New NOS1 dedicated PC. Less terrifying thanks to you. All help still welcome!

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi,

I do not know if such a thread is appropriate for this site as I have not seen anyone start one like this where they ask for help as and when they need it. If it is not appropriate, please remove it.

I have bought a NOS1 recently (not here yet) and need some help and advice with the PC side of things. I have done a lot of reading here but I still have one zillion and one questions.

I am really a newbie in the worse sense of the word and am literally terrified at the prospect of embarking on a PC build, especially one dedicated to get the most out of Peter's XXHighend's software.

This is hopefully the thread where I can ask some idiotic questions and some kind souls with more expertise and experience than myself can offer some advice.

I hope there is no problem with creating such a thread in the first place?

Best regards
Rakesh

[juanpmar]

Hi Rakesh, you have two ways, buy Peter´s PC and forget about the hassle to build it or ask whatever you want to know and anyone will try to help you to build it yourself.

Kind regards,
Juan

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh, you have two ways, buy Peter´s PC and forget about the hassle to build it or ask whatever you want to know and anyone will try to help you to build it yourself.

Kind regards,
Juan

Many thanks. The cpu I have here is a LGA2011 socket R. E5-2680. I have two of these CPUs.

QUESTION: Is there anything to be gained to use these two CPUs in a dual server board. That would be 16 cores! Can XXHighend take advantage of this?

I have got a a blu-ray drive and some hard disks that I would like to use. This means I cannot really get Peter's PC as I would like to use some of the parts that I already have.

Best regards
Rakesh

[juanpmar]

Hi Rakesh, if I were you and wanted to build a computer what I´d do is to take a look to the signature of others and especially to Peter´s signature.

If you already have some components that you intend to use go to the window search in the upper right part of this forum to put the keyword and see what others think.

For example if you are looking for LGA2011 you'll find this (just an example): http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3063.msg33225#msg33225

On the other hand if someone knows something specific about your questions for sure will tell you. If not, ask again 

Regards,
Juan

[Gerard]

I have bought a NOS1 recently (not here yet)

Rakesh

Huh you did not buy a NOS1 here from Peter?

 

[rakeshpoorun]

I have bought a NOS1 recently (not here yet)

Rakesh

Huh you did not buy a NOS1 here from Peter?

 

I am afraid you misunderstand me, Gerard. I meant the NOS1 has not reached me yet as I decided to go for this only a few days ago on Peter's advice.

I know next to nothing about servers and dual cpu motherboards and applications. But  this is what I think...

Clearly XXhighend is CPU intensive and is actually capable of making use of as many cores/threads as are made available to it.

However, presumably, some applications would I think need to be coded specifically so that they can take advantage not only of multiple cores and hyperthreading but also of multiple CPUs.

Now let me guess. At the time Peter wrote the software, he would not have envisaged the situation where anyone would be foolish and absurd enough to use a dual CPU motherboard. So the answer is probably no.

Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

Now let me guess. At the time Peter wrote the software, he would not have envisaged the situation where anyone would be foolish and absurd enough to use a dual CPU motherboard. So the answer is probably no.

Hey Rakesh - then you guessed wrong.

Support for 16 cores has been there since day one. Sadly (for you ) no 8 core processors existed at that time (max was 6 from some AMD). So 2 was common and a little later that became 4 hyperthreaded.
But motherboards with 4 sockets existed for ages already ...

Maybe 5 years or so ago Asus was working on some dual socket reasonable sized board and there is some topic about that in here somewhere.
In the end one board became available (but IIRC some less common brand) and I forgot why I didn't get it, but I (explicitly) didn't.

The only "PC" which today is used with some common sense and dual CPU's is some Mac Pro; I forgot who, but there is a cusomer hanging out there somewhere using that (with Windows).

FYI, software doesn't see 2 CPU's explicitly (but can if must); it sees the CPU cores. So if you put in 2 Xeon's with 20 cores each, it sees 40 cores (numbered 0 u/i 39).

Current version of XXHighEnd supports 24 cores for explicit tasking (see the yellow leds in the top of the screen). But this is just because to date nothing really exists in real (us audio !) life with more cores. If it comes around, the support for more cores comes around.
Btw, the most noticeable this is with track loading. So have 24 cores and 24 tracks load in parallel in the time of the longest track (but say in the time of 1).

Clearly XXhighend is CPU intensive

It is the opposite of that !

Regards,
Peter

[BertD]

Since about 2 months now I am using a rather simple PC and could not be more than happy with it.

http://www.atlastsolutions.com/ultimate-fanless-mini-itx-pc-core-i7-haswell-8gb-120gb-ssd-asus-q87t/

Used only for XX

I should compare it with a so called optimal PC one day but compared to my previous PC there has not much changed to the sound.

At first a bit less alive and dullish but after a week on continuous power it has even improved the previous situation. Still on Switching Power but that will be changed soon so no complaints...

Using Remote Desktop (other PC, tablet or phone), Galleries on the local SSD and the music on an external server connected with wired LAN and all is very responsive.

Decoupled with bearings and a heavy weight on top to eliminate vibrations. Ultra silent, reboots (when needed) within 10 seconds (!) and small size...

Bert

[rakeshpoorun]

...For example if you are looking for LGA2011 you'll find this (just an example): http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3063.msg33225#msg33225

On the other hand if someone knows something specific about your questions for sure will tell you. If not, ask again 

Regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

Thanks for the help and advice.

As you suggested, and as I was planning to anyway, I have done a little more reading about the LGA2011 Motherboards (why Intel would want to have three versions of this socket God in all his wisdom must find hard to fathom), and found out what I needed to know.

My processor is "socket R", so that the very latest V3 processors would not fit in the motherboard that I need to buy for my current processor. Well, that's good to know. For now I need to get the motherboard, memory, and graphic card if required...to start with.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Now let me guess. At the time Peter wrote the software, he would not have envisaged the situation where anyone would be foolish and absurd enough to use a dual CPU motherboard. So the answer is probably no.

Hey Rakesh - then you guessed wrong.

Support for 16 cores has been there since day one. Sadly (for you ) no 8 core processors existed at that time (max was 6 from some AMD). So 2 was common and a little later that became 4 hyperthreaded.
But motherboards with 4 sockets existed for ages already ...

Maybe 5 years or so ago Asus was working on some dual socket reasonable sized board and there is some topic about that in here somewhere.
In the end one board became available (but IIRC some less common brand) and I forgot why I didn't get it, but I (explicitly) didn't.

The only "PC" which today is used with some common sense and dual CPU's is some Mac Pro; I forgot who, but there is a cusomer hanging out there somewhere using that (with Windows).

FYI, software doesn't see 2 CPU's explicitly (but can if must); it sees the CPU cores. So if you put in 2 Xeon's with 20 cores each, it sees 40 cores (numbered 0 u/i 39).

Current version of XXHighEnd supports 24 cores for explicit tasking (see the yellow leds in the top of the screen). But this is just because to date nothing really exists in real (us audio !) life with more cores. If it comes around, the support for more cores comes around.
Btw, the most noticeable this is with track loading. So have 24 cores and 24 tracks load in parallel in the time of the longest track (but say in the time of 1).

Clearly XXhighend is CPU intensive

It is the opposite of that !

Regards,
Peter

Hi Peter,

Many thanks for your response. This was indeed very educational. And it of course has practical implications in that if anyone was to find a dual CPU motherboard, then this does not seem a bad choice although the case might be an issue.

The case that I have just dragged down from the loft to take a look inside will take an ATX-sized motherboard.

There are also some really quiet fans in there that I could use.

So existing components are:
1.a 500GB hard disk Samsung HD5021J
2. a blu-ray rewriter (I think LG or Pioneer)
3. a dvd-rewriter
4. a Lynx Studio 2 AES16 PCI card
5. a  Thermaltake TR2-470 PP PSU
6. 2 x 250GB SSDs (somewhere)
7. The Audiolab 8000DT media HTPC case (must have been a prototype as Audiolab never brought out this product)
8. I also recently bought an ESI Juli@ PCIe soundcard as I realised some motherboards did not have legacy PCI slots anymore
9. Some quiet fans

I also have the recently purchased Xeon E5 socket R processors. I should receive them from Germany over the next few days. I hope that they are not "chinese fakes"...The seller seems to be a legitimate seller. If they are genuine, I may end up buying 2 more; if not my credit card company should be able to refund me. We shall see...

All in all, there must be in the region of a thousand pounds worth of components lying around. I would have loved to have ordered your XXHighend PC but it would have meant wasting and paying twice over for components (especially given that some of the stuff here is not half bad) that I already have.

So I will deal with my PCPhobia, swallow my pride, ask stupid questions as and when required and supplemented with some research, come up with a plan of action over the next couple of weeks. Given the time I have, this will take me two months...

Many thanks
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Since about 2 months now I am using a rather simple PC and could not be more than happy with it.

http://www.atlastsolutions.com/ultimate-fanless-mini-itx-pc-core-i7-haswell-8gb-120gb-ssd-asus-q87t/

Used only for XX

I should compare it with a so called optimal PC one day but compared to my previous PC there has not much changed to the sound.

At first a bit less alive and dullish but after a week on continuous power it has even improved the previous situation. Still on Switching Power but that will be changed soon so no complaints...

Using Remote Desktop (other PC, tablet or phone), Galleries on the local SSD and the music on an external server connected with wired LAN and all is very responsive.

Decoupled with bearings and a heavy weight on top to eliminate vibrations. Ultra silent, reboots (when needed) within 10 seconds (!) and small size...

Bert

Hi Bert,

I went on Atlas Solutions' website and I must say that by the time you have upgraded some components, you are paying in the region of £1000-1200 for a PC with little in the way of upgrade path.

As you say, it is esthetically very pleasing indeed and it looks like it is an excellent XXHighend source. I imagine you have the NOS1a and I have read that this newer version of Peter's dac is more forgiving of the source computer. I will have the NOS1, at least for a year or so. So I need to be more mindful of following the advice given by Peter when designing a PC source for the NOS1. At the moment, I do not think I have departed too much from his recommended specifications.

I like the fact that you are using a tablet to control everything...I would certainly like to do that as well. But one step at a time...

Many thanks
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

It has been quiet here recently so I thought I might as well chip in, if anyone is interested, with where I got to with my project. Not very far at all but I have made some "progress", although I hesitate to use the word.

It has been nearly two weeks ago since I last posted on my self-proposed plan to build my own music pc. In that time, I had to learn a lot not only about building a music server but also understand what my own objectives were. Without clearly defined objectives, no sensible decision can be made.

I realised quite soon just how little I truly knew but from talking to friends, people in IT and companies that actually build servers and workstations to spec, knowledge did not necessarily lead to wisdom and true understanding...The reverse of the coin was that with this greater understanding, essential as it is, I did not really get any closer to knowing why a choice should be made as opposed to another. Like with nearly anything, there are so many opinions and so often conflicting that it is not clear that there is any sort of agreement about anything. It felt a bit like walking down the aisle in Sainbury's looking for a bottle of wine for the evening meal. How does one come to a rational decision when placed in front of such a large number of equally plausible alternatives?

I came very close to just giving up and simply try and order Peter's tested and proven solution. There were however a couple of issues. Quite apart from the cost involved, I really did not want to be tied up to the Asrock X79 motherboard...I wanted to buy some relatively inexpensive processors and upgrade to something more decent eventually from the current V3 Haswell generation (generally more cores for less power consumption). Ideally, I would have liked to move away from Sata III drives, use up and coming tech like USB3.1, maybe Thunderbolt II to connect to a NAS, use really fast PCIe based "NVME" hard drives to boot from, reduce power consumption and increase core count by using CPUs like the Xeon E5-2650LV3. Ideally I wanted a bigger case since clearly that would enable better and more efficient cooling and open up the possibility of a dual cpu LGA2011-3 motherboard.

You may ask: what has any of this got to do with sound? In fact, my understanding is that all the considerations enumerated above have implications both in terms of sound and ease of use and keeping open the possibility of future upgrades.

I however know my limitations and whilst I have a better idea of what I want to achieve and how to get there, I know that I need and will seek help. Some invaluable assistance, Peter, Juan and others who posted in this thread have already given. I hope you will not hold back and help with both advice or blunt criticism.

I have however very culpably digressed from the opening and teasing first line of the post which suggested I had made progress. Part of that progress is understanding what I am doing and where I am going and hopefully that came through above. Maybe my situation will correspond to people joining the Phasure club. The other part of that progress is that I have actually decided on some essential aspects of my build and ordered the parts, but it is the Athletico v Real Madrid Champions League derby in a moment so that will have to wait.

Best rgds
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

Rakesh,

From my own experience :

More than 12 cores won't benefit SQ for explicit technical reasons (read : I didn't do anything in the program that leads to "more cores will sound better").

More than 12 cores *will* benefit track loading of playlists comprising of more than 12 tracks. So the more cores the more tracks load in parallel.
This is not 100% linear (for speed)  because there's also disk (or LAN) I/O involved.

I do not claim that a slower (processor) PC will sound as good and (indeed) I most certainly to not claim that for the normal NOS1.

The more headroom in, say, bandwidth the PC has for everything, the better it will be - always.

Peter

[juanpmar]

I came very close to just giving up and simply try and order Peter's tested and proven solution. There were however a couple of issues. Quite apart from the cost involved, I really did not want to be tied up to the Asrock X79 motherboard...I wanted to buy some relatively inexpensive processors and upgrade to something more decent eventually from the current V3 Haswell generation (generally more cores for less power consumption). Ideally, I would have liked to move away from Sata III drives, use up and coming tech like USB3.1, maybe Thunderbolt II to connect to a NAS, use really fast PCIe based "NVME" hard drives to boot from, reduce power consumption and increase core count by using CPUs like the Xeon E5-2650LV3. Ideally I wanted a bigger case since clearly that would enable better and more efficient cooling and open up the possibility of a dual cpu LGA2011-3 motherboard....
...I however know my limitations and whilst I have a better idea of what I want to achieve and how to get there, I know that I need and will seek help....

Best rgds
Rakesh

Rakesh,

In my opinion the use of a computer as an audiophile source is still in its childhood. If you are planning to use components so different than the ones used by the majority of the people here, then you are a pioneer and in some sense that means that are us the ones who will learn from your experience. As an example, if you are planning to use USB3.1 or Thunderbolt must be you who tell us about your experience with it.
Perhaps with the intention of having the latest you are going too far with the use of so very different parts and as a result will be hard for us to help you. It does not mean of course that you can´t try different configurations or components but I always would use other´s experience as reference. The more optimized computers to use with XXHighEnd and NOS1, that I know, are Peter´s, and with some differences and modifications those of Nick, Mani, Scroobius ...

Kind regards,
Juan

[PeterSt]

A very senseful response, Juan. And don't forget your own very well layed out "configuration". Maybe some will say that by now it is outdated (but then our own PC is that just the same) but about proven concepts ...

Something else (for us "helpers") - and not sure whether this has been made clear in this topic, is that Rakesh actually sort of "wants" to have a base in a by now somewhat older concept : the X79 chipset. This is because the processor he likes to use (a Xenon), which won't fit the LGA2011-3 cpu socket (and which latter would be around the new X99 chipset).
So what follows from this is while you (Rakesh) may want to be in some leading leage, this can not be the case because of your chosen processor.

I should also emphasize that nobody should make this the biggest deal of the world, with the knowledge that most certainly the majority of XXHighEnd users, and also NOS1 users, do not use any really sophisticated PC. It only shouldn't be a from all angles under powered laptop ...

Peter

[juanpmar]

Rakesh (and those interested),

Trying to help a bit more...
Alain sent me this link where can be found general information about the world of PC audio in a quite didactic way.
http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/index.html

However, for specific information regarding our XXHighEnd/NOS1 based system, this (our) forum remains the essential reference.

Regards,
Juan

[christoffe]

It only shouldn't be a from all angles under powered laptop ...

Peter

What? 

Now we have to specify what are “OUR” priorities during the replay with XXH. SQ or speed, or SQ + SPEED?

1)   The only advantages of a high powered (multi core) processor is the speed during the FLAC/WAV conversion playing XXH in the “unattended mode”, storing the WAV files into memory  and searching for files on a local HDD.
2)   As one forum member wrote a couple of weeks ago, I did not hear any differences between the “unattended” and “attended” mode too. (I never play XXH in the “unattended” mode since 2010)
3)   The best SQ on my system (and on my audio PC too) I achieve is with 8x AP.
4)   Within the “Energy saving options” of W8 I shut down the monitor after one minute, and therefore no UI is  ...., and that has the same effect as playing XXH with the “unattended mode”. This “procedure” one “Guy” recommended on CA .
5)   During music replay (on a laptop) in the” attended mode” there are no pauses/breaks between 44Khz tracks but during the FLAC/WAV conversions of > 44kHz titles.

With the “under powered laptop” I have the best SQ ever heard on my system.
My conclusion: Don’t be afraid the to use XXH on a laptop  (see my settings)

Joachim

[Robert]

Peter would you recommend 6 cores over 4? I was looking at I7 4790 3.6Ghz LG 1150.

Robert

[CoenP]

Hi Joachim,

You do not need a speedy processor per se, but you need one that handles threads efficiently. This is where the multiple cores AND Hyperthreading come in and loads of L2/3 cache. You do not want your data to be clogged when waiting for a free thread or freeing up memory when precise timing matters. This is why shutting off stuff counts for SQ. To my knowledge there is no cpu test available for this quality. Otoh you can find the good properties on the datasheet.

