I was hoping the empty space can be used too for my big screen.
The selection of the music to play is really awkward now, and my only wish for improvement.
(Besides the option to not show the message all the time if you turn of crack-detection)

Very interesting.

So now you can calculate a digital correction signal to get perfect output from your DAC?
Like digital negative feedback, maybe not realtime but still?

Peter,

You decided to go for the vertex and not wait for the intel to drop in price?
Knowing you then the Vertex must come close to the intel?

For those not having this problem, should we upgrade too?

Roy,

If you want a good quality external soundcard and you have FireWire on your PC I would recommend the terratec phase (X)24 FW.
I just bought my second one for €28. The first was a 24 FW and now a X24FW. Difference is microphone input and optical in/out.
Normally they sell for about €300 and they were said to sound better then any regular PC-soundcard/box and to me they sound better then my Rotel RCD990.
Maybe they stop selling them?

Hi Peter,

Sorry, I play attended now to try all the settings.
So the logfile is right.

One album is creedence clearwater revival, Chronicle, the 20 greatest hits, where it happens at song number 17, 'I heard it through the grapevine'. It is flac.
There were some more albums but I'm not sure which ones so I'll try to find some more.

My settings are:
- No processor appointment
- below normal
- high,
Dac = 24/192
32 bits
disable crack detect
width 320
split file 100
tooltips on
unattended
showdata

Volume 0
Q1 14
Q2345 15

Ï'll try to see if a regular WAV is having this problem too.

Yes, Cassandra Wilson Blue Light as Wav after song 4 'Children of the Night'
'No track given'   'No track data received' 'Enine three did not start'.
I'll try to see if I can repeat it.

Yes repeatable.
Added two logfiles.

I removed some garbage from the musidirectory and play with 300 in stead of 100, no problems yet. Could this be important?
No success, still the same problem...

Hi Peter,

Like everybody I had a lot of errors, to much to see any systematic causes, but you really solved them!
Only one is left for me:



This happens almost with all the music I play and I think it happens after about 1 hour of playing a (long) album.
When I only replay the song where it happens everything is OK. If I restart the complete album it happens at the same song again.
I get the messages 'Engine # did not start within..' then: 'no track given' and then 'no track data received'.
After clicking the messages I can restart with the next song.
(X1 and X2 the same)

Had some time to try it out playing loud.
After some back and forth I come to Q1 still 14, Q2345 all 15.
This way some hardness was removed which made listening uncomfortable (more like my vinyl now which is very comfortable but less dynamic (working on it!))
and at the sametime it sounds more spacious and full of colour and detail.
But changing 5 sliders and finding the optimum feels a little bit frightening especially when you don't have any idea what your doing and
if your not making some artificial changes which brings you farther from the original?? (like everything 30 sounds just weird)

My 15 cents for today.

I tried Q=+4 with 09w7 and did not hear much for a short test.
Then I upgraded to 09w8 and thought there was a clear improvement!
Details sounded very clear, instruments more seperate in space behind the speakers.
I played an album of Nynke Laverman, a frisian singer with a very distinct sound.
The frisian words are sometimes difficult to follow when you don't hear frisian everyday.
Now it was much easier to hear what she was singing about.
But... who was singing, was this really Nynke? No it could be anybody, the distinct colour of her voice was completely gone.
So back to Q=+14 and there she was again. The color of her voice replaced the abundance of detail.
I did not find the compromise yet but am very curious what this slider is doing to the sound!

My experience with them is mixed:
Because I wanted less noise I made a psu for my tubepreamp which converts 12V from a caravan-battery to 220V.
A lot of capacitance behind it so worked OK. The switching frequency is below the noise.
When I put a AC/DC supply of 12V instead of the battery it sounded really bad.
Back to my old AC/DC 220V supply was really bad too.(and it was supposed to sound very good)
So I settled for the battery, but still some noise, maybe the tubes?
Then an extra AudynCap capacitor close to the battery and a much lower noisefloor!
Now I don't like this because it means I can hear the quality of this capacitor and of the battery...
Besides the overnight charging which I sometimes forget.
So for A DAC it's a nice experiment but not garanteed to work.
If you can make it to work let us know how it sounds!

Then maybe a redesign of the power supply, better rejection and filtering of the mains should help.
If we build or buy it we cannot ask all the neighbours to buy a new fridge...

On the internet there is another interesting DAC wich uses batterysupply. Some companys offer an ac-supply specially for this.
Like Paul Hynes in the UK. Maybe he knows some tricks for you?

Hi Peter,

I guess you know this already but I can not read this between your lines.
You have a seperate earth for the audio but is this completely separate with it's own earth rod?
To me it looks like you have a problem with your gear working as an antenna, and picking up noise from the mains.
This is exactly what happens to a low output-mc cartridge and by measuring this with the german audiotester software
I saw something similar. A good earth lowers the 50 Hz tone with about 15 dB, but the surrounding noisefloor goes doen a couple of dB's too.
A long time ago I decided to use batterypower for my tube-preamp to be independent of the mains. This helped a lot.
From before I remembered that using the mains earth only gave extra nasties. So if you share your mains earth only a little with your wifes appliances than you will notice it in your musical pleasures.
The extra connectors you plug in make it look like they work like an antenna.
This problem I had with my mc-preamp after I did some resoldering a long time ago. Bad connections are good antenna's.
Even a high resistance vdHull cable with carbon wire can give problems this way.
So that's why my solution to all problems I already posted before with a picture how not to do it.

If this is old news then still I like to know your opinion about it!

Don't make your starearth like this:

Good, you closed the case!
And did you put a wire from the case to the real earth?
I experimented with this lately and found this removes all the electrosmog and makes the high frequencies really shine.
I think the best way is to make a central (city!) heating (in my case) or a waterpipe as a star earth to all the metal cases.
But then the cases have to float and not be connected through a balanced wire or electrical earth connection through te mains.
In my cas the vinyl got new live after I connected it this way at the most sensitive part (the arm) to the central city heating.
Big surprise, XXHE sounds better too! (Just my 1 cent)
But only do experiments with this if you know what your doing!!!