OCXO's all over the motherboard. They are expensive. Is there a less expensive solution for a stock motherboard? Thanks for any advice you might have. It depends what kind of computer you are building (eg. one box or two box setup). If you are building a headless computer, the device should still have a HDMI or Display Port for you to initially set up headless ramboot via Flash Drive with the pre-loaded config. It's been found that a NUC (nano unit of computing) with a decent performing CPU that is powered by a low noise linear supply sound better than some less powerful devices, however this requires a power supply that can handle at least 15W which is a little over 2A of current. In order to reduce power consumption further one can disable certain processes from being used in BIOS such as certain audio controllers, WiFi cards, etc. Some NUC's come with a heatsink fan to cool down the CPU but this induces noise and consumes more power so it is advised to put the circuit (motherboard) into a passively cooled case instead, preferably with good performing thermal paste like Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for the CPU DIE. For awhile many people have been fond of the Intel NUC7i7. The device comes with two problems. The first problem is that Intel NUC's do not support ECC ram. The second problem is that their DC input takes a wide range of voltages hence there is more noisy DC to DC conversion taking place. The device has to convert the higher voltage (normally 19V) to lower voltages like 3.3V, 5V, and 12V for it's components. Outside of noise, this voltage drop also generates more heat. On the discussion of RAM/MEMORY, If you are creating a headless NUC with an operating system like AudioLinux, that said operating system has to first be loaded onto a flash drive with the essential configuration required for it to perform as an endpoint (NAA) over the network. Both the flash drive and the RAM needs to be 4GB to support said operating system. Some operating systems like Euphony may require more. It is said that using two sticks in dual channel helps to increase bandwidth and lower the latency of CPU/RAM interaction (data queue's) but doing so involves using another stick that operates at 1.2V. This means more power consumption. Some people have found that one stick to sound better but this can mainly be due to the device not being fed with adequate power thus it performs better with just one stick. The NUC's take something called SODIMM RAM. They are DDR4 and come in many different frequencies and timing (CL). It's preferable to use the one with the highest frequency supported by your NUC's motherboard but what people have found to be the best is called ECC Industrial RAM from the brand APACER. It may not be rated with the highest operational frequency, but people have found that Industrial, ECC, or both combined to sound better than higher frequency or low CL timing RAM. Industrial specified memory modules basically RAM with integrated circuit (IC's) chips from the same batch so their operating voltages are more aligned with one another. ECC (Error-Correcting Code) is a type of register IC placed on the RAM to correct the soft and hard bit errors that computers sometime tends to make. This means that without ECC your outputted files aren't truly "bit perfect" until they are corrected. Intel NUC's in correlation to ECC is that they do not support it. Only their workstation/server computer motherboards do. For both of these problems combined I decided to go with an AMD NUC instead called ASROCK IBOX-V1000. The two advantages is that it receives a set voltage of 12V at the DC input and supports ECC enabled RAM. Both of which has lead to better sound quality after many A/B tests. To address your question on video. CPU's deal with processing tasks while an APU (CPU + GPU) does the same but has video embedded on it. Most NUC's are APU's or has a CPU with a separate GPU on it so most that you purchase that is recommended here will come with either HDMI or Display Port 1.4 on it. Now the NUC can be used in two different ways. Either as a server or as an endpoint. As an endpoint in order to reduce further noise on the circuit it is better to run it headless and operating system loaded onto the RAM via RAMBOOT. If you use it on a server, although it works, even with 4 CPU core it does not have the processing power as a full fledged computer would have when processing music that require heavy filters and modulators. For example if you were to upsample PCM music to DSD, you will be limited to how good a filter/modulator you can use due to CPU processing power limitations. This is one of the reasons why there is an uprising of audiophiles wishing to build passively cooled computer music servers that have more processing power. The problem with this is there are more variables that go into building a computer of this caliber. First off, since the TDP (thermal design power) of a larger computer (eg. Full ATX) requires more power, one cannot easily power it with a lower current linear power supply like with the NUC. It also generates more heat so in order to passively cool it you would need something like an HDPLEX H5 case. In terms of RAM you too can use ECC/Industrial for the larger server. But instead of