Does Improving PC PSU and Reducing PC EMI/RFI Improve SQ?

[earflappin]

Hi All,
I'm new to XXHE, but became an instant convert when I heard 0.9y4 on my Zalman music server. 

Like many of us I have tried many tweaks over the years to improve SQ - some worked, some actually hurt SQ (1 step forward, 2 steps back) and others did nothing.

Recently, I did some experimentation with reducing EMI/RFI inside my Zalman PC.  Basically I took some ERS cloth (known for its EMI/RFI absorptive qualities), put it in a plastic bag (its conductive material!) and carefully encased my Lynx AES16 card.  The improvement was immediate.  Noise was reduced and SQ improved, specifically, richer tonality and increased micro/macro detail.  Has anyone else experimented in this area?   I've also put some ERS on my Zalman PSU with good results.  Next, I'm going to try putting some ERS on the IC chips on the Lynx.  The ERS is OK with high temp applications and the Lynx card doesn't run hot anyway.

Secondly, I've almost always found improving PSU (power supply unit) in components yields improvements.  I power my components with a PurePower 2000 APS which did great things for my SQ, but my Zalman PSU is just a stock switch mode PSU.  I would think, at a minimum, that the Lynx card would benefit from having a higher quality power supply, but the guys at Lynx tell me they don't think so....however, they also told me that added shielding wouldn't increase SQ.  Has anyone done work in this PSU area?
Thanks for sharing!

[Per]

Hi Earflappin,

Fun you mention it - I have also thought a lot about this. Actually I plan - when my health allows - to set up an external PCI expansion box that only contains the soundcard. Besides needing the physical strength to fiddle around with all this (I suffer from a severe muscle disease) it is also a rather expensive approach. A box like this from Magma http://www.magma.com/products/pci/1PCI/index.html costs about a grand (thats more than a hot-rodded PC!) I have though seen a noname box - for PCI express only - at around 300 dollars but the EU based company (I do not recall the name) never responded to my inquiry if a PCI interface card was available.

The idea about seperating the soundcard and the PC is - as I see it - that you can supply this box (and your soundcard) with a clean DC supply (12 volts) from a SLA battery or the likes. Secondly the soundcard sits alone in the box - totally awasy and shielded from the motherboard and other noisy parts of the PC. The only connection between the PC and the expansion box is the PCI / PCI-express interface cable between them. (There might be twists to this that I do not see a non engineer)

It would be very interesting to measure distortion and and noise on a soundcard sitting 1) in a PC vs the same soundcard 2) in an expansion box with its own DC (battery) power supply.

Another and more DIY approach could be to use a PCI riser for the soundcard in an ordinary PC, cut the 5 and 12 volts supply tracks on the riser card and connect these by wires to an external power supply instead. That would be a lot cheaper than an expansion box (if it works that is) The only thing that this solution would not do is seperating the soundcard from the noisy inside of the PC. But that could be had if you'll be radical enough to extend the PCI riser out through PC case having the soundcard sitting in a cage outside the PC - much like you see with tube amplifiers! That would look pretty cool, I think  The only problem with this radical approach would be whether the distance between the soundcard and the motherboard would be too long but with the right case it should work - maybe a mini or low profile (1) PC case.

Now I got this out of mind (for now) - so thanks for bringing up the subject of EMI / RFI / Power supply, Earflappin. It has been a pleasure to read about adventures with setting up XXHIGHEND.

Good luck to you and all - and please keep us posted on the results I personally would love to know if anyone has actually tried the expansion box approach to the soundcard and if they actually gained sound quality improvements from this.

Best wishes,

Per

[earflappin]

Per,
Thanks for your response and best wishes on your health.  Do you live in Sweden by chance?  Love that country - used to live there as an expat years ago.

I have considered the approach you suggested about using a riser and use a battery to provide the power to the Lynx card, as well as using a separate box to remote mount the sound card.  Do you know if there are any sync issues with these PCI/PCIe sounds cars?  I.e. is it okay for the cards to be powered up and down separately from the mother board?  Bottom line, I am game to invest the time and $$ to try this, but could use some help in being sure I specify the right parts.  Personally, I think there is a reasonable boost in SQ to be had by doing this.  And this approach would be alot less expensive that trying to provide the entire PC with power via a linear power supply for example.

So...what would you suggest as a battery for power?

[Fidelio]

Thank you for starting an interesting thread. Using an internal card as my source, I relate very much to this issue.

Personally, I have not experimented with internal isolation, nor with PSU mods, but I have discovered big differences in sound with different mainboards. I suspect this is mainly due to quality differences of the power delivered to the card. I think mainboard power quality is more important than PSU quality; I cannot hear big differences between PSUs.

[PeterSt]

Guys, you won't get much cheaper than the Magma, and you can bet I spent time on this one. Besides, people claim it may not help all that much because of the hight frequency of the PCI bus itself.
I think I recall the PCIe solution as being cheaper, but I forgot what is wrong with it. Something is though (but maybe I just couldn't use PCIe at the time ).

The riser "cables" won't make it to outside of the PC because everything you can buy is too short (say 7 cm or so max). Maybe with some DIY it can work though ... I don't know ...

May one of you go the route of external PCI, keep in mind that the topologies used for it differ quite a lot. One can do 10 meters, another 100. One uses DVI, another Cat5 (or 6).
One box can hold 1 card, another 16 ...

Peter

[earflappin]

I found this on-line for $400.

http://www.startech.com/item/PEX2PCIE4L-PCI-Express-to-2-PCI-Full-Length-2-PCIe-Single-lane-Expansion-Box.aspx

I did live chat with them, but they were unable to suggest a supplier for a compatible battery power supply.  Anybody know where I should look for that? 

Thanks!

[Fidelio]

I think it is cheaper to invest in a motherboard that supplies really good power to the PCI slots. The new Gigabytes are brilliant in this respect by the way.

[earflappin]

Thanks Fidelio.  I use an Asus P5Q-EM 775 G45 RT.  This was the recommended mobo for my Zalman fanless TNN-300 chassis.  Not sure how it's power delivery system rates.  Again, I am just hypothesizing that better power to the PCI card will improve SQ.  Since I've not come across anyone who can validate this hypothesis I think I'm just going to have to give it a try.

Looks like the PCI card needs +12V, -12V, +5V and +3.3V.  Magma does offer an option with an XLR4 to 12V cable so you can provide power from a lighter or 12V battery.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I think it is cheaper to invest in a motherboard that supplies really good power to the PCI slots. The new Gigabytes are brilliant in this respect by the way.

I have made this exact change some months ago, went frome GA-EP35-DS4 to GA-EP45-EXTREME (overclockers-board)(both Gigabyte)
This improvement was quite BIG !
Did not expected that to happen, but it really does.

Roy

PS: the more of those black square cubes (or how do you call them!)(for power supply) on there the better.
      (look at the black square blocks around cpu)

[earflappin]

Thanks for the input.  I'm checking to see what Gigabyte board is compatible with my Asus P5Q-EM. 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Don't worry,

Its already a very good MB, you have there, same specs as the Gigabyte.
But the difference is that this Gigabyte is an OVERCLOCKERS board.
With better power regulation (or power lines), especcialy for that purpose.

I mean you can overclock any motherboard.

PS: and watch out, mini-ATX and ATX !! (it wont fit)
     

[earflappin]

Thanks for the tip!  BTW, on the EMI/RFI front, have you found that using copper foil (as opposed to tin foil...  ) or ERS cloth to help with SQ by suppressing EMI/RFI inside the PC?

[PeterSt]

I found this on-line for $400.

http://www.startech.com/item/PEX2PCIE4L-PCI-Express-to-2-PCI-Full-Length-2-PCIe-Single-lane-Expansion-Box.aspx

I did live chat with them, but they were unable to suggest a supplier for a compatible battery power supply.  Anybody know where I should look for that? 

Thanks!

THIS IS GREAT



Good bye to that Magma stuff which for functionality is the best out there, but this just equals it (did you see the laptop card ?).

If this existed 6 months ago I'll eat some ties.
But about that ... I can't even find it back when going through their products ...

Ok, you can be sure I'll get me one of these and measure noise and everything. Will try some good power supplies as well. You might want to wait for the results.

David, thanks man.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I think I can see were this leads, haha 

[earflappin]

Glad to put this on your radar screen.  If I send you some poffertjes or matjes will it make your testing go faster?  

I'm going to wait on your findings Peter and in mean time just experiment with reducing internal EMI/RFI and getting a new mobo.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Peter,

Can this be your PC to DAC connection ??

DVI ?

[Per]

Per, Thanks for your response and best wishes on your health.  Do you live in Sweden by chance?  Love that country - used to live there as an expat years ago.

Thanks, Earflappin. I live in Denmark - on the beautiful Island of Bornholm http://bornholm.info/?langId=2 just south of Sweden and actually it belonged to Sweden once so you were very close with your guess 

I.e. is it okay for the cards to be powered up and down separately from the mother board?

Well, to be honest I do not know. But I guess so.

So...what would you suggest as a battery for power?

I don't know right out from memory of any finished SLA battey based powersupply product besides UPS powersupply's for PC's that some audiophiles use, but a while ago - on a rare day where I felt a little better - I just connected my TEC 7510 DAC to a standard 7.2 aH SLA battery that my wife boutght me (They are very heavy stuff these lead batteries said my ahcing muscles Well, I cut the power supply cord from the DACs cheap standard switchmode powersupply and connected the wires (remember right polarity!) to the poles of the battery. I then just put back the small plastic protector connectorcaps on the battery poles - and voila,  up and running I was with a drastically improved sound quality.

I have read that it is advisable to ALWAYS put an inline fuse of for instance 1A on the positive lead from the battery to prevent any disasters. (Remember a 12 volts SLA battery of 7.2 aH is VERY powerful and full of hazardous metarials). Enjoying the sound quality (every aspect improved) I unfortunately forgot to monitor the voltage on my SLA battery and when the sound from my DAC started dying and distorting terribly it was also too late to save the battery  Voltage had dropped to (well, errm, to below 6 volts) I was not able to recharge / revive the battery.... 

Regarding sound quality and different brands of SLA batteries, Yeo from www.diyparadise.com has strongly advocated for Hitachi as the premium choice for sound quality. On another line one could also experiment using Li-Ion batteries or the newer Li-Iron types. I think Wavelength Proton (from Gordon Ranklin) has some kind of semibattery psu design based on an internal Li-Ion battery. From what I have read battery power always fare very well against quality linear / switchmode psu's even though the output resistance from a top quality psu is much lower (around 0.1 hom or so I think) Output resistance is - I have read - important for minimal noise and sound quality. But using a battery hooked up the way I did is definately more difficult to handle than an ordinary plug and play psu...

Hope all this was not to way off-topic. Praise to Peter for his very kind and forgiving attitude

Per

[mojave]

I purchased some ERS cloth a few years ago after it was recommended in a thread a head-fi.org. However, it disappeared (I think it was thrown away by my mother-in-law) before I ever installed it. I might purchase some more for my new computer build.

Regarding motherboards and power phases, I have wondered how the power phases effect sound quality. I sent an e-mail to Anand at anandtech.com inquiring about the power delivery circuits in motherboards. Here is what I wrote:  "I enjoyed reading your article today on the new processors and P55 motherboards. I also read your recent article called, “How Much Does it Cost to Build a P55 Motherboard?” One of the main things that set the various motherboards apart was their power delivery circuits. It would be nice to have an article about a motherboard’s power delivery circuit, how they vary, benefits of more phases, and how these circuits affect sound quality in an audiophile HTPC. Thanks." I didn't get a reply, but maybe he is working on the article. 

I have been researching PC power supplies and found that the Corsair HX850 and the Antec Signature 850 have the lowest ripple and are among the most efficient power supplies, even at lower power usage. They are also almost silent - especially when providing the lower amount of watts needed for a typical HTPC.

I am also planning to purchase the Asus Essence ST soundcard as soon as it is released in the U.S. It has an EMI/RFI shield over the analog section and a "copper “faraday” barrier that isolates the power conditioning circuitry from the sensitive analog amplifications circuits." Furthermore, the analog section has its own molex power connector for receiving power directly from the power supply without any noise being introduced by the motherboard, etc.

