Peter,

So put another way the initial report is: wow it sounds much better than my system without it. But it is straight out of the box I know it can sound better because I know that power and ground scheme is not correctly implemted so yes I can hear
and I know it needs some work but still it knocks the socks off the starting point without it. A week later much, much better, proving a usefull diagnostic to get information on other tweeks and I can now see where I'm going with it. I don't know if it will be "really" good or put another way how flawed it will be in the end but I doubt that it will leave my system.

The problem we have is no common reference to discuss it's effect on sound at the moment, so I could be describing "perfect" or I might be describing "filtered" into oblivion. My point is that without hearing this, comments are conjecture. If it helps to know there may be potential because I say its good then fine.


Regards USB 3

I agree the card runs at different frequencies to usb 2, your comments on noise spectrum are very interesting and I am sure relevant. There are additional large differences however in implementation that you may have taken into account but don't mention:

The USB 3 cards we are using are PCIe bus (500mb/s) vs USB 2 on PCI bus at (133mb/sec) with different interupt signalling, possible bus device contention for USB 2 on PCI  and an additional PCIe to PCI bridge in the signal path for USB 2. USB 3 cards are designed ground up to handel much higher data throughputs with all that this implies for reliability of input and output signalling. Clocks circuits are also generally much better implemented on USB 3 cards.  I know from experiment that PCI bus latency can modify sound charateristics so there is evidance that bus carateristics have an impact. These are significant points of difference between USB 2 and USB 3 and may also be contributing to the sound. These were the reasons I decided to try it out. There is no technical religion here however if USB 2 sounds "better" tommorow then I'll use it in a blink.

Regards,

Nick.

EDIT messed-up quote markups

Peter hi,

I drafted a long post but in reviewing your very valid points I realised it all boils down to a few  points.

1) Evidence is mounting here that signal and ground coupling with the PC is a big problem. Lots of points in the system set up I have arrived at are pointing towards this.
2) I agree that there is new componentary entering the replay chain that could be doing things that as yet are not understood.
3) I cannot offer any definitive proof of the above only circumstantial arguments and I accept this could just be wrong.


I agree but I defiantly stand by what I said about the sound. If its "smoothing" then I say give me more (I don't think it is). I am looking forwards to your hear something like this . I feel confident that that one way or another this will lead to good things.

Best regards,

Nick

Ps I would still bet some beers on PC related noise being a big factor but I am happy to lose the bet in exchange for a better understanding

All,

So reading this I think [?] we are just agreeing about tweaks.

For my part my personal ethos here is;

• Develop an idea,
• Try it out,
• If there is a subjective improvement describe what happened for folks to try if they want to,
• Gauge feedback in terms of general applicability and effectiveness.
• Try to understand it and exploit it or don’t understand it and  still exploit it.

The value of tweaks ?

Well, hands up anyone in a hurry to use USB 2 again after trying PCIe USB 3 ports ? We don’t understand exactly what makes this tick, but it does work. I will feel better when we do understand why it works and I really hope with the understanding that other possibilities may become visible but until then personally I would not be without it.

The stuff I post is meant to offer up ideas, to stimulate discussion, and help with system tuning (no guarantees offered  ). I try not to post unless tweaks subjectively  improve my system's sound and the tweaks may not work in other peoples systems. If you give them a go, please always be ready to roll them back if they don’t work for you or things move on and they are no longer necessary for any reason. 

Nick

Hi Georg,

I did some very basic tests recently trying to improve the quality of the ground connection between the PC and DAC. The tests were quite crude (cutting ground pins on a PCIe USB board and inserting a cleaner ground). The result was a two steps forward two steps back in terms of sound quality but it was possible to hear what may happen if zero ground coupling were better applied.

When you look at it a PC it is just about the worst device you could think of to drive a high resolution analogue audio chain down stream for the reasons you mention. The hardware I have makes it possible to completely electrically isolate the DAC and PC (the only electrical link is via the mains connection of the pc and dac which happen to use the same wall socket).