SODIMM it is called UDIMM. UDIMM is unbuffered memory which means the CPU's memory controller sends tasks directly to UDIMM's DRAM bank of memory modules. RDIMM is better in the case that most of them are also ECC but have an extra chip to register given workloads. This chip organizes the data and prioritizes it in order before sending it to DRAM. The benefit here is it takes the workload from the CPU's memory controller. It is very beneficial for server's with multiple CPU's as they require it, but still somewhat beneficial for a single CPU. The unfortunate part is that most RDIMM's are not made to Industrial specification. However since they are made in smaller batches, they are more likely to perform in closer tolerances than standard unbuffered DIMM's. Another benefit of using a larger server with a larger motherboard (like an ATX) is that there are PCI-E and PCI available for a plug in card such as the one you mentioned (Pink Faun I²S). It is common to use cards like JCAT Net Card or USB CARD FEMTO to isolate the Ethernet or USB controller chip further away from the noisy motherboard circuitry and power the card with cleaner external power (5V/1.5A). This improves the measured jitter of the output device since the controller circuit is now better isolated, operate under clean power, and utilizes a lower phase noise clock (Crytek CCHD-957). These cards can be installed in PCI-E x1, x4, x8 or x16 lanes. The lanes with the higher multiplier have more bandwidth and thus performs faster. If the card only has enough pins for a particular multiplier (eg. PCI-E x4), using it on a lane with higher bandwidth won't necessarily improve it. You'll however want to connect it to the PCI-E lane that makes a direction connection to the CPU rather than the one that routes to the chipset first.There are cheaper cards out there like the Matrix Audio Element-H (USB) that comes with an aluminum shielded cover. It is hopeful that other brands will one day do the same for extra EMI/RFI rejection. Clocks/Oscillators with lower phase noise can be used to replace the lesser performing ones on located on the motherboard or even on the add-on cards. Each aftermarket clock should come with it's own circuit and powered with clean power. Pink Faun does have this in the form of their OCXO modules. The higher priced OCXO clocks usually leads to lower phase noise plots, but do note that their power input is equally important alongside how well they are decoupled/dampened and temperature controlled (using an oven). In order to replace stock clocks you will need to know how to solder or know someone who can with some technical know-how in circuitry. A cheap option is to purchase over the counter clocks like the Crystek CCHD-575 in the frequency you want to replace from websites like Mouser or Digikey and use an adapter board for the clock to sit on with wires leading up to the location you want to replace. It is advised to power said clock with a low noise linear voltage regulator like an Analog Devices LT3045 rather than using the noisy voltage supplied by the motherboard. These regulators can be purchased from LDOVR.com but required to be connected to the 5V of a power supply so it can drop the voltage down to 3.3V for the clock. A slight higher priced option is to buy pre-made clock modules, however I advise you look at it's phase noise before you purchase them. Most of them will do better than the stocks but if you don't properly pay attention to the phase noise, maybe not by much. A higher priced option would be mounting a SOtM sCLK-EX clock module to an Akasa 2.5" SSD/HDD bracket by drilling holes to mount the PCB board by using 5-10mm hex standoffs and imperial #4-40 or M3 machine screws. There should be another drilled hole made to fit a GX16-2 DC input connector and a two wires leading from the connector to the clock module's power input (9V/1A). The clock module has four clock outputs that can be programmed for the frequency that is required. It stock it has a lower phase noise than Crystek and even lower when a Masterclock is connected to the masterclock input of the device. What occurs when the connection is made is that it takes the incredibly low phase noise 10MHz signal of the Masterclock and uses it as a reference point for it's clock circuit to generate/output even lower phase noise.The even more pricey ones are from Pink Faun such as their "Ultra OXCO". The downfall of that is that they only work for one location. I personally use the sCLK-EX which only occupies one mounting bracket in the back of the case but can tap into four different locations. Normally you'll want to connect the clocks to SYSTEM, CHIPSET, OUTPUT (I²S, USB, ETHERNET), and whatever clock that controls the display you're using (HDMI or DISPLAY PORT). If you are using both JCAT NET and USB card then don't clock the display and clock both of these cards instead. In conclusion, having an ATX music server will be more ideal in being able to use the top of the line digital filters such as the ones available on HQPLAYER thanks to the higher CPU processing power of the server. Aside from processing power it allows you use more isolated add-on cards for lower jitter performance as well as allowing more space to be used for aftermarket clocks. The only inconveniences