My i5 is almost as "fast" as the (sb) i7 in arithmetic, yet is sometimes even below the performance border needed for xx. I never saw anyone complan with a low clockrate i7.

My next cpu will have HT and at least 4 cores. Maybe the new k series broadwell or even a Skylake for extra low power consumption.

Regards, Coen

[christoffe]

Hi,

thanks Coen,

Operating XXH in the „minimzed OS“ the active processes (shown in the task manager) are down to appr. 23 (coming from 58), the threads to 243 (coming from 932) and the handles to 5800 (coming from 24729). The only program running is the XXEngine3.exe.

XXH is on a RAM disc and in the “attended mode” during the “switching” of the music tracks the CPU load is constant, except a small dip of some milliseconds.

During all processes the remaining “memory” shows no “activities”, in other  words, everything is “running” between the processor and the RAM disc(s), and there is an approach for a tweak. Somebody in CA wrote that the Samsung modules are of the best quality.

The new X99 chipset with the appropriate CPU supports the DDR4 memory modules (with higher speed) and with that hardware another improvement of the SQ should be possible.

Joachim

[PeterSt]

It only shouldn't be a from all angles under powered laptop ...

Peter

What? 

Hi Joachim,

It is easy to miss, but read this again :

I imagine you have the NOS1a and I have read that this newer version of Peter's dac is more forgiving of the source computer. I will have the NOS1, at least for a year or so. So I need to be more mindful of following the advice given by Peter when designing a PC source for the NOS1.

So this is all about a PC for any normal situation. Could be a Weiss, could be a NOS1, could be anything. But not NOS1a, like you have ...
Ok ?

Regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

And Joachim,

Operating XXH in the „minimzed OS“ the active processes (shown in the task manager) are down to appr. 23 (coming from 58), the threads to 243 (coming from 932) and the handles to 5800 (coming from 24729). The only program running is the XXEngine3.exe.

Although I am not sure why you say this (or "claim" this ), please be a bit careful with the contexts for others (like the example of this topic being about the normal NOS1 and a PC for that). Anyway, for a same reason (better : same no-reason) I could mention that the running services (under W8) should be 5, including the Phasure NOS1 Driver. How many have you running ? I bet more. Why ? because you are neglecting everything. And why is that ? because *you* don't care much any more. You have a NOS1a ...

And then still it matters. Here it does (again). Just improve on the other stuff around software and DAC and it will matter again.

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

Peter would you recommend 6 cores over 4? I was looking at I7 4790 3.6Ghz LG 1150.

Hi Robert,

This is a bit difficult to give as a strict advice. I mean, the difference on the $ is quite large. But assuming it will not matter all that much for SQ (if detectable at all) I personally would go for two times faster track loading (Unattended). So an 8 core (Hyperthreaded assumed) will most often not allow the whole album to load in parallel (because more than 8 tracks) and so it takes twice the time now. A 12 core will most often do load the whole album in parallel (because most will be 12 tracks or less).

So if I were you I would look at that reason alone, and then consider whether it is worth while the money difference (very roughly a 300 euros when compared to a fine i7 4-core).

Hope this helps !
Peter

[PeterSt]

You do not need a speedy processor per se, but you need one that handles threads efficiently. This is where the multiple cores AND Hyperthreading come in and loads of L2/3 cache. You do not want your data to be clogged when waiting for a free thread or freeing up memory when precise timing matters. This is why shutting off stuff counts for SQ.

Quite correct in my view. But read carefully, because what that also tells is that there shouldn't be many processes running to begin with. And this is under our control to some extent only, with also the notice that dozens of active threads may be running while you see one "process name" only.
So how to solve that ? more cores to be certain.

Thus ... clear.

Well, almost, because when you use XXHighEnd 1.186a (and up) and set Q3, Q4 and Q5 to 1, nothing is going to interfere with the playback threads. So now ALL other processes wil run on the other cores. Still they imply current draw (in spiky form) and still they will influence SQ (via jitter in-DAC). And still it is so that the fewer cores the more spiky that current will be.
And still it is so that when the processor is under powered (with again an enphasis on "from all angles") this spikyness will even be higher.

Thus ...

Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Quick post:

I sent an email to a few motherboard manufacturers last week. I have the reply from Asus regarding their dual CPU motherboard (e.g. the Z10PE-D16 WS) but that was somewhat negative. The questions and answers were:

    Question1: Is it likely you will be updating the bios uefi of your dual cpu workstation motherboards so one can boot frpm Intel 750 SSD from the PCIe slot?

        Answer[from Asrockrack]: we use OCZ RevoDrive as our PCIe SSD validation, and yes, we will support PCIe SSD for sure. And our dual CPU workstation product will be called EP2C612 WS, which you may see it on our official website soon! (Need samples?)

    Question: So the answer, to be absolutely clear, is that one will be able to use the EP2C612 WS and boot from an Intel 750 SSD located in the PCIe slot?  When will this product be launched? When will it be in the shops? I have quite soon. Can you please send me the relevant spec sheet if you have one presently?
    Question2: Also, do you know when the Asrock X99 professional/USB3.1 will be available to buy?
        Answer: this product line belongs to ASRock, and we will be glad to introduce you to them, therefore, could you please let me know your location and the way you most likely to purchase our products - via disty or  on-line purchasing?

And the last email was:

Hi Rakesh,

Yes, absolutely!

This EP2C612 WS can boot from Intel 750 PCIe SSD located in the PCIe slot @UEFI mode with Windows 8.1 Pro, and it has been verified.

As for the purchasing questions, I will asked our sales department to contact you via proper channel and hope that you will get what you need soon!

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Cheers,
ASRR TSD Team.

It is certainly of interest to me and maybe of interest to others so I took the liberty of posting this here.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Addendum:

The Asrock dual CPU motherboard EP2C612 WS mentioned above by Asrockrack is not commercially available yet but should be shortly. I do not know the specs but if it is like other Asrock motherboards, it should be very competitively priced.

Best rgds
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Addendum 2:

A quick online search shows that Asrock have already posted the specifications of this EP2C612 motherboard (and other workstation/server motherboards which are part of their new 2015 lineup) online. The specs can be downloaded here:

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/Catalog2015.pdf

Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Addendum 3:

I am quite impressed by the EP2C612D16-2L2T motherboard.

It has 3 x PCIe x 16 slots and 3 x PCIe x 8 slots, has onboard USB3.1 type A (not type C unfortunately but I am pretty sure this can be added via an AIC) as well as Thunderbolt.

The EP2C612D16NM-2T8R adds an LSI3008 card (shock, horror the purists might say) at the expense of a few PCI slots and on-board Thunderbolt header...

Would anyone care to say what they think of these as potential candidates for a source PC for the NOS1?

Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Well, I am not completely surprised if nobody has tried a dual cpu motherboard set-up as a PC source for the NOS1/1a.

With the little real knowledge that I have in such matters, I can think of the following grounds which will count against the viability of such an option:

1. Cost involved. A dual CPU motherboard costs more but that's not always true. For example, I have noticed that the Asus Tuf X99 motherboard costs in excess of 400 Euros but the Asus Z10PA-D8 WS can be found for less. I imagine one does not need more memory. The case required may or may not be bigger but some dual CPU motherboards are ATX size.

2. Complexity. I imagine this must be true. From the reviews that I have read where dual cpu systems were being used, clearly this is considered an issue as not all (in fact few) applications are able to take advantage of the dual cpu configuration. In such cases however, where the application can take advantage of the additional headroom (as seems to be the case with XXHighend), rather substantial gains are made on the singe cpu solution.

3. Power requirements. The motherboard itself will consume presumably more power than its single CPU counterpart but this is unlikely to be by that much. More problematic is the doubling of power draw from the additional CPU. However, if one considers that the power draw of the high-end multi-core CPUs used by some NOS1/1a owners is in the region of 130w peak, then surely two low-powered Intel Xeons consuming 70W peak each is not altogether such a different siuation.

4. Cooling requirements. Whilst the use of two low powered CPUs do lead to lesser cooling requirements (individually) compared a heavyweight 130w CPU nonetheless, the presence of two CPUs means the positioning of one affects the flow of coll air to the other. How much of a problem this is I do not know but I imagine with low powered Xeon CPUs, the issue might not be an insuperable one.

5. Upgrading power supplies. As someone who does not like the effect of poor mains electricity on playback, I can only admire those who hav tried to address these issues within the PC. I have read about different proposed "solutions" by HDPlex for example but here again I am not too sure about the gains to be had here. If I understand correctly XXHighend make minimal power demands during playback. So it is arguable that a solution which is not mainstream and maybe rpovide so little gain is an irrelevant consideration.

6. Sound quality. Glad you ask. I do not have the foggiest and there is only one way to find out!

Best
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Addendum 4:

I now have the reply from Supermicro's distributors regarding a motherboard that, on paper, I prefer to all the other solutions I have looked at in terms of dual CPU motherboards.

It is the Supermicro MBD-X10DAC.

Specs can be found here:

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DAC.cfm

Again for those who are interested in such matters, I have the reply from their distributors which I received this morning which I post here:

Morning Rakesh,

 ...
 

I can confirm that we can boot from the 750 SSD on the X10DAC.

 

Please advise how you would like to proceed.

 

Regards

That's it for now.

rgds
Rakesh
 

[rakeshpoorun]

RE: Hard drive configuration in "XXHIghend PC"

Since I last posted here about my proposed build, I have tried to take what would have been an ideal short-cut and order the XXHighend PC from Peter directly built per the specifications he posted on this site.

It is most unlikely that this will now happen but irrespective of this, there are a few issues that I need to consider regarding my build based in all likelihood on the Supermicro X10dac, which is at this moment my favourite solution going forward although no one here or elsewhere has commented on the wisdom or otherwise of this choice.

My post here is a specific call for help and advice regarding the hard drive configuration of an XXHighend PC source. I have ordered the Intel 750 400GB PCI-e SSD (I will call this SSD1; had to order this in the US as it is difficult to find in Europe at the moment) and have also bought some 300GB 10000rpm Velociraptors hard drives on ebay.

Running XXHighend in Ramdisk, I am planning to use the Intel 750 SSD for Windows OS and XXHighend. I am also thinking of using another cheaper SSD like the Samsung SM951 (AICH) (I will call this SSD2) 256GB for Galleries. Is this the way to go about this? Can anyone comment?

Another issue regards the Playback location. My understanding is that this should ideally be in Ramdisk as well. But should this be stored on SSD1 or SSD2 or ideally on a separate SSD (such as another Samsung SM951)?

Obviously I do realise that these issues must have been considered in other threads and I have tried to go through these but I have found them less than conclusive. So any help or advice or just a note of your own experience would be appreciated.

I have some further questions regarding the hard drives where I will be storing my music and maybe some music dvds/blurays but that will be a question for another post.

Many thanks
Rakesh

P.S. I am in the UK (Berkshire)/France (Alsace/Germany border) so if any kind soul with experience building an XXHighend PC would be willing to let me listen to their rig or offer some advice/help with my build, please feel free to get in touch.

[PeterSt]

Rakesh,

Maybe you are going to rephrase a couple of options if I tell you that the phenomenon RAMDisk is about an emulated hdd in internal memory. I mean, it looks like you think that an SSD equals RAMDisk.
Am I wrong in thinking this ?

Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Rakesh,

Maybe you are going to rephrase a couple of options if I tell you that the phenomenon RAMDisk is about an emulated hdd in internal memory. I mean, it looks like you think that an SSD equals RAMDisk.
Am I wrong in thinking this ?

Peter

Hi Peter,

I am in a cafe and using my smartphone to type so please excuse the brevity of my response.

I understand that Ramdisk is actually a virtual disk that takes advantage of the very high speed access the CPU has to the volatile memory contained in Ram. I read what you wrote about the requirements for Ram for storing high resolution/ upsampled music and accordingly went for 64MB of ram. From my understanding of the requirements of XXHIghend and the audio files transferred to memory, this should be amply sufficient.

I am also fairly sure that the volatility of ram memory means that one inevitably must have the XXHighend software on hard disk, and this is why I have gone for the Intel 750 PCI-e for Windows OS and XXHighend, as this is nvme and therefore capable of being used as a bootable drive with the X10dac motherboard according to Supermicro and their distributor here in the UK.

I understand that Galleries can be considered as the metadata pertaining to what we want to play, somewhat like a synopsis and table of contents but not the audio file itself. This should be apparently/preferably on a separate drive and I am thinking of a separate Samsung SM951 AICH SSD which at 256GB should be able to deal with my expanding flac music/potentially ripped DVD/bluray collection over many years to come.

So I do not think I am incorrect in my understanding of what Ramdisk is - in the XXhighend PC, it is partitioned to accommodate both XXHighend itself and the Playback drive.

But I was confused and almost certainly incorrect about a different aspect of how your music pc operates. I thought that the music files and the Playback drive were different things. Now I think that in fact the Playback drive is simply where the music files reside during playback. On this basis there is no need for a separate SSD for the playback drive? The playback drive source the music files from wherever the music collection is stored be it a SATA drive or as will likely be the case in my PC a combination of 10k Velociraptor drives and 15k sas hard drives which can have a transfer speed of 12Gbps when used with the LSI raid card incorporated in the Supermicro motherboard.

Is the above about right?

Thanks
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

On the basis there is no need for a separate SSD for the playback drive?

At least that was the reason for my previous post.

But it is now not clear yet whether you have the right idea in mind. Playback drive is like this :

Permantent Storage -> Copy activity -> Playback Drive -> Playback from there.

Playback Drive can be anything (including not applicable and then the normal source is used) and can also be a RAMDisk. General consensus is that the latter is the best.

and accordingly went for 64MB of ram

64GB I suppose ? but really overdone.
8GB Of RAM for the Playback Drive as RAMDisk is sufficient for everything and all (thinking Hires albums and not 10 of them in one playlist).

SSD I would use for Galleries indeed and now for their reading speed.

Something else :
Best thing (SQ) is to have as few as possible in the audio PC, not as much as possible ...
This is how you may end up with two PC's in the end. One that plays the music and one that holds all the music, including Galleries. All what's left is the OS Disk, which in the end can also be something different, but never mind.
Not necessary at alll to think like that from the start, but think that it will happen in the end (stage).

Regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

On the basis there is no need for a separate SSD for the playback drive?

At least that was the reason for my previous post.

But it is now not clear yet whether you have the right idea in mind. Playback drive is like this :

Permantent Storage -> Copy activity -> Playback Drive -> Playback from there.

Playback Drive can be anything (including not applicable and then the normal source is used) and can also be a RAMDisk. General consensus is that the latter is the best.

and accordingly went for 64MB of ram

64GB I suppose ? but really overdone.
8GB Of RAM for the Playback Drive as RAMDisk is sufficient for everything and all (thinking Hires albums and not 10 of them in one playlist).

SSD I would use for Galleries indeed and now for their reading speed.

Something else :
Best thing (SQ) is to have as few as possible in the audio PC, not as much as possible ...
This is how you may end up with two PC's in the end. One that plays the music and one that holds all the music, including Galleries. All what's left is the OS Disk, which in the end can also be something different, but never mind.
Not necessary at alll to think like that from the start, but think that it will happen in the end (stage).

Regards,
Peter

Peter,

Thanks for the post above. It was certainly very helpful in helping me understand the nature of the Playback drive. So I do not need a third SSD, just two one for XXHIGHEND and Windows OS and the other for Galleries.

It is funny you mention two PCs one slaved to the other as this is what I was planning to do down the line when I upgrade to the NOS1a in due course next year.

The idea is to use my current build as a music server storage option. I would remove 32GB of ram, used the two remaining CPUs ( I did mention that I eventually ended buying 4 of these low powered INTEL LGA2011 v3 Xeons)... If that's feasible, I will have not have a single disk in that XXHighend Playback optimised pc, just two CPUs and the ram sticks. This is another reason why the X10dac has always appealed to me.  Is what I am proposing a possibility using the current configuration as a starting point?

Best rgds
Rakesh

P.S. Yes I did mean 64GB of ram. What you wrote was that 24GB or so were ideal for high resolution music because up sampling resulted in large music files stored in Playback drive. It's good that 32GB is sufficient as it means that I have most of what's needed for a second XXHIGHEND Optimised PC. As things stand all that I would require would be amother dual CPU motherboard probably the Supermicro X10dax (which enables some mild overclocking of Xeon CPUs and memory) and a case.

[PeterSt]

Rakesh,

Having a dual CPU in the music (file) server really seriously does not make any sense. Take a laptop for that ! (to emphasize what I mean).

And a ram stick ? that smells like a thumb drive or USB pen or what to call it. Can be the playback drive all right, but it is still not the RAMDisk. RAMDisk is just internal memory.
My English is not the best as you may notice, so maybe it's about that.

Regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Rakesh,

Having a dual CPU in the music (file) server really seriously does not make any sense. Take a laptop for that ! (to emphasize what I mean).

And a ram stick ? that smells like a thumb drive or USB pen or what to call it. Can be the playback drive all right, but it is still not the RAMDisk. RAMDisk is just internal memory.
My English is not the best as you may notice, so maybe it's about that.

Regards,
Peter

With regard to the use of the term "Ram stick," it was a slip on my part, I meant of course memory modules. I simply meant I could use less memory in the file server and use the memory modules in the "Playback Optimised PC."