Listening without PC noise entering the dac gives quite profound results. it's all about many, many subtle changes in the sound but the effect of the setup is superb. I am not entirely sure that I have the best implemtation but for the first time in 7 years I think that the PC has the capacity to be a transport of the highest possible quality. Of course this is using a NOS1 and XXHE 

Best,

Nick.

Juan hi,

That's interesting, i agree with your descrition of the sound from these settings. In my case I had assumed the settings were working due to the additional hardware I am using to isolate the pc and DAC.

When i think about it now I have not tried lower clock res and USB latency since I built the fast pc recently. Might it be that the enabler for these settings is the speed of the PC not the additional hardware ?

Best,

Nick.

Brian hi,

I am pleased that you are getting some improvements, but you have my sympathy when it comes to moving that much music. Personally I have always just copied music and not noticed too much of a difference. What does seem to help is defraging the drive occationaly.

If you haven't already tried it one of the best tweaks is the PCIe USB card, well worth the 30 dollars.

Worth mentioning is that the list is about to change with a very big addition. I am working on a tweek that apears to be a game changer. I want to get a reasonable understanding of how best to apply it before I post but in essence it gets right to the hart of the biggest problem of using a pc as a transport electrical noise and ground contamination. At the moment it's 5 steps forward and one or two back but I would like to see all upside from it before I post. I am getting superb sound from clock res of 5 ms and NOS buffer size of 4ms eg this approach really changes things.

Ultimatly i think it may need Peters expertise to test it in order to do it justice. I just do not have the test kit to work out the best way of using this equipment but I will post as soon as things are settled out enough from subjective testing.

Best Nick.

Peter,

Please put me on the list.

Nick.

So I cut the ground pin tracks on the PCIe card so that the ground was provided only via the Molex connector back to the ATx PC Power Supply. This gave an interesting if not successful effect.

Bass had the best delineation and tone differentiation I have heard from my system, like listening to a melody played out in the mid range but delivered with Bass frequency notes, nice. Bass weight dropped overall however.

The real problem and the reason the experiment is not successful overall is that the sound is thin and forward eg voices lost the sense weight and tone of a real person singing and the depth and tonal of instruments is to a large extend lost.

I have seen this presentation before when tweaking USB PCI cards. If I had to guess I think the improved analogue ground did significantly improve bass, stereo image and sound noise floor a lot, but the digital transmission to the card suffers from the ground changes resulting in the characteristic thinness.

I would not recommend anyone try cutting the ground traces, but I will listen to a [new] USB 3 board with and without the molex earth arrangements to see if this gives any sort of SQ edge post findings.

Anyway a good excuse to use Mobo USB 3 [not too bad actually] whilst the new PCIe USB 3 card is delivered.

Nick

Peter,

At the moment I have the two ground paths (not ideal I know, one via the molex and the other via the mother board) as I have not yet cut the PCIe edge connector pin ground traces. I wanted to order another PCIe board first to make comparison of any effect easier.

Results so far really rely on the return resistance of the molex ground route [hopefully] being lower than via the Mobo and therefore establishing the current return via this route first.

More tests coming up soon with cut tracks.



Defiantly agree with your logic here.

As an observation where I have generated alternate grounds for other components such as HDDs (when applying linear supplies) I have found that Bass SQ in particular often suffers unless the ground to the component (HDD etc) is still referenced back directly to the ATx grounds.


Best Nick.

Hi,

I was looking for better ways to establish a good signal ground from my PC into rest of my system. In my case the PC connects to a NOS1 USB.

The signal ground for the whole of my system is established from the connection to the ground of the USB port on the PC (and via the PC's ATx supply back to the mains earth) this follows Peters design for the NOS1 USB (Peter, please straighten me out if I am going wrong  ). Working the ground back towards the mains earth, as I use a PCIe USB 3 card (as a lot of us are using now) the ground is referenced from about three of the edge connection pins between the PCIe card and the motherboard PCIe bus. From the bus connector it goes over the motherboard back to the motherboard 24 pin ATx connector and via one of the earth leads back the the ATx ground plain in the supply.