is that the CPU cannot have too much CPU cores as this raises the temperature beyond the passive cooled chassis's allowed TDP and in order to power this kind of server with a linear power supply you will need something with like a lower end HDPLEX 200W or higher end Paul Hynes SR7. This sole reason is why people on the forums right now are trying out various linear power supplies in the voltages needed by the motherboard (3.3V, 5V, 12V) in different locations (EPS and ATX). One could simply use a DC to ATX converter but these create over 10mV (10,000uV) of noise which is way beyond a typical audiophile linear power supply that normally are single digit uV. Thus it is recommended to disable all unused IC's in BIOS to further save on power consumption. In general, the music server has lots of DC to DC converters on board despite being fed clean power so it is advised to used a network switch (eg. EtherRegen) to galvanically isolate computer noise from reaching the DAC (since Ethernet is inherently galvanically isolated). With this setup it requires a NUC to be placed after the network switch and before the DAC to receive music files from the server and send it to the DAC. This method has less noise since the NUC is uses much less current and is fed a linear power supply. It doesn't do much heavy level processing on it's own as it's job is to just simply hand over the audio files. This is the reason why having a set input voltage for the NUC is better than having one with a wide input (12-19VDC) as those can create more noise that can eventually irrigate to the DAC. This is the reason why USB reconditioning devices like UpTone ISOREGEN or SOtM tX-USBultra help with sound quality when placed after the USB output of the server or NUC. Lastly, one can improve the clocks within the NUC also, but with small form factors and passive cooling there is very little space. There is two ways I could think of for having an end game system. 1. Taiko Audio SGM Extreme (One Box Setup) 2. Custom Built Server & Endpoint Based Audio Chain (Multiple Box Setup) Not sure which would be better between the two.. StreamFidelity, Iving, motberg and 12 others 2 4 9 ٩(●̮̃•)۶ Carbon (NET) ⇢ EtherRegen (NET) ⇢ Carbyne (USB) ⇢ Terminator-Plus (XLR) ⇢ β22 (XLR) ⇢ Diana TC (ง'-')ง 【 = ◈ ︿ ◈ = 】 Link to comment
Popular Post Energy Posted February 22, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted February 22, 2020 45 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said: @Energy Thank you for this very good contribution. It's like a compendium. 👌 And even this really ingeniously new designed Taiko Audio SGM Extreme has a disadvantage: to my knowledge it will not be able to render the EC modulators in HQPlayer with DSD 256. This requires a clock frequency of at least 4 GHz over several cores. It's ok, because the target picture is different. Our goal is to render with EC modulators. Look: whatsbestforum That's what I was going for. 😉 Now if anyone asks questions just link it to that. It'll make life a little simpler. I concur. We both find DSD upsampling superior to anything else available. I have tried JPLAY Femto but found HQPLAYER far better. Even when using streams like Tidal, although JPLAY sounds good, using Roon as a front end that's connected to Tidal and feeding audio streams to HQPLAYER to have it upsampled from PCM to DSD is still better by a long shot. How organic the sound is, timbre, decay, openness in sound stage/air, and especially the layering of music or how it's projected is much more ear candy. Right now I am using an AMD 3950X. Even when overclocked all 16 cores still fail to get poly-sinc-xtr-lp to play ASDMEC7 at DSD512. While everyone else "fauning" over the Taiko SGM Extreme, we are looking at passively cooled 8GHz CPU's to handle DSD512 instead. 😅 I definitely miss the sound stage of DSD512 so much that I sometimes go back to the AMSDM7 512+fs modulator just to play DSD512 with acoustic music for a better sense of head space. Back to the server build discussion.. I have a few things to note 1. Apacer Industrial RAM should sound better than any consumer ram regardless of CL timing 2. Intel Optane for the operating system should sound better due to it's lower latency 3. Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut thermal paste will be better for the heatsink StreamFidelity, 87mpi and ASRMichael 3 ٩(●̮̃•)۶ Carbon (NET) ⇢ EtherRegen (NET) ⇢ Carbyne (USB) ⇢ Terminator-Plus (XLR) ⇢ β22 (XLR) ⇢ Diana TC (ง'-')ง 【 = ◈ ︿ ◈ = 】 Link to comment
Energy Posted February 27, 2020 Share Posted February 27, 2020 3 hours ago, elan120 said: The 8GB Apacer WT ECC DDR4 UDIMM part number is D31.23245S.001 I see nowhere that sells this RAM. Do we have to contact Apacer directly in order to purchase it? ٩(●̮̃•)۶ Carbon (NET) ⇢ EtherRegen (NET) ⇢ Carbyne (USB) ⇢ Terminator-Plus (XLR) ⇢ β22 (XLR) ⇢ Diana TC (ง'-')ง 【 = ◈ ︿ ◈ = 】 Link to comment
Energy Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 @StreamFidelity Did you by any chance listen before and after applying the new BIOS configuration to listen for audible changes? ٩(●̮̃•)۶ Carbon (NET) ⇢ EtherRegen (NET) ⇢ Carbyne (USB) ⇢ Terminator-Plus (XLR) ⇢ β22 (XLR) ⇢ Diana TC (ง'-')ง 【 = ◈ ︿ ◈ = 】 Link to comment
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