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steveinusa

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  1. Mark, it sounds better....just choke up and try it versus the $3 SATA cables .. _
  2. Peter, absolutely! I certainly don't know everything, but everyone on these forums do - it is like treasure hunting. That is why I have spent and continue to spend an inordinate amount of time reading about everyone's discoveries on the way to the "best" sound. A PC setup like I am suggesting sounds really good. The challenge I had in spec'ing out the music server was the power component, without getting ridiculous with a custom linear power supply. The solution using a real well engineered PSU (like a Seasonic) and Ryan Mintz's filtered ATX cables made the resulting music server easy, very powerful, with great sound output, and no need for the SOtM components.
  3. I have spent a huge amount of time on this forum as well as JPLAY and conversing with several other people that are experts in music, elimination of noise, electronics and music generated from a computer. I will note the conclusions I have reached on the characteristics of computer that outputs music that sounds fantastic. I have built computers from the early ‘90’s, and I have always built my own systems, so this build may seem a little more than a C.A.P.S., but it is just a few details (very important details). This is meant to be a system with the most consideration being the SOUND produced. The system is a Windows 8 computer, Intel CPU, running JRiver Media 17 (JRiver Media Center software - have not upgraded to 18), and overlayed with JPLAY (JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows), with music stored on a NAS (flac and wav file format). I am going to discuss the major components of a music computer that sounds great and why. Some of what I will suggest may cause some consternation, but please bear with me. • Power Supply (PSU) – must be powerful and of high quality, very, very important • Mother Board (MB) – High quality, high bandwidth • CPU – as powerful as possible (with large L1,L2 & L3 cache) – Intel i7 • RAM – The best and fastest RAM possible and the lowest latency • Solid-State harddrives (SSD) • Video Card – must have a powerful video card, believe it or not, it sounds better! • Filtering technology – the secret to making all this sound superb • Power Cord – must be a high quality cord – won’t say more than that. Just get a good one. I use the power cords from Pangea (Audio Advisor). A computer that sounds great must be as powerful as possible. You must have a big, efficient power supply, you must have the best motherboard you can afford, and the most powerful CPU installed, and at least 8GB of the lowest latency RAM on board. You must have a good video card too, even if you have a headless setup. It must be cooled effectively. Why, you are asking (screaming even maybe - )? Things that I will address that compromise the sound are heat, quantization error, low bandwidth, low power, noise, filtering systems. In this article, I will not address the software considerations and how to reduce the system services in Windows or other tweaks in the playback software (Windows 8 sounds better, by the way). Others have done a good job in those areas. Nor will I address the importance of cleaning up the magnetic and induced electrical harmonics present in the electrical system of your home that inject noise into your entire music/video system. That is another topic. All the things we try to do in audio is to eliminate or as much as possible, reduce “noise”. That’s why we attempt to address the noise with SSD drives, low power Atom motherboards, linear power supplies, PicoPSU, SotM Filters, ERS, no fans, CnC’d aluminum cases etc. Noise is simply voltage we don’t want, and it is measured in uV (microvolts). A perfect digital square-wave is either 0.0uV or 3.3uV. Any deviation is noise. That noise gets added to the music signal from multiple sources and causes amplitude distortion which gets imprinted on the digital signal and translates into added unwanted harmonics. The digital signal contains timing and amplitude information which gets imprinted on the square wave and is then read by the computer, and processed, copied, re-copied, many times, then you hear the result – good or bad. Sources of Noise Heat. There is a big difference if the CPU is at 32°C versus 45°-50°C. Heat increases resistance, which decreases bandwidth. Lower bandwidth means more noise. So you must cool the system. Heat makes more noise than using a fan. A water cooled system would be best, and is recommended for the serious computer audiophile, but it is a big hassle. Second best are efficient, low noise fans. Vibration. Environmental and system (micovibrations). Your computer should be on good footers and a maplewood block. There is a lot of information on systems to minimize this challenge on various music and equipment forums. Power Supply Noise. This is the biggest problem, and why everyone has gone with either external power supplies, linear power supplies or the PicoPSU. Switched Mode Power Supplies (SMPS) inject a lot of noise back into your system which degrades the sound considerably. On the other hand, a wimpy PSU makes your system inherently less musical sounding. It won’t have the slam, depth, detail and power because it won’t have the bandwidth and the transient response to