I talked to Gary Dodd of Dodd Audio at RMAF. He is one of the leading edge designers of battery powered tube preamps and tube amplifiers. He said he could build a lithium ion power supply for the Essence ST soundcard that would have no noise whatsoever. I haven't talked to him since, but when I get the card, I may consider going that route.

In anticipation of the Essence ST, I have already purchased some opamps to replace the stock units. I have also purchased a 1ppm TCXO to replace the stock clock on the soundcard. 

[earflappin]

Mojave, thanks for your excellent post!  I will want to track your progress on the Asus ST card - it sounds like they are going the extra mile to ensure optimal SQ.  I really like the ability to bypass the mobo for power input.  Likewise, I like the idea of a Dodd power supply for that card.  This approach is very much in line with where my thoughts were headed, although I still like the idea of getting the card out of the computer chassis using the StarTech PCI expansion chassis.  Taking this approach makes it so easy to use the card for other computers.

Thanks again!

[GerardA]

Very interesting topic!
Now I wonder if a spdif/connection from a soundcard to an external DAC would be better sounding then using the SPDIF-connector on the motherboard. The latter goes through the northbridge, southbridge and a Realtek-codec (ALC889A),
while the former goes through northbridge pci-expres and soundcard.
Any idea's/experiences?

I agree with audiodidact on the Gigabyteboards. My ma78gpm-ds2h has:
- lower RDS mosfet, ferrite core chokes and lower ESR Solid Capacitors! Sounds like good marketing talk but also sounded better then the regular version. (And what about Intel vs AMD?)

And for the battery, I once used a pc-powersupply to feed my preamp because the battery broke down. Never heard such an awfull sound. Back to battery and overnight charging!

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Very interesting topic!
Now I wonder if a spdif/connection from a soundcard to an external DAC would be better sounding then using the SPDIF-connector on the motherboard. The latter goes through the northbridge, southbridge and a Realtek-codec (ALC889A),
while the former goes through northbridge pci-expres and soundcard.
Any idea's/experiences?

I have the Juli@ for that purpose only,
Maybe the Asus Essence will be a better choice, now a days.

I have tried the onboard ones on both Gigabytes boards and they sound horrible.
I have expressed this before, I believe.

[GerardA]

Thanks for repeating Roy!
Then there is still room for improvement. Juli@ is the best for SPDIF?
BTW. What codecs did your Gigabyte have? Azalia HD or the old AC97?
I saw the Juliet is PCI and thus goes through north and southbridge.
I would prefer therefor a PCI-e solution. Especially because that's the only slot left available in my HTPC!
Maybe Asus or Maya?

[Gerard]

Maybe the Asus Essence will be a better choice, now a days.

Hey Audiodidakt,

I have read something about the card.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/11709-exclusive-asus-xonar-essence-stx-sneak-peak.html

This is what i have read.

There is also an S/PDIF digital output featuring optical and coaxial output of Dolby Digital Live for those who want or need full surround sound. Make no mistake though, this card is designed to be an analog powerhouse above all else.


What do they mean by this... Meaning is this a normal SPDIF output?

Grtz Gerard 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

First of all the Asus best part is the analog part.
But we are not interested in that, I dont.
I want spdif to dac for now (until NOS1 comes available)
But maybe some people like it for its analog achievements

I think maybe this card can do better than the Juli@ or others in this league. (or because maybe you can fiddle around with power supplies on STX)
I like the juli@ very much for know, still awaiting that better solution.

The Juli@ is quite cheap compared to the Asus Essence STX.
Only the juli@ needs tweaking output for decent COAX spdif connection.
I did expressed this too before.
I was somewere in here.
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=967.msg7816#msg7816

Don't want to spend too much on different cards and such, rather save up some $ for the NOS1.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Then there is still room for improvement. Juli@ is the best for SPDIF?
BTW. What codecs did your Gigabyte have? Azalia HD or the old AC97?

Azalia HD that is!
Are you using the onboard one ?
Then I am really curious what a rather good souncard can do for you.
I would say get a Juli@, you can hold solder-iron a make yourself a decent COAX SPdif.
But you prefer a PCIe, then I don't know accually, Maya or STX

[GerardA]

Hi Roy,

I checked the juliet and it seems to have the same Envy24HT that my Terratec Phase 24FW has.
The onboard SPDIF sounds definitly better then the Terratec's.
One way it also depends on what it is that makes the SPDIF sound better/worse.
I hoped to find a more technical answer to this because just buying something to find out myself is not the way I work...
And of course what is the DAC doing to get the SPDIF-signal tick?
BTW, can you describe the improvement you heard?

[Fidelio]

First of all the Asus best part is the analog part.

You should hear the Onkyo card then...propped full of Black Gates by the way

Its toslink output sounds great as well, but obviously the whole point of the card is ist analogue part.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Maybe we went a bit

maybe its better to put this in another topic (or existing one)

haha

and keep this one alive!!

[ed linssen]

Hi Gerard,

The ASUS card is meant to be used through its analog outputs. By tossing the opamps you can modify its sound to your own taste if you think you should do so! The same with the opamp of the headphone-amp. The link of the card you name is about the Essence STX. The latest and the most interesting card is the Xonar Essence ST. So without the X! The STX is a pci-e card while the ST is the classic pci. It is a better way because it doesnot need the pci-e to pci conversion. Besides Asus claims to use a specially developped circuit to bring down RFI to a lower level. In the ST. which is intoduced in europe round Juli. (STX earlier in the year round Jan) Maybe the ST is not yet on the shelves in the US.
Btw. the ADconverter is NOT the Cirrus Logic cs5361, but it's better brother the CS 5381. So analog recording is in good hands too.

I must say the thing sounds really good in its stock outfit. Its up to you!
I myself changed my complete powersupply for for a big 60amps battery. The best way is to bring in the and 12Volts seperately on the Molex-plug. However there still was an SQ improvement by feeding the whole computer with the battery. Only my cumputer including the card draws about 2 3/4Amps!. I just use a two-position powerswitch which switches the powerline between off/charging and not charging/on. So I can play about the hole day uninterrupted if I like, and charge overnight with a little automatic 2,5Amps wallwartcharger.
Watch out that the voltage of the battery doesn't drop under the 11,2 Volts or so. Doede Douma (dddac.de) has a very simple device to control this.

Fun,

Ed

[PeterSt]

Maybe we went a bit

I think it is okay. If David thinks it is not, he will say so, I'm sure.

In the end the subject is always the same : how to get the sound out of the PC the best way.

Maybe I was the first crazy back in 2005 to buy a Fireface800 to do it the best way thinkable back then, but today I'm using a PCI card just the same because net it works out the best. This doesn't mean it is the most optimal, and for a longer time I indeed thought about the PCI extenders. This is just theory though, but already 20 times more practice when it is affordable to begin with (thinking commercial here ).

[Telstar]

THIS IS GREAT

Good bye to that Magma stuff which for functionality is the best out there, but this just equals it (did you see the laptop card ?).

If this existed 6 months ago I'll eat some ties.
But about that ... I can't even find it back when going through their products ...

Ok, you can be sure I'll get me one of these and measure noise and everything. Will try some good power supplies as well. You might want to wait for the results.

David, thanks man.

I dont get which benefit this gives over a computer with no moving parts and which draw not much power.
I haven't done comparisons and i think i never will since my next soundcard will be firewire.

[Gerard]

Hi Gerard,

The ASUS card is meant to be used through its analog outputs. By tossing the opamps you can modify its sound to your own taste if you think you should do so! The same with the opamp of the headphone-amp. The link of the card you name is about the Essence STX. The latest and the most interesting card is the Xonar Essence ST. So without the X! The STX is a pci-e card while the ST is the classic pci. It is a better way because it doesnot need the pci-e to pci conversion. Besides Asus claims to use a specially developped circuit to bring down RFI to a lower level. In the ST. which is intoduced in europe round Juli. (STX earlier in the year round Jan) Maybe the ST is not yet on the shelves in the US.
Btw. the ADconverter is NOT the Cirrus Logic cs5361, but it's better brother the CS 5381. So analog recording is in good hands too.

I must say the thing sounds really good in its stock outfit. Its up to you!
I myself changed my complete powersupply for for a big 60amps battery. The best way is to bring in the and 12Volts seperately on the Molex-plug. However there still was an SQ improvement by feeding the whole computer with the battery. Only my cumputer including the card draws about 2 3/4Amps!. I just use a two-position powerswitch which switches the powerline between off/charging and not charging/on. So I can play about the hole day uninterrupted if I like, and charge overnight with a little automatic 2,5Amps wallwartcharger.
Watch out that the voltage of the battery doesn't drop under the 11,2 Volts or so. Doede Douma (dddac.de) has a very simple device to control this.

Fun,

Ed

Hey Ed,

Thanx for the reply.... Hmmmm a battery for the pc that sounds interesting.....

grtz Gerard....

[PeterSt]

I dont get which benefit this gives over a computer with no moving parts and which draw not much power.
I haven't done comparisons and i think i never will since my next soundcard will be firewire.

Ah, but you will (see the benefits). YMMV a bit though, as my audio PC holds 8 disks SATAII connected. They move ...

But, all depends on the EMI/RFI springing from this separate PCI bus in relation to what comes from a complete mobo. And I don't know that yet.
Also, all is related to as how I have it right now, and this is the interface right in the PC box. I have no complaints whatsoever BUT there are other constraints doing it this way !

Just think about those ...

[GerardA]

Peter,

but today I'm using a PCI card just the same because net it works out the best.

What kind/type of PC-card may that be?

[PeterSt]

Not PC card, PCI card.
But  I hope you will allow me not to eleborate on that, because it's not related to the card or brand itself. It is a tweaked thing though, and because of that suffices my needs. It would be useless to you.

[GerardA]

Haha, I'm behind the new developments, all my PCI-cards are PC-cards.
I'll try to put them outside the box too! Just soldering some wires from the card to the connector will do it?

[earflappin]

Thanks for everyone's posts.  Let me try to summarize the input so far:

PC Power Supply - Anecdotal evidence that:
+ Gigabyte mobo provides better SQ than others due to better power regulation.
+ Using a battery power supply improves SQ; presumably versus using a standard switch mode PSU plugged into the wall?  Might a similar improvement been achieved by plugging the PC into a power conditioning device?
I've observed SQ improvements by plugging my Zalman PC and Berkeley Alpha DAC into a PurePower APS regenerative PSU versus a normal wall outlet.

PC RFI/EMI Suppression - No one reported they had experience with improving SQ using shielding inside the PC.

I'm going to change out my Asus mobo with a Gigabye and am experimenting with using ERS cloth inside my Zalman PC - I'll report back my experience.  Also, Peter said he was going to buy the StarTech PCI expansion chassis to remote mount his PCI card (which should reduce EMI/RFI impacts) and experiment with power supplies as well.  I think we are all very interested in Peter's findings. 

[mojave]

I came across an article yesterday called Do I Need 32-Phase Power On My Motherboard?? It mentions two things of relevance to audio. First, more phases result in a lower noise power supply. Second, 2 oz of copper on the motherboard (like the Gigabyte motherboards) will "will dissipate more heat and lead to lower electrical noise."

[earflappin]

Mojave, thanks for the article link.  I'll read through it.  As I mentioned, intuitively, I understand why better better PSU's generally lead to better SQ in analog components, but I don't quite get how this carries over into the world of digital.  Can you explain in lay terms why, for example, the Gigabyte mobo would lead to better SQ?  And do you have personal experience of comparing the Gigabyte mobo to others?  Thanks.

[Fidelio]

Can you explain in lay terms why, for example, the Gigabyte mobo would lead to better SQ? 

Perhaps I forgot to mention; I use an internal sound card, and this is consequently very sensitive to the power supplied to it by the motherboard. I had a very nice experience with the new Gigabyte model, that's why I mentioned it.

[earflappin]

Fidelio, what sound card do you use and what mobo did you have before switching to the Gigabyte?  Thanks!

[Fidelio]

The sound card is in my sig, an Onkyo Wavio SE-90 PCI. Great, great, proper card with 2 channel only, RCA outs.

With XXHE, it whoops £2000 cd players.

I had an Abit AX78 before the Gigabyte, and an MSI Neo4 before that, and a ECS nForce3 939 before that. Now I have a Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3.

