jaxwired

Got my DAC2dsdSE Femto upgrade back yesterday. Listening now. Will post some impressions after a bit more seat time. My take is that there really should be zero break in required. My DAC2 was already run-in before e upgrade and now the only change is a new clock chip. Why would a clock chip perform any differently after a break in period? Especially a clock with this level of precision. I surely hope that the clocks accuracy does not change with use. Just my opinion. No offense meant.

Wyred received my DAC2dsdSE on Thursday for the Femto upgrade. I suspect I will have it back before next weekend. Psyched! Will report my findings when it returns to my system. : )

Richard, I notice from your sig you own the wyred preamp with the stage 2 upgrade. That's quite an investment considering that upgrade nearly doubles the price of the preamp. I apologize if you've covered this in detail before but did you own the preamp before and after the upgrade? Can you comment on the value of the upgrade? Thanks!

That's how I read it, yes, spdif out was bass heavy in Chris's review.

Hello everyone. Thank you in advance for any advice given to me on this thread. Like many people I find this area of hifi difficult to research so I really appreciate advice from people have invested that time. I have a CAPS topanga that is customized with a XONNAR essence STX sound card. I use the cards SPDIF output and run coax into my DAC. I have two DACs a micromega MyDAC and a benchmark DAC1 HGC. Both support USB input. Right now I'm using the micromega DAC and love it. Anyway, one thing I've noticed about the XONNAR essence STX card (which was also noted by Chris in his review) is a slightly pumped up bass. I'd like to eliminate the card for this reason but I'm not sure what approach to take. Buy a better DAC like the auralic and just run straight out of the standard USB 2 ports into the DAC or buy a SOTM USB card and use that or buy a standalone USB to spdif converter and use that between the server and DAC. Or just stick with the card (which is really pretty great other than this bass thing). Or abandon the caps server altogether and buy a new music server that supports native spdif out. I'm at analysis paralysis right now. Thoughts?

Thanks everyone! Wish there was a more definitive answer. Gonna start another thread outlining my real underlying question. Thanks again!

Any comments much appreciated. Would like to know, if I have an asynchronous USB DAC, will a good USB to SPDIF converter still reap rewards? What I mean is, is it any benefit to convert to spdif prior to the DAC so I can use the DACS spdif input rather than the USB?

The room has a dedicated circuit. The only thing else on the circuit is my 2 channel integrated amp and my music server. I've never tripped the circuit in that room before. The house was built in 2010.

Recently bought an rel r218. Love the sound but it just blew the fuse when I turned it on. I don't see anything in the manual about the fuse. But that has to be the problem since its dead to the world. It also tripped my breaker when t popped. I've only had it a couple of weeks. Now I'm thinking about returning it. But I do love the sound. It's the first sub I've ever owned that didn't intrude. Just blends right in. I can still return this thing to music direct and just lose the shipping. What is your advice? Thank you in advance for your help!

I understand completely. The first thing you have to do is add the Caps box to your network whatever your network is. Probably a simple home groups networks which is typical for windows seven and eight. But you do have to add the server to the network. Before any of the other devices will see it. But that is just step one of several steps that you must do. They aren't hard but Each step can have problems that will take much investigation to overcome. Good luck with whatever you decide

If you have a specific question about how to set it up I might be able to help you Is it just remote access that is causing you trouble?

Yep. If you read my thread on my new caps server you will find I went through quite a struggle myself and I'm a software engineer. It's not impossible but microsofts stuff is never plug and play regardless of what they claim.

Go for the caps Box. I was debating the same decision a couple weeks ago. I'm thrilled with my topanga (with xonar essence Stx card and 500gb ssd) has exceeded my expectations. Superb sound...

Greg, thanks for posting. I agree with Flac2Dac, its awesome when industry insiders post. The more contact with users the better! : ) Dedicated music servers, like the NAD M50, Wyred4Sound Music Server, Bryston BDP-1, Olive One through 10, etc, are all interim solutions. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to have them. They are needed and enjoyed by the audiophile community right now, but no way is this the long term future of digital audio. Bandwidth and hardware get cheaper every year. Apple and Amazon will keep expanding and improving until music servers are squeezed out entirely. Mog and Spotify and others will eventually serve up all music ever recorded in the highest resolution available. Just a matter of time. Internet streaming is clearly the ultimate solution. Only quality prevents audiophiles from migrating to it. And when it's cheap enough to do, the big players will provide the quality and music servers will join the beta max at the Smithsonian. Until then, its a valid debate and I don't think there's a clear winner.