Peter, if I understand correctly the use of a dual CPU motherboard is overkill for this application (as a music server which it will not be to start with and maybe never). I am sure this is the case.  But there are other advantages to using the X10dac motherboard such as the presence of the LSI/Avago SAS3 controller which is described in the review on "servethehome.com website" as:

"Probably the biggest standout feature of the Supermicro X10DAC is the onboard LSI / Avago SAS 3008 controller. The SAS3008 is a cacheless HBA that can be used either in IT mode (HBA) or IR mode (RAID 0, 1, 10). The SAS 3008 is a very fast controller that features eight 12gbps SAS3 ports. As we have seen already with some of our SAS3 benchmarks such as the Toshiba PX02SMU080 800GB drive we benchmarked recently, it would not be hard to populate this controller with eight drives each capable of over 1GB/s transfer speeds. When this controller is combined with the ten SATA 3 ports, one has up to 18 storage ports available using onboard controllers."

In other words, the use of this motherboard gives me a slice of my cake and I can eat it as well. For the time being, I use it in my main XXHighend PC and later on I harness its storage potential to utilise it as the centrepiece of my music/file server.

Building an XXHighend dedicated/optimised PC at a later date should be relatively painless given that it will consist of just the two processors and the RAM. I may not even need a graphic card if it can be configured for headless operation so only the graphic card in the music server is used to hook up to a monitor.

Maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with what I see to be the logic behind the approach outlined above. As things stand however, I am not sure what that might be other than the use of an additional CPU. OK sure this adds to the cost but for now it will be used as both music server/Playback PC and the Supermicro X10dac seems to be a good interim solution.

rgds
Rakesh

[juanpmar]

Having a dual CPU in the music (file) server really seriously does not make any sense. Take a laptop for that ! (to emphasize what I mean).

Are there some minimal specifications for a server laptop like amount of memory, CPU speed, USB ports or hdd size?

Regards
Juan

[PeterSt]

"Probably the biggest standout feature of the Supermicro X10DAC is the onboard LSI / Avago SAS 3008 controller. The SAS3008 is a cacheless HBA that can be used either in IT mode (HBA) or IR mode (RAID 0, 1, 10). The SAS 3008 is a very fast controller that features eight 12gbps SAS3 ports. As we have seen already with some of our SAS3 benchmarks such as the Toshiba PX02SMU080 800GB drive we benchmarked recently, it would not be hard to populate this controller with eight drives each capable of over 1GB/s transfer speeds. When this controller is combined with the ten SATA 3 ports, one has up to 18 storage ports available using onboard controllers."

[/i]

Nah ... There is no single way that you are going to utilize any of this. Not even for one (fast) port. So this is not overkill, it really is "rubbish". Think like having a large V12, drive that out of a cargo plane (up in the air) and think you will be down faster with that V12.
(thinking of it, you will be faster down because it weighs more than a line-4 motor)

So there are a 100 other things that determine the overall speed (of in this case file transfer) and you wont gain a thing on it. Too difficult to explain, so you'd have to trust me.

Also, by the time you can utilize that amount of disk ports and thinking of today's (or just tomorrow's) hdd's of 8TB, you wished you have invested in a factory of ripping machines for which wasn't $ left anyway because the millions of albums are too expensive. Next you must also have an 8 channel system at least, so you can listen to 4x stereo at the same time in order to listen to 1% of those albums for the rest of your life.

Have the cheapest for this but try to get some SATAIII ports because at some stage some speed can be handy (like when making a backup copy).
There is much (more) to it to make things fast but there is also much (more) to it to make things "slow" becaue irrelevant. Just don't even think about it ... that would be my idea.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Having a dual CPU in the music (file) server really seriously does not make any sense. Take a laptop for that ! (to emphasize what I mean).

Are there some minimal specifications for a server laptop like amount of memory, CPU speed, USB ports or hdd size?

Hi Juan,

The laptop was an example to show how irrelevant it all is. In the end I would never use a laptop because they often suffer from congestion (look at the ever burning disk light) and might be unresponsive for a (too) long time. Still it gives the (my) idea that it doesn't matter much.

"hdd size" is an odd one because you can only be talking about music disks here and they will never be internally in the laptop (a laptop still assumed).
And next the only one who is able to answer that (hdd) question, is you.

Regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

"Probably the biggest standout feature of the Supermicro X10DAC is the onboard LSI / Avago SAS 3008 controller. The SAS3008 is a cacheless HBA that can be used either in IT mode (HBA) or IR mode (RAID 0, 1, 10). The SAS 3008 is a very fast controller that features eight 12gbps SAS3 ports. As we have seen already with some of our SAS3 benchmarks such as the Toshiba PX02SMU080 800GB drive we benchmarked recently, it would not be hard to populate this controller with eight drives each capable of over 1GB/s transfer speeds. When this controller is combined with the ten SATA 3 ports, one has up to 18 storage ports available using onboard controllers."

[/i]

Nah ... There is no single way that you are going to utilize any of this. Not even for one (fast) port. So this is not overkill, it really is "rubbish". Think like having a large V12, drive that out of a cargo plane (up in the air) and think you will be down faster with that V12.
(thinking of it, you will be faster down because it weighs more than a line-4 motor)

So there are a 100 other things that determine the overall speed (of in this case file transfer) and you wont gain a thing on it. Too difficult to explain, so you'd have to trust me.

Also, by the time you can utilize that amount of disk ports and thinking of today's (or just tomorrow's) hdd's of 8TB, you wished you have invested in a factory of ripping machines for which wasn't $ left anyway because the millions of albums are too expensive. Next you must also have an 8 channel system at least, so you can listen to 4x stereo at the same time in order to listen to 1% of those albums for the rest of your life.

Have the cheapest for this but try to get some SATAIII ports because at some stage some speed can be handy (like when making a backup copy).
There is much (more) to it to make things fast but there is also much (more) to it to make things "slow" becaue irrelevant. Just don't even think about it ... that would be my idea.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Some strong words indeed. Maybe the use of "rubbish" goes some way to justify your points and validate your perspective...Add weight and substance to your arguments. I should try it one day. Maybe I will start winning some arguments with my little ones instead of trying to reason with them as to the reasons we do or do not do certain things. I imagine I will say, "You want this expensive train set. This is rubbish (in inverted commas). It is too fast for this track...It is like putting a V12 in a car and dropping it from altitude (oops it might in fact go faster but that's not relevant). I am right but it's too hard or time-consuming to explain. Bugger this. Just trust me."  I will report back.

Having said that, you are probably right. Let's see a CD is about 500MB but the same album in high-resolution is roughly 6GB. I imagine all in all 2 x 6TB discs should be quite sufficient for my entire music collection (about 2000 cds + 400 dvds + 100 blu-rays that I may want to store on there). I would probably want to use an additional disc for back-up. I imagine to make use of three SAS3 ports is not a bad idea here.

I imagine that people here have not hallucinated when they commented that the best results they obtained was by using a SATAIII hard disc as a source like the Western Digital Velociraptor. They are easy to find and cheap but relatively low capacity so let's say I have two of these and still back-up to the 6TB disc. I would be using 5 of the 18 ports and have the possibility of using this to store ripped blu-ray discs as well if I feel like it.

Why is it, I wonder, that most people I know who make a living selling audio products always use expensive car analogies to make a point? My second car was a BMW 540i V8 and sure I did not need that much power when I drove all the way from the UK to Italy in the summer, but it sure beat driving a 2cv Citroen for sheer pleasure! But car analogies don't really float my proverbial boat so I will move on...

So there are a 100 other things that determine the overall speed (of in this case file transfer) and you wont gain a thing on it. Too difficult to explain, so you'd have to trust me.
...

I do not follow your logic here.

I thought, and you seem to agree, that high file transfer speeds is a good thing.  So the ability of having 12Gbp/s file transfer seems to be a great idea unless you are saying that the motherboard and hard drive manufacturers are lying about these gains and that I won't actually enjoy these speeds? If this is the crux of your argument and you felt so strongly about it, then say so. If on the other hand, there is a price to pay elsewhere, maybe it would be enlightening to hear what the actual reasons are. I can only speculate that one looses out elsewhere because of the added complexity of the motherboard or because the file transfer protocols may impact on the way the motherboard accesses data on the hard drives? Or could it be that the raid card increases power consumption? Or does this subsystem have implications in terms of Windows OS which would not fit in well with the way the XXHighend software operates?

I am the first to admit that I was not too sure about the choice of this motherboard and this is why I posted here about it in the first place. In the hope that someone with more experience than I have would explain whether it is a good choice or not.

In conclusion, Peter, I am inclined to accept your advice at face value and may well decide to forego the X10dac and use the X10dax instead (it is a dual processor motherboard but does not have the  onboard SAS3  controller). But I must say it was a very odd way of putting across your point...

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

In conclusion, Peter, I am inclined to accept your advice at face value and may well decide to forego the X10dac and use the X10dax instead (it is a dual processor motherboard but does not have the  onboard SAS3  controller).

Peter,


I am trying to attach a picture to the specifications of the Supermicro X10DAX motherboard. I would welcome your opinion (and anyone's else who cares to contribute for that matter) as to whether it is any good for my purposes?

Maybe I should clarify what are my purposes even if it is not evident from the above? Well to have a single pc that will make use of XXHighend, use 2 processors and be fairly stable/reliable over time. Eventually maybe migrate all the hard discs including OS discs to another pc so this motherboard could be dedicated to just playing music files during playback and nothing else.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

By the way,

for those who are interested in a really minimalist set-up for an XXHighend PC, you might want to consider this soon to be launched mini ITX LGA-2011-R motherboard by Asrock.


EPC612D4I

    Mini ITX 6.7" x 6.7"
    Socket LGA 2011 R3 Intel Xeon processor E5-1600/2600 v3 series
    Supports Quad channel DDR4 2133/1866 ECC DIMM, 4 x SO-DIMM slots
    Supports 4 SATA3 by C612
    Supports 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16
    Integrated IPMI 2.0 with KVM and Dedicated LAN (RTL8211E)
    Supports Intel Dual GLAN ( Intel i210 + Intel i217 )



Full specs can be found here:

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPC612D4I#Specifications

[PeterSt]

Hi Rakesh,

I have not much lust to bring across an ICT course/education. If you ask for advice then I can give you that and if you can't accept the answer then it could be better to not ask the questions in the first place. There's just too much involved in explaining (all).

But I will now make it worse for you () :

My profession is (computer) performance specialist. Started with that explicitly, back in 1975. Still working on that on a daily basis. XXHighEnd is one of its products where the power of the PC is utilized for SQ (and CPU usage is 0.0000x% anyway). NOS1-USB is also one of its product with 24/768 input capability.
Important ? of course not.

More important could be the first ever "logistics software" (today named ERP software) running on a (Novell) PC network. This was in 1989 and two AT servers running at a speed of 40MHz served 120 XT 12 MHz clients concurrently, all with faster response than any mainframe available at the day (with the notice that Cray's really were used for something (science) else).
So in those poor AT servers them SAS ports could have been useful but still weren't needed anyway.

Hey, the danger with topics like this is that readers may start to think that we need super computers to run a simple audio player. So I am answering the questions because you ask them. I tend to answer in the direction of your liking (say "speed") because it is my (real) profession. But at some stage it goes too far because it can't be utilized by one single poor user (client in IT terms) which the audio thread is.

In comparison, today's normal work is about 1000s of such clients causing ~ 8000 sales orders with say 100000 sales order lines and all behind that to deliver those lines the next day early morning (think fresh food). One server is doing this and STILL no 12GB etc. ports are in there because of no benefit. However, smart caches and multi processors and smart threading etc. etc. sure is there. To AVOID the necessity of this stuff, just because at some stage (which is all stages) it does not exist yet. But the ERP software did.
XXHighEnd makes use of the same "technology" were possible, just because it is me. You won't know it, but try to browse the Library Area with 400K tracks in there, all with coverart, and *know* that there's not even a database involved.

You can well say that one of the big "hobby's" I have applied in there is using a giant amount of data (which in the end is more than any largest company will have stored), without a single piece of "database".
I think I know what I am doing (or advising for that matter).

Best regards,
Peter

[juanpmar]

Having a dual CPU in the music (file) server really seriously does not make any sense. Take a laptop for that ! (to emphasize what I mean).

Are there some minimal specifications for a server laptop like amount of memory, CPU speed, USB ports or hdd size?

Hi Juan,

The laptop was an example to show how irrelevant it all is. In the end I would never use a laptop because they often suffer from congestion (look at the ever burning disk light) and might be unresponsive for a (too) long time. Still it gives the (my) idea that it doesn't matter much.

Regards,
Peter

Hey Peter, sometimes is difficult to understand your yes/not at the same time,  probably the same applies to me and to many people here and it shows the complexity and multitude of possibilities of what we are treating here.
But...sometimes also the answer could be more specific or at least "some" more specific. E.g. I was waiting for something like: would be better if you don't use a laptop and use instead a Pc with at least 4Gb of memory and a i3 processor, etc. Or better even: take a look at what I am using now as Pc server.
Of course for me is difficult to deal with a foreign language with enough subtlety. So do not understand this as a reproach but as a humble proposal to avoid countless posts asking back the same thing.

Kind regards,
Juan

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

I suppose you wish to go with a Windows Server OS since there is no mention of support for Windows 8 OS with the Asrock server motherboard ?

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC. If I was unsure of what to get, I would on the contrary look for something that resembles more what is used by Peter, but this is just an humble suggestion.

The word "server" as it is used here has not much to do with a real server that is intended for quite different matters. A real server does not need to be silent as it is normally put in a server room where there is air conditioning, in a noisy fan environment, big time redundancy (hard drives in RAID configuration) and multi-"everything" (multi-task, multi-user), with 2 power supplies per server et al... It is built like a tank, weights like a tank and it draws a lot of power. All is oriented towards power, speed, economy of time between failures, etc... Not really aimed at music at all...

We have to remember that a music PC is only the PC where the processing will occur and in order to accomplish this, one needs the right balance between speed, enough ram and silence (physically and electronically). To achieve this, a nice start would be from what Peter recommends. I am sure you would be very happy with a build that is almost identical with what Peter has achieved. The CPU is very powerful, the amount of ram should not exceed a level where it would bring more noise (since each memory stick demands power and works with "spikes of power") and less internal components than more.

As it will advance, I am sure a lot of us will be happy to bring suggestions, but the music PC needs to have good balance (silence, speed and not too much power). As you will notice, I am not talking about a "server". The server in our context is a very simple thing: the hard drive containing the music is connected to another PC (the "server") and that another PC is connected through LAN with the music PC where XXHighEnd resides.

I am not a good example of what should be done. I live with my mistakes and still have a long way to go. If you hope to be helped, you will have to orient your goals toward something that is more in line with what we have and know, as opposed to "quite different"...

I will leave it there for the moment. The lack of response from many of us has probably a lot to do with the direction you have taken...

The format of the box is not really important, but what you will put inside is... The amount of hard drives is not important either, unless you have music in the Terabytes department, but even so, a 5400RPM would be a lot more silent and powerful enough for the task than a SAS 15k RPM or a RAID array (for example)...

I will continue to monitor this thread as it will evolve, but Peter, Juan, many others and I are certainly willing to help, as long as they understand and can help in assisting you

Hope this does not come as a "showstopper" comment

Regards,

Alain

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

I suppose you wish to go with a Windows Server OS since there is no mention of support for Windows 8 OS with the Asrock server motherboard ?

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC. If I was unsure of what to get, I would on the contrary look for something that resembles more what is used by Peter, but this is just an humble suggestion.

The word "server" as it is used here has not much to do with a real server that is intended for quite different matters. A real server does not need to be silent as it is normally put in a server room where there is air conditioning, in a noisy fan environment, big time redundancy (hard drives in RAID configuration) and multi-"everything" (multi-task, multi-user), with 2 power supplies per server et al... It is built like a tank, weights like a tank and it draws a lot of power. All is oriented towards power, speed, economy of time between failures, etc... Not really aimed at music at all...

We have to remember that a music PC is only the PC where the processing will occur and in order to accomplish this, one needs the right balance between speed, enough ram and silence (physically and electronically). To achieve this, a nice start would be from what Peter recommends. I am sure you would be very happy with a build that is almost identical with what Peter has achieved. The CPU is very powerful, the amount of ram should not exceed a level where it would bring more noise (since each memory stick demands power and works with "spikes of power") and less internal components than more.

As it will advance, I am sure a lot of us will be happy to bring suggestions, but the music PC needs to have good balance (silence, speed and not too much power). As you will notice, I am not talking about a "server". The server in our context is a very simple thing: the hard drive containing the music is connected to another PC (the "server") and that another PC is connected through LAN with the music PC where XXHighEnd resides.

I am not a good example of what should be done. I live with my mistakes and still have a long way to go. If you hope to be helped, you will have to orient your goals toward something that is more in line with what we have and know, as opposed to "quite different"...

I will leave it there for the moment. The lack of response from many of us has probably a lot to do with the direction you have taken...

The format of the box is not really important, but what you will put inside is... The amount of hard drives is not important either, unless you have music in the Terabytes department, but even so, a 5400RPM would be a lot more silent and powerful enough for the task than a SAS 15k RPM or a RAID array (for example)...

I will continue to monitor this thread as it will evolve, but Peter, Juan, many others and I are certainly willing to help, as long as they understand and can help in assisting you

Hope this does not come as a "showstopper" comment

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

Thanks for taking the time with the thoughtful and highly instructive post. In all honesty, I do not know how this build has come to be regarded as a "super powered pc."

