A 'HiFi' computer music player.

[Spirit]

As in, how am I doing the streaming?
Over ethernet?

Will store music on ssd when they're big enough...

[Deleted]

Phil
I am only suggesting that you LISTEN before you decide, so that you can better judge for yourself what may be the best approach.
What Jeff is using is best discussed with him. It's what he has accomplished that is far more important. After all, Jeff and yourself don't live that far from each other, do you ?
Alex

[Spirit]

I'm all ears

Just didn't know *what* he'd done...

I know he drives past every Tuesday night for tennis... and I don't believe it's that far away.

[robertkd]

Jul 28, 2009 3:06:08 GMT Spirit said:

As in, how am I doing the streaming?
Over ethernet?

Will store music on ssd when they're big enough...

urm I suspect you mean cheap enough after all Suns 7410 with 12TB SSD array is likely "big enough" just a tad expensive at USD $57.5K

suspect latency wouldn't be an issue either,...

[Spirit]

Yeah it's entirely possible I meant cheap enough... but big enough too.
I have ~300gb of music, with that set to increase a fair bit...
Currently the largest ssd is 250gb, and it all needs to go on one drive due to space considerations...

[Will]

Too many projects, not enough time/money!!

If Jeff wants to share his thoughts I'd be very interested, as well.

My thoughts are still a mini-itx board, operating system on a compact flash ide drive, media on a 'silent' drive. Of course, the whole thing would be damped to high heaven! The mainboard would be powered by a linear supply, with the audio HDD having it's own separate supply.

Of course, any experience, anecdotes would be great!

Phil, I'm looking at Spdif as my main output. I read in a couple of places that you can use the digital part of of ESI's Juli@ board by itself, by pulling off the analogue section of the card (it's designed to do this) I must get confirmation from ESi about this though.

[Spirit]

I've also read you can tap the i2s stream directly off the julia too... something else to look into perhaps?

edit: www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=102851&highlight=

[Will]

I'm pretty sure that Minivan has done this, Phil, but I maybe wrong.

[Spirit]

Ah yes! I seem to recall you may well be right.

[jeffc]

Guys,

Sorry to be late to the party here, I'm as much all ears as I have ideas. Alex seems to have arrived at a very nice PC setup simply by judicious damping with felt and 3M 2552 tape. Re PC/MAC music server/media centre, you could really go to town with silent/fanless systems, solid state HDDs, linear PSUs, Blu-ray writer, damping to the clappers.

My short term fix has been a Dell Latitude D630 intel core2-duo laptop, relatively quite, with all externals incl a dedicated 1Tb Samsung stillpoint HDD for .wav file storage and LG blu-ray writer, both with as much damping control I can muster, including extensive 3M 2552 tape useage. Battery (3700mAh NiMH 4 x subC for model aircraft) powered Trends USB DAC used for headphone duties or to supply other DACs like my moded CS4397 cheapo via S/PDIF or supply a Banzai CMOY amp via 3.5 mm plugged cable, just for added grunt/hearing loss through temptation to crank up the vol . Sound quality from .wav files played back using XXHE or Creative Media Centre Player pretty darn fantastic already IMHO, but who knows the limits of PC-based audio. Ask Alex and I've yet to test XXHE engine #3 for Vista which from reports blows away any other media player on the planet.

Still the laptop is a short term fix and I'd like a dedicated box with all SATA cabling like Alex has to minimize opportunities for losses, so as said, I'm all ears for good ideas you guys can come up with.

cheers.. jeffc

[Spirit]

Jul 28, 2009 2:02:22 GMT @sandyk said:

Phil
I would respectfully suggest that you visit Jeff and have a listen to what he has achieved, before embarking on that route. Unless of course you are willing to settle for mediocre music playback.
Alex

Now knowing what Jeff *is* using, I'm failing to see how what I've proposed will be 'mediocre' at all. If anything, it should be a fair bit superior as it won't have ANY moving parts... and an SSD hdd... which to me negates the need for any damping...

This will be a purely playback machine... any ripping will be done with another, that could be damped should I see fit...

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2009 3:48:49 GMT Spirit said:

Jul 28, 2009 2:02:22 GMT @sandyk said:

Phil
I would respectfully suggest that you visit Jeff and have a listen to what he has achieved, before embarking on that route. Unless of course you are willing to settle for mediocre music playback.
Alex

Now knowing what Jeff *is* using, I'm failing to see how what I've proposed will be 'mediocre' at all. If anything, it should be a fair bit superior as it won't have ANY moving parts... and an SSD hdd... which to me negates the need for any damping...

This will be a purely playback machine... any ripping will be done with another, that could be damped should I see fit...