So I thought I'd post my experience "so far" with my recent switch to a CAPS music server. First let me talk about the "why" for moving to a CAPS server. I'm a 2 channel audio guy and almost 4 years ago I made the switch from a dedicated CD player to a music streamer. I started with an Apple TV and eventually migrated to an Apple AirPort Express (V1). The AE is supposed to be better because it does not change the sample rate like the Apple TV does. Anyway, both ATV and the AE sounded superb to me and I've been very happy even if many people disparage these Apple streamers for high jitter. A/B testing against my old CD player left me more than satisfied. Maybe my benchmark DAC was rectifying the jitter for me, who knows. So why switch off Apple if I'm happy? Couple of reasons. First, I'm not in love with iTunes or the Apple Remote. Neither gives me the flexibility I want. Second, I want to squeeze the last ounce of sound quality I can out of my system so if jitter is a problem, I'd like to try a source with better specs. Third, I would like to be able to play hi-res files which I currently cannot do as Airport Express will not stream higher than 44.1. So I started looking for a possible new solution (at the strong encouragement of one of my audiophile buds). If I was going to switch, the following was on my wish list: 1. Use JRiver Media (seems to be the best) 2. Use a very good IOS app for remote control. 3. Supports ALAC so I do not have to convert all my Apple Lossless rips. 4. Simple to setup (yeah right...) 5. Simple to use. 6. Supports 192/24 resolution. 7. Sane price for performance. Regarding the price/performance ratio, there are really 3 price brackets I investigated (none anywhere near as cheap as the Apple solution of course). Bracket 1: Less than $600. In this bracket I considered: 1. A Logitech Squeezebox and didn't see this as enough of a change from the Apple streamer to warrant all the hassle I would have to go through. 2. One of the cheap streamers from Denon, Marantz, and Pioneer. All 3 make network streamers that are under $600. I ruled out all 3 because they had a mix of poor reviews, but mostly because they all have remote apps that are lacking IMO. Also, sound quality is questionable at this level. Again, I have to wonder how this would be an improvement over the Apple streamer. Bracket 2: $600 to $1200. In this bracket, you have the Cambridge Audio Stream Magic which does seem a step above the cheaper network streamers, but I couldn't help feeling like I was paying a lot for the good DAC and I'd be using an external DAC anyway. Plus, again, the remote app was lacking. You also have the CAPS servers in this bracket. These have the downside of being a bit more homemade looking and you have to wrestle networking and a computer configuration into submission on your own. That is definitely the one down side for me to the CAPS solution. Bracket 3: Over $1200 to $2500. I cap my budget at $2500. To be honest, I'm very reluctant to spend anywhere near $2500 for a music server when the technology changes so fast. Expensive music servers lose most of their value in 3 years or less. Still, I looked seriously at the Wyred4Sound music servers. The remote app is not JRriver. And what really turned me off was I read a blog that stated CDs rip were much slower than on a normal PC. So, I didn't want to spend months re-ripping my CDs which would be necessary to put my music on the W4S server. Then you have the new NAD M50 which is a lot like the W4S server except it doesn't have a hard drive. But you can buy the NAD M52 file server for another $2k!!!! Ouch! Again, NAD has their own proprietary remote app that is not impressive. So, that's just a slice of all my thinking on this research intensive subject. I only state all that in hopes it might help someone else. Regardless, I decided to take the plunge on a CAPS server and build the cheapest model (topanga). I ordered all the parts planning to do the simple 3 minute job of assembly when it arrived. However, I quickly realized that my NAD M2 amp does not have a USB input (something I had forgotten). So I considered possible solutions to this dilemma. I could buy a USB to SPDIF converter to bridge between the computer and the NAD M2 Integrated amp. Or, I could find a way to get a SPDIF output from the CAPS box. After speaking with Andrew at Small Green Computer, I decided to get the Topanga with the Asus Xonar Essence STX card built in. I also decided to let Andrew build it because that card requires a custom power cable and mounting the card in the box is a little tricky. The card practically takes up half the box. It's tight. So, I cancelled all the stuff I ordered to assemble myself and ordered