[earflappin]

Thanks Fidelio.  Very helpful information.  I'm going to get a Gigabyte mobo to replace my Asus and see what kind of improvements that gives me. 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Watch out earflappin,

Difference between mini-ATX and ATX boards.
It maybe won't fit your zalman,

If it all works out, we are very happy to hear the results, try to get used to it how it sound right now.
Switching back and forth, can be difficult, as you are aware of.

Roy

[AUDIODIDAKT]

oh,

btw earflappin, how did you connect your Toshiba Netbook with Remote Desktop Connection
to your zalman music server by cable or network or WiFi??

[earflappin]

Roy, thanks for the reminder on the mobo.  The GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-UD2H is a micro ATX mobo just like my current Asus - it's the same form factor and equivalent functionality. 

My Zalman PC is hardwired connected to a wireless Apple Airport which sits about 10 feet away (it was too difficult to run a hardwire from my router).  I use the Toshiba netbook wireless to connect it.  It works flawlessly with no drop-outs.  As an aside, with WinXP Pro, I would get periodic drop outs in playback.  Since I switched to Win7 for both the Zalman and Toshiba I have not had any drop-outs. 

BTW, you're up a bit late (or early I should say) aren't you?   

[PeterSt]

He's late, but that compensates for me being early a bit.

But ... don't forget to try without the wireless one day. If you don't hear a difference it's okay. But I think you will ...

[earflappin]

Peter, just so I'm clear....hehe...you're saying there would be SQ improvement if I hardwire the network connection from my router to the Zalman versus going wireless from my router to an outboard (i.e. not inside the Zalman) wireless receiver (Apple Airport Express) and then hardwire from the Airport Express to the Zalman?  Are you also saying there's a further improvement if my netbook is hardwired as well?

BTW, I am continuing to love the Quad Arc Prediction mode.  I've read where you cite Quad Arc will sound its best if the DAC doesn't over sample the input.  Do I understand that ideally the DAC should not do any filtering of its own as well?  So basically, just take the unaltered incoming bit stream and do a D-A conversion?

[PeterSt]

Hi David - About the latter, yes, that is what it is made for (and how I use it myself).
More ideal could (!) be that the DAC provides (only !) the normal analogue filtering, but this is just theory for "unknown DACs" because it should adapt to the Arc Prediction, which obviously can't happen. Then *still* the analogue filtering may destroy, depending on the implementation and used parts etc. Notice that this analogue filtering has one reason to be there only : filter out the high frequencies (above 176.4/192) your amps may not be able to cope with (linearity). In the very end it is my estimate (!) that this is all a bit of blahblah, because those who can't bear NOS/Filterless are hard to find, if there at all (and this filters NOTHING and measures the worst).
On this matter, the Phasure NOS1 will not contain any filtering whatsoever - is NOS/Filterless for those who think that bad measurements sound good thus use no upsampling - but is the best out of everything when fed with Arc Prediction which measures as good as anything else but sounds better because nothing is destroyed.


About the wire(les)s ...
The Zalman shouldn't contain any wireless device in the first place, but I think you know that.
Digital sound shouldn't travel over wireless (but that is for you to try).
When the Netbook is wirelessly connected to the router, and is doing RDP to control the Zalman, no problem.

I now think (or see) that you use the latter, so no problem. Sorry for the before stirring (if only the Zalman produces the sound, and not the Netbook).
A small but though : the sole fact that the Zalman is providing the RDP connection is not the best for SQ again. I must say honestly I never tested this (for differences), but I sure stay away from using it, even while it would be by far the most convenient control. The difference would be (theoretically) similar to the switched off Services versus not.

But then I won't talk you in the "remote troubles" we actually all have in here.

I'm just thinking ... the very best might be to let XXHighEnd shut down the RDP connection during playing (doable) while getting it up again quickly when needed (dunno).

Peter

[earflappin]

Thanks for the insights Peter. 

I'm currently getting the best SQ from my system using Quad Arc Prediction (QARC) to my Berkeley Alpha DAC (BADA)with a digital fitler setting of 2.  This is the same filter that the Pacific Microsonics ADC/DAC Model One and Model Two use (these products are used by some the largest, best known recording studios to produce the digital recordings we listen to today).  I'm trying to see if the BADA can be set with NO digital filter through a firmare backdoor or a new firmware release.

When I A/B listening to XXHE with no upsampling and using the BADA filter 1 setting (this is the filter they recommend for best SQ) VS. QARC and the filter 2 setting the latter yields a more "fleshed out" sound with more detail, texture and dimensionality AND with less glare/ringing.  In this way it sounds much more "analog".

Regarding RDC I hear you!  There may be some negative impact on SQ to using it, but I just can't be bothered with a direct connected monitor, keyboard and mouse.  I'm going to A/B the SQ just for kicks.  If you could turn off the network and RDC during unattended mode that would be great.  I'm not sure if this can be done without having to reinitiate the RDC session.  I do think if RDC could be used without SQ degradation it is a no brainer.

[earflappin]

Regarding PSU impact on SQ I thought I'd share my experience with power cords and power conditioning units (PCU) - i.e. those class of components which take the mains power and attempt to improve the quality and regulation of power to those components plugged into it.

Over the years I've experimented with alot of different PCU's ranging from the early PS Audio PowerPlants, Shunyata Hydra's, Sound Application, Walker Audio Velocitor, Running Springs Audio, Environmental Potentials (these EP devices install in the electrical panel itself and are used in noisy industrial plants to feed power to CNC and robotic machines), and, most recently the PurePower APS.  Similarly, I tried a range of audiophile PC's and my own DIY cables.  I've also owned an array of amplifiers and pre-amps that used various types of PSU's including battery and tube.

Regarding PCU's, I inevitably found that while these devices reduced noise they imparted their own sonic signature which included a dulling of dynamics (likely due to current limitations).  Ultimately, I found the EP devices to be most effective with the least sonic impact (an added bonus is that the EP devices provide surge protection for the entire house). 

About 6 months ago a good friend and serious audiophile told me I needed to try the PurePower APS claiming it was the biggest breakthrough in SQ he had ever heard from a single component.  Yeah right I thought.  Anyway, I got one on trial - it took about 30 seconds to hear the transformation.  Significantly improved SQ - similar to what QARC does.  The PurePower APS is a regenerative power supply, but unlike the PS Audio design, the PurePower regenerates from a battery so the unit is "off the power grid".  And if there is any current limitations I can't hear them even with power hungry amps. 

Regarding power cords I've had a similar experience.  Generally I've found that they all improved some aspect of SQ while trading off others.  When you look at the design of these PC's alot of them have filtering networks.  With my PurePower APS I get the best SQ by using a simple DIY power cord comprised of 1 16ga solid core copper wire for hot, neutral and ground.  If I use audiophile PC's I hear a slight smearing or slowing of the sound.  I think this is due to their filtering networks.  Since the PurePower removes most/all of the electrical artifacts on the power grid there is simply no need for any filtering.

Regarding the PC, I have never liked switch mode power supplies and I remain anxious to learn about Peter's experience with trying battery power for the PCI card.  If I wanted to try battery power for my entire PC can somone recommend a commerical unit I could buy? 

Thanks!

[Fidelio]

If I wanted to try battery power for my entire PC can somone recommend a commerical unit I could buy? 

But the PC PSU would in this case still be switch-mode, only with a more stable 230V going into it.

For pure battery power, you would have to have multiple battery pack, one for each PSU rail you need. That would mean 3.3V, 5V and 12V in various configurations. However, even the most expensive Li-Ion or NiCad batteries are not linear regarding voltage, so the mainboard should have onboard power regulation similar to that on laptops, built especially for being powered from batteries. I think powering a desktop PC from batteries is too much of a hassle. If one is very adept at electronics, one could of course build a non-switch mode PSU, but that is another question.

[earflappin]

Thanks Fidelio.  That's the conclusion I was coming to as well.  For now I think I will leave it with powering my PC from my PurePower APS. 

I think the idea of trying battery power just for the PCI card remains the best first experiment and will eagerly await Peter's findings in this area.

[earflappin]

Peter, dang...I hate this obsession...err...I mean hobby....   

Anyway, I did play with RDC and there seems to be a slight, but audible, improvement in SQ when I shut down RDC.  I get most of the improvement if I select a playlist, run XXHE in unattended mode, and the log off my RDC session.  The issue right now is I can't restart RDC without a reboot of the music server once I've run XXHE (see my post under problems).  I'm reinstalling Win7 64 bit to see if my tweaks to the op system are the issue.

[PeterSt]

Peter, dang...I hate this obsession...err...I mean hobby....   

Well, sorry about that !

I too have been experiencing a lot with power regeneration, and at some time I ended up with a normal computer on-line UPS which I used for over 10 years.
Later I got myself a crazily inexpensive off line UPS (1800 euro or so, generating real sines), but again later it appeared to create problems with grounding, plus I never got excited from the sound.
Next I got another kind of problem with high frequency noise on the means, in the end coming from the loud speakers as well, and I got myself a couple of transformerless regenerators meant for 30w only. I think these were the only ones I ever experienced not harming the sound at all (but doing a great job on the mains noise and everything) ... until one broke, another one broke and a next one got fire. I won't name the brand, because although my main amps are rated under 30W and the small regenerators they should cope, they did not, and I guess a 30W amp is different from a 30W DAC. However ...

Because I just *had* to solve my mains-noise problems, I found a grounding scheme which is a 1000 times better (think dBs here) than what a regenerator ever can achieve. This is part of the DAC and proprietary and noise becomes unmeasurable because of it (unless the -160dB my measuring equipment shows is to be seen as reliable ). Notice on this matter, it is the DAC that creates the "mains problems", and not anything else, as per my own findings.

Currently I use nothing for mains protection etc., except shunt regelated PSUs, and I think it is the best.

To my findings, batteries are not the best at all, and those with the proper math can point that out (someone in here can do that, but I forgot who it is). This is speed related.
So ... to be clear on things, the "PSU's" I am going to let loose on the PCI bus will not be batteries of any kind. They (I've quite some to test) will be non-switching though, *if* it needs that in the first place ! Anyway, think more in the direction of a 100000uF "backup". I must say honestly though, that right at this moment I don't even know what or how to exactly test it (with electrical noise appearing at -160dB), apart from listening of course. One thing : measuring tells all (there was a time I was not of that leage) if you only know what (and how) to measure. And to keep in mind : I can measure the analogue out of the DAC software wise in details no measuring equipment can do. So I guess I am going to do that.

Btw, somewhere next week I'll be having the stuff here.
Peter

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I hope this will work,

To keep the soundcard out of the mobo, and give it its own psu.

Have you thought about integrate this in the DAC, or would you rather keep it outside. (boxed)
And maybe the integrate of word-clock (on both sides) would become easier this way. (as in bring PCI slot with soundcard into DAC)

If this all works for the better, anyway.
Really great someone capable of doing these kinds of measurings!

[PeterSt]

I hope this will work

What to say, if it already works now ? But if you mean teachnically (and not sonically), yes, that is to find out (but it just should !).

Have you thought about

I am twisting my mind on these things for over two years now, and right from the beginning (ok, after a couple of hundred pages of writing) I kind of knew what actually *is* the best solution. Like the matrix (I think) I talked about earlier. However, not everything is feaseable for normal money, and and getting it to you all ("all" is those with these kind of needs of course) is the big sport. You (Roy) have seen some of my half creations because they were just visible, but there is more. And there's also the most obvious like Firewire, which just is *not* going to work. Not in practice with all those half baked chip morons around it (by now I hope they read this). And in the end ? well, even that is not the best solution.

You will see ...

[PeterSt]

This is just for fun and

With my ever planned 32/384 DAC I planned a special connection to the PC which has never been done before. That is, not that I know of, and there isn't any reason for it also with other manufacturers;
Then, in this topic I expressed about wanting a general I2S connection. This I2S connection should work for PC's just the same. And as you may know, it is (AFAIK) the most jitter free connection;
I tried this with Firewire as the first carrier, but this is a dead end. I just can't find any Firewire boards with manufacturers that want to sell something, or otherwise the drivers s*ck and access to the SDKs etc. is (too) difficult.
So now I combined my old plan with this new DAC ...

