Mani,

i'm looking forwards to hearing the outcomes of your tests.
Thanks for mentioning of the Belden cable. I was concidering a rewire of the whole system on the Mains side and had spotted this cable. With your posertive experiance I have the confidence now to just go ahead and do it.

Also thanks for helping with my questions about the AirLink transformers, I am really happy with what it has done for my system .

Cheers,

Nick.

Hope this may provide more data on the SFS = 2 playback stopping.

Playback stops here as well between tracks often at the end of the first track, sometimes as many as four tracks will play. In my case I decreased SFS to 1 and have continuous playback. I do like the new low SFS with Q1 at 14. It provides a very nice presentation as people have described.

I prefer SFS = 1 to a value of two, will try slightly higher values and check the garbage collect setting with SFS = 2 to see if the playback stops are cured.

Nick.

That's good to know thanks. I think I might hum a little louder though if I had to supply 1400w rms  . Its nice setup in your cellar though, really no problems if the transformers decide to sing along a little 

Nick.

Thanks Mani,

I went ahead and ordered a 3kva transformer from Airlink today. I went for this size purely due to size and the thought that there is no way my system is going near 13 amps of mains voltage draw so I hope this should suffice. If hum is not a problem it will live in my listening room so the 5kva model would rather big.

Air link reckoned that the default PE arrangement  for the unit is that the house PE is connected through to the output ground. They did say this link can be broken to setup your own bespoke PE ground. My plan is to try with the house PE setup first and see what happens.

I have a three phase mains supply into the house and I'am concerned that the load on other phases may also be influencing the PE / neutral potential of the phase used for hifi, particularly after Peters earlier post. Tests switching off phases seem to confirm some interactions between them. I am not sure if the balanced transformer will help here, I can think of arguments for and against but best just to try it and listen I guess.

The Airlink "derived ground" worrys me a bit, I hope they do not mean that the out put is not referenced an external low impedance ground (house or dedicated bespoke earth). Humm I feel the need for another call tommorow with Airlink to understand this.

Did the 5kva transformers come with any Airlink documentation ? There is not much on their website.

Best Nick.

Mani,

Thanks for mentioning this, I think I will go for a 3 or a 5 kva version like yours. Do you get any audible hum from your units ?

Best

Nick

Bingo ! 

Our posts crossed over 

Nick.

Boy this is on topic for me right now, clean mains is the most important issue here at the moment. Paul has helped me immensely by highlighting problems with my system that have been plaguing me for months during our recent visits to listen to one another’s systems.

Following this I have been doing some basic testing with the house mains supply by switching off the mains phases in the house that are not supplying to the music systems and then also turning off the other household circuits on the supply phase that feeds the hifi. Early results seem to confirm this is good direction to be looking at.

Following Pauls mentioing balanced and putting me onto Airlink I have been looking at the balanced supply approach carefully and speaking to AirLink. Seems like the first thing to get right is a configuration that sensibly addresses electrical safety. The issue being that when the mains supply is configured to be balanced both the neutral and live connections carry 120v ac whereas the safety measures in a house are in place to trap faults on a single live feed system.

I plan to fuse both the live and neutral connections as they enter into all equipment connected to the balanced supply. Also I really want to have a ganged RCD that disconnects in the output of the balanced supply that isolates both 120v phases of the supply is the case of a fault condition on either phase. This will prevent the danger of having say a 120v “neutral” balanced feed into a hi fi component even when the “live” fuse in the component has blown.

Regards the earthing scheme the plan at first is to use house PE on the balanced side to start with. I know this may not be optimal but again I want to be sure of all the implications of setting up a separate earth on the balanced mains side before going ahead.

There are certainly some very positive comments about sound quality of Balanced supply out there together with descriptions of the sort of problem that I have been having which were addressed by other by moving to Balanced supply. If I can get the electrical safety worked through then I am ready now to order a balanced transformer. Will let you know how it goes.

If anyone has already setup a balanced supply it would be geat to hear how it was done.


Best Nick.

Mani hi,

I have a ProPassion silver of the same era, mine is a single ended version (RCA inputs and outputs). The shalco switch internally has two layers in mine (left and right but otherwise looks identical to your picture. I cannot see how the version you have could be balanced. Room for improvement there if you are looking for balanced end to end connectivity.

