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nicks

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  1. I had what sounds like the same problem with an earlier v4 beta. I found an "app restart" after I booted Euphony resolved the issue.
  2. I have the same issue with what I believe is the original JCAT USB interface. Euphony recognises the connected DAC but no audio is output. Connect the DAC to the motherboard USB port and it works fine. I'm using an Intel DH77EB board and the JCAT card is powered from the motherboard. It works fine under Windows and with JPLAY. I'm curious to hear how Euphony compares to JPLAY and would rather do this comparison with the same hardware platform. This thread seems to focus on the latest JCAT XE USB card. Is the original USB card known to have the same issue? Perhaps I'm the only one still using the original JCAT card! It's probably time I upgraded both the motherboard and to the JCAT XE USB.
  3. I very much doubt any free script will come close to the results AO achieves. Phil has spent many hours researching and testing AO over the past three plus years leveraging a great deal of professional IT knowledge and experience. And the results he has achieved are spectacular, especially with the latest v2.00 release. Having invested all that time and effort to achieve such results it's not at all unreasonable to expect some financial compensation IMHO.
  4. Hi ElviaCaprice, I have been using AO with Win server 2012 for the past three plus years. I recently upgraded to v2.00 and have been very pleasantly surprised by the huge upgrade it has produced in my system. The uplift in performance is very substantial and would cost substantially more if you were seeking to achieve a similar result via computer hardware or Hi-Fi component upgrade. I regard AO as an essential component to achieving high-end sound quality from a computer transport. Once heard is highly unlikely you will be seeking a refund. And if you do it won't be AO that is the weak link in your system. All the best, - Nick
  5. Hi John, Further to our conversation re: the use of on-board M/B headers. This weekend I connected one of the M/B USB headers to a USB socket on the Streacom case. This enabled me to easily disconnect the 5v supply (without disassembling my USB inter-connect) and stop injecting the computers noisy 5v supply into my DAC. The result: a huge improvement in sound quality. I can now confidently state this computer transport is outperforming my silver disk transport and is the best sound I've obtained from my system. I now need to address the noise the Ethernet lead is injecting into the computer, the sound is noticeably improved with it disconnected. As I see it I have three options: 1) install a Wi-Fi card into the spare miniPCI slot; 2) insert an in-line filter into the Ethernet cable or 3) replace the copper Ethernet with a fibre based connection. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with their experience and solutions to address this issue. BTW Great to hear your system is up and running. - Nick
  6. Hello Ian, I sourced components from the following UK on-line vendors:- Case: (Streacom FC5 Evo) Scan.co.uk M/B: (Intel 2800MT) LambdaTek (ensure you select the retail box, not the oem version) PSU: (White Energy 60w) P/N: 04079-UK RAM: (kingston value RAM P/N: K162671 SSD: (256GB Crucial mSATA SSD) amazon.co.uk I found these provided quick delivery, next day in the case of Scan and Lambdatek. All of these items are readily available from other sources therefore I suggest you shop around for the best price, availability and delivery. Good luck! - Nick
  7. Hi John, Make sure you plug the inexpensive PSU into the wall socket, rather than an extension block. I made this mistake and found there to be a very substancial loss of sound quality - just as can be the case with traditional high-end hi-fi components. Its early days but I haven't found performance to be an issue with Jplay. Most of the media I've played thus far has been uncompressed red book WAV's but I have also played high res FLAC 24/96 without playback start delay being a problem. And even if there is some delay it's a trade-off I'm willing to accept to get better sound. I'm using Jplay mini at present but have been impressed by the Jplay plugin for JRiver. This arguably gives you the best of both worlds in terms of improved sound and convenience. BTW this PC boots to the desktop from a cold start within 10-15 seconds, with all the default Windows8 processes enabled. I think it's a good balance between performance/power consumption and head output. I haven't bothered to try the S/PDIF interface because I expect USB to be a lot better, i.e. less jitter, with the (dCS) DAC's asynchrous mode. If this mobo also offered a compatible external word clock input I guess it could be interesting to do the comparison. Nick
  8. Hi John, I too have been following this thread closely from the UK. The failure of my silver disk transport in the last couple of weeks left me with only a MacMini 'transport' in my system. The upside is that the failure of the CD transport (and its repair costs!) gave me the impetus to seriously investigate just what's possible with computer audio. I'm using the Intel DN2800MT with Crucial 256GB mSATA drive, a couple of Kingston 2Gb RAM DIMMS plus an inexpensive external PSU. I wanted a slimline case which would fit into my rack and therefore opted for the Streacom FC5WS-EVO. I built and had the system running within a couple of hours on Saturday. Its difficult to conceive of a more straightforward and elegant configuration with literally everything contained on the motherboard. The only internal cabling being the power on/off switch and LED leads to the case front panel. It also appears to run very cool and with minimal power consumption. I have to thank Ted for bring this configuration to my attention. Anyway its been working fine since the weekend with Windows 8 64 bit free preview build and my initial impression is very positive. In a number of respects its outperforming my CD transport, especially in detail retrieval, and is certainly a substantial improvement over the Mac platform. I should also note that I have just discovered jplay, again thanks to these forums, and have been very impressed by the contribution its making to the overall performance. This is clearly the best sounding playback software I've