I guess I again came back to this, because it is

- fun
- the best
- fresh
- the most obvious.

haha

[earflappin]

Peter, thanks for sharing your experience.  Glad you didn't burn yourself up experimenting....   

Eager to hear the results of the outboard PCI card experiment.  BTW, I tried using some EMI/RFI shielding inside my Zalman, including on my Lynx card, and couldn't hear any improvements in SQ. 

When will you be shipping your DAC and what will one need to buy for the PC side of the i2S interface.  Is it possible to use the standard PC HDMI connector with special driver code?

[PeterSt]

[most vague post ever which is a first brainstorm about why hires material is not right]

I still wanted to respond on this one :

I'm currently getting the best SQ from my system using Quad Arc Prediction (QARC) to my Berkeley Alpha DAC (BADA)with a digital fitler setting of 2.  This is the same filter that the Pacific Microsonics ADC/DAC Model One and Model Two use (these products are used by some the largest, best known recording studios to produce the digital recordings we listen to today).  I'm trying to see if the BADA can be set with NO digital filter through a firmare backdoor or a new firmware release.

When I A/B listening to XXHE with no upsampling and using the BADA filter 1 setting (this is the filter they recommend for best SQ) VS. QARC and the filter 2 setting the latter yields a more "fleshed out" sound with more detail, texture and dimensionality AND with less glare/ringing.  In this way it sounds much more "analog".

Well, I don't think the Alpha can do without any filtering !

I am not sure what to think from this setting of 2 and the theories behind that, but I have the hunch there is "something" important in there. So, notice this is a combination of "pre-arranging" (Arc Prediction) while something else (the filtering in the DAC) does not expect that to have happened. I may have said elsewhere that the filtering as such is hardly an explicit means to get the analogue wave right, but is merely a principle of "flattening" with the effect of digital (stepping) turning into analogue (rounded stepping). There's no other theory than "flattening" BUT the mathematics behind it highly anticipate on the ADC process and what actually goes wrong there, which is nothing else than a too low sample rate to make it analogue in the file, and with this knowledge of the "band limited" registration this math can turn that back to normal analogue. Read a (27 page) paper of Dan Lavry and you'll get the hunch of "this is Walhalla" indeed.

With the danger of me myself not even being able to understand what I just wrote, I am convinced that something else is wrong. I mean, the current means of this filtering s*cks all over in the first place and the people who should know do actually not (like D.L., your setting 1, name it), but I am afraid there is something going on beyond (!!) the red book means of thinking that can't work while again the knowledgeable are convinced it does.

Ok, this latter again :
There is a big difference between red book and its 22050 boundary, and say 96KHz material with its boundary of 48000;
The 22050 boundary *must* be created or otherwise we'll starve of harmonic distortion, with the result of that boundary being 20000 and (much) less because of the roll off the filtering "needs", while the 48000 boundary is okay by itself, but is dealt with the same way as red book for filtering. Or at least that is what I think.

Now, don't try to understand the above, but try to get the hunch of this :
At "decimating" or IOW going from the high resolution recording to anything else but 44100, I think there is an error applied. This is similar to what I just babbled about and it keeps on anticipating on the 22050 boundary. My thinking springs from knowing how the normal filtering works, and that actually the same filtering is used in the ADC. Not exactly the same, but anticipating on the same error applied when doing it the other way around, in the DAC. So, it is always to keep in mind that the normal filtering applied in the DAC anticipates on the knowledgde of how the ADC worked, and actually both are a combo.

What I am all heading for the the stupid (as seems) fact, that native high resolution material as offered to us does not sound as good as my own "faked" high resolution upsampling from 44.1. In order to see this, one has to listen through an NOS/Filterless (and I mean really filterless) DAC in the first place. Look :

The principle of Arc Prediction as how it works out net, 100% anticipates on no further filtering needed. Its principle would come down a 100% to native 88200 - or better 176400 material just not needing the upsampling, because it already has that resolution in the first place.
(thus, we feed both a 176400 Arc upsampled from 44100 and a native 176400 to the completely filterless DAC, and the upsampled sounds way better)
Now, how can it be that this native 88200 / 176400 through that NOS/Filterless DAC does NOT sound as good ? This can only be because it already contains some "filtering" in the material, which filtering is NOT there in 44100 material. It almost looks like the decimation process went via 44100 and is then upsampled by the wrong filtering means.

Of course the latter is not true for the explicit means of doing it, but the same as the normal filtering means are wrong and work out so indirectly, I guess similar is happening at decimating.

At some stage I created the decimating from 352800 to 176400, and the (too stupid) way I did it implied quantisation noise. I then aksed 2L (which I kind of worked together with on this) to create me a 176400 version of their 352800 recording so I could compare. They did (and of course applied one of the existing routines in their software), and I myself ended up with some commercial product doing the same, which commercial product also can do it the other way around (upsampling). Notice that the math doing this (sincx) is reversible ...

Now, coming to an end of the most vague post ever (sorry for that), it is my idea that at decimating, only when doing that to 44100 the area under 22050 remains untouched because everything and all tells it should (meaning : everything and all avoids filtering in the audible band as good as possible). Thus, when creating a 176400 file out of a natively recorded 352800 (DXD) the *resolution* is maintained, but the filtering is the same as ever, and while in effect this rolls off after 22050, its *means* are again the "flattening" I talked about earlier. In the eyes of formal filtering theories there is no reason not to do so, while forgetting the ringing implied, which is the one thing Arc Prediction does NOT.

If I am right on this, all currently produced hires material is lost forever already.
Peter

[PeterSt]

One addition to the previous post :

The guys at 2L are those who provoce DXD (352800) in the first place, and empirically they found that 352800 is the boundary where no filtering is needed at all (I have been on the phone extensivley somehwhere a year ago with the technical guy there).
By now I am a kind of sure that their empirical finding (listening) is based on sonething else : all decimated material just contains filtering and *that* is the reason why it doesn't sound better compared to the higher resolution 352800 they record in natively.

Looking at the measurements I personally don't see a single reason why e.g. 176400 would be worse than 352800 BUT assuming our amplifiers can cope with the left high frequency digital stuff (which for 352800 would be above that, and which for 176400 would be above just that).

And thus there is another reason (see previous post).

[earflappin]

I dunno....I think your post on how the Q sliders work rates pretty high on the most vague post ever as well...

I think you're on to something....because my ears are agreeing with what you're saying....but I guess most of us will have to wait until your NOS DAC1 is available to hear exactly where you're going.

BTW, I told the Berkeley guys how impressed I've been with XXHE and that I now use it over Samplitude as my reference player using their filter 2.....and some of their other customers have said the same thing....they were not surprised I prefered the filter 2 setting as it does the least amount of filtering of all 4 of their settings.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Haha,

Thanks for your always interesting posts Peter, enjoyed reading it.

If I was a lawyer, I would say: you have a strong case there son.
And how does the industry plea, ....... ! hehe

The principle of Arc Prediction as how it works out net, 100% anticipates on no further filtering needed

This is most important ! that proofs why hires doesn't sound good, it is "touched" already.
But it also proofs that I (and many of us) like ARC prediction.
But as Peter said it works "theoraticly" (to preceive the best) only on NOS and non-upsampling DAC's.
No I start to understand why music sounded so "clumpy" for many years.
With all that filtering going on.
And there you have it music with those "wrong means" of filtering "baked" in to it, and its lost forever.
With lost forever, I mean, just get the 16/44 original version. (and use ARC)
I also dare to say, this also implies on those "24Bit/96Khz Remasters", those are tempered (touched) too.
Can we throw them out of our collection, hehe (me spending all those hours on getting "them", but I hope it helped)

With the danger of me myself not even being able to understand what I just wrote, I am convinced that something else is wrong.
I mean, the current means of this filtering s*cks all over in the first place and the people who should know do actually not (like D.L., your setting 1, name it),
but I am afraid there is something going on beyond (!!) the red book \

Understanding is one, yes, but just take a listen and anybody should easely understand why.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I dunno....I think your post on how the Q sliders work rates pretty high on the most vague post ever as well...

LOL, 

That one is much harder to get a grip on,

Roy

[Per]

To my findings, batteries are not the best at all, and those with the proper math can point that out (someone in here can do that, but I forgot who it is). This is speed related.

Peter, I think the Danish DACT guys discuss what you are talking about in this link:

http://www.dact.com/html/ct102_vs_batteries.html

Per

[Fidelio]

I dunno....I think your post on how the Q sliders work rates pretty high on the most vague post ever as well...

Hehe, it has that David Lynch-vibe to it, reading it reminds me of the time i watched Eraserhead slightly drunk. Pretty far out stuff.

[PeterSt]

hehehe, one big difference : with the Qs I know what I am doing but I don't want you to know, while with the filtering and stuff you ought to know how it works while I don't dig that.

This by itself is a big apple and a larger orange of course, but you'll get the idea.

One day this all will be sorted out I guess.
At least I try to work on just that.

[PeterSt]

Peter, thanks for sharing your experience.  Glad you didn't burn yourself up experimenting....   

Eager to hear the results of the outboard PCI card experiment.  BTW, I tried using some EMI/RFI shielding inside my Zalman, including on my Lynx card, and couldn't hear any improvements in SQ. 

Not to avoid this ...

I never experienced in practice that this "shielding" would help somewhere, but in the mean time I always thought it should.
Maybe, just maybe this is about the cr*ppy interfaces often provided on mobos, might that be sound devices or firewire outputs - they for 100% are not ok.
On this matter, my inboard PCI interfaces always surprised me on the sunny side, while remember, I ever back bought something like a 1400 euro Fireface800 to get it all out of there (just to SPDIF pass through).

When will you be shipping your DAC and what will one need to buy for the PC side of the i2S interface.  Is it possible to use the standard PC HDMI connector with special driver code?

Kind of definitive : production starts in January at an easy one unit per day, just to get aquainted with things.
Nothing further is required, and all what is needed will be in the shipment.
Buying can be done on-line, and in the next few weeks a webshop will be setup for that with real time insight in available stock etc. By that time you will see the options to choose from automaically, and I hope some things will be a nice surprise. Shipping world-wide.

All 'n all I hope to have worked on this long enough to offer something which is the best you ever listened to, against a price which only makes you smile.
No good within 45 days ? money back guarantee, but the shipping costs are yours.

Anything else ? the price maybe. Well, that will be very close to what I mentioned the last somewhere around these boards.

[earflappin]

Thanks.  I presume you just wish to stay silent on the interface we will need to connect to the NOS1....since you cite that everything required will be in the box then perhaps you're just going to use USB....

[Gerard]

production starts in January 

That will be a real fine new years present than! Sure the best one in have had in years!!

 

[PeterSt]

since you cite that everything required will be in the box

box - carton - plastic bag - cabinet ... yeah, I guess I said something like that. 

[manisandher]

... (thus, we feed both a 176400 Arc upsampled from 44100 and a native 176400 to the completely filterless DAC, and the upsampled sounds way better)
Now, how can it be that this native 88200 / 176400 through that NOS/Filterless DAC does NOT sound as good ? This can only be because it already contains some "filtering" in the material, which filtering is NOT there in 44100 material. It almost looks like the decimation process went via 44100 and is then upsampled by the wrong filtering means...

... If I am right on this, all currently produced hires material is lost forever already.

Peter, have you tried the Reference Recordings 176.4 material? It is the best hi-rez material I have come across (SQ-wise, not music-wise!). This may be because I am using the same ADC/DAC that is used to record it. It may also be because of the following, from one of the designers of the ADC/DAC:
"If it's going to be 176.4 or 192kHz, then we will not decimate that signal; we use a proprietary filter [non-oversampled] optimized to that sample rate."

When I have my system set up again (hopefully in next few weeks), I will record from LP at 44.1 and 176.4KHz rates and then compare Arc Prediction upsampled to non-upsampling.

Mani.

[earflappin]

Mani,

The Pacific Microsonics Model 2 is a nice piece.  I have the Berkeley Alpha DAC (the same guys that founded Pacific Microsonics) and to my ears I'm getting the best sound with Quad Arc and with my Berkeley on the filter 2 setting which is the same filter as the  Model 2.

[manisandher]

earflappin,

I like it. (Though I've never heard one, the Alpha is supposed to be pretty damn good too, no?)