It could be better....It got me thinking most PCIe USB 3 cards have that molex or SATA power connector (to provide enought current for the USB 3.0 in line power standard). These aux power connectors are bad for sound if connected as they are no use to put clean power into the USB chipset BUT the aux power socket is connected to the PCIe USB cards ground plain with a much better connection than the ground pins of the PCIe bus AND you can choose how the ground is routed from here back to the ATx supply.

To see if the ground connection could be improved, I took a molex to SATA power wiring link and cut the 12v and 5v power wires (yellow and red) leaving just the black ground wires intact. This was pluged into the PCIe USB card SATA power connector and from here the aim was to connect back in the cleanest way possible to the ATx supply. In my case I have a modular type ATx supply so I was able to run a dedicated molex distribution lead with no other periferal devices connected to it from the ATx supply directly to the ground only connection to the PCIe USB card.

I think this has helped sound quality in my system but a lot has changed recently so it's hard to be specific about the exact changes. It may be worth giving this a try particularly if you have a system who's signal ground if referenced to the USB ground.

It would be good to know if this works for others.

Regards,

Nick

Ps I was determined to find a use for that aux power connection 

Brian hi,

Which version of the Renesas driver software are you using ?

Version 2.0.34.0 is the version known to work ok with the NOS1 USB. As far as I know most folks are using 64bit OS with this version of the driver, but I would start by checking this first. I think there may be a link or a mention as to where the driver can be downloaded earlier in this topic if you don't have it.

Best Nick.

Haha 

Me neither generally but only the stuff to tweak the clock speed. Funny thing is that Minimised OS stops it loading very nicely (you must hate that stuff Peter  )

The drivers I have been stripping are Windows 7 installed.

Nick.

Edit
Ps the Asus USB driver is gone  just the NEC PCIe USB 3 driver left.

Mani, all,


I have been spending some time messing about with device driver loads using MS Autoruns. Windows 7 loads every driver it can think of when installing on this Asus P9X79 WS mother board and when it has done this it adds LOADS more for devices that i don't think are even part of the motherboard !

I am about 2/3 the way thought the driver thinning out process and there is a subtle but significant change to sound quality. Dynamics and attack apear to drop a little but there is a nice change in tone accuracy and differentiation. Harmonics and delicacy of decay are much improved, like the a slightly faulty sustain peddle on a piano has been fixed. Digital hardness has reduced and analogue type smoothness hasimproved (again  ).

I don't intend playing with all the driver load permutations and combinations (they are endless). I may set up some restore points to track blocks of Autoruns changes to make sure that things are moving in the right direction.

It's an old tweak this but it's really working on the Asus motherboard.

I will post when I have something worth trying, discounting the slight change to dynamics (still making my minde up on this) I would say this is a very worthwhile change, similar in scale of change that the use of USB 3 brings.

Back soon with some Autoruns lists to try out.

Best Nick.
Edits to grammar 

I have the 3930 CPU, you can set the clock speed anywhere upto 4.2ghz with ease so I would not worry too much about losing out on the 3960.

 Running my pc totally fanless in the spec you outlined mobo temp reads 38 deg c, hard drives etc a get warm but are fine at about 45 c to the touch. Ambient room temp for these case conditions is about 18c

I think you should be fine. You can always add a small case fan from a wall wart supply if needed but I'm guessing it wont be needed.

For fun I put the resorator gpu water block on my passive gpu card which gets a little more heat out of the case but this was more because the  resorator kit comes with the gpu kit anyway.

Best,

Nick.

Pistorllero hi,

IMHO the Juli@ cards are an exceptionally good value way of getting a very high quality SPDIF feed out of a desktop. It should certainly should be a big improvement on the Realtek on board sound card you have been using.

Beyond fitting a standard Juli@ card which should improve sound a lot, there are some very effective tweeks for the Juli@. Clock upgrades and the power rails on the card can improve an already very good performance.

It may be worth contacting Peter as he may have a number of Juli@s with clock upgrades that have been removed from NOS1 DACs upgraded to Peters NOS USB interface.

Best Nick