the server from Andrew at SGC. I then went off to find myself a NAS box to act as the file server for the music server. I have never owned a NAS box and have never wanted to own one. I like simplicity and low maintenance. Going beyond my computer's hard drive never seemed necessary or worth it to me, but for the music server it did seem necessary. However, the reviews on Amazon.com for 1 and 2 TB NAS drives (under $200) were horrible. Like half the people were complaining about failures and slowness and configuration problems. Sounded very unfriendly to me. I know that Amazon reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt, but these were in much higher numbers than normal and for most of the cheap NAS boxes the story was the same. I then decided to research solid state drives. I found that I could get a 480GB SSD for just over $300. Not bad. Only a $100 more than the NAS drive (that I really didn't even want). So I called Andrew at Small Green Computer and he told that yes, that drive would work rather than the 64GB SSD originally recommended. Since I do not have a gigantic music collection, my current music takes up less than 200GB in ALAC format. This would allow me to double my music collection before I ran out of space, which, by then, 1TB SSD drives would be available for cheap (no doubt). So, yesterday, my new CAPS server arrived packed with the giant Xonar Essence STX card and the 480 GB SSD drive. Loaded with Windows 8 Pro 32. I have never used Windows 8. And I was not looking forward to it from what I've read. But, what the heck, how hard can it be? Well, let's start there; it's a major departure from every previous windows version. You cannot even guess how to power down. No kidding, you will find the answer on Google. Doing anything in Windows 8 for the first time is painful. Just putting JRiver into the startup group took me 20 minutes and several Google searches. Nothing works like you are used to and basically you have to research every little operation. But, it is do-able, just highly annoying as a new user. The first task I had was to copy my music from my desktop running iTunes to the CAPS SSD drive. Luckily, the CAPS server had no problem joining my homegroup network and I was able to instantly see the computer and its drive from my Desktop computer. I then Googled "which is faster, using my USB hard drive to transfer the data or my home network via Ethernet.” I concluded the network was faster so I used windows explorer and just drug my entire iTunes folder onto the CAPS C:\ drive. This took about 2 hours to finish. During that time, I investigated getting Remote Desktop to work. I do not plan to keep a monitor and keyboard with the CAP server. Therefore I want to control it remotely from my desktop computer. So, I tried to remote into the CAPS box using window Remote Desktop app. No luck. So I went to the CAPS box. First thing you have to do is change a setting on the CAPS box to allow remote desktop connections. Went back downstairs to the desktop, tried again. No, again. Although my Homegroup network could see the CAPS server, Remote Desktop could not see it by name. After much research, I tried using the CAPS server IP address which I was reluctant to do because I know that some IP addresses are not static and will change later. So then I researched how to know if my IP is static or dynamic. Luckily mine was static, so I used it instead of the CAPS server name. This got me past the "Can't find the computer" error and on to the "Failed Credentials" error. So then I spent an hour researching credentials and users and local security policies on windows until I finally figured out that my credentials did not work (even though I'm the admin on all boxes) because I don't have a password for my user. I don't use passwords on my home account. Don't need to. But no error message tells you this is the real problem. In fact, there is a special security policy in Windows called "Only allow local users with blank passwords". Once you disable that, you can finally remote desktop into the CAPS server with your normal user account (Isn't that nice? : ) ) So easy... By this time, my music was on the CAPS box. I then spent some time setting up the Xonar Sound Card and JRiver (which I had downloaded and installed). This created a very long troubleshooting session where the Xonar Sound Card Control Center (containing the necessary settings) would crash when settings were changed. The app would crash and terminate. Also, the sound card did not show up in the list of devices under "Manage Audio Devices" in the Windows control panel. The Xonar sound card did show up under the device manager section "Sound Video and Game Controllers" along