OK, so here it is. The Atom N270 is one core... but it has two threads - any good?

It looks like my search for the perfect music server for XXHE continues...

Mani.

Hi Georg, welcome. It's a great time to join the XXHE 'club'...

Mani.

Thanks Peter - definitely helpful. Hopefully I'll have a chance to play around with buffers and split file sizes later today. But I believe these will just help me determine the lowest latency that I can go for. For now, I'm pretty certain it's around 75 samples.


Correction: I don't get a glitch around 4 minutes. Actually, I get a glitch around 10 seconds before the end of a track. The track that I was using just happened to be around 4 minutes long.

Peter, what's happening just before the end of a track to send my modest music PC into a spin? Is there anything that you or I could do about it, other than what you already posted in your previous thread?

Mani.

Exactly. Any form of upsampling will change the LSB and the HDCD light will not come on. So technically, you're ruining the HDCD decoding by applying AP.

BUT...

I've done extensive listening and in my system, QAP sounds better than 'HDCD'. My DAC has the old PDM100 filter/decoder chipset which I believe was the best filter available at that time... but no match for QAP! My understanding is that the filter in the BADA is better than the PDM100. Better than DAP? Maybe. Better than QAP? I doubt it...

Mani.

Oh yeah, it definitely is. But I have a problem.

You may or may not know that I've just put together a music PC based on the C.A.P.S. server on the computeraudiophile.com site. This uses an Atom chipset, which in itself I don't think is an issue here (though I might get lower latency with a more powerful processor and I think the integrated video really struggles, even when switching to the SVGA driver). The real issue is the 2GB max RAM. The highest that I can then set the split file size is 500MB - worth around 5 minutes of music at 176.4K. So, I get 5 minutes of really, really great sound... and as soon as pretty much anything happens, it goes to pot.

[EDIT: 500MB should really be worth around 10 minutes of 24/176.4 music, no? I'm not sure what's causing the glitch at around 4 minutes then.]

Of course, I could select a much higher buffer for the Weiss. It also has 3 levels of what it calls 'Safe Mode'. I think this is related to the amount of bandwidth that is reserved for the firewire interface, level 3 being the highest.

From the Weiss website:

"But the real reason Firewire is more reliable than USB is more fundamental than that. It's because Firewire allows two operating modes. One is asynchronous, similar to what USB uses. The other is isochronous mode, and it lets a device carve out a certain dedicated amount of bandwidth that other devices can't touch. It gets a certain number of time slices each second all its own. The advantages for audio should be obvious: that stream of data can just keep on flowing, and as long as there isn't more bandwidth demand than the wire can handle (not very likely) nothing will interfere with it. No collisions, no glitches."

I'll play around with all this. But from what you say Peter, it seems that the lower the latency the better, right?

Mani.

Perhaps not related to Firewire driver issues, but I cannot play music for more than 4-5 minutes (at 176.4K) before some sort of interuption. With Engine#3, there is simply a gap, and then the music resumes. With Engine#4, it's a disaster - the dreaded distortion and half-speed!

Mani.

My wallpaper doesn't work in Unattended mode...

Mani.

With the new version of XX (0.9y-6), I'm realising that my Weiss firewire drivers are not up to the job of providing really low latency. As soon as I switch the Weiss AFI1 unit on, the latency increases from around 50us to 200us and my CPU activity shoots up.

With Engine#4 and Special Mode, I'm at 75 samples with 16/44.1 and 300 samples with QAP. I've 'tweaked W7 to death' and even shut down ACPI. Using the legacy firewire driver helps, but not a lot.

Any other ideas?

Mani.

OK, so at the time of writing, this version had been downloaded 43 times... enough to start a topic, I think.

On my system, Engine#4 comes across in a very 'down to earth', 'organic' sort of way. Engine#3 is great (better than before?) but is 'in your face' compared to Engine#4. Maybe there's a time and a place for either... but for me, it's Engine#4 all the way.

Mani.

Thinking about it, I probably liked his 'The Second' cables because I was using a pair of B&W N802 speakers at the time, which are just way too bright ordinarily. I sold these to my sister, and still have to cover my ears whenever I'm at her place, because they sound so grating... even with the 'darkness' that the VdH The Seconds bring to the party.

Nice article BTW; http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/audio-faqs/short-versus-long-cables. Cables really are a bottomless pit though. Like I said earlier, there are much bigger nuts to crack in audio... IMHO.

Mani.

Hey Peter, have you ever discussed carbon cables with a particular neighbour of yours?

Mani.

Actually, that's not my only piece of advice. On top of this, I would say stick with good quality pure copper over anything else (except maybe carbon). Even then, the insulation material/geometry will have an effect, and this is why you're going to have to listen to it in your own system.

A final thought - don't forget that there will be cabling inside your electronics and speakers that may ultimately act as the weakest link. This is why I have my speaker cables soldered directly onto my speaker drivers. But I don't intend to do the same thing with all my electronics!

If I had to do it all over again, I'd stick with cheap OFCC cables from my local electronics supplier... honestly. There are far more important nuts to crack, IMHO... like taking the digital 'glare' out of digital - something that Engine#4 looks like it's going to help us do.

Mani.

Over 1.5m, according to Dan Lavry...

Mani.

How big is your can for the worms that'll sprawl out of asking such a question?

FWIW, many years ago, I tried more (analogue) cables than I can remember - both interconnects and speaker cables. I spent a veritable fortune on this endeavour.

I found that I really didn't like silver-plated or solid silver... at all. No matter what the make, or price (and I'm talking thousands of dollars here). I even tried solid gold (yes, solid gold) which I liked a lot more than any silver one. I actually still have these... but have them 'wasting away' in my office system.

There were two makes/models that I preferred over all the others.. and they were a fraction of the price of the silver/gold ones I tried. One was Van den Hul 'The Second' interconnects and speaker cables. Probably too 'dark' for most people, but such a natural and full tonal texture. The other was Analysis Plus Solo Crystal interconnects and speaker cables. Indeed, I use these exclusively in my main system - with active crossovers and 8 amps, as you can imagine, I'm using a lot of these cables. I didn't care at all for the more expensive Analysis Plus silver- and gold-plated cables - I actually hated the former.

Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that you do what I did - actually buy the cable then sell what you don't like at a massive loss, if at all. (In fact, I probably have the world's most expensive cabling in my car, becaue I couldn't sell it. But my car is so noisey that I can't hear a thing anyway!)

Try to find a retailer who will let you return what you don't like... that's my only advice really.

Mani.

You're bang on. So, you're not just a pretty face after all

Mani.