But I always try to remain as objective as possible about gear - stuff that I once thought was good has turned out to be pretty mediocre... especially my old DAC compared to the Model Two.

In any event, I will buy a NOS1 DAC when it's released, and you know something, I will be genuinely pleased if it beats the Model Two. I won't sell the Model Two though - it's simply too 'special' to part with.

Mani.

[earflappin]

Mani,

Only heard the Model 2 once at Goodwins High End in Boston where I used to live (I mean Boston, not the Goodwins store, although I did spend a lot of time there too...).  The Alpha DAC is very, very good.  It has bested every other DAC I've thrown up against it, even my previous mega-expensive reference DAC/pre-amp. 

I agree with you about always remaining objective.  Just because something sounds better than what you had previously doesn't mean its the best in its overall class. 

I'll probably buy a NOS1 DAC as well based on how pleased I've been with the XXHE software.

[Eric]

Hi Peter,
will the DAC be able to be connected to Firewire input, or would it still be necessary to use a Fireface400 or something similar?
And do you plan to run the DAC on battery power (like the TwinDAC+)?
Cheers,
Eric.

[Telstar]

Roy, thanks for the reminder on the mobo.  The GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-UD2H is a micro ATX mobo just like my current Asus - it's the same form factor and equivalent functionality. 

You have my same motherboard. Stongly recommended.

[earflappin]

Telstar, so you have the Gigabyte mobo in your music server?  Do you know how it compares sonically to the Asus mobo's?  I use the Asus now, but have the Gigabyte on order just on the hope it will further improve my sound quality which is already quite excellent.

Thanks.

[Telstar]

Kind of definitive : production starts in January at an easy one unit per day, just to get aquainted with things.

What? I spend one week away thanks to an annoying flu and i read this?
Gotta reserve those tickets for january.

[Telstar]

Telstar, so you have the Gigabyte mobo in your music server?  Do you know how it compares sonically to the Asus mobo's?  I use the Asus now, but have the Gigabyte on order just on the hope it will further improve my sound quality which is already quite excellent.

Thanks.

No, I dont know.
But It sounded better than the previous machine with an old Iwill server mainboard, which i can assure was realized extremely well.

[leifchristensen]

has anybody considered building a linear pc psu?
would be interesting?
or maybe put BG caps on the different lines from the sm psu to start with?
here´s a guide in Norwegian about the different connectors and their pin no´s and voltages in a std pc psu
the important tables should be easy to figure out even if they´re in Norwegian
http://www.hardware.no/artikler/stromforsyningens_kabler_og_kontakter/39078/utskrift

best
Leif
 

[PeterSt]

Hi Peter,
will the DAC be able to be connected to Firewire input, or would it still be necessary to use a Fireface400 or something similar?
And do you plan to run the DAC on battery power (like the TwinDAC+)?
Cheers,
Eric.

Hi Eric,

All will be completely self contained, so nothing is needed but a PC (or even no PC ). On that matter, all you may be buying now will be "obsolete" by then. I know, I'm a bit in the dark, but you will see.

No, SURE not any battery power. That just doesn't cut it.
Have you ever been to a concert ? (yes you have) ... ever experienced that bass of which you thought it couldn't be obtained in your listening room ?
... no you haven't.
But I sure have !! and it is not my amps doing it. It is the DAC in its current setup which is definitive ...

[earflappin]

Peter, sounds pretty exciting.  The power supply is a super critical element of a DAC - it has to be extremely fast to respond to the big dynamic range.  It makes sense to me that if you have found a better way of managing this in your DAC it will yield a nice improvement in SQ separate from the other aspects of your design.

Any update on your experimentations with different power supplies for the outboard PCI chassis?

[PeterSt]

David - No, not yet. Measuring stuff usually is for the weekends (somehow Saturday mornings always seem suitable).
Will let you know ! But when you think I may have forgotten it, call again !

[AUDIODIDAKT]

haha, (sneaky laughin to himself)

Dedicated Audio PC, no FUCKING way, without Dedicated PSU in PC (unit for whole pc, complete plan, hehe)
There is almost no info nor experience about this, anywere (and maybe no need for it anyway, it effects only "us")
But for us this is of ATMOST importance  , we should take the lead in this, as being frontenders.

Will give more info, how this came to me.

This matter should not be taken lightly, why, I "hear" my motherboard, even stumled over a Gigabyte flaw."
A "bad" pci slot, first hearing this, then found out about it on the internet. (learning thru hearing)
Will explain more this week.

Hope I don't interfere (overlap) with some of your current projects, Peter, you succeding very well with  leaving us in the dark. (maybe with PCI and soundcard stuff, but again I don't know)


Object take an overclockers board, tweak it, ONLY leaving the "core" we need and add (homegrown) PSU unit.
Depending on your needs, let say keep it around 400 euros. (just PSU plan and parts)

Would you....................... ?

Peter, you spend it on just an PCI extender, do you give me some room proving this, not knowing the outcome of it.
Will not accept current common solutions, this carpenter will build his own, I know for sure.
Its not that hard doing a beter job ,doh

yesterday spending my whole day with my motherboard in my hands, its just all so wrong.
Things are complex the way the are right know, just start peeling.
What we already suspect, is the case here, doubt everything.

Roy

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Maybe there would be even some Phasure (test cases mostly start with an x, referring to the name thing) energy settings for unattended mode maybe.
Would we want this, most energy settings can be software controlled, so the option is there.
Could this be usefull for us, you have the answer, knowing the behavior of xx during unattended, could things go more quiet.
when determined lowest possible energy settings during playback.
Just to keep it alive and perform unattended mode.
So could we improve the standard energy behavior of Bill to hour own needs,
I know you doing some work on getting full control over "going to sleep" with HDD's

But maybe its just nothing, I dunno


 

kinda dynamic energy saver meets software overclocking (underclocking for us)

But than again, it will only use more energy during playback, and it won't work to hour advantage

[AUDIODIDAKT]

But what if,

What if you don't actually play the files realtime.
Just sending them over to your NOS1 (nice buffer), and then commence playback from there.
pc is just server (or should say HDD's), so no interference what so ever. (no I2s, no clock, no shielding (disconnect after recieving)
Feeding the baby, and it will keep playing. (think streaming)
So we have CD-player again. (who pulled them apart anyway, dac and drive and this never worked out)
As in Real Unattended, can I be wrong (with embedded settings ofcourse)

Key here is embedded settings, or should I say pre-handle script.
DSP, does no sound that strange afterall, putting output data from RAM in script, commanding DAC to handle from here on

aha, hehe

Nice

You were too quite on some subjects, why would he not be interessed, I just wandered (then is hits me)
I get it, just plug in your big XXL USB stick in DAC (as in a rig of 10TB HDD's as in pci extender).
Pc will be total commander, nothing more nothing less, so we have our pc back too.
No procceses just some commands will be sended when needed.
And have means to remote control to whole bunch

Thnx for making my PC a rather expensive means of enjoying my cover art
And you were planning to say this when.......? (but maybe you already did, but just as not listening)
Now I can make sense out of it all
Just walking the paths.

[PeterSt]

Hey spammer !

In half of it all I see nice ideas, 70% can't work, 5% may be implementable, and 100% I don't understand.

Actually the setup of the DAC is so strange that I really must sit back and think about some of your options. But this is more in the line of "but isn't it working like that already then ?".
It is all a bit of the world upside down, and from that perspective all must be reconsidered.

Peter, you spend it on just an PCI extender, do you give me some room proving this, not knowing the outcome of it.

This must be part of the 100% I mentioned. Do you want me to withhold you from the results until you tested it all yourself ?
I'll be comparing and testing tomorrow. So you'll always have 32 hours left, at least.

Would we want this, most energy settings can be software controlled, so the option is there.

Part of the 5% here.
I have been staring at this for several minutes, and I actually start to wonder whether the Phasure NOS1 solution can ever be bothered by this. I guess so, but maybe not.
Maybe if I hang upside down for a couple of hours I'll get it.

Just sending them over to your NOS1 (nice buffer), and then commence playback from there.

Part of the 70%.
Ok ok, since a few important parts to let this work have been *removed*. Haha ...

So we have CD-player again.

... while this is true already.

[Gerard]

Peter,

It's way but is it possible to give the PHASURE NOS1 a aluminium or a black front?? I like aluminium but maybe a possibility to choose. 

 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Hey,

Quote
Peter, you spend it on just an PCI extender, do you give me some room proving this, not knowing the outcome of it.

This must be part of the 100% I mentioned. Do you want me to withhold you from the results until you tested it all yourself ?
I'll be comparing and testing tomorrow. So you'll always have 32 hours left, at least.

I can do just the same here (shunts black gates and all), I have all materials here, BUT

How to give the Juli@ its own PSU, can I just disconnect the lines from motherboard and then connect my own PSU on soundcard ???
what are the powerlines of PCI slot or Juli@ anyway.
I think they even maybe holes for it in the soundcard to connect a psu 
Hard to find datasheets on the ESI Juli@ and the GA-EP45-EXTREME

Anyone??

Would love to share my findings ofcourse.

This is NOT my pic, but can make some of these changes too. (even splitting the card of its analog part made SQ change)

[astacus21]

you can try isolate the power pinouts of pci bus and make a psu for your soundcard. Take a look at this:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_PCI_Pinout.html

[earflappin]

Hi Peter, any updates yet on your experimentation with different power supplies for your new StarTech outboard PCI expansion chassis?  i'm living vicariously through you on this ya know.....   

[PeterSt]

I planned to spend yesterday on this, but instead got involved in DAC stuff. Today I was out, and now it will be somewhere this week I'm afraid. Not before Wednesday.

I am as curious as you, but it really takes some time to set it all up, switch PSUs and stuff.

[PeterSt]

But before I forget to tell :

Yesterday I got the projector screen out of the ceiling, and it has got a kind of high current (surging) motor;
Getting it down was not a problem, but stopping it when it was down, was. The music PC rebooted. Ok, it was time to stop listening anyway (movie time), but not quite intentional.

All will imply that at stopping the motor a power peak will have occurred, and I guess the 0,000001nF capacitors in the (switching) PSU couldn't buffer the peak.

I may have told before that the 12V power connection to the board goes via a kind of loosish connector (coming from the brick), and it already happened that just touching the power cable a bit, caused a bick crack through the loud speakers.
Notice that the box is never to be powered down when the PC is running, nor should it be powered up then (it is not hot pluggable).

So, that we already know.
Peter

[PeterSt]

Back again on this one ... but I guess it will be my last post about it.

48 hours ago I brought the lot over to a friend's W7 machine;

The stereo was at a longer distance from the PC, so we started with a longer cable. Nothing. (this worked on my Vista)
A shorter cable - Nothing.
A short cable - bingo.
Next moved the PC towards the stereo, but ... nothing.
Huh ?
Many hours later I went back home without result.
Back home though ... nothing.
Huh ?
A driver had disappeared from my PC too, suddenly, but yesterday I found which (system, mobo) driver that was, downloaded that and restored it, but ... nothing.
Many many hours of attempts later, I just rebuilt everything as how it was before the expansion box, and now I have sound again.

In the mean time 48 hours no response from the supplier.

To me it looks like the W7 attempts have changed something to or the PCIe board, or the remote board. I can't tell. Anyway this obvioudly shouldn't happen. Something can just be (hardware) broken as well. Again, I can't tell.
Notice that PCI extension is a strange thing to begin with, and possibly this solution is just too cheap. If 300 euro is cheap ... but anyway, down the drain for me.

If I ever get an answer from the supplier I'll let you know. Especially if it is a stupid answer.

Prrrt
Peter

[earflappin]

Sorry to hear that!  In your experiment were you using the ExpressCard in a laptop or were you using a desk-top PC?  Dang, I was looking forward to hearing about the power supply experimentation.....   

[PeterSt]

The desktop.

As a kind of "last resort and prove what is going on" I wanted to try the ExpressCard, but in such a situation your laptop has to support that. The one I have here, sadly, does not. And I didn't hunt for a converter (which does exist (PCCard (PCMCIA II) to ExpressCard).

Well, I can only say I am sorry.