If it is indeed a "super powered pc," this was not my intention and the whole thing is a darned mistake. Given how little I know about computers generally, it is not at all the situation I was aiming for. And a mistake of the worse kind, because I have already acquired quite a lot of the parts required for this project. This is what I have bought as things stand:

    2 x E5-2648L v3
    Hynix 64GB DDR4 Ram (4 x 16GB)
    Intel 750 SSD 400GB PCIe NVME, to use as bootable drive for Windows 8 64bit OS and XXHighend
    2 x 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000BLF 2.5" (SATA 3Gb/s)
       
   

I am planning to add these parts:

   
    Supermicro X10DAC motherboard or Supermicro X10DAX based on what Peter has said above
    Silverstone EC04-P PCI Express Card
    Palit Geforce GTX 750 ti Kalmx
    Samsung 256GB PCIe ACHI SSD to use for Galleries

I imagine it is never really too late and I could always just leave out the Supermicro board, use only some of the RAM and go for something simpler.

But Alain, I thought the idea of having two cpus, which are both low powered and have 12 cores each, made a lot of sense (the CPUs are rated at 75W each, half of what many here are using). I never intended using Windows Server OS but rather Windows 8 64bit that I thought most people over here use. I did not know that the RAM could be too much, I had read in a thread somewhere that Peter worked out for high resolution and upsampled music one would be looking at 24GB and Juan also seemed to have added to his Ram to get to 24GB. I thought 32Gb was fine but because I had two CPUs, I thought let me make sure each CPU can access 32Gb...Maybe the reasoning above is "rubbish," using Peter's helpful terminology , but that's where my thinking got me.

I clearly have a choice. Rethink the whole thing and go for a single processor motherboard or since I have advanced so far, bite the bullet and see what comes out of it.

What would be great would be if I could meet someone who has bought Peter's XXHighend's PC that I could listen to so I would have a benchmark and could then see just how much I have messed it up. So if you Alain are not too far, and you do not mind, please let me know and I could come and listen to your system if not too inconvenient...It is about time I get to listen to someone's well settled Phasure NOS1/1a + XXHighend PC system. I will bring along a nice bottle of wine for your effort. I am in SE England and often in Alsace in France where my family lives...



Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi,
...
I am really a newbie in the worse sense of the word and am literally terrified at the prospect of embarking on a PC build, especially one dedicated to get the most out of Peter's XXHighend's software.

This is hopefully the thread where I can ask some idiotic questions and some kind souls with more expertise and experience than myself can offer some advice.

I hope there is no problem with creating such a thread in the first place?

Best regards
Rakesh

Hi Peter,

In my defence, I did say that I know close to nothing about "the PC side of things" and warned that some of my questions might be regarded as "idiotic."

This was a few weeks ago. At the time I did not have the foggiest about the difference between Socket LGA2011 and LGA2011R3, what is the difference between SATA and SATA III and SATA EXPRESS, a HDD and SSD, cores, hyperthreading, Ramdisk, DDR3 and DDR4 memory, server, workstation and database etc etc you get my drift...
It gradually dawned upon me that in taking a leap of faith and going for the NOS1, and reading a little bit more about it on your site that I really needed to try and understand a bit more about the complexities of designing a Music PC. I read your posts where you describe the parts you chose in building the XXHighend PC and some of the reasoning you gave behind the choices you made.
A long time ago, I worked for the Financial Times group in the City of London and we of course had some of the best IT professionals around who would come to sort out issues. A lot of that work was done in the back office but the little that I saw of their work had convinced me that IT professionals are a funny bunch. They are happy to share a joke or two, maybe go to the pub for a pint but they never discuss their work and there is little sense to be gleaned from their rare and brief utterances about the subject. I am reminded of this extremely bright French PhD student that I met at university who was writing a thesis about neural networks, teaching computers or modelling processes that could emulate the human brain (she has published a paper about this and that too is impossible for me to follow). She did try to explain but soon enough, I realised she was making assumptions about what was for her basic theory that made the exercise one in futility. I decided that I would only bother about computers as an aid for my work and stay away from them otherwise.
But buying the NOS1 changed all of that. It was not about work anymore but about my interest in audio and given that I think that in the long term the PC will be our main source of content for our acoustic systems, it made sense that I took advantage of this opportunity to try and learn the basics of building and specifying an audio PC.
Where in some respects, your website and others have proved a source of useful information – and this is no slight on them, they just were never intended to be -they do not really help someone in my shoes and in the intervening weeks, I have done a fair amount of reading and discussed my needs with people who build and configure servers for a living.

Hi Rakesh,

I have not much lust to bring across an ICT course/education. If you ask for advice then I can give you that and if you can't accept the answer then it could be better to not ask the questions in the first place. There's just too much involved in explaining (all).

Best regards,
Peter

In your defence, you do not have to answer any question at all. You offer a solution, the XXHighend PC, that people like me are free to buy if they wish and if they don’t well really they are on their own out of choice. So do not feel compelled to answer or offer comment on anything at all. If however, someone does contribute and offers some form of response, it would be nice if the answer made some effort at explaining why a particular conclusion was arrived at. That is helpful not only to me but anyone who is thinking about these issues on your forum. But it is very much your pregorative how you deal with it...And as I said, based on my dealings with IT professionals in the past, such as they were, I am not surprised and neither am I especially bothered.
Actually, Peter, most of the questions that I have, I have kept to myself. I try to be very specific and ask only one question at a time. So in the period of 6 and 1/2 weeks since I first started this thread, I have explicitly asked for help and advice on seven separate occasions (posts #2, 5, 11, 27, 30, 32 and 41, and for many of these I made an attempt to answer myself based on my limited understanding of the issues involved). Some other posters posted questions of their own which suggests that the thread is actually quite useful for those of us who have questions related to building a XXHighend pc. If that’s too much, please say so and I will close the thread since the reason for its existence is to give me (and others who are interested) a venue where some questions can be asked, which incidentally, might be questions faced by other forum users (especially new ones) and be helpful to them as well.
Peter, the problem is not that I “can't accept the answer,” as you put it, but rather that the answer you offered was unintelligible in parts and the reasoning either unclear or simply missing. The whole point of this thread is so that I (and maybe others) can learn. It is after all your software, your design, your criteria that we are trying to understand and implement because overall we bought your products believing you are highly capable and know what you are doing, and are not in the business of ripping people off which is true of most audio companies out there. So, as Juan might be also suggesting, before you offer an answer, decide, if the question is one that’s worth your valuable time and attention, what you can do to help others like myself, infinitely less knowledgeable than your are, understand better the reasoning behind your answer rather than offer an answer which is truly no help because it obfuscates and pontificates without actually saying anything concrete.
As I said earlier, I am willing to take your advice on trust. As it happens, yesterday I read a little more about the new 12 Gbp/s SAS3 storage solutions and I have read about some of the issues that might well make it unsuitable for the XXHighend PC. What I found interesting was reading that actually suggests that the difficulty arises mainly when you are looking to have SAS3 drives as an EXTERNAL solution where there are so many things that get complicated. The Supermicro distributor I talked to earlier today explained the complications involved with matching motherboard, chassis, backplanes in order to take advantage of these SAS3 drives. But in the case of the Supermicro X10dac, these issues do not arise at all since the SAS3 will each have an individual connector and as a result of the backward compatibility you can use older generations drives as well. So it seems to me, yes you are right because generally speaking the use of sas3 drives is made quite complicated because of the aftermarket raid cards that need to be specified, the backplane and the external storage device. On the other hand, if one were happy to use internal SAS3 drives, then sure the X10dac is a perfect solution. There may be other issues, but that's how much I understand of this whole issue thus far...And I appreciate why this issue might have irritated as it will not be relevant to XXHighend users in pretty much any conceivable scenario.

It was my conceit that caused this issue to be brought up and I realise it was a waste of your time. For that I do apologise. I still think you could have been a little less abstruse with your response...


Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

I realise it was a waste of your time. For that I do apologise. I still think you could have been a little less abstruse with your response...

Not at all, not needed and no.
haha

Best regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

I would like to ask a couple of questions if I may.

(i) How do I make sure I get the right Silverstone SST-EC04-P card?

 I have read somehere that there are two versions of the card and would like to order the correct one. I can see that the card is available on www.scan.co.uk, see link below:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silverstone-ec04-p-pci-express-card-with-4x-usb-30-ports

Has anyone ordered the card from Scan? Can you confirm whether it is the correct one? And if not and you know where the correct card can be sourced please let me know?

Is there a simple to understand guide as to how the card is to be modified and isolated from the chassis of the computer?

(ii) Would the Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti Kalmx be suitable keeping in mind requirements for low power consumption?

I was initially thinking of the Nvidia GeForce 210 1Gb DDR3 but think that the Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti Kalmx would not significantly affect power consumption. Is the Palit something that anyone has tried and would it be suitable? It is passively cooled and power consumption is fairly low at 10W idle (but 88W under GPU Load against 30W for the Nvidia GeForce 210) so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

My 3930 based Audio PC consumes 49W during 32/705600 playback and that includes the (210) graphics card.

I hope this is helpful.
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

My 3930 based Audio PC consumes 49W during 32/705600 playback and that includes the (210) graphics card.

I hope this is helpful.
Peter

Hi Peter,

It is indeed very helpful. Thanks.

It would be interesting to know the power draw of the Nvidia Graphic card alone at idle. I cannot find that information whereas I was able to get a fairly good idea of the Palit power consumption at idle which is 10W. Maybe the two cards are not so dissimilar in this respect?

The Nvidia 210 graphics card is really a boon for people who need one but want to keep both noise and power consumption very low.

It is however not silent if I understand correctly? Does the fan not come on even when it is at idle? This is what I have read in a  review online:

 "GT 210 -- The noise levels coming from the card are average, in idle you will not hear the card as we measured 40 DBa. Which is below the threshold of noise from the PC itself. Once the GPU starts to heat up the fan RPM will go up. The card however remains steady and we measure roughly 41 dBA which a decent enough noise level. It's alright -- but not silent." (from Guru3d.com review)

The Palit is passively cooled (there are no fans present at all) so should in theory be completely silent.

The disadvantage of the Palit is that under load its temperature will go up to 55C with good ventilation (against 45C for the Nvidia). That 10C difference is meaningless during playback since the two cards are at idle (where their temperatures are 32C and 39C respectively, not a lot in it).

So swings and roundabouts. I will give the Nvidia the nod though. It seems the less risky solution based on your experience so that's the one I will go for. Peter, thanks for the tip.

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Alain,

Thanks for taking the time with the thoughtful and highly instructive post. In all honesty, I do not know how this build has come to be regarded as a "super powered pc."

If it is indeed a "super powered pc," this was not my intention and the whole thing is a darned mistake. Given how little I know about computers generally, it is not at all the situation I was aiming for. And a mistake of the worse kind, because I have already acquired quite a lot of the parts required for this project. This is what I have bought as things stand:

    2 x E5-2648L v3
    Hynix 64GB DDR4 Ram (4 x 16GB)
    Intel 750 SSD 400GB PCIe NVME, to use as bootable drive for Windows 8 64bit OS and XXHighend
    2 x 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000BLF 2.5" (SATA 3Gb/s)

I am planning to add these parts:
  
    Supermicro X10DAC motherboard or Supermicro X10DAX based on what Peter has said above
    Silverstone EC04-P PCI Express Card
    Palit Geforce GTX 750 ti Kalmx
    Samsung 256GB PCIe ACHI SSD to use for Galleries

I imagine it is never really too late and I could always just leave out the Supermicro board, use only some of the RAM and go for something simpler.

But Alain, I thought the idea of having two cpus, which are both low powered and have 12 cores each, made a lot of sense (the CPUs are rated at 75W each, half of what many here are using). I never intended using Windows Server OS but rather Windows 8 64bit that I thought most people over here use. I did not know that the RAM could be too much, I had read in a thread somewhere that Peter worked out for high resolution and upsampled music one would be looking at 24GB and Juan also seemed to have added to his Ram to get to 24GB. I thought 32Gb was fine but because I had two CPUs, I thought let me make sure each CPU can access 32Gb...Maybe the reasoning above is "rubbish," using Peter's helpful terminology , but that's where my thinking got me.

I clearly have a choice. Rethink the whole thing and go for a single processor motherboard or since I have advanced so far, bite the bullet and see what comes out of it.

What would be great would be if I could meet someone who has bought Peter's XXHighend's PC that I could listen to so I would have a benchmark and could then see just how much I have messed it up. So if you Alain are not too far, and you do not mind, please let me know and I could come and listen to your system if not too inconvenient...It is about time I get to listen to someone's well settled Phasure NOS1/1a + XXHighend PC system. I will bring along a nice bottle of wine for your effort. I am in SE England and often in Alsace in France where my family lives...

Best regards
Rakesh

Hi Rakesh,

I live in Canada, a little far from where you live Maybe someone else will raise his hand and offer the hospitality ?

Since you already have the parts, I would probably "bite the bullet" too I won't say that I am not curious about the results that will emanate from your choices. Peter may remember that some years ago, when I was about to have a dedicated PC for XXHighEnd, I mentioned "a server motherboard and a xeon processor". At the time, it seemed to me that this kind of PC would be simpler for the task. I finally settled for the Intel 3930k i7 but alas I bought an Asus Sabertooth X79 mobo and I can't get my CPU lower than 1.3ghz... When I see that Peter can go a lot lower than this... Grrrr Alain

I also understand that you have at least thoroughly studied the components and have done a lot of reading through the different threads. Somehow you have done your homework and there is nothing negative with that.

My word of advice would be like this: do not put too much stuff in your PC. Keep it simple. Raid ? No need for that. Each thing that you add is taking power and adding another variable. If I understand correctly, you may have 4 drives in your PC ?

My music PC even has its system disk in an external enclosure. This was for personal reasons but I will not require that anymore soon. The music drive is a silent 4TB drive connected on another PC (my "all purpose PC" -> older), the 2 PCs connected with a direct LAN connection. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse is connected to the music PC (only when needed). I access the music PC from my all purpose PC through the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). For the moment it is not the perfect combination since I don't have the NOS1 upgraded to the "a" version but it is also a future project for me too

The reason I don't need more than 2 drives has a lot to do with my habits. I do not use pics and graphics (no gallery) and I also play only a few songs at a time, so the music drive does not need to be very fast. I also have my songs in WAV format (no FLAC) so no conversion is necessary.

You will need to have a backup strategy to not lose all you will rip (and download), but for the moment it is a little too early for this

Keep on ok ?

Regards,

Alain

[Robert]

Rakesh, I've just made a dedicated PC look at my details. It was expensive for me to get Peter's dedicated PC all the way from Holland to New Zealand.

I went for the i7 4790k 4Ghz 8MB LGA1150, Corsair 16gb Ram, Corsair AX760i power supply, ASUS Z97-A motherboard. Its totally dedicated to audio. I havn't even played with Bios settings yet or XXhighend settings.
 
Well all I can say is wow!!! compared to my i3 laptop it is no comparison. When I push the on button the screen is ready to go almost instantly. And the music is massively improved in every respect.

Not having heard Peter's either I would state mine is a minimum to consider. One thing is, different manufactured computer components do sound different, some better, some worse. Unfortunately unless one has access to all these to try you just have to run with what you choose. 
There is a member of this community who is dedicated to making PC's for better sound(Chronos) based in UK, Nick and like all good things this comes at a price.

Robert

[PeterSt]

There must be a small misunderstanding at hand.
I now see that the Asus (!) Geforce 210 also exists in fanned version (or has existed ?) but this is "ours" (see below).

Obtain it in the lowest amount of memory version (which is 1GB these days - was 500MB).

Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

...

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC.

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

Thanks for the long response. While I doubt that my proposed build should be called either a "perfect pc" or a "super powered pc," I am delighted that this thread has given me an opportunity to read about your own current Music PC, and some of the reasons behind your implementation.

If I understand correctly, your Music PC actually comprises 4 distinct areas, as follows:

1. A motherboard with just the processor and memory
2. A separate "pc" or external enclosure that contains your
system disk
3. A Control Centre pc which is your access point to everything over a LAN
4. A separate enclosure for your music files

This sounds like quite a significant attempt at making sure there are as you say the least number of variables that affect the playback of your music files.

Can I ask whether you arrived at this solution incrementally or whether this was the "design brief" from the beginning?

If the solution was arrived at incrementally, I imagine, if you do not mind, you might explain the iterations you went through, how the different decisions affected the sound quality and ultimately what brought the greatest sonic benefits, what brought the least, or none at all, and maybe if there is anything you might have done differently based on these experiences. I am taking a liberty here I realise because in this thread which is supposed to be about my build, my questions, I am asking you questions about your system. But I think it might be of huge interest to anyone starting out like me to know what ultimately made you go for the choices that you made. I certainly would be fascinated to know how and what motivated the different stages of your Music PC journey and how you evaluate the results of decisions you took and implemented.

My word of advice would be like this: do not put too much stuff in your PC. Keep it simple. Raid ? No need for that. Each thing that you add is taking power and adding another variable.

...
Alain

It is true that the evolution of music playback systems has always followed that trend. We have a source, a pre-amp, an amplifier, the speakers and no one in their right mind would question these distinctions which follow the distinct and separate functions of various parts of our playback system. This is also the main objection I have against all-in-one solutions like Devialet's and others which try to incorporate too many functionalities in a single box. It does seem to be currently the trendy thing to do and I think there may be some good that comes out of it (like Peter's solution which seemingly takes a more holistic view on integrating the different parts of the playback chain in a more coherent whole which might be ultimately be better than the sum of the parts because of the synergy between the different elements).