Best,

Nick.

Paul Peter hi,

My visit to Pauls on Saturday was a great day, we had a fun time listening and trying things out and I was made to feel exceptionally welcome. This and the quality of the music being played resulting in my completely losing track of time  

I agree with Paul's description of the Anadco. It puts in a good performance but such is the resolving power of Paul's system (more in a moment on this....) that the results were very clear. So much so that in the end it only took a short time to compare and understand the differences. Our observations about the sound were very consistent so I think we were hearing the same characteristics of the copper and fibre usb systems.

If the criterion is the best possible sound then the Anadco USB 3 does not quite make it. The other virtues like ability to remove the pc from the listening room are possible but there would be a sonic compromise for this. We decided to leave the Anadco system at Paul's for testing of short fibre cables just in case the Anadco has as last trick to reveal whilst on tour in the uk, of course a visit to Holland may uncover more  

This brings me on to what for me was frankly a revaluation, listening to Paul's system has redefined my view of what is possible in music replay in a domestic environment. I was rocked on my heals and open jawed at what I was hearing throughout the day. With the NOS1, gainclones and Audio Note AN-Es coupled with meticulous setup, home made interconnects, speaker wiring and using Bybees, Paul has created something REALY exceptional.

With a decent recording there is not a hint of edge or hardness at all in the sound, there is detail that it is difficult to rationalise coming from a mere mechanical transducer, highs (cymbals etc) are at the same time both very prominent, lifelike and natural.  The system presents dynamics an unbelievable sound stage and presence and remains rock solid regardless of the complexity of music. All music types we listened to we're given this same virtuoso performance. The resolving power and musical ability of this ostensivly quite simple system left me stunned at what I was hearing. Very quickly we just moved on to exploring Paul's great collection of music during the afternoon.

This sounds like a rave but I think Paul has managed to create a very special system indead, god only knows what z09-7 is going to sound like if as Peter says we are listening to distortion right now with pre z09-7 software.

I cannot thank Paul's enough for showing me his system, I now understand where I want to get to with my system and it has confirmed for me that it can be done !


Regards,

Nick.

Alain hi,

I had a look at the S1A interface which looks similar to the S1B you have.

I had a difficult time getting the interface to install at Bios and Windows 7 device manager level. When I had overcome these problems I found that I could only install USB2 cards successfully, USB 3 cards could be seen by Windows Device Manager but would not work.

With USB 2 cards the system would play correctly with the NOS although I only tried this for a relatively short periods. I think there may have been a latency issue as I was getting occasional clicks in the music.

The USB 3 problems and possible latency issues meant that I quite quickly focused on the R1USB30B (USB fibre system) which is what Paul and I have been looking at.

I didn’t look at the CPU load for this USB card or the S1B stsems but we should be able to do this for the R1USB30B, its an interesting finding.

One interesting point is that there may have been an issue regards PCIe spread spectrum incompatibility for the R1USB30A (the older NEC chipset USB fibre card). This was explained in a PDF document now removed from the Adnaco site. It might be a good idea to try to disable spread spectrum on your PCIe if you can do this in your bios. No evidence that this is the issue but just in case.

Regards,

Nick.

Paul,

I am really looking forwards to the visit this weekend.

Whatever the outcome for the USB fibre system when we hear it, you are right, it is much better to give it some time to listen carefully and be sure of how it really performs, good or bad.

Best,

Nick.

Parphan hi,

The R1BP1A board can very easily be run from just a 3.3v linear supply with a 5v supply if needed, so there no need to use an ATX PSU. I used an ATX for my test install but as I mentioned is was very hard to configure and I could not get a USB 3 card to install.

In LGA 1366 sould be fine, Paul uses one I think and has the system set up right now.

The percentages were intended to indicate the proportion of the benefit from using the R1USB30A card is accessible using it's own SMPS vs using a good linear supply. The change in sound quality in absolute terms is very good but right now Paul is perhaps best placed to offer information as my system was not on top form when I tried the card out.

I did not try battery power just a good quality linear supply. The [EDIT R1USB30A remote] card needs 500ma so any battery would need to be both a fast low noise power source and be able to supply this kind of draw for hours.