[earflappin]

No worries as the Aussies say....    Not your fault...you were just another victim of Murphy's Law....anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually when least expected....   

Hopefully StarTech tech support can fix the issue.  Otherwise you should demand a full refund.

[Nick]

Hi,
Just caught this thread on PCI power supplies and though I would post my experiences generally on PC power supply and power mods to PCI cards. Sorry for the long post, got a bit carried away but I hope it adds to the experience out there.


PC switched mode supplies seem to be bad news for audio. My experience is that different supplies give much better results than others but I got fed up with the hit and miss approach to buying ATx supplies on the chance they would improve sound quality so I ended up going down a different route....

I currently use a ATx supply (selected for low noise levels) for my CPU and mother board. For everything else the systems has external (outside the PC) linear laboratory bench power supplies (6 in total) on;

1) All cooling fans (nasty things for Sound Quality)

2) Hard drive (both 5v and 12v supplies) I only have one powered up while playing music

3) PCI USB card. The USB PCI card is where it gets more interesting. I have cut the supplies from the PC’s PCI bus to the card (got the PCI Bus standard pin from out on Wikipedia). I now have 3 high quality +5v and +3v linear supplies (Audiocom 2 X Q-Powers and 1 Invisius supply) physically on to the USB card. One supply runs the clock area of the card, one the main USB chipset on the card (see USB chip set note below) and the last seems to run the USB output drivers. In addition all of the bypass capacitors on the USB board have been upgraded for N Type Black Gates and OsCons. I started by powering the separate piggy back supplies from the PCs ATx supply but they now run from an external smoothed lab 12V lab supply outside the PC.

4) Not done this yet – but I want to mod an old Audiocom Superclock 3 that I have to 48mhz (common USB card frequency) to upgrade the PCI card USB clock. I expect this to be very effective from past experience.


The replacement of the USB PCI card bypass capacitors is very easy to do and easily audible - well worth the effort (even still running on the ATx powered PCI bus motherboard 5v and 3v rails). Cutting the PCI 3v and 5v rails on the USB card and running from the piggy back linear supplies makes a bigger difference (really cuts down on digital hash), using the external 12v lab supply better makes it better again.
Although my experience is with PCI USB cards this stuff will work on sound cards, if you have digital audio processing or particularly analogue audio functions (eg UDB, FireWire, SPDIF, Soundcard DACs, line level OP-Amp outputs etc) on your PCI board I would expect even bigger changes to sound with similar power supply mods.

Note on USB Chipsets - For other folks using PCI USB this may be useful in helping to home in on good sounding USB boards. My experience of on mother board USB has been poor with very little chance for upgrade. On the USB PCI card front I have tried most of the USB chipsets and a lot of boards for sound quality including NEC, VIA, OPTI samples. I have also tried PCI Express USB cards but most of these are just regular PCI USB cards (usually with an NEC chip set) with a PCI Express to PCI bus bridge chip on the card. By far the best cards for me have been normal PCI USB cards with the NVidia chipset, a much better sound and responds better of all to the power mods described above. The NVidia chipset takes some getting hold of but Startech USB cards still ship with NVidia. If anyone knows of any pro audio targeted cards I would be very interested.


Downstream outside the PC the power supply obsession continues I am using an M-Audio Transit for SPDIF conversion into my Audio Note DAC. The Transit card currently runs 6 separate supplies on the board feeding most of the important vcc rails on each of the 3 chips in the Transit card. These supplies are in turn powered by a Lab bench supply. In addition the Transit 6Mhz clock has been upgraded with a modified AudioCom Superclock 4 this also has its an additional separate AudioCom Invisius  +12v supply.
For my setup the power supply mods above have taken sound quality from a very high quality digital audio system into the realms of high quality analogue (vinal) playback. Well worth the time and effort.


Regards,
Nick.


Ps Peter, I have to say XX 09y-4 is absolutely stunning, thanks for a fantastic player,

[PeterSt]

Wow Nick, that really "sounds" fantastic !
Might you run into some ever made picture ... it should look impressive ...
But you don't need to of course.

I guess it just is all about this.
Peter

[earflappin]

Nick, thanks so much for your post!  This was exactly the kind of information I was looking for....someone who had actually run this type of experiment.  I use a Lynx AES16 PCI card that outputs AES/EBU to my DAC and want to try what you've done.  Can you provide a link to the site where you bought your power supplies?  How loud are the fans and are there any power supply alternatives which run silent?  Also, some pictures would be greatly appreciated when you have time!

Thanks again.  Greatly appreciated. 

[PeterSt]

How loud are the fans

Fans ? ... well. Maybe linear power supplies with fans exist hahaha

Only kidding.

[leifchristensen]

very nice comments Nick
just up my alley and something I´ll try in my own setup
what single psu update would you give first priority?
I now use asus p5k-e mobo spdif output x-former isolated to my buffalo dac but plan to run mobo usb to hiface-I2S to buffalo I2s input
best
Leif

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Just caught this thread on PCI power supplies and though I would post my experiences generally on PC power supply and power mods to PCI cards. Sorry for the long post, got a bit carried away but I hope it adds to the experience out there.

This is nice info Nick, Thnx for sharing your experience

What I'am interessed about is this:
I can only imagine what the difference would be when powering your soundcard seperatly, this is pretty important IMO. (also shielding and galvanic isolation ofcourse)
This is a must !

But would taking it step FURTHER, as in give the MoBo a seperate PSU plan, result in better SQ ?
Is this because of stable powering or reducing the EMI/RFI ?
And what should need a seperate psu: RAM, CPU, NB, SB, SSD or all?? and why ?
(hdd's, vga and fans (maybe 1 case fan in there) should already been removed)

And how about booting (start-up)(+12V line I belief is the one being switched)?

Very interesting discussion btw.

Roy

My mobo has like 7x +12V, 4x or more +5V and some +3,3V (what needs +3,3V ?)

[leifchristensen]

3,3 vdc is for harddiscs
best
Leif

[earflappin]

What about a linear power supply like this one?

http://www.aplab.com/pcc/ps03-a.htm

[PeterSt]

I don't recall the numbers anymore, but IIRC a ripple of 0.04% on the current is not sufficient to let (e.g.) Firewire run.

It will look interesting in your rack though.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

3,3 vdc is for harddiscs
best
Leif

Thnx,
 
Only 5V and 12V  is needed for newer hdd's, right?
SSD only needs 5V. (maybe cutting away some acces wiring)

If it can make a difference I will think about seperate PSU's on MB.
Maybe I wait for NOS1 first, then do a litttle experimenting.
First powering soundcard and clock, then maybe try sep. psu on MB.
In this order.

[earflappin]

Here's an interesting article relevant to this thread I just came across:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3467

Here is a link to the custom power supply referenced in this article:

http://sjostromaudio.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=27

[Nick]

All,

It’s nice to get so much interest and thanks for the comments. I have tried to answer some of the questions below, its only based on my setup eg USB in to a Transit card but I hope it helps...

I will post some pics but the system is not pretty, its spread out like a bad electronics project on the bench, the problem is its never finished  . I am on holidays right now so will take the shots next week and post them.

The fans I use are
CPU fan
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/intelcooling/cnps7000c
The fan comes with a little in line voltage controller to adjust fan speed, I set it quite slow, from a 3 or 4 feet away its hard to hear. You need a bit of clearance above the CPU though as the copper fins are quite tall.

Case fan
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/97858
These Akasa have worked well.
Power Supplies

I use Audiocom linear supplies these are very high quality and designed specifically for digital and analogue audio. Place then as close to the PCI board circuits as possible. I have about 12 X Q-Powers in total (now discontinued) and 3 of the invisius supplies (these are  extreamly good but quite expensive. I looked into making my own but done have the test kit needed to ensure they can meet the standards of the Audiocom kit.

Invisius 2 regulators
http://www.audiocominternational.com/product_detail.asp?id=14
I have been doing audio power mods for a few years now on audio and these things really are more than the sum of the parts.

Lab Bench Supplies
The first one I had hanging about just a 2 amp 0-30 volt, single rail old but nice, I use this one for the M-Audio Transit Audiocom supplies.

The second is a Maplin supply, I bought this in a hurry to see what could be done powering the PC. I probably would go for the third supply below though now.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=5925

The third is the nicest bench supply it’s a bit big but has 2 X 0 to 30v and 1 X 5v supplies. One thing to be aware of is that it has thermal cut in cooling fans which are quite loud. They cut in from time to time. At the volumes I listen at this is not much of a problem but they are quite loud (I keep meaning to see it I can replace the internal fans with some Akasa ones) .
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Triple-Output-DC-Bench-Power-Supply-0-30V-0-3A_W0QQitemZ320370820851QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_BOI_Electrical_Test_Measurement_Equipment_ET?hash=item4a9796c6f3

Leifchristensen
From my experience I would not go down the mobo USB route. I have tried onboard USB on 4 laptops 3 mobos and most have not been as good as the Startach NVidia chipset USB card. On board looks hard to upgrade so for what the Startech card costs (circa £20) I would give it a go.
http://www.startech.com/item/PCI625USB2I-Value-6-Port-USB-20-PCI-Card.aspx

I have found USB cables to have quite an effect on sound quality. I tried quite a few but in the end I bought a few meters of 0.5mm pure silver wire and PTFE insulation and made one up. You only need to have the quality wire for the USB signal and the signal earth (the USB +5v from the PC is best not used down stream at all but the cable wiring can just be hook up wire). I hacked the connectors from some cheep USB cables and platted the silver wire (two cores at lease for signal +ve and earth). The cable is un-shielded but is works lots better than standard cables 

For power supply upgrades I generally work in this order;
1)   Replace the bypass capacitors on the boards with Black Gates or OsCons. Both are getting hard to get now as black gate have stopped producing. IMO they are the best you can get for Audio particularly the red / purple N and Nx types well worth the extra cost.
2)   If I can work out how to do a clock upgrade (eg apply an Audiocom Supper clock) this almost always has a good effect.
3)   For a basic upgrade I try isolate the existing supply on the card (I usually just break the relevant PCB track) and apply the smoothed supply across the bypass capacitors for the power rail. Take care this can be point of no return stuff as broken surface mount PCB tracks are hard to reconnect 
4)   For the PCI cards I have worked on it seems fine to power these separately before the PC supply is switched on. When the PC boots everything seems to sync up fine.
5)   Next a bit of research, I look out the data sheets for the USB board / Transit Card / DAC chips in my system components. It helps to get a reasonable idea of what to go for, I usually concentrate on the boards Crystal clock / PPLs (phase lock loops) / digital line drivers (eg AES outputs) where I can work out where these are. For clever proprietary DSP ICs the chances are that the data sheets are not going to be available so then your back to looking at the existing power arrangements to work out where to break in to the supplies.
6)   I have found quite a lot of PC boards and Digital Audio boards are implemented with a view to keeping cost down. Reading the data sheets can throw up some interesting simple things. For instance my DAC AD1865 really responds well to separate earths for its digital and analogue rails. This is specifically mentioned in the DAC application notes data sheet but was not well implemented in my DAC.

The PCI Bus pin out for the power pins to look at is here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Local_Bus


With regards to mobo’s I have done the following based on part personal experiment and part reading what others have done.

I run a ASRock board. At the time the approach was to keep the system as simple as possible and to have plenty of horse power to spare for the music. In the end I went for;

1)   The simplest onboard video adaptor I could find (I read that sound cards seem to be bad news for Audio and experience has born this out to some degree).
2)   PCI bus expansion for my PCI USB card
3)   Generally a simple board because most of the extras were just going to be turned off and would only create RF and use processor and Bus time (eg minimum expansion slots etc etc)
4)   Bios with good level of control over the mobo systems as I want to turn most off them off. In particular turn off clock spreading on the CPU and this is like deliberately adding jitter to the CPU clock – doesn’t seem right for Audio .
5)   Finally I wanted a Bios that can load multiple configs as I wanted to rune dual boots one for audio with absolutely everything turned off and one for normal use.
6)   I did look at the mobo power supply (as far as possible from pics). I know that some are better than others but I already knew that I was going down the route of supply upgrades.