reproduce the powerful lows to generate a clean music signal that sounds really good. A powerful PSU has high current and less heat, and is more stable and thus has less noise. Linear PSU are great, but they don’t have the current required for really good sound in a PC setup. The PSU is the most important component in your computer. EMI/RFI. Did you know that every little trace, wire, cable, component and your motherboard emits all sorts of radio frequencies and magnetic fields that creates a lot of electronics noise? This is a very serious problem for us music lovers, and it is not just limited to your computer. All your components have this problem, and no one really knows how to address is correctly (except for one person I have found is David Schulte at the Upgrade Company – The Upgrade Company - Leader in High Performance Audio Video Upgrades). We have all tried the EMS material from Stillpoints or 3M. Proper shielding makes a serious improvement in the clarity, detail, soundstage and removes that “haze” we know is there, but don’t know it is gone, until it is gone. But, it must be done correctly. CPU and L1, L2 and L3 cache. All current CPUs are more than fast enough to process the data, but the I/O of the other peripherals in the system, including the motherboard, are the bottleneck. CPUs have memory integrated into the CPU called cache, which is very very fast memory. L1 cache is the fastest, L2 and L3 are slower. They act as a buffer for the CPU. The better the CPU (for our purposes), the more cache they have. Remember, if the data (music) has to be processed more than necessary, more power is used, and more noise is injected into the square-wave, which degrades the sound we are looking for. With an i7, or even an i5, with multiple processor threads, lower wait states, and faster clocks, we have less noise and better performance. Memory. The RAM memory is always playing catch up with CPU as we noted above. So you want the fastest RAM you can get, with the lowest latency (or wait states). This reduces the number of times the music has to be processed, which reduces … noise! So, to summarize, we want a fast, powerful computer, with a high quality motherboard, like an ASUS Rampage IV or something little more modest like a P8Z77-M, with an Intel i7 processor. You can go with any flavor you like, but the more L1,L2,L3 cache the better. I used an i7-3770T, for lower power consumption, and hence lower noise. We want it cool. You want fast, high quality RAM – I use Corsair Dominator 1600C7, 4 x 4GB sticks. Of course, use solid state harddrives (I use OCZ Vertex 4 64GB) for your operating system (a PCI-SSD Card is even better). A real good SATA cable is important too! I use the silver ppastudio SATA cable made by Pang over in Taiwan (ppastudio.blogspot.com). The operating system should be Windows 8, with system modifications. The music should be on a separate harddrive, preferably external, connected via ethernet to a NAS (I have a QNAP 219P+, 2x1TB Seagate 7200.12 and VPI Cat7 SSTP shielded cabling). A good video card, like the Radeon HD 6870, 7870 or the GeoForce GTX 560 Ti is a good choice. This reduces the load on the CPU so more time can be allocated to decoding and processing the music files and music playback software. The power supply should be at a minimum 560W, depending what other peripherals you have. On my system I did not include a DVD/CD/BR drive. As discussed above, a good PSU is probably the most important component in your system. I suggest using a 860W-1200W Corsair or Seasonic PSU. The secret sauce to eliminate the harmonics generated by the PSU, get all the benefits we have talked about and eliminate the problems, is to use the ATX filtered cables from Core Audio at https://coreaudiotechnology.com/products/power-supplies/atx-cables. These replace your cables for the PSU (4/8 and 24-pin) and a separate y-cable for your fans and peripherals. With these filters, you do not need the SOtM PCI-USB board nor the fan filters. If you are using a USB DAC, get a cheap USB 3.0 card, and power it and the fans from the PSU, filtered with the Core Audio ATX cables in between. These cables are the cats-meow! In my opinion, they are a game changer. If you want a cool looking audiophile case, like from Wesena or Streacom, you will need one that can hold a full ATX PSU. If you don’t care what it looks like, you can keep it hidden, and everything is controlled anyway via your JRemoted iPad, iPhone, or Android phone/pad running Gizmo. These things allow you to have all the benefits of a powerful and awesome sounding music computer, without the downsides discussed above. Oh, and by the way, your rips will improve in sound! For a lot more information go to the forums at JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows, the “Articles” and “FAQs” at http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com and of course all the threads here at Computer Audiophile. Call up David at the Upgrade Company, and ask him what he can do for your components.
  4. Alix, the other choice, is to use a really good regular ATX PSU like one from Seasonic (I use the X-560, but the X-860 might be a better choice) and then filtered ATX cables from Core Audio you referenced below. You definitely want more power, and with the ATX Cables from Core, you will have a vastly superior sounding system....and dare I say, better than anything so far I have seen.