used. The integration with J RIver is also impressive and for those who can't live without J.RIver's GUI and many useful library management features. I must stress these are very early days. I wasn't going to comment for a few weeks with a more considered assessment. But having seen your post I thought I should confirm its a configuration that works well and produces excellent results. It's also an absolute bargain in the context of hi-end hi-fi equipment and certainly produces results which compare very favourably with high-end CD transports. The only disappointment for me is the compatibility issues between my DAC which have prevented me purchasing the SOtM PCIe interface. If anyone has experience using the SOtM USB2.0 PCI card with a PCI to PCIe riser/adapter I would be keen to hear whether this is a viable work around. I now need to workout how best to expand my storage and whether to use internal or external attached SATA storage or go down the NAS route. My preference is for the latter but I need to do some more research before committing to another hardware purchase. Anyway the mSATA drive will suffice for now. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the results. If you have any further questions I'm quite happy to try and answer them. Do let us all know how you get on. - NickS
  9. Hi Suteetat Are you any closer to resolving the apparent compatibility issue with the SOtM PCIe card and your dCS Upsampler? I'm also using the dCS Scarlatti upsampler (with default Windows drivers) and planning to build a server based on ted_b recent CAPS2+ specification. However this issue with the PCIe/USB3 SOtM card, plus the potential lack of switchable power on this card, has caused me to seriously consider the Intel D2700DC PCI based mobo instead to support the USB2 SOtM card. I'm puzzled as to what advantage the USB3 version offers over the original USB2 PCI card? Is there some expectation it will sound better than the USB2 version? And does the UDB3/PCIe have switchable power output? I'm getting very good results with a standard 2010 MacMini (Win7 bootcamp, JRiver & Entreq Apollo USB cable) but it sounds like there are substantial performance improvements available with CAPS based server. Thanks in advance for your insight, experience and advice with SOtM USB cards and dCS Scarlatti. - Nick
  10. ted_b wrote: "I may ask Brad at Revelation Audio Labs for his firewire to evaluate (especially after Barrows reminder) .. Brad's RAL USB dual conduit is quite revelatory." And I couldn't agree more. I was introduced to Brad's Firewire dual conduit cable and found the improvement it brought to a dCS Scarlatti DAC to Upsampler link revelatory. And at the price it is a bargain relative to alternative cables on the market. I gather the Crystal Firewire sets the standard but at $4k its quite a long way outside my budget. The results with the RAL Firewire cable encouraged me to try the dual-conduit USB, quickly followed by the power-free single conduit version, between a Windows 7 laptop (running JRiver) and Scarlatti Upsampler. The RAL USB cable has improved the SQ produced by the PC such that I now prefer ripped redbook CD's played back on my laptop in preference to the dCS Verdi CD transport. Prior to the arrival of the RAL USB cable I was sceptical that a standard Win7 PC could equal or improve upon a high-end transport. I had been using the standard cheap USB cable dCS supply with good results but a long way short of the superb results obtained from the CD transport. The RAL USB has unlocked the potential offered by J River and has enabled me to enjoy listening to my ripped red book CD's on a PC without suffering a loss of SQ compared with the dCS CD transport. So much so that I now prefer the SQ produced by the PC which I believe is out performing the CD transport in SQ terms. I'm now a convert to computer audio and seriously looking at building a dedicated PC and investigate other media players like XXHighEnd. In my experience, with a transparent high resolution system, you cannot get anywhere near realising the full performance & SQ potential of a high quality DAC without high quality digital cables and RAL's are very hard to beat at the price. The difference in resulting SQ is substantial and once experienced leaves you kicking yourself for not having tried them sooner. - Nick
  11. Hi, I owned a dCS Elgar+ for five years before upgrading to Scarlatti. I think you will find the Elgar will still outperform most current DAC's and unless you already have a serious high-end system you will not be hearing it's full potential. If your Purcell supports it I recommend you upsample all your red books CD's and PCM data from your Macbook to DSD for best performance. And the suggestion that dCS level performance will ever be available for $200 is wishful thinking. The Elgar & Purcell will only accept data up to 96KS/s on its single-wire (AES, RCA or BNC) interfaces. It will however accept 176.4 and 192 over dual-wire AES and for this you need a professional PC interface card, for example RME. Unfortunately this also requires a PCI bus which you obviously don't have available on the Macbook. I think therefore unless you can use a Mac/PC desktop with PCI bus and get hold of a professional sound card with dual-AES support you will be limited to playing 96KS/s data from your Macbook. I doubt dCS will make a software update available to enable high sample rates for the earlier units but you could drop them an email and ask. dCS have released a single-wire software update (v1.20)for Scarlatti DAC which does support all sample rates up to 192KS/s over AES, RCA & BNC interfaces.
  12. Hi I thoroughly recommend the Revelation Audio Labs USB cables. I tried the dual-conduit initially followed by the power-free version. Both provide stunning results, the power-free version improving on the dual-conduit even with the latter's power 'leg' is disconnected. The improvement in the resolution of dCS front end with these cables has been huge. And given the relatively modest cost they are a bargain. I'm now a convert to Computer Audio because the sound I'm achieving from ripped red book CD's has now surpassed the dCS Verdi CD transport. If you are in the market for USB (or firewire) cables you should hear what these cables are capable of, in a suitably transparent system they are revelatory. - Nick
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