unsleepable

Have you tried a USB printer cable of similar, with a ferrite attached to it?

Are you using the HDPLEX linear power supply?

In case you were referring to my post, I'd like to point out that I wasn't criticising anything. I've simply asked about the thermal and power layouts, assuming that the designer's has considered these aspects and that there might be some background for the choices made. These aspects are vital for any computer, but much more for one without active cooling and that uses a low-powered supply. This is not just a matter of tastes… The chassis and the power supply must allow for the system to work at full capacity in normal conditions. As I said, the numbers just don't add up, and seem to indicate that the design might be flawed. I am afraid that the text you quoted only reinforces my point: This means that the processor may consume more than 80W, even though the heat dissipation won't be proportional to the power consumption. Peak power consumption will of course be larger than the dissipated heat. I know that the power calculation I laid out is very conservative, and that realistically higher numbers should be considered—for example, no efficiency is rated for the linear power supply, and I very much doubt that it is 100%. Linear power supplies usually have a much lower efficiency than switch-mode ones, a 50–60% figure would be quite normal. All in all, with this particular component selection and considering a linear power supply, a 250W figure would seem more appropriate if we want the system to be able to run at full capacity. But again, rather than speculating maybe Chris has this information from the vendors of the selected components, and his own calculations. As for heat dissipation, I simply quoted what appears in the user guide of the chassis selected for this particular design, a recommendation made by the company that makes these things.

Chris — I've been checking this C.A.P.S. v4 Pipeline server as I am looking for components to build my own digital source. And I think there are a couple of issues about which I hope I can get your input. On the one hand, why a 80W processor? The E3-1241 v3 processor is very powerful, but similar processing power can be found a lower power consumption and heat dissipation. For the Streacom FC10 case, the vendor specifies a maximum of 95W TDP CPU. But if you open the user guide at http://www.streacom.com/downloads/ug/fc10.pdf, on page 3 it more clearly recommends a 65W TCP one. The vendor warns that a high TDP will require the chassis to be "placed in a location with adequate air flow and moderate ambient room temperature." I understand that nothing major will happen if the chassis is not able to keep the processor cool. The CPU will just throttle down to lower the temperature. But then, it begs the question of why this processor was chosen when, depending on the environment, it might not be possible to obtain its maximum performance. The other issue is power. The HDPLEX Linear PSU provides a maximum of 100W regardless of the power rating of the DC power supply. But a quick calculation shows that the maximum power consumption for the whole setup is as follows: - Processor: 80W - Motherboard: since it doesn't provide full-fledged video, let's say a conservative 20W. - Memory: again conservatively, ~ 3W per module - SSD: 3.3W - SOtM tX-PCIexp card: ~ 15W plus 2.5W per connected device—a maximum of 20W. Everything adds up to 129.3W—without considering additional disks, a potential graphics card, or the optical drive that the chassis allows for. Even assuming a 100% efficiency on the linear power supply, we are ~ 30% over maximum—and again, the culprit is clearly the processor. I understand that this is under absolute maximum load, and I assume that normally the system will function fine—but still, it seems that we are not exactly on the safe side. Am I maybe missing something here? Also, if you have your own calculations about these aspects of the system design, I would very much appreciate it if you could share them to have a better insight. And one last question, what's the advantage of the FC10 over the FC5 chassis? Since the motherboard is µATX, it would fit in the FC5 chassis and still leave room for 3 x 2.5" disks, while removing the need for the pipe extensions, and I guess simplifying the setup. What other considerations have gone into the chassis selection? Thank you in advance for any help you can shed on this.

Even though the cable is USB 3.0, the DAC USB port is likely 1.1, or maybe 2.0. Therefore the maximum cable length supported is either 3 or 5 m. You have just been using it over specifications and it worked for you—although there might have been data loss that you were not aware of, and of course the setup might not been stable. A USB repeater, extender, or even an active USB hub might help.

Something like this: http://www.qed.co.uk/hdmi_digital/optical_digital_audio/performance_optical_digital_audio_toslink-mini_toslink.html The mini-TOSLINK plug is a bit longer than the regular mini-jack connector, so that's how the computer knows when to enable the S/PDIF port.

Many people who would want to have her album would have bought it regardless of Spotify, so I don't think those figures by themselves tell the whole story.

Actually, I'd say there's lots… The only thing I would really take into account, is to make sure not to plug the disk to the same controller as the DAC.

I completely agree with that. It's very disconcerting and gives me the chills when a DAC sounds better on one port than another. Obviously, either some ports don't do a good job, or none do. It always surprises me that some DACs that have this flaw still get to be very popular. [emoji15]

In a mirror, any of the disks contains all the data so you can always recover from that. When you remove a disk, the RAID is degraded but it works—that's what it's designed for after all. So you remove a disk, put another in place and add it to the volume. The NAS will restore the redundancy by copying the data from the working drive to the new one.

Does anyone know what DAC chip is in the N-P01? The N-50A and the N-70A use Sabre32 chips, while the previous N-30 and N-50 apparently implement AKM. But I haven't been able to find this information for the N-P01.

Yes, that's what I meant—a full media server, also to play media files. Plex would do that.

For 44.1KHz/16-bit audio you'd need ~6.7 Mbps if it wasn't compressed—plus additional overhead. Although audio will surely come compressed. I'd say that a 10Mbps connection makes sense.

So basically what you want to do is use the Chromebox as a media server, accessing the files from the network, right? Maybe something like Plex would do, and there is also an app for it.

From the power supply, I'd say. Maybe your dac doesn't isolate the port. If you hear differences in "depth", it could also be jitter. Or it could be a bad USB controller implementation in the DAC altogether. As for solutions to play directly from the computer, if your computer has a TOSLINK port, you could try that, and see if the sound is also improved over USB. Or use an Airport Express.