I thought some of you might find this interesting. I don't have a map of my system so I will explain as best I can.

I'm using a Peachtree Nova which has these sources connected: Tascam 112mkII, Oppo BDP83, Pro-Ject mini FM tuner, and 1616M via BNC.

The preamp out feeds an 8-10 watt 6BM8 power amp to which are connected 94db/w sensitive Omega bookshelf speaks and sub. the line out feeds back into the 1616M.

I rolled some new 6BM8s in the other day and finally got my 1616M back from getting BNC swapped in; my system was offline for 3 months, a long story.

Anyway, my 80w picopsu driven mini-ITX board has one PCI slot which is how the 1616M connects. I bought a Cat7 cable to connect the external 1616M unit because I had read about the construction being more durable and robust than cat6 (and it is).

So I get the system back online over the last few days, and start hearing what sounds like "tube rush". You know, a little light crackling here and there; NOT sharp digital artifacts from sync drop. I remember thinking, man those Matsush*ta tubes were new in box, doh, I never tested them on the AT1000, oh well, I roll some Amperex in there later.

So by today I had the system all back in, room cleaned up, off work early, and I start listening to the speakers up close, and I can here the whine of transistors switching. I move my mouse, and I here fuzz mimicking my every move. Granted, this was quiet, or so I thought, eventually it got under my skin as I have never really had this in 10 years of playing with PC audio. It painfully became evident this was unacceptable as I realize, this is loud wonky cr*p I'm observing. I'm hearing it on my couch, and starting to freak out. 3 months of rebuilding this setup.

Then I start disconnecting, powering down, unplugging the web of gear. Moving things around in the power conditioner. Ideas rise and fade; the PC is connect to a UPS via USB, that's got to be it, ground loop?! Nope. turns out I had never even connected my PC to my new UPS either, duh, it was still in the power conditioner.

I end up with 1616M disconnected from the Nova (cat7 unplugged), unplugged Nova, everything unplugged really.....and just the PC on (on a new outlet off the conditioner) with the power amp. I can STILL hear this noise.......... getting on the powerline?! I had some shorting plugs and the result was silence with just the amp on with speakers. BUT, I hadn't unplugged the analog RCAs going into the Nova, so with it still unplugged, I pull all 3 sources out, and connected it back to the power amp.

And plug the Nova back in to DEAD silence. TINY hum, expected from a tube amp, but what a peaceful sound that was. I suddenly realized how loud all the nastiness was. I vaguely remember similar hash when I used one of these cables before on my Oppo. I think the shield is only connected on one end. I still don't fully understand this, I'm not an EE. How was this noise getting from the PC into the amp? EMI I imagine picked up like the cable acting as an antenna is my guess.

Finally, I almost gave up because I was burnt out on rebuilding and just couldn't tell if I was being really anal, but when it didn't feel right, I am glad I pursued it with such a great result; perfect to start off the new year.

I'll have to play around with XXHighend sometime and see how it sounds, but for now I'm enjoying my custom Last.FM 1920x1080 track info screen in JRiver MC14, something I can't live without.

Just thought I'd share this crazy tale because I feel pretty confident I am getting great sound from a PC, something many don't think is possible. So even if I'm not using XXHighend, we share the love of PC audio in common.

Happy New Year.

HiFi

For those non-tweakers there are store-bought solutions out here in the wilderness.

Addonics box (or similar) can be connected via eSata to the new mini-ITX motherboards, and my board runs on an 80w "laptop style" PSU (picoPSU) with a 45w AMD dual-core.

There are some nice external sound cards that can be used as transports, or you can get a more reasonable external, slap a linear supply on it, and mod if for BNC. Honestly, I don't know why many have not started with a BNC mod first (RCA digital coax bugs the heck out of me). You can even add a nice clock to this sound card. I happen to use the 1616M which is still PCI based but I have pretty low lower going on in the PC and I may get anal and go with linears all my gear (1616M, motherboard, AEA ribbon, and Black Sparrow - I'm not going to mess with batteries).

So, with the low power power mini-ITX stuff you have one SSD, off board separate power for HD but still connected with a wire (no NAS please for many reasons), and you could even use a linear supply on the  board because they are 12v at 6.5A IIRC.

I lost the site but they had linears for about $300. Given this idea that you could get a somewhat affordable linear for a mini-ITX I think you could use any PCI based-card. So, I just wanted to point out that the Pc tech. is get smaller and more efficient and allows more flexibility without having to custom design or DIY everything imo.

Happy New Year everyone.
HiFi

The one thing I can't stand about 7: the auto-maximize window feature.

I often want to leave some windows organized on my kitchen Touchsmart PC and if you get to close, easy to do using your finger, to the top of the screen, the windows are pulled into full focus and maximized. Probably I way to disable it but I haven't checked yet.

Overall, I am very happy, as I think Vista was the most unstable operating system I ever used.

Example, new PC at work, and they asked me XP or Vista (this was 4 months ago). I reluctantly said Vista for some reason, and I have some strange bugs; mainly compatibility issues no doubt but 7 on my 4 other PCs at home is quite smooth.

I haven't looked at the waveform yet, just seems to peak there and there is some grit in the singer's voice.

I plan to try 16/44 upsampled but I also want to compare players playing back native 24/96 material.

Strange, I haven't any problems with audio output in MC14. While my 1616M is getting a mod I have been using the Peachtree Nova's USB and sound is stable.

I just tested out XXHighEnd as a player. I found this part in "Hey Lloyd I'm Ready to be Heartbroken" at 1:14 where I think the song peaks and clips with the singers voice. I honed in on that after a while as a reference.

Using J. River at 32/96 upsampling vs. XXHighend's proprietary Arc upsampling (double/engine3) at 32/96 I thought that XXHigend sound edgier and raw on that vocal, but it was very subtle. Eventually I just could not tell a difference, or at least enough to merit using the very low usability-factor XXHighend. I will do some more listening.

I used my AKG 702s and Raptor headamp fed by my crummy X-Fi at work as my new DAC is not here yet. No ReplayGain or volume leveling was employed on either player. J. River was set to play from memory and use ASIO4ALL output.

I'm getting my 1616M back today so I will try at home on the hifi with some native 24/96 material.

DC