So I understand the decision to have your playback motherboard with only the processor, ram (and I imagine your Silverstone EC04-P card must be located in a PCIe slot on this motherboard). So the Playback side is reduced to its bare minimum and separated from everything else, whether it be storage or system disks? This is a very purist approach indeed and fits in with your objective which is to make sure that there are no external demands being made on the generally acknowledged "dirty" PC power supply.

It seems to me that this is probably the most important design decision you made in your Music PC. If there is one aspect of your Music PC that I would like to be able to afford to implement, assuming I had a clear understanding of how to implement it, this is the one I would go for.



[/quote]

My music PC even has its system disk in an external enclosure. This was for personal reasons but I will not require that anymore soon.
...
Alain

Alain, if the Playback "heart" of your PC is completely devoid of these, if I may put it that way, "harmful" or extraneous variables, is it not simpler to keep your system disk on or connected to the motherboard of the other "Control Centre PC?" I imagine that it can (in theory but then I have no deep understanding of the theory here admittedly) make no difference since the processing is all taking place in the "Music PC?" And how come you will not even have that soon? Surely a system disk is an inevitable part of any pc, unless you mean to keep it in ram somehow (use of a battery?) but this sounds very extreme...


[/quote]

The music drive is a silent 4TB drive connected on another PC (my "all purpose PC" -> older)

...

Alain

I imagine that my thinking about the external OS system disk applies here as well. Having said that given that the music files are read from the hard drive, maybe a slightly different thinking applies here. In other words, give the music files storage a chance to do their work as correctly as possible in isolation without the power contamination/electronic noise/vibrations(?) that may originate from the "Control Centre PC." Is this the reason for this choice? And if you moved the hard drive from an internal location, did you notice a difference in sound after?




[/quote]

the 2 PCs connected with a direct LAN connection.

...

Alain

If you have your OS disk on a separate motherboard, then of course it needs to be over a LAN. Is there a minimum throughput of data transfer that one should aim for in a LAN? This is a rather important question if one is thinking ahead in selecting the motherboard as most of these come with some form of inbuilt LAN, going from what I understand to be the run of the mill versions to 2Gbe, 4Gbe and 10Gbase-T...




[/quote]

I access the music PC from my all purpose PC through the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).

...

Alain

It appears that you have a highly differentiated system which is paradoxically also a very minimalist one (lack of Galleries for instance). This is very extreme. I really would like the convenience of controlling everything from a tablet. Is this something you have considered and rejected because of the difficulty or it is just not important to you?

Alain, I am sorry about having gone through your system in this way but there are so many of your design decisions which are very interesting to me. I think I understand the reasoning for most of them but apart from the first one, I am not too sure whether I would have opted for any of the others until I have had a lot more experience with a "basic" system as I can conceive it at the moment. The idea of a "headless" motherboard with just the CPUs and memory I find fascinating and tempting but it does make my head spin as well...


Thanks for that enlightening description of your Music PC!

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

On the basis there is no need for a separate SSD for the playback drive?

...Something else :
Best thing (SQ) is to have as few as possible in the audio PC, not as much as possible ...
This is how you may end up with two PC's in the end. One that plays the music and one that holds all the music, including Galleries.

Regards,
Peter

Peter, I like your advice but would like your thoughts on the following, if that is not too much trouble.

I would like to think ahead slightly and achieve the solution you have described there over time. But it does require thinking ahead to that eventuality. I imagine these could be the stages one goes through in order to achieve the above incrementally over the course of time, say a year:

STAGE ONE

  1. Build a Playback PC. Dual CPU motherboard with 2 ssds, SSD1 for Windows OS/XXHighend and SSD2 for Galleries, 3 hard drives for music and back-up.

STAGE TWO

   2. Build a Control PC. Add single CPU motherboard. SSD2 and hard drives from Playback PC migrate to this. The two PCs are connected over a LAN.

STAGE THREE

    3.  Build a Remote Enabler PC. Connect Control PC to this other simpler PC with Wi-fi. Now everything can be controlled from a tablet via Remote Desktop. (Maybe there is a simpler way of achieving this?)

Peter, if you are wondering, yes, there is a question there somewhere for you. Does this make sense? Are there specific criteria one should keep in mind when going through STAGE ONE knowing that STAGES TWO and THREE will follow in due course? I have some of my own thoughts on this but would appreciate your views, and those of anyone who maybe have some experience running such a configuration now or are planning to at some point in the future.
   

All what's left is the OS Disk, which in the end can also be something different, but never mind.

...
Regards,
Peter

Peter, I am not too sure what you mean by this.

I have discussed this idea with a couple of people who build and configure servers/workstations. They seem to say that the system disks cannot be on a separate PC. One mentioned that potentially it might be in Satadom but it looks like one cannot run a PC with OS in a separate PC over a LAN network. This is a similar point to the one made by Alain earlier, I suspect. If one were to offload the OS disk (that would contain XXHighend as well I imagine) in an external enclosure, how would this be done? What would be the connection between this and the Playback PC? Would it require the use of a PCIe card "extender" and the SSD drive would then be in that external enclosure? I am just trying to understand the ideas you have mentioned. Coming from you, I am sure you have tried it and it provides some clear benefits. Peter, would you mind explaining your thoughts here?

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry for the delay... Many questions and in the meantime many things happening here... Suddenly days are getting shorter

First allow me to tell you that most (if not all) of what I did with the PC comes from Peter and our fellow audiophiles. Sharing our discoveries, then having them analyzed and/or tested by Peter really helped me to implement aspects of what I listen to today.

Most of the things (they are not many) I did that are not documented here because I don't really think they could be considered really useful SQ wise.

The external OS drive I use is connected to the music PC motherboard with an Esata connection ("External" sata). For the sake of the understanding, I shall say that it is the same as if it was installed inside the music PC, but it is connected with a longer cable. SQ wise, it is not the ideal, but at the time, it was practical for me to have it that way. Like I mentioned before, I could now remove it from its external enclosure and put it back inside the music PC.

"Incremental improvements" are of two natures: the ones that I can't really hear (but I have confidence in the persons that say it is worthwhile) and those from which I perceived some improvements. There are not many, since XXHighEnd takes care of so many aspects of the computer. There may be some that will come out through time, but it does not prevent you from building your computer as you actually see it. These incremental tweaks can be added later.

Since you know people you trust and you take some advice here and there, you know that our perceptions will be biased by what we will hear from them and the amount of trust you put ni them. When I chose to listen to Peter (I know he would like that I listen more haha), I never regretted it. There may be some aspects I prefer not to go as far as he does, but that has nothing to do with distrust. It has more to do with personal needs, limitations, finances and what I consider ractical.

As I previously wrote, the simpler and less loaded the PC, the better. I learned it here. Some put their music drive(s) inside the computer, some put them outside. It is again a matter of practicality. There are "plus" and "minus" to this. All depends on the level at which you you want to go. An external hard drive may be driven with USB or an Esata cable. What I like to think for example is that Esata could be better because it does not have to be converted from USB to Sata inside an external enclosure. But an external enclosure requires a longer cable.

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge.

As for galleries, it is a personal choice. I never really attached importance to this aspect of things. Some people can spend a great deal of time in tagging their music files (the origin, date the album was issued, some info that brings interest to that recording, people involved, genre, etc...), looking for album covers. I do now, but in the beginning, all I wanted was to rip my CDs.

The same applies for a tablet that I could use to access the Control PC. I tried a few times and will eventually come back to it someday, but for the moment I do not feel it necessary for my personal usage.

Not having a permanent keyboard, mouse and screen is yet another matter of practicality for me. The music PC is located at a place where it would be troublesome for me to install these peripherals permanently. I use Remote Desktop Connection instead, knowing that in doing so it may affect SQ (this with the NOS1, not with the NOS1a). But I also know that having these peripherals connected may affect SQ, depending on their usage, if I apply "unattended", if I shut all services or not, etc... So you may need to make your own comparisons for your convenience, ease of use, SQ vs practicality...

While I like to understand what happens "under the hood", I do not dig far to reach all the details. As I grow older, there are aspects that are of less interest for me, so I tend to try sometimes or I simply apply something with trust to the person that suggested it. I have my own personal biased tastes also - this will always influence me of course.

You may eventually read other themes around a PC, but you have yet to build your computer and have it working

Sorry if I did not follow the path of your questions. Please feel free to ask if I missed something. I am also aware that I can be vague in my answers, but when it will come to aspects I have omitted for the moment, I will answer the ones I am more involved and knowledgeable. When time will come

Finally, about the OS being installed on a "distant" PC, like the music disk... Peter will be better than me about this, but from my inquiries and research, the conclusion was that the requirements were cumbersome. It would bring more questions and unexpected situations than benefits. This also requires a Control PC that would have a Server OS (I think), so more expensive, licenses to pay for, a "hit and miss" for many of us also and maybe too frustrating to be of real value.

Maybe some day there will be an "empty" PC without any disk, taking its software from distance, but for the time being, we already have a wonderful journey to continue

Again, sorry for the delay...

Regards,

Alain

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry for the delay... Many questions and in the meantime many things happening here... Suddenly days are getting shorter

First allow me to tell you that most (if not all) of what I did with the PC comes from Peter and our fellow audiophiles. Sharing our discoveries, then having them analyzed and/or tested by Peter really helped me to implement aspects of what I listen to today.

Most of the things (they are not many) I did that are not documented here because I don't really think they could be considered really useful SQ wise.

Hi Alain,

No worries about the delay, I have had a long week myself. It seems to me that clearly we have here some areas of agreement that come from the collective effort of forum members, who especially try to pay attention to Peter's guidance and advice. I have learnt a lot from reading the different threads myself and my attempt should in fact be regarded in some ways as my own, albeit misguided, interpretation of what should be done in order to minimise the effects of all "external" (the tragedy being that they are really unavoidably internal) factors on the playback chain from data to analogue output.

"Incremental improvements" are of two natures: the ones that I can't really hear (but I have confidence in the persons that say it is worthwhile) and those from which I perceived some improvements. There are not many, since XXHighEnd takes care of so many aspects of the computer. There may be some that will come out through time, but it does not prevent you from building your computer as you actually see it. These incremental tweaks can be added later...

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge...

You may eventually read other themes around a PC, but you have yet to build your computer and have it working

In a way, I went too fast. I should have used a "normal pc," and then carried out changes one step at a time and see what happens. Well it is too late for that now. But with hindsight, I would now go for a simple low-powered system like the recently launched Supermicro Sys-5028D-TNT4, a small but powerful pc based on the low-powered Xeon Broadwell 8-cores processor. I think it is ideal if one wants a low cost off-the-shelf solution.

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028D-TN4T.cfm

Finally, about the OS being installed on a "distant" PC, like the music disk... Peter will be better than me about this, but from my inquiries and research, the conclusion was that the requirements were cumbersome. It would bring more questions and unexpected situations than benefits. This also requires a Control PC that would have a Server OS (I think), so more expensive, licenses to pay for, a "hit and miss" for many of us also and maybe too frustrating to be of real value.

Maybe some day there will be an "empty" PC without any disk, taking its software from distance, but for the time being, we already have a wonderful journey to continue

...
Alain

For the sake of those who are interested in such things, and whilst I may be completely wrong, placing the OS disk outside of the main motherboard is very hard if not impossible to achieve under Windows 8 Pro. One could use an external PCIe slot enclosure but it is really too much hassle.

The solution may be using the new PCIe NVME ssd that I will be using. An alternative would be to use the Satadom or even better the proprietary version used by Supermicro that they call Superdom. It comes in 16GB, 32GB or 64GB capacity and consumes a minuscule 1w or so in the X10 motherboard where it draws power directly from the Superdom socket and does not need the additional 3-5w it needs in other versions and earlier Supermicro motherboards. Used in the latest X10 Supermicro motherboards this is, on paper at least, a promising and beautiful solution especially when one realises that some of these motherboards have two of these (so the OS can be mirrored), so that the second one could be used for Galleries.

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

[/quote]

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge.


Regards,

Alain

I agree. But I am not in a position to do that just yet. In truth, events beyond my control mean that a vital part of the acoustic system I ordered months ago has been delayed and it looks like it may be June/July before it is ready, a horrendously bad time because I go away for a long summer vacation with my family as I see so little of them in these spring/early summer months...

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

Thanks for the feedback I am at least sure about one thing: you are making your homework

For the moment, I am not thinking about changing my motherboard, but I still find the "server" aspect of things interesting

And yes, family is more important than everything

Regards,

Alain

[rakeshpoorun]

So.

I have been thinking a little more about my choice of motherboard recently. It is not as with other things in the life of someone who cares about audio where if you are not completely satisfied with a discrete element of the playback chain you may just about get away with swapping it (and assuming that the fault does not lie elsewhere) and see what happens.

Someone wrote earlier in this thread that different motherboards have their own "individual sound." Whilst I doubt that one can generally audibly identify such differences, unless one has extensive experience building and listening to such audio pcs (like Peter here probably has for instance), I would think that in an audio pc which is acting as a "memory player," such differences as they might be are of little import. On the other hand, what is extremely important are other factors which can be determined by the choice of the motherboard. Now that I have spent time reading, researching and thinking about this project for a few weeks, and reflecting on what are the ideal characteristics that I would be looking for in a motherboard, the ranking in order of importance of these different characteristics, and what motherboard out there fits closest to this "ideal" mix of characteristics/features, there are still a few issues that require a final determination.

As a side note, I would add that, in my opinion, if anyone here is in my shoes and is thinking of a new audio pc, and has something that will competently do the job for now, then they would do well to wait until next year if they can, when Intel will have launched the new Skylake desktop processors and the Xeon DE processors (like the recently released D1540), which are low power  and multicore, and with the advantages associated to the new chipset such as USB3.1, even Thunderbolt 3 and even integrated TGbase Lan. For those planning to build their audio pcs next year, they are likely to be able to tick a long list of what I see as these ideal characteristics and then some.

For those who can wait, the future promises some exciting and promising solutions. The present does not have to be so gloomy though if one can balance wisely between occasionally competing and frequently conflicting demands.

I imagine that one might think that in order to inflict the least harm on the audio file while it is being processed by XXHighend, one might want to bring these processes within the confines of memory whilst also minimising demands on the PSU, something that I understand XXHighend does extremely competently.

I am quite happy with the location of Windows OS, XXHighend, Galleries and the music files in my proposed audio pc. Should I feel the need (urge?) to experiment between slightly different locations at a later date, changes such I envisage could be made quickly, cheaply and unobtrusively.

There is however one area where the decision must be made from the beginning and where there will be no going back. I do not/will not/cannot afford to change motherboards for years to come and so the question is as follows. Either I go for one which has no on-board graphics so no matter how much I can reduce power requirements elsewhere, I will never be able to get rid of the 8-12W that I imagine the Nvidia 210 (passively cooled) will draw. On the other hand, there are several eligible motherboards which have on-board graphics (via the Aspeed 2400 video chip on the motherboard typically). Is it the case then that such a motherboard will enable one to reduce the power consumption of the system as a whole even further? I ask this question more in hope than expectation as clearly it seems no one (who contributes here at any rate) has much experience with server motherboards like the one I am planning to use. Still theoretically (says someone whose understanding of the relevant theory is wafer thin), one would think that XXHighend will be able to reduce the demands made from the on-board graphics more than it could do with the PCIe slot GPU, whose power draw will never go below its "idle" state power draw. Any ideas?

And does it matter? Peter stated that his system's power draw is 45W at full load (with Windows OS and XXHighend working). Now a dual CPU motherboard, even one as power efficient as the Supermicros can be will draw in the region of 100W (I assume that the CPUs will not draw much at that point). So 10W is an additional 10 percent, surely not worth too much of a fuss.

Even so, does it matter? Well, this Nvidia 210 graphics card requires a PCIe slot and some of these motherboards have only three such slots. I need a minimum of three PCIe slots for SSD1 (Windows OS/XXHighend), SSD2 (Galleries) and the isolated Silverstone EC04-P USB card. Obviously with the Nvidia 210, I will need a fourth.

Any other considerations? Well, there might be. I like watching live or recorded concerts on Sky Art HD, music dvds and blu-rays. Is there a way XXhighend can process the digital two-channel signal from my SKy box or the OPPO player digital output whilst the picture is streamed to the display/projector via HDMI? I imagine that given that XXHighend is a memory player that there will be an insoluble problem with lipsynching and that this is simply not doable within a dedicated audio pc? Even if that is the case, can the NOS1 be used via a route that does not involve the "audio pc?"

I did say I like to ask only one question in any one post but I am also aware that it is a rule that I "(honor more) in the breach than the observance." My excuse is of course that the queries are all intrincally related to and derived from the original issue which is whether or not one would have a preference for a motherboard with on-board graphics or not when one has a choice, everything else being equal. Even if a preference can be found and the grounds are clear, how much importance should one attach to this issue generally when in reality one has to consider other factors as well? As I said earlier, I ask these questions more in hope than expectation. At least, they serve as pointers to some of the considerations that I face as I continue on this journey that will hopefully lead to some result worthy of the effort and grey matter I have invested in the process. It may also help someone else embarking on this journey as they may be able to avoid the many pitfalls that will become evident one day down the line when I have a working audio pc/NOS1 system and look back to comment on this journey with the benefit of hindsight.

Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

Hi Rakesh,

I don't think that you will find anyone even the slightest acquainted with any of the paragraphs in your last post. But of course anyone who is after all - is happiliy invited to respond.

If you try to set new standards, that is fine. Try all out and let us know the result. However, also please realize that you have no reference and so you can also have no result, really. If your sound is "the best" then, well, mine already was as well. And for all of the others, no difference.

It is not as with other things in the life of someone who cares about audio where if you are not completely satisfied with a discrete element of the playback chain you may just about get away with swapping it (and assuming that the fault does not lie elsewhere) and see what happens.

Already there you seem to be off by miles. It may count for you though ... in your mind and at this moment and nobody will have a problem with that. Of course not, why would he or she or me. The serious warning is and remains this :

You won't be able to judge.

This, perhaps sadly, means that you first must obtain something "normal", to next go the unexplored route of ... well, anything you can make up according the current state of technique etc. Only then you can compare.
If it were so that for example me would tell you "sure, the more of that all the better SQ will be !!" ... but I explicitly do not. The contrary and no need to repeat it I'd say.

The only thing what remains for me at this moment is telling you that no normal SSD connects to PCIe although it will be possible if really needed. Just SATA(III).
Also, nobody buys a MoBo for the years to come. At least that is what I think. Sure, if one first makes himself so dependent on all around it that hardly anything else is possible later plus the $ investment is too high otherwise ...
But things were then put upside down to begin with.

Anyway ... and I really have to emphasize it or otherwise it is misunderstood :
Nobody can really say / state in advance that this all is not useful. So by all means go ahead with it and set the standards (ehm, if it works out). But how can you tell that it is "the" standard without reference ?

Best regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,
...
If you try to set new standards, that is fine. Try all out and let us know the result. However, also please realize that you have no reference and so you can also have no result, really. If your sound is "the best" then, well, mine already was as well. And for all of the others, no difference.
...

The serious warning is and remains this :

You won't be able to judge.

This, perhaps sadly, means that you first must obtain something "normal", to next go the unexplored route of ... well, anything you can make up according the current state of technique etc. Only then you can compare.
...

So by all means go ahead with it and set the standards (ehm, if it works out). But how can you tell that it is "the" standard without reference ?

Peter,

It is kind of you to suggest that I may be trying to set some standards, given that it sounded more correct to interpret your meaning as being that I have no standards when it comes to a music pc.

The more unkind interpretation is in fact the correct one here. I have no standards or benchmark against which to judge any results that my "audio pc" may lead to.

But then my objective is not to set any new standards. In a reply to Alain who made a similar point to yours earlier in this thread, I wrote:

...

In all honesty, I do not know how this build has come to be regarded as a "super powered pc."

If it is indeed a "super powered pc," this was not my intention and the whole thing is a darned mistake. Given how little I know about computers generally, it is not at all the situation I was aiming for. And a mistake of the worse kind, because I have already acquired quite a lot of the parts required for this project.

...

I imagine it is never really too late and I could always just leave out the Supermicro board, use only some of the RAM and go for something simpler.

But Alain, I thought the idea of having two cpus, which are both low powered and have 12 cores each, made a lot of sense (the CPUs are rated at 75W each, half of what many here are using). I never intended using Windows Server OS but rather Windows 8 64bit that I thought most people over here use. I did not know that the RAM could be too much, I had read in a thread somewhere that Peter worked out for high resolution and upsampled music one would be looking at 24GB and Juan also seemed to have added to his Ram to get to 24GB. I thought 32Gb was fine but because I had two CPUs, I thought let me make sure each CPU can access 32Gb...Maybe the reasoning above is "rubbish," using Peter's helpful terminology , but that's where my thinking got me.

I clearly have a choice. Rethink the whole thing and go for a single processor motherboard or since I have advanced so far, bite the bullet and see what comes out of it.

...
Rakesh

I am inclined to heed your advice. As I said earlier, I might have liked to use a slightly more modern counterpart of the X79 Extreme 4M (i.e. the Asrock X99M announced in April but not for sale yet) by Asrock, so I can use the LGA2001 R3 processors that I have. But the company is intent on releasing products that are then nowhere to be found for sale.

The only thing what remains for me at this moment is telling you that no normal SSD connects to PCIe although it will be possible if really needed. Just SATA(III).
...

You are right. No "normal" SSD can be fitted/connected to the PCIe slot.

You are also wrong. A cheap AHCI SM951 128GB SSD by Samsung will do it without breaking a sweat. See the links below.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8979/samsung-sm951-512-gb-review

http://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/solid-state-drives-ssd/samsung-sm951-128gb-m-2-ngff-pcie-solid-state-drive-ssd-2280-mzhpv128hdgm-00000/?gclid=CjwKEAjwkcWrBRDg5u6SuPS11C0SJAChLLAHUJvym0KuEUrpLgOdLZRKkCUu0Dln-cWYQIZDrE1PphoCd43w_wcB

The 128GB AHCI version costs less than 100 euros and I imagine that two of these might be perfectly suitable for fast access to Windows OS/XXHighend and Galleries (yes they are indeed bootable and the NVME versions, which are even faster, are also bootable provided the motherboard has the updated UEFI, and the Asrock X99 motherboards have all been so updated recently).

Also, nobody buys a MoBo for the years to come. At least that is what I think.

Best regards,
Peter

I agree. But for the reasons you mention, I still hope that I will get a good three years of service from whatever I buy now. We shall see. I wonder how many Asrock X79 mobos will be around then; time will tell...

But how can you tell that it is "the" standard without reference ?

Best regards,
Peter

I sincerely hope that someone not far from me will be interested in carrying out some comparisons. I could get together with that person or exchange audio pcs and see...

In any case, I am not too sure I any longer agree, if I ever did, that there is a "benchmark" when it comes to what different people here are using audio pc wise. There are too many differences in terms of execution, implementation...

In many ways, in my mind, my proposed audio pc is nothing really out of the ordinary, merely the logical consequence of a few principles that have their origin in the execution of your own "XXHighend PC" and others before who have followed or advocated similar solutions as on the website that Juan kindly referred us to:

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/

It was certainly well worth a close read.

Thanks for the advice, Peter. There is clear wisdom in it but it is not quite as black and white and logically the inexorable conclusion that you make it appear to be. A solution could have been found half-way where some more modern components could have been used (for example replace the motherboard and suddenly I can use my processor and memory -  but I am not asking, as I did so already and I know that answer)...


Kind regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

HARD DRIVES: IN OR OUT?

It is really strange that after two months of reading about the subject, here and elsewhere, that I should feel the need to revisit this topic.

The whole idea of externalising hard drives makes so much sense that in some ways there can be no controversy. As Alain said above, the objective is to reduce variables and the demands on the power supply in the "audio pc."

I agree with the idea in principle but maybe we should stop for a moment and consider the consequences of our desire to reduce demands on the main "audio pc" to as close to zero as possible.

By getting rid of hard drives from the main system, are we not creating a monster further along because the PC or NAS where the audio files will be held will itself have a power supply which will be itself spurting all its electronic noise and RFI into the lines where the rest of the whole electronic playback system draws power? Peter advocated this solution as well but perhaps he has his music files in single enclosures which do not draw much power?

I am surprised that the accepted consensus seems to be to have two computers linked over a LAN. Unless one has the luxury of being able to plug the second pc over a separate mains circuit (I ran a separate circuit from the external power source for the house which was dedicated to my audio system years ago but that is not a common solution I think), are we not just creating a multi-headed monster after spending so much time and effort subduing the first one? And this right where we have the rest of our playback?

On the other hand, if we have our music hard drives in the same case as our "audio pc," don't we find that these drives spin down into inactivity once the audio files have been transferred (I am assuming to Playback partition in Ramdisk) and the PSU, faced with the very low demands made on it as a result of the operation of "XXHighend," is taken, blissfully for us, out of the picture as far as is possible?

I wonder.

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

HARD DRIVES: IN OR OUT?

It is really strange that after two months of reading about the subject, here and elsewhere, that I should feel the need to revisit this topic.

Hi Rakesh,

The whole idea of externalising hard drives makes so much sense that in some ways there can be no controversy. As Alain said above, the objective is to reduce variables and the demands on the power supply in the "audio pc."

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that at a certain time I found it practical to have the OS drive in an enclosure, but that it is not required anymore. I was swapping between two drives at the time, so having the OS drive outside of the box was making my life easier.

I also power my OS drive with a linear power supply, but even this can be adapted, as I will have a cable inserted into the PC to still power the SSD (from the LPSU). So it will stay independant from the PC PSU.

Reinserting the SSD inside the PC will also reduce the length of the sata signal cable. Having an external sata (Esata) cable requires a certain length and though the Esata cable is shielded properly, it is still a lot longer than what would be required if the drive was inside the PC.

As you see, putting back the OS drive inside the PC chassis and still have it powered with linear power will only bring good things, unless it can be shown that the SSD will add noise (electromagnetic or else) inside the chassis. I doubt I would be able to hear the difference, but who knows...

Another point is that a mechanical drive will bring some vibrations in the PC chassis. I am entering in an unknown territory here, but Peter would be better than I to explain what this could be about. Of course, there are ways to prevent these vibrations, but in a PC chassis it will probably be more complicated. A mechanical drive in an external enclosure, the enclosure being suspended with some rubber bands with a "U" shaped piece of wood (or else) - that is quite easy. (My OS drive being a SSD, this is not a problem).

As for the music drive, I really appreciate that I can move it in different places or even swap drives (the enclosure I have allows for this very easily, as it is a "trayless" enclosure.
I use this: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707329&cm_re=startech_drive_enclosure-_-17-707-329-_-Product
By the way, the external music drive is also powered with a linear power supply and suspended.

I agree with the idea in principle but maybe we should stop for a moment and consider the consequences of our desire to reduce demands on the main "audio pc" to as close to zero as possible.

By getting rid of hard drives from the main system, are we not creating a monster further along because the PC or NAS where the audio files will be held will itself have a power supply which will be itself spurting all its electronic noise and RFI into the lines where the rest of the whole electronic playback system draws power? Peter advocated this solution as well but perhaps he has his music files in single enclosures which do not draw much power?

Linear power supply

I am surprised that the accepted consensus seems to be to have two computers linked over a LAN. Unless one has the luxury of being able to plug the second pc over a separate mains circuit (I ran a separate circuit from the external power source for the house which was dedicated to my audio system years ago but that is not a common solution I think), are we not just creating a multi-headed monster after spending so much time and effort subduing the first one? And this right where we have the rest of our playback?

On the other hand, if we have our music hard drives in the same case as our "audio pc," don't we find that these drives spin down into inactivity once the audio files have been transferred (I am assuming to Playback partition in Ramdisk) and the PSU, faced with the very low demands made on it as a result of the operation of "XXHighend," is taken, blissfully for us, out of the picture as far as is possible?

This is a matter of trust. I do trust Peter, even when I do not follow his path in all details. It was easy for me to implement the two PCs configuration and it also will allow to use a tablet to control the server through which I can access the audio PC with RDC... In some way, there is a "split" of work and I believe it can be for the better.

But you will be able to test these different configurations only once you have you PC built. I suppose you already have another PC for the frequent internet access or for any other task. It will be easy for you to determine if the two PC configuration is worth it or not, depending on your experimentations. You may (or may not) find this useful for you.

Like they say, "Your mileage may vary" (YMMV)

You have many good questions. Many of them will be answered by yourself Some of them will require that you spend some money, but as many of us have discovered through time, there is an evolution and this journey can be very interesting, as they will also be "ear openers"

Only you may fix the limits but from what I have seen up to now, you are preparing "the ground" quite thoroughly. But no matter how many questions you will ask, you will discover a lot of things by yourself.

And then, we will ask you questions too

Regards,

Alain

[PeterSt]

A very general remark could be that we are a long way from conclusions around "the PC". And, people may trust me - that even could be justified BUT it is to be noted that I usually only travel paths that others came up with first. What am I saying really ?

Well, that it is only a year ago that I started to work out the means of set up I am still using today, but that prior to that I approached it a sort of other way around and was satisfied with that just the same. You first must know the difference and prior to that must have the idea in the first place (and the ideas usually come from others which is just statistics).

If we go back to the first glimpse of this all making a difference, then I recall Paul (AKA Scroobius) who detached a DVD drive and was sure it sounded better. Just detach it - it wasn't in use anyway.
But mind you, this was maybe 5 years ago (I really did not count) and only two years ago I started thinking about it and worked on it for what ? maybe 6 months. You can't see it, but by sheer accident Alain was involved. It was the goal to have exactly NOTHING in the PC. And this can work, but it takes so much d*mn time that I had to give up. But what came from it was all the support in the software for such a thing and now, for example, the "disk I/O" speed over the LAN is net faster than when the music would be on SATA connected hdd(/ssd etc.).

I am not sure what my subject is, but it should be about 6 months of work to only find out after that whether it is helpful (to SQ) or not. So this is all really crazy stuff. First though, there must be sufficient indication that the result can be beneficial and with bits and pieces this comes forward. A Paul detaches a DVD drive, a Mani detaches a Monitor, a Paul removes a video card (with a full weekend of trialling because the stupid PC doesn't like to boot without it - but worked out), and me ? Oh, I only notice that a phone remote sounds better than a tablet. Why beats me so far, but I think it is so.

So Rakesh, now you have some back ground. And moral : in a year all will be different again.

Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Alain,

Thanks for the detailed response. I have carefully noted the points you make and they have helped me to think more clearly about what I am trying to achieve.

The fact that you are very happy with the sound quality of your source is a hugely weighty factor even though at times, I do not follow the reasoning behind certain decisions. As you say, some of these decisions are based on trust.

But one should also note that many of these decisions seem to be based on a 3-5 years old approach, at a time when the rules of engagement were markedly different. For instance, at the time, Intel processors were not as efficient as they are nowadays. Most of these configurations assumed that Windows OS/XXHighend and Galleries would be on HDDs or the first generation SSDs. The relative newness of the SSD technology and the Sata bottleneck meant the starting point was very different to what it would be today.

The use of Ramdisks for the operating system, XXHighend and fast low power SSDs mean that we can approach the conception of an "audio pc" on a very different footing. I am nearly sure that if you put Peter, yourself, and others more knowledgeable than myself in a room, with time and resources, that you would come up with something very different, and undoubtedly superior to anything I can come up with from my particularly  limited vantage point. I do not have your wealth of experience, practical knowledge and your understanding of theory. In short, this is the sort of venture where the odds are so heavily stacked against me that I wonder everyday why I even bother on persisting with this project.

But I am me. And I am persistent. So something will happen, good or bad and more likely bad but at least I will have learnt.

...
As you see, putting back the OS drive inside the PC chassis and still have it powered with linear power will only bring good things, unless it can be shown that the SSD will add noise (electromagnetic or else) inside the chassis. I doubt I would be able to hear the difference, but who knows...

...

This is a matter of trust. I do trust Peter, even when I do not follow his path in all details. It was easy for me to implement the two PCs configuration and it also will allow to use a tablet to control the server through which I can access the audio PC with RDC... In some way, there is a "split" of work and I believe it can be for the better.

But you will be able to test these different configurations only once you have you PC built.

...
Regards,

Alain

So Alain, I take it you use a Linear PSU or maybe more.  It is not very clear from your signature what is the power supply arrangement of your system. The Intel processor you use, the i7-3930K is 130W, which even in a minimalist system like yours, alongside the X79 motherboard must mean a peak load of say 170W. Obviously the normal power draw for a system dedicated to a single purpose like yours will be considerably less -  still your PSU must be able to cope with a load of 150W when your computer is booting up. I suspect the Linear power supply you refer to somewhat enigmatically is the HDPlex 100W, but this looks to me as if it is not powerful enough for the task unless you are combining it with the HDPlex 160 or 250 DC-ATX PSU? I would be fascinated to know the power supply configuration of your system even though it will not work in the case of my proposed dual cpu "audio pc" which will likely have a power draw of 100W at idle, 170W at boot-up and 250-300W at peak load (where it will never be admittedly given it will be dedicated for use with the NOS1).

In the future this will be hopefully different, and better. The next generation of Skylake processors will maybe offer 12 cores for a total power draw of 45W someday (including motherboard) and the HDPlex 100W LPS will then be amply sufficient (or maybe even unnecessary given that so little demand will be made on the power supply.

Again thanks for the detailed and helpful response. I appreciated that. It helps me feel a little less left to my own devices in a field where I have no expertise of any kind to draw on, so the chances of me answering questions instead of asking them, as you kindly surmise will happen someday, are both very slim and very remote.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Spinning around

This has nothing and everything to do with my Phasure NOS1/ Audio PC project. I thought, as there is some interest in horns over here, that you would not mind me posting what is arguably the most irrelevant post/attachment ever.

I placed this order ages ago, in late February, but the whole project had been discussed, researched and fermented over a number of years. I would like to recoup my costs but since I learnt everything I know from forums like this one and my personal research, I am happy to answer questions in a frank, open and transparent manner in the hope that others may learn from my experience and my mistakes.

It is however important that I do not tempt the devil and jinx the whole project which is already behind schedule. So I will wait for the horns to be finished (I am obviously not the one making them - I bought a lathe but then sold it when I realised I did not have the requisite skills) before I publish too much about it - I do not want to tempt fate. I have been let down by so many amateur would-be horn builders and myriad events and circumstances which conspired to delay and distract this project.