This is what I went for, its cheep but seems to put in a good performance.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=G43Twins-FullHD

I have not gone as far as a separate mobo power plan (so far )but I would not be surprised to hear that it worked for sound quality. Certainly for my system turning everything off either by bios setting and or by disconnecting if it’s not used works (eg CDROMS, A Drive, Additional Hard Drives etc). Using the lab bench supplies for fans the remaining hard drive and PCI USB card is also good for sound.


Best Regards,

Nick.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I will read all tomorrow Nick,

But again THNX for your great effort much appreciated.
 

Enjoying some Jan Akkerman - 1994 - Blues Hearts over here.

[PeterSt]

Nick,

On behalf of everyone, me not the least ... a great THANKS for your valuable efforts in the first place, and taking all this time to eleborate in the second. Really, REALLY appreciated !

Best regards,
Peter

[earflappin]

UPDATE -

After further investigation I decided to take a different tact on the topic of eliminating EMI/RFI noise and jitter induced in the AES/SPDIF ouput of computer music servers which degrades sound quality in the DAC.  Specifically, using an Antelope Isochrone DA AES/SPDIF reclocker in between the computer and the DAC.  The improvement it made in my system was immediate and very significant and I think it is a more comprehensive, simple and cost effective solution than using linear power supplies for the PC and PCI/PCIe cards.

Antelope is a leading provider of clocking solutions for the pro audio world.  Basically, the DA electrically isolates the incoming AES/SPDIF input from the computer, buffers it and reclocks the ouput using a very high quality clock.  This approach strips off incoming electrical noise and reduces jitter.  Since the Lynx AES16 card already has reportedly low jitter the greater impact may be one of just electrical noise isolation.

The sound quality improvements are truly significant.  I'd go so far to say this one component has made the biggest impact of any single component in my system except for when I changed my speakers to a high efficiency two way.  Without the DA in the system it is clear the ENTIRE sonic spectrum is being smeared or blurred.  With the DA the sound is more focused, clear, tonally rich, precise, detailed AND glare is reduced.  I would use the analogy of the difference between a blurred picture versus one in proper focus.

I suspect any good reclocker would give similar results, but I'm not going to try others (such as the Grimm Audio CC1).  The DA is not cheap at $1000, but compared to buying linear power supplies for the PC, PCI expansison chassis, not to mention the hassle, I think its a good deal.

I got mine from Sweetwater Audio which has a good return policy so it was a great risk free way to try. 

[JuanPabloCuervo]

UPDATE -

using an Antelope Isochrone DA AES/SPDIF reclocker in between the computer and the DAC.  The improvement it made in my system was immediate and very significant and I think it is a more comprehensive, simple and cost effective solution than using linear power supplies for the PC and PCI/PCIe cards.

Antelope .../... the DA electrically isolates the incoming AES/SPDIF input from the computer, buffers it and reclocks the ouput using a very high quality clock.  This approach strips off incoming electrical noise and reduces jitter.  Since the Lynx AES16 card already has reportedly low jitter the greater impact may be one of just electrical noise isolation.

The sound quality improvements are truly significant. 

I suspect any good reclocker would give similar results, but I'm not going to try others (such as the Grimm Audio CC1).  The DA is not cheap at $1000, but compared to buying linear power supplies for the PC, PCI expansison chassis, not to mention the hassle, I think its a good deal.

this remembers me this post, that says the Antelope DA does not Reclock.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Antelope-DA-Review#comment-33539
but thats only valid with the THRU AES Out, the other AES outs are reclocked, crazy post there.

anyway...
i use transformer isolation,
ETSLan.com Pa-813 vs. Canare bcj-a10tra
i like more the ETS.

becouse i have to use the s/pdif input of the converter, my converter does not have wordclock or AES/EBU input,

i like to use "no s/pdif cable", just the balun and the BNC-to-RCA-male adapter.
sound changes if adding an s/pdif cable, and all cables seem to sound a bit diferent, i was about to go crazy with s/pdif cables.
"the best cable its no cable."

from the AES/EBU out of the Lynx AES16.
"becouse AES16 does not have s/pdif out."

i also have the Drawmer M-Clock DMS-1, and it does have S.R.C. based reclock.
but i like more to send the clock to the soundcard by AES/EBU, and disable SynchoLock(TM).

usign the SRC reclock, sounds a bit strange, something changes, and that small diference can be measured with RMAA Audio Rightmark,
if doing 1:1 reclock the diference its small, but from 44.1k to 96k or from 96k to 44.1k, the sound changes too much becouse the reclocking algorithms.
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-shoot-outs-sound-file-comparisons-audio-tests/348088-http-src-infinitewave-ca-src-comparisons.html

this thread, its a bit strange becouse ive never heard those EMI & RFI interferences you are talking about with the equipmen i have now, "similar to yours"

once i had a behringer ada8000 and yamaha dsp factory ds2416 with ADAT card,
and i could hear the PC Hard Drive reading & writing in the amplifier/loudspeakers like a fax modem or something.

it was an AC power issue, & bad shielded cables from DAC to amplifiers,
becouse interference cannot be transmitter by ADAT, its optically isolated
 and ADAT its the only connection possible to the Soundcard from the ADA8000, also i didnt had the WC cable becouse the Yamaha soundcard didnt had WC I/Os.
i was usign the ADAT clock, ADA8000 master, soundcard slave becouse it did sounded better.

but with Lynx AES16 ?
your problem must be in the AC power, & cables not shielded, also the DAC & amplifier sensitive Power supplys.
but any decent component to component AC power isolation & filtering should solve the problem...
equipment like: Leveler iPure, Furman P-1800 PF or AR or IT, or Monster mpp7000ss or PSAudio.com
and Monster Powerline 300 or 400 Pro AC cables or Oyaide shileded power cables ...

now i have a cooler master m700 PSU and works ok,
the MSI X58 Eclipse motherboard has a BIOS setting to reduce EMI & RFI spikes generated by the i7 920 cpu, but i have never had a problem with that feature turned off.

the only problem i have now its the Sharing IRQ with the video card and low buffer samples, i did not have that issue with older motherboard Asus P5W DH Deluxe.
now i have to use 16-Bit color to improove the soundcard at low buffer settings.
pitch starts to go crazy first, then clicks & pops "Audio Drop outs."

but tha EMI & RFI interference must be AC Power issue & bad shielded cables.

DC in the AES/EBU its rare, and sometimes its usefull, like Mutec iClock has an user selectable DC offset for the AES Black outs.
but anyway CommonMode noise can be blocked with Transformer isolation CMRR, and ETS Lan transformers sounds great to my ears, becouse it does not degrade the AES/EBU signal, & has higher bandwith.

[GerardA]

Very Interesting

but anyway CommonMode noise can be blocked with Transformer isolation CMRR, and ETS Lan transformers sounds great to my ears, becouse it does not degrade the AES/EBU signal, & has higher bandwith.

I put a Lundahl 1572 isolation transformer between PC and DAC and have very positive results.
The sound is more enjoyable, more analog like. Cristalclean highs, sweet mids and very natural bass.
So yes there is a lot of RFI-noise coming out of the PC by SPDIF.
This solution costs only 20 euro and a cap of 30 cents and a piece of wire...

And the rest will be jitter which will have to be cured by the italian reclocker talked about here before.

(Nice Christmas and happy newyear to everybody!)

[HiFiTubes]

For those non-tweakers there are store-bought solutions out here in the wilderness.

Addonics box (or similar) can be connected via eSata to the new mini-ITX motherboards, and my board runs on an 80w "laptop style" PSU (picoPSU) with a 45w AMD dual-core.

There are some nice external sound cards that can be used as transports, or you can get a more reasonable external, slap a linear supply on it, and mod if for BNC. Honestly, I don't know why many have not started with a BNC mod first (RCA digital coax bugs the heck out of me). You can even add a nice clock to this sound card. I happen to use the 1616M which is still PCI based but I have pretty low lower going on in the PC and I may get anal and go with linears all my gear (1616M, motherboard, AEA ribbon, and Black Sparrow - I'm not going to mess with batteries).

So, with the low power power mini-ITX stuff you have one SSD, off board separate power for HD but still connected with a wire (no NAS please for many reasons), and you could even use a linear supply on the  board because they are 12v at 6.5A IIRC.

I lost the site but they had linears for about $300. Given this idea that you could get a somewhat affordable linear for a mini-ITX I think you could use any PCI based-card. So, I just wanted to point out that the Pc tech. is get smaller and more efficient and allows more flexibility without having to custom design or DIY everything imo.

Happy New Year everyone.
HiFi

[Marcin_gps]

I try to isolate my sound card as much as possible from PC's noisy environment and came up with an idea to buy sth like this for my Cantatis Overture sound card:

- http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-express-to-pci-expansion-box-p29809.html

OR even better

- http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pcie-4-x-pci-expansion-atx-kit.html with Pico/linear PSU combo

What do you think about it? I know that Peter considered sth like that...
Greets,
Marcin

[pedal]

This is really a no-brainer. Practically all PC powersupplies are rubbish switchmode or semi-rubbish switchmode quality, both letting through and generating new distorition into the audio signal, digital and analoge.

Upgrading to external powersupply is probably one of the best upgrades you can do to a media-PC. Unfortunately there is not so many to choose from. My dream is to find (or build) an overkill linear powersupply meeting the ATX standard with the 3 voltages:
+5V     for motherboard electronics, disk drives and cards
+12V   for disk drives and some cards
+3.3V  for the majority of modern logic electronics in motherboard
-12V   for some accessory cards

(Heat/silent cooling is also an issue. May it should feature big passive cooling wings?)


If anybody can find such a thing, please inform me!


EDIT: Here is a link to DIY Audio about the same thing: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/100095-linear-pc-power-supply.html

[PeterSt]

I know of a company who just put into production a linear PSU at the size of a matchbox, especially made for PCs (ATX connections). No fan in that matchbox as well, hahaha.

I am not sure it is too early to tell about though, and I don't think they have a sales channel for it yet. But since I am a customer there already ... who knows. The price is (don't laugh) around a 100 euro.
The "inventor" of it is an audio freak himself ...

I don't know how good it really is, as I didn't have it in my hands myself. IIRC 5Amps can be drawn from it.

[pedal]

This is very interesting. If they do it "right" I think they can sell hundreds, as PC-audio is catching on.

Mass-production, universal technology and the "China-effect" has brought down the price and lifted the performance on all kinds of stereo equipment. That's a fact, and that's very fortunate for all of us. Today you can purchase a "highend" system at unbelivable low price. But, there are still some factors which cannot be bought cheap. One of them is oversized clean power supplies. Here, I belive there are big improvements to be made.

A couple of years ago, Stereophile published jitter measurements from a Mac laptop running on its battery vs. the standard external switchmode powersupply. The jitter increased 10-fold with the switchmode in use...

[manisandher]

Yes, this is one of the things I used to like about using a laptop - the SQ went up audibly on unplugging the SMPS and running on battery.

I still think a laptop can be a 'good' solution... but I no longer think it can be the 'best' solution.

Mani.

[Marcin_gps]

I know of a company who just put into production a linear PSU at the size of a matchbox, especially made for PCs (ATX connections). No fan in that matchbox as well, hahaha.

I am not sure it is too early to tell about though, and I don't think they have a sales channel for it yet. But since I am a customer there already ... who knows. The price is (don't laugh) around a 100 euro.
The "inventor" of it is an audio freak himself ...

I don't know how good it really is, as I didn't have it in my hands myself. IIRC 5Amps can be drawn from it.

That's great news!!! Update us if you find out more 

pedal,

you could always buy a Pico PSU and feed both, p4 and p24 with the linear psu like Peaktech 6080 through the pico psu. It's very easy to implement and quite cheap as well. I would probably go with Pico+Peaktech combo myself unless Peter reveals some revelations about linear ATX psu available soon 

[Marcin_gps]

Yes, this is one of the things I used to like about using a laptop - the SQ went up audibly on unplugging the SMPS and running on battery.

I still think a laptop can be a 'good' solution... but I no longer think it can be the 'best' solution.

Mani.

A laptop isn't that good solution IMHO. The components inside are very close to each other (noisy environment).