  5. I tried JPLAY out a few weeks ago, and other than the annoying silent stops in the demo, I noticed it did sound better than just the straight JRiver (which I love). SO I bought it for $134. A little pricey, but it works fantastic overlayed on JRiver (for the convenience of the interface). It sounds more open, more detail, less "haze" in the music. The music, depending on whether 16/44.1 to 24/192 is this is gooood! to WOW! now that is what I'm talking about. Plus Marcin and Josef are extremely helpful with any trouble shooting issues. I don't think they sleep.
  6. Jesseinsf - I just noticed you have a computer similar to the one I built. I had a powder coated Lian-Li case made for me, with an ASUS P6X58D MB, 12GB Corsair Ram, like yours, the Intel i7 930 2.8GHz CPU, a XFX Radeon HD 4870 video card, 2 WD 640GB HD, setup in a RAID 0 (where all my music is - backed up to a QNAP NAS with 2 1T Seagate Drives), 2 OZC SSD drives - one for WIN 7 Pro, and the other for Ubuntu, I have the ASUS Xonar Essence STX like you, powered by a Cooler Master M850W PSU and a Samsung XL2370-1 monitor, plus a few other goodies, and it smokes.....and plays music beautifully through a pair of Sennheiser HD650's.
  7. Jesseinsf - I agree and understand what you are saying about proper shielding. I thought about that quite a bit when I built my computer last year ....but I do not have the technical know-how to do that. Like materials to use, where to get them, how to apply them, shielding for specific circuits and parts on and the in computer etc. If you can give me some specifics on how to do that, I would love to know so I can really tune up my computer. Thanks in advance!
  8. After reading about the various playback software and ways to make the music sound like music from a computer in Absolute Sound (the last 4 issues - Dec,Jan,Feb,Mar), they concluded the best overall program was JRiver 17, however for the best sound, was JPLAY. So, I went and checked out JPLAY. Their new version 4.1 is a pluggin for JRiver! So you get the great interface and other capabilities from JRiver, and the superior sound played through JPLAY. And it is superior. You have to try to believe it. Quite remarkable. The one thing the authors in Absolute Sound concluded was that a WAV playback is superior to FLAC, even a HiRes FLAC file. I hope HDTracks reads the article and makes available their files in WAV format. They also were surprised to also discover a high quality AC Cable plugged into the computer makes a very noticeable positive difference too.
  9. I simply have an Acer Notebook, connected wirelessly to my main computer, with access to the attached 1TB USB hardrive where all my music is located (including 24/96 files). I connect the notebook to an HRT Streamer II+ via a Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable, connected to my Nuforce Amp, and voila! hi-res music in the living room.
  10. Flatmap - with your Proton and AKG K-702 - what USB cable do you use, and did you upgrade the headphone cable for your AKG K-702s? Is there anything else you use or have setup with current system? I am looking at getting both the Proton and the AKG K-702 (from Headphone). Thanks in advance.
  11. Dan - Cullen Circuits does a custom mod on the Sonos. you can go to www.cullencircuits.com and check it out. They can do the mod for 24/96 or 24/192. It can also be modded to use the Empirical Audio Pace Car Reclocker. Steve
  12. Thanks Chris. Let us know when you have some information to report. It has a lot of trick stuff built in, but it appears they have used superior parts and power isolation design that may make it a really great mb for computer generated music. Steve
  13. Chris or any enthusiastic computer audiophile - has anyone tested and used the new ASUS audiophile grade motherboard? Any info or feedback would be appreciated. Chris indicated in a prior post he was working with ASUS. Thank you in advance. Steve
  14. Thank you Clay. Since I am new to all of this, your observation that the Lynx was a response to trying to get better sound out of the existing SPDIF technology, was what I had a feeling about. From what I have read from Mr. Rankin, Mr. Hansen and Mr Nugent, the asynchronous USB is just "technically" better. The sound of course is what really matters. Now if they can figure out to do it at 24/192, then I am thinking that would seal the deal. Again, as observed earlier, the execution is very important. Gordon Rankin appears to have changed the game as far as USB to computer connections go. Mr. Hansen made a big bet on it. My feeling is, that is currently the best bet. Thank you again for your expert observations. Steve
  15. ok Eloise, now we are getting somewhere. Thank you very much for your answer. I am trying to figure all of this out and which way I should jump. So, all interfaces can sound good, if the execution is done properly with the end result in mind (hear), is what I understand you to be saying. Ok, having that understanding, I guess I need to pick the top designers, decide which way the audio computing technology may be going (I think USB) and go listen, like audiozorro said earlier. Again, thank you everyone! STeve
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