What you can see is a small (and the first) section of a fairly large 115Hz tractrix horn spinning.

Enjoy!

Best regards
Rakesh

[acg]

Spinning around

This has nothing and everything to do with my Phasure NOS1/ Audio PC project. I thought, as there is some interest in horns over here, that you would not mind me posting what is arguably the most irrelevant post/attachment ever.

I placed this order ages ago, in late February, but the whole project had been discussed, researched and fermented over a number of years. I would like to recoup my costs but since I learnt everything I know from forums like this one and my personal research, I am happy to answer questions in a frank, open and transparent manner in the hope that others may learn from my experience and my mistakes.

It is however important that I do not tempt the devil and jinx the whole project which is already behind schedule. So I will wait for the horns to be finished (I am obviously not the one making them - I bought a lathe but then sold it when I realised I did not have the requisite skills) before I publish too much about it - I do not want to tempt fate. I have been let down by so many amateur would-be horn builders and myriad events and circumstances which conspired to delay and distract this project.

What you can see is a small (and the first) section of a fairly large 115Hz tractrix horn spinning.

Enjoy!

Best regards
Rakesh

Ha, I'm building exactly the same thing myself!  Those big horns are a LOT of work to turn, so in a way I am not surprised that it has taken several months so far for you to get them especially from an amateur builder (such as myself).  There is a mob in the US that make these for their horn systems and they allow three weeks construction for two workers...so one guy in a back shed is going to be much longer.

[rakeshpoorun]

Old faithful in audio and stupendous customer service

I came home a few days ago and opened the doors to the unmistakable smell of burnt electronics. It turned out that the capacitors of my old faithful Grace M902 headphone amplifier/DAC, manufactured in 2005 and bought by me in 2006, had burnt to a crisp. Although I only use the unit intermittently, I realised that I missed it straight away. Fair enough, it may have its foibles but the combination of this neat little unit with Sennheiser HD650 is something quite special indeed. Then I discovered that the company which supplied it in the UK and had serviced it and upgraded it in the past was not a Grace Design Distributor any longer. Having already called Grace Audio years ago, I remembered a very helpful, courteous down-to-earth conversation that addressed briefly and succinctly all the many queries that I had about the unit (I have always liked asking questions!).

So where normally I might have contacted the companies/individuals I turn to when I need such help, I called Grace Design and spoke to a real gentleman that blew away my usual skepticism when it comes to audio companies, that in the main I regard as instruments of the devil himself. Yes he was happy to help. No they could NOT UPGRADE to the latest M920 "flagship" unit but I had a choice of returning to their European distributor (unknown to me) or ship directly to them.

What shocked me and what is the point of this post is that he felt confident enough to diagnose the problem there and then send me an invoice for a derisory amount including parts, labour and shipping! I was left speechless. This is not a feeling that comes often in this hobby. I remember my dealings with Naim here in the UK in the past that left a bitter taste and turned me away from their whole product line forever, and quite a few others, who in spite of their reputation, were so obscure or obscene (figuratively speaking of course) that I became in the main disillusioned with audio companies. On the other hand, companies like ATC offer a stupendous warranty that they back to the hilt (I took my ATC active SCM20-2a 6 years after having bought these from a dealer with whom I fell out and they replaced drivers no question asked, and even changed the voltage on one rare unit I had imported from the US).

So what is my point? Sometime we audio people forget that in buying products from dealers/distributors/manufacturers, we forget that if you tear down all the hullabaloo about a change in settings that means your mother-in-law can shimmy away to "dance music" (what the hell is that anyways? - I thought a set of Bose speakers and two huge subs would do the job) in the kitchen, presumably this being the metaphysical g-spot sweet spot where the system is at its most resolving...you are left with real products which deliver day in day out, and if you run into difficulty, there is someone you can easily turn to.

So my Grace Design M902 is off to be repaired and I await its return with impatience.

So that's the point. But is there a moral to the whole thing? I think there is. I realise today that some of these companies that have most impressed me (I mentioned two here, Grace Design and ATC - there are others but not many) have something in common. They are not part of the mainstream industry and do not go out of their way to serve the high-end audiophile market, which like FIFA, corrupts everything that it touches. Of course, when they do realise that the audiophile community likes their products, they are likely to start behaving very differently. Even Grace Design and ATC are not immune to this contamination (see the pricing of the M920 and the burl 20th Anniversary special edition ATC SCM-50).

One truth which is rarely voiced and admitted, is that ironically and ultimately, the problem lies more with us the electorate of that corrupt and tainted industry, because we in many different ways behave in a manner which encourages these crazy notions such that speakers consisting of 5 drivers in a nice looking enclosure will easily cost upward of $50,000, and pre-amps can cost north of $10000. I feel so bad about this industry that I will make sure that of my many interests and hobbies, this is the one that I will not pass on to my children. They are welcome to my ATCs (the horns speakers are too much hassle for them) and I wish to god that's all the interest they have in audio. If they continue with the piano as they have been doing for the past two years, and develop a habit of going to regular live concerts of classical music, and if they need to get some audio equipment to replace the Grace Design or ATC I send them off with, I know who I will recommend they go to.

This is a unique and quite tragic hobby I find, where although I do enjoy it, I would not wish it on my children and for that matter, on anyone who has a choice.

So some might ask, if you have used such a broad brush to paint such a grim picture of our hobby and the industry that's intimately bound with it, what do you make of our host? Well, he is still a mystery to me. There is clearly a sense of honesty and integrity that permeates the forum generally and this is also why I was prepared to take a blind punt (I knew nothing about the Phasure Dac until a friend told me about it and I read some of Peter's postings and thoughts here). For me, our hobby cannot be dissociated from the people behind the products that find their place in our audio equipment rack. I will feel happy to have Peter's dac in my room, even though ultimately I might not like his view and vision and interpretation as seen through the implementation and execution of the tools at his disposal. Peter is clearly going through a turning point in the evolution of his equipment portfolio. What the future holds, I do not know and I daresay nobody does. But in the main, with most audio equipment out there, especially the absurdly expensive ones, I feel nauseous and sick and guilty...I hope I am not the only one to feel so.

Best regards
Rakesh



P.S.

Ha, I'm building exactly the same thing myself!  Those big horns are a LOT of work to turn, so in a way I am not surprised that it has taken several months so far for you to get them especially from an amateur builder (such as myself).  There is a mob in the US that make these for their horn systems and they allow three weeks construction for two workers...so one guy in a back shed is going to be much longer.

Hi ACG,

I would not call my current builder an amateur although this is indeed the first time he engages in a project of this magnitude. He has access to CNC machinery and my own attention to detail, so in the end, I think it will be all fine. Good luck with your horns.

Rakesh

[Nick]

Rakesh ,

Blarr blarr blarr....

...So what is my point? Sometime we audio people forget that in buying products from dealers/distributors/manufacturers, we forget that if you tear down all the hullabaloo about a change in settings that means your mother-in-law can shimmy away to "dance music" (what the hell is that anyways? - I thought a set of Bose speakers and two huge subs would do the job) in the kitchen, presumably this being the metaphysical g-spot sweet spot where the system is at its most resolving...you are left with real products which deliver day in day out, and if you run in difficulty, there is someone you can easily turn to.

I don't oftern look in on this thread, too much navel gazing, but.

Clearly my repsonse to your pontificating in the "Nicks Chronos" thread has got under your skin. So you decide to have a pop masked in a point about "real product".

If I were you I would be seriously concerned if the caps had malfunctioned in that way. Might the cheap cost of repare be an embarrassed manufacturer ? Risk of fire, sock etc ? Interesting that the quote was over the phone, makes me wonder how many of these failures your "real product" manufacturer might have has seen before.....

If the certainty of getting a low cost repare in decades to come for treasured and possibly by then out of date equipment is important, stay with your "real product values. I am for experiment, inovation, progress and service.

Next time you take a pop have some evidance to back it up. You have absolutely no idea what you are passing comment on so better not to.

Nick.


Ps try asking your favorite "real product" vendors for their designs and for them to post them publicly on line, in the interest of transparency of course. Those that are offering well worn designs might help you but if there is inovation you will be told politely to go bother someone else.

[rakeshpoorun]

LEAVING HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE

Hi Nick,

You do yourself a disservice by posting in this thread. In the earlier "Nick's Chronos" thread you refer to, you had explained your position as follows:

I want to keep this quite simple.

The Chronos is a product, so beyond a high level description of what it is and does I do not propose to enter detailed descriptions here of how it is designed and how it works.

...

This is a clear position I hope. If there is genuine interest in the Chronos I ask please that people to contact me directly.
...

Nick.

You are right and I agree. It is a very clear position. And I for for one was prepared to accept it and close that chapter, which is why I did not reply to your post there. I have more important things to do with my time. Your tone has now veered to the aggressive and you have lost your manners in launching a fairly personal tirade against me.

Irrespective of the right or wrong of your attitude on a site where the ethos seems to be to share, assist others and be as transparent and honest as possible in one's dealings with others, which people are free to make of what they will, your response means that I will feel free to take the liberty this time of making a couple of observations.

You seem to have changed your attitude markedly from the time when you were writing on Juan's long thread about how he built his audio pc where he went on at great length and in some detail into the decisions and choices that he made in finalising his design,  and shared with us all in a post that must have occupied him for weeks and months,  as he updated the contents of his audio pc as it evolved over time. This is what you had to say early on in that thread:

Hi all,



Here is the spec for my PC build. Thanks to Juan and Mani for their recommendations which helped to spec the build.
...

Best,
Nick.

Later on, you refer to your debt of gratitude for the work done by Peter, whose "towering presence" you eulogise in glowing and grateful terms.

What I wanted to say is that IMHO there is one pioneer who posts regularly on this site. This person is well known by us all for not just relying on subjective experiment to discover improvements but who always seeks to address fundamentally the theories in his own developments our others proposals. Were it not for Peter's approach I believe that computer music reproduction would not have moved on like it has in the last 5 years, at times it has been is dizzying listening to what has been achieved.

So Juan thanks for the kind words but I am just a slightly obsessive and compulsive type enjoying trying things out and sharing the results. Pioneer is a little strong in such towering company 

Kind regards,
Nick.

Still further on, we have you referring to the cases used and "discovered" by Juan:

 

Bob Juan hi,

I have two of the fractal design cases in the link from Juan above. One is used for my main audio pc. The are very well built and tick the boxes for an audio pc that Juan mentions. Very nice kit.

Regards,

Nick.

This is just one thread where there are several instances of your willingness to borrow from others and make use of the work that they have done.

I clearly remember reading a thread which was about how you approached Peter with your miraculous discovery of "Dexa" clocks, of which you were using two and waxing lyrical about until Peter used his equipment to show you how poorly they were performing. Using equipment that you do not have.

I am sure, Nick, that this is the tip of the iceberg. If one were to dig deeper, one would find, I have no doubt, innumerable such instances where you borrowed and asked others for help.

Forgive me, Nick, but when you say that you have a unique solution, I am not convinced. Your solution is almost certainly a combination of several techniques, tips and ideas that you have gleaned, like I have, from this very forum. Pretending otherwise would be a lie.

So now I have said it, the thing that bothered me about your attitude. There is something inherently hypocritical and revolting about the way you seem to have taken full advantage of the open and sharing ethos of this forum, and then violated it in the same breath.

Best regards
Rakesh

[Nick]

Rakesh

Again it is clear I touched a nerve, look at the length of your post and the effort you are going to provoke a response ! You crossed a line and picked the wrong person a tit for tat post with you is a waste of my time..

Read back a further in the forum and you will find that much of what we do here with pcs i have been very involved with. Hanging out here progress and problems are all taken in an air of good will. I  love the problems, if you ask "why" apparent failiure becomes progress. You need to read more of the posts your quotes are from.

My advice is take it down a notch, you will get much further and discover more.

Recycled stuff ? You would like to think so, but truth is there is real innovation.  Other people developing serious server products are expressing interest.

Nick.

[rakeshpoorun]

Rakesh

Again it is clear I touched a nerve, look at the length of your post and the effort you are going to provoke a response ! You crossed a line and picked the wrong person a tit for tat post with you is a waste of my time..

Read back a further in the forum and you will find that much of what we do here with pcs i have been very involved with. Hanging out here progress and problems are all taken in an air of good will. I  love the problems, if you ask "why" apparent failiure becomes progress. You need to read more of the posts your quotes are from  .

My advice is take it down a notch, you will get much further and discover more.

Recycled stuff ? You would like to think so  but truth is there is real innovation.  Other people developing serious server products are expressing interest.

Nick.

Hi Nick,

I have actually read the whole of Juan's thread, twice now, thanks to you!  So in a strange way, yes you have helped me on my journey to understand and learn more about the many design decisions that go into making an "audio pc." I will gladly take this whole affair down a notch as you suggest, although please do not mistake my willingness to be amicable as weakness, or an admission that I agree with you or your approach in the slightest.

I would say this though. In my opinion, fundamentally, your approach is wrong, because instead of proceeding in a holistic fashion based on a deep understanding of how this very complex and audio unfriendly environment that is the personal computer works, you approach the "audio pc" in a random, piecemeal manner, that will ultimately paper over the cracks and not solve the deep-seated issues. Unfortunately, I think that everyone here has no choice but adopt this haphasard method. It is clearly not unscientific because as with many fields of knowledge significant progress can be made in this way. But it is not ideal.

And I find your constant reference to "innovation" in hushed, reverent and mysterious tones, like it was some secret to be handed down as you join a cult at an initiation ceremony, really grating and at odds with the whole atmosphere of transparency and mutual help that runs through this site. 

I would speculate this. What you are talking about is one of two things. Less likely it has something to do with your earlier experimentation with trying to isolate the usb card. Alternatively, and more likely, is the addition of a master clock which slaves both the dac and the "audio pc." Speculatively, this could be done for instance by adding a sound card like the RME (I think) which is capable of accepting an external clock. I am very doubtful about this method working, coming from a non-engineer and amateur like yourself, without meaning to be disrespectful but merely stating the obvious. In the right hands, say if Peter were to look into this, I imagine this could bear some promise. Is it worth the cost, effort and hassle? Personally, I do not think so.

All in all then Nick, far from touching a nerve, you merely made me think and for that thanks.

About the capacitors, you said:

....
If I were you I would be seriously concerned if the caps had malfunctioned in that way. Might the cheap cost of repare be an embarrassed manufacturer ? Risk of fire, sock etc ? Interesting that the quote was over the phone, makes me wonder how many of these failures your "real product" manufacturer might have has seen before.....

Seriously? This is a a piece of equipment that has on occasions not been used for very lengthy durations and capacitors, even good quality ones, can fail over time. I am not seriously concerned and there is no suggestion online that Grace Design products are prone to failure. Their five year warranty actually attests that the opposite is more likely to be true (do you know many audio manufacturers who offer a 5-year warranty on ALL their products? I don't).

....

Ps try asking your favorite "real product" vendors for their designs and for them to post them publicly on line, in the interest of transparency of course. Those that are offering well worn designs might help you but if there is inovation you will be told politely to go bother someone else.

As it happens, in 2004, Michael Grace was asked questions online precisely in the same vein that you were asked, and this even before the Grace M902 was launched. Here is his response (you may benefit from comparing it to yours when I asked about your "product"):

Hi All,
I thought I would shed a little light on the m902. The m902 replaces the 901 in our lineup (although we still have a few 901s left!). It has the same headphone output amplifier as the 901 which is based on a high current, high speed transimpedance amplifier (AD815). This is where the similarities end though.
The first important difference is in the level attenuator. The m902 uses a digitally controlled analog attenuator which provides 95dB of attenuation with precision .5dB steps. I think there are several advantages to this type of control. First off there are no contacts to become contaminated, there is no switch capacitance that varies from setting to setting, and there is no wire or connectors to color the sound. Also, the digitally controlled attenuator has a very wide volume range which makes the m902 handle a variety of headphones from super sensitive types like the Shure E5 to the not-so-sensitive types like the HD600 or K1000. Anywhere in the entire range you can find the exact listening level with .5dB steps. (final firmware might switch to 1dB steps at attenuation levels of –85dB and below). The attenuator IC that had the best transparency and musicality also happened to have four channels so we hooked up the extra two channels to a line output so that you could use the m902 to control speakers or use it as a DAC.

Speaking of DACs, the m902 contains our “second generation” DACs which have some notable improvements over the DACs in the 901. While the 901 used a very high performance chip (CS43122) we chose the Burr Brown PCM1730 for the m902. This DAC is one of the few that has current outputs and allows us to use our own current to voltage converter. The current to voltage converter uses very high speed transimpedance amplifiers which assures that reconstruction of the analog signal is done without the non-linear slew rate limiting of regular op amps. While you won’t see the benefits of this type of topology in the measured performance I think it makes a significant improvement in the clarity and resolving power of the DAC. The m902 also employs a second PLL which we call s-Lock. The s-Lock PLL re-clocks the recovered clock from the digital inputs (including the USB) using super stable crystal oscillators and delivers a sample clock to the DAC with very low intrinsic (self generated) jitter and well over 100 times attenuation of incoming jitter from external sources. Call me old fashioned but I’m just not a believer in sample rate converters. While the 901 DAC is capable of fine performance with a low jitter source the clock recovery circuitry is not capable of attenuating incoming jitter so its performance degrades with long cables and jittery sources.