[pedal]

About PeakTech:

I googled a little and it seems like it's a German company. Here is their website: http://www.peaktech.de/products/kategorie/dc-netzgeraete.html

They are specialized in "hospital grade equipment". Seems they have DC PSU in 2 categories: Linear and Switching Mode. (Maybe they sell linear to hospital enviroments which are sensitive to RF radiation?)
Judging from their product range, there are several options. To replace a ATX psu I have to buy 4 pcs PeakTech 6080? Is that so? Or maybe another model?

Anyone with some experience here?

[Marcin_gps]

You need one Pico PSU (preferably 150xt) and one Peaktech 6080 to power P4 and P24 sockets on your motherboard. Use your old SMPS ATX PSU to feed all the "dirty" components like hard drives and optical drives.

PS
I got response from VirtuaVia. They say that the PCI-E to PCI expansion case isn´t powered anyhow by the pci
extension cable or motherboard's pci slot.

[Telstar]

I use the Winmate dc-dc psu with a switching psu (gateway 150W). It's not linear but i think it improved things comparing to the internal psu i was using before.
I'm going to build an OUTPUT filter/distributor for all the switching-equipment that I have to isolate the audio chain (i.e. the amplifiers and the dac).

RFI is produced by the computer itself, isolating it with a transformer or other means is very important IF a digital or analog signal comes from it.I'm waiting to find out the NOS1 computer interface before mumbling further.

[manisandher]

I try to isolate my sound card as much as possible from PC's noisy environment and came up with an idea to buy sth like this for my Cantatis Overture sound card:

- http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-express-to-pci-expansion-box-p29809.html

Marcin, thanks for posting this. I've just ordered one of these and will let you know how it works.

I went for the low-powered version because I think 38W is enough to power my single RME AES card. Also, I want to use a linear AC-DC 12V supply, which itself will be powered by an AC-DC-AC regenerator. All this with a view to getting the cleanest 5V AES signal out of the RME card.

Including shipping and VAT, this solution has cost more than I was hoping for - around €275! But it might be worth every penny...

Mani

[Marcin_gps]

It might be, but there is another factor - long cable. I don't know if it's such a good thing for audio. Anyway, I'm looking forward to your impressions. 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Whats the difference with this one, I believe this is already on Peter's pile of audio stuff.
http://www.startech.com/item/PEX2PCIE4L-PCI-Express-to-2-PCI-Full-Length-2-PCIe-Single-lane-Expansion-Box.aspx

I though this topic started of with this one.

[PeterSt]

Oh boy ... Roy is right. And I didn't respond to Marcin's post about it because I thought he clearly suggested that I had it (a bit fuzzy because it was under another brand name).

What do you think about it? I know that Peter considered sth like that...

So Mani, you could have bought mine ...

If you replace the PSU it will work allright, unless it stops working. This happened to me, and I never got any replies to my emails. I must honestly say I never called either, something to be done with real troubles of course.
By now I forgot what exactly happened to my PC at the time, but some crucial OS driver had removed itself, and this couldn't be noticed by something else. Only the exclamation mark in the hardware list indicated it, which I really didn't notice because I often have some of those. .
By the time you have problems with it, I will be able to help I think, because in the end I made pictures of settings and things.
But maybe it won't happen to you at all.

I think by itself this is a nice solution for these kind of things, because it is affordable. A year back it was not. But change that PSU (you can assemble one in the box itself).

Peter

[Marcin_gps]

Peter, were there any noticeable improvements with this case?

I'd really appreciate your response.
M.

[PeterSt]

Hi Marcin - How to answer this ...

Like Mani, I bought it as soon I learned it was there. And, at the time I thought to serve you all to test it and see what can be done with it, just because I (think I) have the experience at investigating these kind of things longer ago (deeply). I could measure, etc. So, I got it running at first which lasted two days before it died on me; I never got round to any testing in those two days. Then I waited for a couple of weeks on answers from the supplier, which I never got.
This all was at the time I was using Vista, and of which I noticed in the end the not-working driver for "something". When I went to W7 (already a few months later), the exclamation mark had gone, and for fun I tried the box again. And surprise, it worked again.
But I really lost my interest in it, and never did anything with it anymore.

The only thing I can tell is when you use it as is, switching on the television may reboot your system. So, when I had it working in the beginning (the two days) I had a sufficient amount of reboots which I could dedicate to switching on something, that I judged it as "no good". However, since I planned to use a linear PSU for it, I didn't care all *that* much about this, assuming this caused it.

All 'n all you can say I never tested it as planned, but what I saw of it right out of the box didn't make me happy (and IIRC $400 more poor).

That's all,
Peter

[Marcin_gps]

Peter, thanks for a reply I'd rather buy sth like this http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-express-to-pci-adapter-p29855.html
and power it by a linear PSU, but I am not 100% sure if this adapter gets the power from a motherboard or is it completely powered through the molex.

[PeterSt]

Usually the molex connection does something additional. Hmm ...

But somehow it seems you look at it the other way around, I think. This card allows a PCI card on top of it, and it has a molex output for ... tell me !? Not for itself. Not for a random PCI card because they just don't need it. They exist of course (GPUs), but ...

But maybe you get it better than I do ...

[Marcin_gps]

Are you saying, that the molex is there to feed the adapter? LOL If so, then I don't need this cr*p :D

[PeterSt]

No, I don't say that. I just don't understand what it is for !
And you don't either I think. Hahaha

But you can always buy one. They will selll it for a reason.

[Marcin_gps]

I know what's the original purpose of this adapter, but it would be the easiest way for me to deliver clear power from a linear PSU to my sound card through it.

[wushuliu]

I know power conditioning can be a touchy subject for some but since we all are after the same goal of the best sound we can achieve (particularly w/ noisy components like PCs), here are some of my tweaks that I use with all my audio components, learned from other forums over the years.

1. DIY power conditioner w/ Hammond Choke
   
    This is a very simple DIY that is extremely effective.  All you need is a Hammond 193L or 193M choke, some wire, and a male IEC.
   
     http://www.hammondmfg.com/193.htm
    http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/LEVITON-MANUFACTURING-835-515PR-/64-020
     (or equivalent for your country)

      The choke has two wires. Simply insert one wire into the Line/Hot of the plug, and the other into the Neutral. Plug into wall closest to your setup. That's it! Doesn't matter which wire you use. If the length is too short simply extend it with more wire (preferably soldered).

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=40168

It doesn't look sexy, but it's a) cheap and b) better than spending $700 on the commercial equivalent:

http://www.stereotimes.com/acc010500.shtml

This is just two of many threads, most of which are on Audio Asylum:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=10310.20.
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=tweaks&m=145262

If you doubt what it will do for your a/c and sound, plug it in next to your TV. After a day I guarantee you will not want to take it out.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention it because with computers noise is such a big problem and this simple DIY is a relatively cheap way to make a big impact on your music...

2. For those people using a desktop/tower PC for music I recommend upgrading your power cord. I have just recently switched my stock cord with this:

http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PGAC14SE

It lowered the noise floor of my PC and improved audio quality. They also have a cheaper version, but I can't vouch for that. I think the improvement is due to a combination of improved shielding and larger gauge wire. Larger gauge power cords (of the same design) usually sound better regardless of application.

The DIY choke however is several magnitudes better in terms of improvement.

hope this was of some help

w

[peranders]

Here's an interesting article relevant to this thread I just came across:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3467

Here is a link to the custom power supply referenced in this article:

http://sjostromaudio.com/pages/hifi-projects/36-hifi-projects/97-jsr03-sjoestroem-super-regulator

Thought I mention that I have improved the regulator. I kind person in New York has done some measurements. 921 nanovolt noise!

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/20937-super-regulator-collecting-facts-15.html#post2132153
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/20937-super-regulator-collecting-facts-14.html#post1824991
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/20937-super-regulator-collecting-facts-14.html#post1986153

Check the green and cyan curve.

[Nick]

I made a post some time ago to the thread and said I would post some pictures of my modified M-Audio Transit. Its taken some time but here we go in case they are of interest.

Transit circuit, with super clock 4 modified to 6Mhz, two invius regulated supplies (3.3v and 5V), 4 Q-Power supplies (5v) and Black Gate decoupling caps throughout. I have picked up the SPDIF output and converted from optical to electrical output.

Its a real birds nest of wiring  but musicaly rather good to listen to.

Close up of top side of Transit

Rear of transit showing positions of Black Gate decoupling caps

I am now using a HiFace which is similar in performance to the modified Transit (it seems that USB chips and implemtations have moved on a lot since the Transit was designed). If it were not for Peters NOS DAC I would be working on the HiFace (I think has great potential) but dosen't seem worth it if the Pasure NOS DAC might be availabe soon.


Nick

[Marcin_gps]

Nick, thanks for posting the photos. Unfortunately I got rid of my Transit card, instead I use PCI sound card - Cantatis Overture. I've been thinking about psu mod, but I'm not sure if it'd be cost-effective.

[Marcin_gps]

Nick, are you still using Startech PCI USB controller for hiface or like your sig says, motherboard's controller? Did you compare those two? (disabling onboard controller when using PCI card)

I'd really appreciate if you made a comparison for me. Do you have similar experiences with FireWire controllers? Are those worth attention? I'm asking, because I'm about to build ultimate music server for my friend - based on OrigenAE case and the best components only. If the FireWire in his dCS Elgar Plus won't be good enough, then we'll go with RME HSDP AES-32 or HSDPe AES-32 (if it's better).

[manisandher]

If the FireWire in his dCS Elgar Plus won't be good enough, then we'll go with RME HSDP AES-32 or HSDPe AES-32 (if it's better).

Marcin,

I'm pretty certain you can't use the Elgar's firewire input to connect it to a PC. The firewire input is designed to connect the Elgar to other dCS units (like their CD/SACD transports and upsampling units). They used firewire to allow for the high data rates required by SACD.

Of course, the newer dCS units can be connected directly to a PC, but via async USB, and not firewire.

If your friend is interested in using the Elgar's dual-wire AES inputs, then he has three options (there may be more):
1. the RME AES-32 (PCI or PCIe)
2. the Lynx AES16 (PCI or PCIe)
3. one of the Weiss units: AFI1 (with w/c IO) or INT202 (without w/c IO)

HTH,
Mani.

[gonzalito]

Recently, I did some experimentation with reducing EMI/RFI inside my Zalman PC.  Basically I took some ERS cloth (known for its EMI/RFI absorptive qualities), put it in a plastic bag (its conductive material!) and carefully encased my Lynx AES16 card.  The improvement was immediate.  Noise was reduced and SQ improved, specifically, richer tonality and increased micro/macro detail.  Has anyone else experimented in this area?   I've also put some ERS on my Zalman PSU with good results.  Next, I'm going to try putting some ERS on the IC chips on the Lynx.  The ERS is OK with high temp applications and the Lynx card doesn't run hot anyway.

earflappin,

Could you please post some pics of your "experiment" of encasing the sound card with ERS cloth and the plastic bag? I was wondering about doing the same with my Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 Xtreme...

Thanks in advance,

Regards!

[earflappin]

Gonzalito,

Unfortunately I am unable to post any pictures as I have since sold my Zalman TNN-300 silent PC music server with the AES16 PCI card in which I had encased the AES16 with ERS cloth.  What I can tell you is that I felt I heard some improvement, although I did not conduct a double blind test.  The only thing I would caution is that the ERS cloth is conductive and you do not want to let it make direct contact with the PCI for risk of shorting out the board.  That is why I used a plastic bag to encase the ERS cloth.  The AES16 board does not run hot so there is little, if any, risk of melting the bag.  Bottom line, all I can say is give it a try and let your ears be the judge.

Best

[praphan]

Hi Gonzalito,

I use ERS cloths to encase the Lynx AES 16 too. Earflappin is right that the cloth is conductive. But instead of using plastic bag to shield the cloth to pcb, I use clear plastic sheets that you may recycle from candy or chocolate boxes. You can use this plastic sheet to custom made a "shield box" for the Lynx card and then attach ERS cloth to all side of the shield box using double side tape.

regards,
Praphan

[gonzalito]

Thanks both of you, earflappin and Praphan, for your answers.

Praphan,

Was the improvement very noticeable?

[praphan]

To be honest, not a "wow" improvement. But worth a try. You will have a slightly darker abckground.

[peranders]

A big (super) regulator test can be found in Linear Audio's volume 4.

http://linearaudio.nl

http://www.linearaudio.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=85&Itemid=115