The item linear pc supply sounds interesting but in my final config I plan to have the pc in a separate room powered by a separate mains phase withint he house so any benefit from the linear supply would be internal to the pc not via any lowering of noise transmision via USB or mains transmitted smtp noise into the DAC. These two issues will already will have been addressed by this setup. It would still be very interesting to try the linear atx supply, I suspect even in such a setup may well help music quality.

Best regards,

Nick.

At last, with Paul's help, there is enough information to start to post comments on the Adnaco fibre system which provides total electrical isolation of the PC from the DAC.

General observation is that the system is extremely promising I think many of us will be seeing much more of it going forwards. Impact on sound is significant and it opens up interesting opertunities to place the pc hundreds of feet from the music system, which with Peters remote control system means the pc can be placed out of the listening room on a separate mains ring to remove the SMPS feed back into DAC and amps.

First the Adnaco systems

I have looked at two systems:

The first is a Remote USB optical fibre extension system.
Details at http://www.adnaco.com/products/s3a/

The second a remote PCIE host card also connected by optical fibre to the PC. Details at http://www.adnaco.com/products/s1a/

Both could be made to work with my 2011 cpu ASUS based pc. However the remote PCIe host system would only work with a USB 2 card fitted, it was VERY hard to install in my PC end to end in order to get it to work with remote USB cards and my NOS1. In the end I could not get it to work with USB 3 cards only USB 2. This is possibly down to my motherboard and 2011 CPU using a high proportion of system resources (DAM, interrupts etc) so this system may work for other people but it was not the solution for me and with the remote Adnaco USB 3 system working so well attention was very soon focused on that Adnaco system.

So the Adnaco USB 3 system.

Note that these comments relate to the sound when properly setup (more later). The effect on sound quality can be quite disorientating at first, somehow everything is the same but you just do not recognise the sound at first. After some time listening you realise that EVERYTHING is just slightly better than before. Detail levels go up, hash disappears music is more REAL.

I will not go much further with respect to sound quality now. During the testing Paul come over to mine to take a listen. Whilst he was here he helped to pinpointed a bery serious problem with my system which frankly prevents absolute assessment of the Adnaco system in my system (now fixed after 7 months of trying so many, many thanks to Paul and Peter in this respect). Paul has however borrowed the USB system for a week to try in his system and it is after trading mails on its performance that confidence is high enough now to post about the system. I think Paul hopefully plans to post some more detailed thoughts on the ststem.

Regarding setting up the USB 3 remote system.

First point is that the small SMTP supply that comes with the system will get things going very quickly but to a great performance the Adnaco has to have a high quality 5v linear supply. Also important if it can be done (in the case of the NOS1 at least) is closely coupling the Adnaco into the NOS1 signal earth, and shielding the USB shield to PE. It is also possible in this way to completely iliminate the use of the external USB lead when using it with a NOS1 (by direct connection into the internal NOS1 USB lead) which helps a little to reduce some edges in the sound. Overall it appears best to try to treat the remorte USB system electricly as a part of the DAC it is feeding not as a remote external interface. As a remote system it works well say 70% of the benefit but implemented within the NOS1 with a linear supply more is available. I am sure that Peter could sweat more from the system with proper tools rather than the trial and error subjective approach used here.

So an exciting development and more to come on this I am sure.

Nick.

Ps I would like to thank Mark at Item Audio for the kind loan of the two different Adnaco systems that I have been trying. Mark is defiantly one of these very rare hifi dealers that are genuinely passionate about pc audio. I have no ties with Item Audio and have paied full retail price for the USB system that I have kept to become part of my system.

Brian hi,

I will take a look at the memory speed as well, in the past I have always gone for faster settings but this sounds very promising.

Post coming up soon on the Adnaco fibre interface, there is more evidanve now of its effect, Paul has been borrowing my setup to try out whilst I sort out my amp. I think it has made quite a posertive impression.

Paul,

Please post your thoughts on the Adnaco if you would like to.

All the best,

Nick.

I am  also with Mani on his point,

I have had years of pleasure and fun from the XXHE licence and have no problems with relicencing when the time comes.

Best,

Nick.