Like the 901, there are no electrolytic capacitors in the signal path. The inputs to the volume control are capacitor coupled with metalized polymer capacitors while the output amplifier is controlled with a DC servo. I think that a coupling capacitor sounds better than a servo since, when using a servo, you are not only listening to the integrator capacitor but you are also listening to the servo amplifier as its output is summed into the audio signal. However, in the case of the output amplifier we would need a very large value output capacitor to protect the headphones from DC offset so a servo is necessary here. (to keep the low frequency roll off below 10Hz while using 32 Ohm phones we would need around 5000uF which would only be available in an electrolytic type.)

Other enhancements to the m902 include:

All audio signal path resistors are 0.5% tolerance thin film surface mount types. Thin film resistors use the same type of metalic material used in thruough hole metal film types but have no lead inductance.

Improved capacitors in the output amplifier compensation network.

Larger power transformer with separate winding for digital circuitry. (the 901 derived digital supplies from the +analog supply)

Improved headphone jacks

4 layer pcb (this allows a continuous, low impedance ground plane and low inductance power supply distribution)

Separate power supply regulators for analog amplifiers, digital reciever PLL, DAC digital supply, DAC analog supply. 7 regulators in the m902!

Passive cross feed circuit.

Optional IR remote control. I wanted to be able to sit on my couch and have the m902 in my stereo cabinet so I could have it hooked into my loudspeaker system as a DAC…


Yup, there is more stuff in the m902 than in the 901…and it costs more. No cut corners. Just nice rounded ones on the outside.

Cheers,
Michael


A little further on, he posts some additional measurements for his product:

Hi all,
Here are the results of the USB jitter and bit tests. Please let me
know if proper etiquette would be to start a new thread with this sort of
technical stuff.

The Mac Power Book (OSX) will play 44.1kHz and 48kHz files over the usb
interface to the m902 with perfect bit accuracy. Again, as I mentioned
in a previous post, you must open the MIDI/Audio setup panel and set the
output sample rate to match the file being played or else sample rate
conversion occurs. (We will have these details in the owners manual)

SACD:
As far as I know there are no SACD players that have digital output when playing SACD disks with the possible exception of units with the I-link port. I think this is a firewire-like interface but the data is encrypted and (correct me if I'm wrong) asynchronous which would provide for jitter prone transfers. In the professional world DSD equipment uses SDIF-3 which consists of separate clock and data signals on BNC connectors. I think EMM Labs makes a modification for a SACD player so that it will output DSD data to a DSD dac...

USB jitter:
Measured at the spdif output of the PCM2902 the recovered clock from the PCM2902 measures about 240 pico seconds of RMS jitter when playing a 44.1kHz file and 390 pico seconds when playing a 48kHz file. Note that the 44.1kHz performance is very near to the noise floor of the Terrasonde Digital Audio Toolbox which is about 200 Pico Seconds when measuring spdif data streams. To really know the jitter of the PCM2902 would require access to the sample clock inside the chip. Oh well. However, this is not shabby jitter performance. I was expecting worse. With a good secondary PLL (like the s-Lock circuit) this can be reduced to less than 40 pico seconds.

If there was any confusion earlier in this thread, the usb interface is limited to a *maximum* sample rate of 48kHz and 16bit word length. 44.1kHz works fine. While there are USB solutions that support higher sample rates and bit depths, they are marginaly reliable. For higher sample rates and bit depths the only viable solution is IEEE 1394 (firewire) as it is designed for audio and video streaming. USB 2.0 will probably not become a popular audio transport for its lack of clear standards for audio streaming.


On another note a friend of mine who is a Linux guru is working on determining the requirements for making the m902 work with Linux.
I'll report as soon as we know anything.

Michael

So Nick, there you are. This is what happens when you ask a professional details of the product that the potential customer is considering. Very different to your response, quite clearly. Nobody asked you for your schematics (not that I think you have any because you merely assemble a bunch of parts), just a simple explanation of what your product is, what it does, how much it costs, why you think it represents an improvement on what's available elsewhere.

On the other hand, you will have noticed that this is very much the approach adopted by Peter. He is very forthcoming with what he is trying to achieve, the technical hurdles that he faces, and what solutions he has adopted. This is very different to what you have offered here.

So I rest my case.

I am not interested in your "product," Nick, and am unlikely to ever be (you will be relieved to hear). To end, if I may be allowed to quote myself:

...
There is clearly a sense of honesty and integrity that permeates the forum generally and this is also why I was prepared to take a blind punt (I knew nothing about the Phasure Dac until a friend told me about it and I read some of Peter's postings and thoughts here). For me, our hobby cannot be dissociated from the people behind the products that find their place in our audio equipment rack.
...

Best regards
Rakesh

[manisandher]

A very quick post - just no time...

Rakesh, IMO you are VERY wrong about Nick and his product. Nick makes some fundamental changes to the mobo itself, which in my own experience make a big difference to the SQ.

But I understand your (and Peter's) frustration with the way things are being communicated on this forum. I can't speak for Nick here, but I think he has his reasons for wanting to stay vague about exactly what he does to the mobo. I mean, just ask Peter what happened with M2Tech a few years and you'll understand why Nick might be a bit cautious.

Paul Pang is the only other person I know who is approaching things in a similar (though different) way to Nick.

HTH.

Mani

[Nick]

I would say this though. In my opinion, fundamentally, your approach is wrong, because instead of proceeding in a holistic fashion based on a deep understanding of how this very complex and audio unfriendly environment that is the personal computer works, you approach the "audio pc" in a random, piecemeal manner, that will ultimately paper over the cracks and not solve the deep-seated issues. Unfortunately, I think that everyone here has no choice but adopt this haphasard method. It is clearly not unscientific because as with many fields of knowledge significant progress can be made in this way. But it is not ideal.

You are at the first step the haphazard method, been there 7 years ago. Too many variables with too many effects. You do have a choice.

Now try stuf, loads and loads of stuff for years (most in my case not posted about it gets boring to read). Get your nose in data sheets read white papers anything available that might be relevant. Deliberately go off on tangents to chech ideas out, from the location that data is stored to the point is is streamed into the dac chips. Buy the same devices with as many different chip sets as possible to listen to differences, pore over there circuits to understand differences, modify and try stuff out. Look for the common themes, understand where you can. Swim against the flow of opinion at times.

This is what I did.

I did not attack people out of frustration because they drew a line.

You were inviteded to contact me you chose to do otherwise. You then post a passive aggressive point here that I take exception too. You follow up with the rubbish above.

Last time from me. Take it down a notch you will get further and learn more.

Nick.

[PeterSt]

Dear Rakesh,

By now your topic is used as a, how to say it ..., "abusing of". But what I like, is to explicitly continue this, thus in your topic. Btw, you already decided that yourself but I can see that this is also just you.

What I like to grant you (very explicitly) is the sheer capability of sorting things out as they really are. But let me tell you if you didn't know it yourself already, you live by :

etiquette

and I think you noticed very very well that I am the same, that everybody in this forum tries to be the same or just is the same and the reason to be here, but that one person is disobeying this little unwritten rule, also after asking more than once to behave otherwise.

Sorry for the long sentence.

But in short : I am now done with this.

I'll probably have a couple of more posts coming up and this is only introductionary announcing the "abusing" of your nice topic, Rakesh, but of which I feel it just suits you very well.

For others :
Undoubtedly you will think that Rakesh and me are exchanging emails about this. I'd even think that myself, reading Rakesh' musings about this. But it is not so. Nothing.

So a first thing I like others to see through is how in the world it is possible that someone resembles all what is happening in here, so very well, only by reading posts (but for days and days I'd say). This is just US.

From which has to follow that what Nick is doing is not us at all. I hate it so much that I have even considered to close down this whole forum. Only because one messes up and obviously can't stop himself from doing that either. Ad neither can I myself, as it seems.

Now we are calling names. I won't let that happen ...

Peter

[PeterSt]

A very quick post - just no time...

Oil on the fire.

You understand that, right ?

[PeterSt]

Rakesh, IMO you are VERY wrong about Nick and his product.

Sorry, but IMHO Rakkesh is VERY right.

But I understand your (and Peter's) frustration with the way things are being communicated on this forum.

Sorry again, because there is nothing communicated as such. NO-THING.

and you'll understand why Nick might be a bit cautious.

Hey Mani, no. I understand that you try to have a resembling example, but it is not at all. M2Tech had(/has) a product and it comes with a description. May it be important, Phasure has a product or two and it comes with description (some times of 1000s of pages and STILL not telling all up to what I deem necessary). Nick has no single description at all. It probably goes (unconsciously) beyond you, but then you are dreaming too, just like Nick who claims he spent some words about it and next claims that I rejected that and lastly keeps on saying that he THUS doesn't tell anything anymore. So no, he never told anything to begin with.

Please don't take this too personally, but it should be clear by now that I don't like this at all.
And it is funny (and great) to see that some one who is actually totally objective on this, comes up with how we all should see this stupendous thing. At least that is my opinion, but that's a bit obvious.

Regards,
Peter

[manisandher]

A very quick post - just no time...

Oil on the fire.

You understand that, right ?

Yes. But not my intention. I suppose I just feel inclined to support someone I know and like.

Ever since Nick posted his "Nick's Tweaks" thread all those years ago, I've considered him as someone who bends over backwards to share with others here what he has discovered through a lot of his own time and effort. But maybe you're right Peter. Maybe the $ signs do start to interfere with things at some point. [And this is one of the reasons I've always tried to stay above board with all my 'suppliers' in this hobby (i.e. I've never asked for any discounts or favours) - and this includes Nick, Bert, and of course you yourself Peter (as you well know).]

But I have one admission, and I will apologise to Nick at the outset. I've never been comfortable with the idea the "Chronos PC" as a 'product' offered by Nick. And I'm sorry to have started a thread that included the name. To me, Nick's services are quite clear - he modifies the mobo with the aim of improving its SQ. If anyone were to ask me whether I have a "Chronos PC", I would categorically deny it. I call my PC 'Le Monster'. I selected all the components and built it myself (with a lot of knowledge gained from this very forum). My PC remains my own 'Le Monster', but it now has some of Nick's mobo mods applied to it. Does this help? Probably not one iota. Oh well.

Right, I'm done with justifying myself or trying to support others. Seems I've failed on both counts anyway. So time to stop digging...

Mani.

[rakeshpoorun]

One Cable to rule your audio pc, One Cable to display your Covert Art,
One Cable to find your music files and in the darkness play them

Looking ahead, I suggested earlier in this thread that good things might come to those who can wait:

...
As a side note, I would add that, in my opinion, if anyone here is in my shoes and is thinking of a new audio pc, and has something that will competently do the job for now, then they would do well to wait until next year if they can, when Intel will have launched the new Skylake desktop processors and the Xeon DE processors (like the recently released D1540), which are low power  and multicore, and with the advantages associated to the new chipset such as USB3.1, even Thunderbolt 3 and even integrated TGbase Lan. For those planning to build their audio pcs next year, they are likely to be able to tick a long list of what I see as these ideal characteristics and then some.
...

I think the following might add credence to that opinion for anyone interested in building a new 'audio pc' later this year (more likely next year), once Skylake and Thunderbolt 3 are well and properly launched in due course.

The backward compatibility of Thunderbolt 3 with USB 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1, its proper integration in the next Skylake socket motherboard because it is an Intel technology, the possibility of using it for 10Gbe networking, maybe all with one single cable, makes this a tantalising prospect for those who can wait.

The original article can be found at this link:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/06/thunderbolt-3-embraces-usb-type-c-connector-doubles-bandwidth-to-40gbps/

Text copied and pasted below:


Original story

At Computex 2015, Intel has unveiled Thunderbolt 3. The headline feature: Thunderbolt 3 has changed connector from Mini DisplayPort to USB Type-C.

In addition to the new connector, Thunderbolt 3 now also supports USB 3.1 (i.e. Gen 2, up to 10Gbps), and the Thunderbolt transport layer sees its max bandwidth doubled from 20Gbps to 40Gbps (bi-directional, full duplex). Thunderbolt 3 also offers an optional 100W of power, in accordance with the USB Power Delivery spec. Without USB PD, Thunderbolt 3 will provide up to 15 watts.

Thunderbolt 3 is backed by Intel's new Alpine Ridge controller. USB 3.1 support is provided by integrating a USB 3.1 host controller into Alpine Ridge. There will be two flavours of the controller, one that uses four PCIe 3.0 lanes to drive two Thunderbolt ports, and another version that only uses two PCIe lanes connected to a single Thunderbolt port.

With the increase in max bandwidth, Thunderbolt 3 now supports up to two 4K @ 60Hz displays or a single 5K @ 60Hz display running off a single cable. The official Intel slide deck says that Thunderbolt 3 supports DisplayPort 1.2 (not 1.3), but there's no mention of HDMI. The Alpine Ridge leak back in April 2014 suggested that HDMI 2.0 would be supported, but Intel today says that DisplayPort 1.2 is "the native standard" for display over Thunderbolt 3, though HDMI 2.0 monitors will be supported with an "adapter."

The same leak also suggested that Thunderbolt 3 would be paired with Skylake, Intel's next chip after Broadwell, but we can confirm that isn't the case: Thunderbolt 3 would theoretically work with Broadwell. Intel hasn't given an official release date for Thunderbolt 3, but it has told us that it will probably launch alongside Skylake. Updated: We asked Apple about its involvement with Thunderbolt 3, and a spokesperson responded with, "we do not talk about things that may lie ahead." (It wouldn't be surprising if the first outing of Thunderbolt 3 is with a Skylake-powered MacBook Pro in late 2015.)
Enlarge / A promotional image from Intel Light Peak, which is what Thunderbolt started off as, before it got turned into a copper-wire tech.

At launch, there'll be one passive Thunderbolt 3 cable that supports Thunderbolt, USB 3.1, and DisplayPort 1.2, but with a max bandwidth of only 20Gbps. Intel confirms that this passive cable will be a standard, cheap USB Type-C cable. There'll also be an active cable that allows for up to 40Gbps, but drops DisplayPort 1.2 connectivity. Intel is also working on an active optical cable for Thunderbolt 3, but it isn't sharing any more details at the moment, and it won't be on the market until sometime in 2016. (Is this the rebirth of Light Peak?!)

The most exciting aspect of Thunderbolt 3 is its adoption of the USB Type-C connector. Type-C has a much smaller Z-height (about 3mm) than Mini DisplayPort (about 5mm), which in theory will allow Thunderbolt to make the jump to tablets and other small form factors. Ultra-thin laptops, such as the new MacBook with just a single USB Type-C port or Microsoft's Surface line, may also stand to gain a lot from Thunderbolt 3.

With a total bandwidth of 40Gbps, Thunderbolt 3 offers a tantalising glimpse of "one cable to rule them all." In theory, you could use Thunderbolt almost everywhere: to power your laptop, to power and drive your 4K monitor, and to power and connect all of your external peripherals. The one obvious exception is external graphics cards, with all but the lowest-end GPUs still drawing more than 100W. By supporting USB 3.1 and jumping on the Type-C connector, Thunderbolt 3 may actually be the interconnect to usher in that tidy-cable utopia.



That's obviously relevant for those buying a new 'Skylake' socket motherboard. But now imagine if it so happens that Add-On-Cards should come out to add Thunderbolt 3 to X99 motherboards. Obviously it's likely the 100W charging capability would be lost (who cares?) but the remaining functionality as described in the above article would be extremely useful in the context of a Phasure NOS1(a)/XXHighend PC system.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi guys,

Another relatively irrelevant post I imagine but for me it is all just one project with different strands so I hope you do not mind...may be of interest to some members here.

If you do and I am upsetting sensibilities (as being as remote from an 'audio pc' project as conceivable), please let me know and I will get rid of the post.

These pics were taken by Louis last month and the lathe that you saw in the video I posted earlier in this thread (post #67 above) should be back in action this week when he comes back from his vacations. The indication is that they will be finished by the end of the month but realistically, I now think it is going to be the first week of July. And I am myself off shortly after that until early September, so timing is not great. Well, it is out of my control (I did place the order with an agreed delivery time of April and pay what was required of me months ago), all I can do is wait.

Louis Eastman's website can be found here:

http://www.goldstandardaudio.com/

You can see some sketch-up pics of my project there, as well as some smaller horns!

He also does some other stuff, furniture and the like:


www.madebylouis.com

www.valelaneworkshop.com



best rgds
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

AUDIO AND CULTURE

Hi all,

I hope that I will not be advised to edit this post by Peter.

I will weigh my words very carefully and hope not to give offence.

I will be mindful that although it has been established that I do not come from Algeria or Mauritania,(ha ha ha) that potentially my culture is so different that it might cause maybe some misunderstanding or difficulty in the future.

I have explained that I have lived from a very young age in England, where I did my higher studies at what's considered a very good university, met my wife here, married here, had my children here and consider myself English through and through.

Are audio and culture related topics?

I think one should not refer to cultures, even in private e-mails, as this is likely to come across the wrong way but there is no doubt that different cultures will have different attitudes to different aspects of music, audio maybe even music playback. Sure we should be aware of it but it is not right that it should become an issue.

Our interest in audio and music is a universal language that links all of us together, in this wonderful world that we can appreciate for an ephemeral moment.

We should remember that.

Kind regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Thought I might post a pic of hopefully the end product of my current multi-channel horn project. Overall height is exaggerated as total height in my current room would be 1.8-2m as listening distance is approximately 2.5-4m.