with 2 other sound hardware components. I then attempted to re-install the driver from asus (the card maker). I downloaded the correct version for Windows 8 (32bit) and installed it. Same problems. Control app would crash. I then read approximately 1483 blog posts on windows sound cards and settings. Which is a lot of fun and something I've always meant to do (scratch that off my bucket list now). I read that, to use the Xonar Sound Card, you must disable the onboard (motherboard) sound device. I also read IN MULTIPLE blogs that doing this via the OS device manager was identical to doing this via the BIOS settings of the motherboard. So I foolishly disabled the two other sound devices in the device manager settings in the OS of the CAPS box. This had, of course, no impact. BUT, I consoled myself by re-installing the Xonar Sound Card driver several more times (having enjoyed the experience so much the first time). At this point, I went to bed (about 2:30am). No solution. After a few obligations in the morning, I got back on this pesky problem. I finally decided to try disabling the onboard sound device via the bios. I had not done it earlier because I was doing all my work remotely and did not want to have to go to the actual CAPS box upstairs and mess with the BIOS. Plus, I did not know what key press activated the bios settings screen and I've found those flash by pretty quick and are no fun to catch. Turned out it was F2 and pretty easy to do. Did it. Tried the Xonar Control App, no crash. Set up the Xonar card based on Chris's setting recommendations and we were ready to go, or were we? One quick aside here, I mentioned that the Xonar card did not show up under "Manage Audio Devices". Turns out it DOES, but not when you are looking at that screen via Remote Desktop. Only when you are on the actual box. Hard to believe, but that is my experience. So, I'd recommend doing setup right on the box itself. So, now it was time for the big moment. Actually listen to music playing from my new CAPS server. So I hooked up my 75 ohm digital coax cable and turned on my amp. And basked in the glorious silence. Now, I have no explanation as to why for some reason my NAD M2 amp chose this particular moment to refuse to send a signal to its speaker terminals, but that is what happened. Everything looked good, but no sound from the amp. So then I thought "OMG, I've blown something in my expensive NAD M2 amplifier by hooking up this COAX from the digital out of this Xonar card". Keep in mind; I'm on like 3 hours sleep at this time. So it's kind of fuzzy. So...I decided to try my Apple AE again, just to reassure myself that I have not ruined my amp, it's just the CAPS server not working. I set the AE back up in its entire normal configuration and voila, no sound. So now, I'm really starting to panic. So then I go down to my living room headphone rig and rip out my Benchmark DAC2 and drag it upstairs and plug the Apple AE into that and listen with headphones. At last I get sound. Yea! The AE still works. I quickly consider becoming a headphone only guy and dragging all my hifi equipment to the curb. But the moment passes. I then plug the CAPS server into the Benchmark and again, I get sound! Yea, the CAPS server works! Too bad I've ruined my NAD M2 amp. So, the last thing I do is I try hooking the Benchmark (which I now know is working) to the NAD M2 via analog balanced cables. And, THANK GOD, the amp plays. And for some reason, I then switch the COAX from the CAPS straight to the NAD amp and IT PLAYS TOO!!! Why did the NAD stop playing for that 30 minute period? Well, my theory is that I'm being punished by some cosmic karma. Probably for always waiting until my lane ends before I get over. Other than that, I have no explanation. Perhaps I was just being an idiot due to lack of sleep. I'm going to skip the part of this story where my Ethernet cable was loose in the CAPS rear panel and I could not get JRemote to see my server. But trust me; it was part of the fun. Ok, so now it works. It's THAT easy! : ) You too can have the joy of computer audio. Just kidding really. It was a bad 6 hour journey but well worth it. I am now enjoying JRemote on my iPad controlling JRiver. JRiver auto starts with the CAPS server. All my music is on the CAPS server. I have a plenty of growth space left on the CAPS drive for expansion. I can remote into the CAP server from my desktop WITH my normal user account. Ahh..life is good…… I have hooked up both the Apple AE and the CAPS server to A/B test with the same song. I am now enjoying that process. So far, they both sound fantastic. BUT, I prefer the CAPS server for all its benefits. BTW, this thing is SMALL! Much smaller than it looks online.