Phil
The major losses of SQ are during the ripping to the HDD,whether solid state,SATA,or IDE. The SQ is defined by the quality of the Optical device used to rip the .wav files to the HDD. The LG BR writer which both Jeff and myself,TonyG and a couple of other members are using, is superior in this area in comparison with a normal CD/DVD writer, most likely due to the pereformance of it's optical block, with the requirements for tighter focussing and less jitter needed for tracking the much finer pitch of a Blue Ray disc. Sound and vibration deadening of the LG BR writer further improves it's performance. I have also tried saving files via SPDIF IN, from my modified Oppo SACD/DVD-A player, with added dampening and other mods, but not 3M tape. The SQ was better than that from the internal Pioneer writer, but could not match that from the internally mounted BR writer.
Interestingly, the difference between .wav files made from 24/192 DVD-A rips, made both before and after dampening with the 3M tape is far more obvious than with normal 44.1/16 bit recordings. The Benchmark USB DAC even claims to be able to reduce the SQ differences between rips done using different quality transports by eliminating jitter. After listening to one yesterday, I would agree that the SQ when using USB compared with SPDIF via this DAC seemed almost identical. It was however unable to make earlier rips by the Pioneer writer sound as good as recent rips using the dampened LG BluRay writer.
Gavin, Alan,Nick and a few other RG and DIYAudio members haver also heard these differences directly from my PC.
Yes, great care was taken to ensure that ALL compared files had identical checksums. Several other members,including Jeff,Leo,Miguel, Sol,and Will have also listened to uploaded examples and verified these differences. Many of these results have not been posted.
Alex

[jeffc]

Hey Phil/Will,

PC-based high end audio seems to me to be a big fat Tassie oyster ready to be cracked open and sucked down raw, kicking on the way down, with salivary glands salivating and taste buds in ecstasy, loins in a state of XXXXX .... starting to sound like MERTON here. I've had a dabble, Alex has had a dabble, and through experimenting with tweaking off the shelf gear we've been getting a taste for just how far PC audio SQ limits can be pushed. However, neither of us believe we're there yet, close maybe, but not there. ;D

Looking forward to you dabbling too to take this to the next level, which I'm sure there is. Off to Umart, Computer Alliance for the goodies lads. You and Will seem to have the homework mostly done, just remember to hit up Alex for some 3M 2552 tape to dampen those heat spreaders on the RAM modules .

cheers.. jeffc

[Deleted]

You and Will seem to have the homework mostly done, just remember to hit up Alex for some 3M 2552 tape to dampen those heat spreaders on the RAM modules .

Jeff
I haven't even gone there yet.
I will leave something that radical to others to verify first.
I'm copping enough disbelief as it is , without suggesting something that radical ! For the moment, I will concentrate on finishing my Class A HA for the PC, so that I can more easily hear small differences that may (or may not !) come from stuff like that.
Alex

[jeffc]

Hi Alex,

Sorry to be frivolous with that last post, I haven't damped RAM heat spreaders, yet ;D, and not good form of me to lead anyone astray or to dobb you in for 3M tape testing in this particular application ;D. But who knows until someone gives it a go.

I was simply trying to make the point that PC-based audio seems to have enormous potential and is ripe for more explorations like those we've been dabbling in.

cheers.. jeffc

[Deleted]

Jeff
I still believe that the quality of the power supply for the writer (in particular,but not exclusively) used for ripping the .wav files has a part to play as well. A simple LC filter may be a good starting point there as a toe in the water. It should be quite easy to insert this in a jiffy box between the PC power supply and the +5 and +12V lines to the Optical device. You could feed from a 4 pin molex supply plug through the LC filters to a SATA PSU lead .
Alex

[robertkd]

mmm interesting I may have missed something but I thought that mechanically coupling a large mass to "something" meant that the "vibrations" where absorbed by the large mass e.g. "the cement" and turned into heat

I am also curious as to eight fourteen modulation (or 8-14-mod plus on dvd) in that if the bit stream read from the disc is decoded then effectively the "actual data" is made in the electronics and is not the data read from the bit stream??

If the resultant files are the same at the binary level, my question is how can there be a difference, after all 0xb01101101 is the same as 0xb01101101

Robert

[Deleted]

If the resultant files are the same at the binary level, my question is how can there be a difference, after all 0xb01101101 is the same as 0xb01101101

Robert

So on that basis,you are prepared to reject out of hand,that there may be other mechanisms at work that affect the reproduced audio, and that all the RG members who have heard differences between so called "bit perfect" files are all delusional ?
Again , I would remind that the article in HI FI Choice also stated that ripped PC files were vastly inferior to the same files ripped and played by an expensive Naim hardware player. Obviously, those experienced reviewers are delusional too ?
You were also offered download details on several occasions, but I suppose that you had already decided that they couldn't possibly sound different ?
Alex

[robertkd]

Aug 9, 2009 11:17:57 GMT @sandyk said:

If the resultant files are the same at the binary level, my question is how can there be a difference, after all 0xb01101101 is the same as 0xb01101101

Robert

So on that basis,you are prepared to reject out of hand,that there may be other mechanisms at work that affect the reproduced audio, and that all the RG members who have heard differences between so called "bit perfect" files are all delusional ?
Again , I would remind that the article in HI FI Choice also stated that ripped PC files were vastly inferior to the same files ripped and played by an expensive Naim hardware player. Obviously, those experienced reviewers are delusional too ?
You were also offered download details on several occasions, but I suppose that you had already decided that they couldn't possibly sound different ?
Alex

indeed I ask the question if the data is the same then how can it sound different?

if you install software using these "damped drives" does it run better, different? do you feel warm and fuzzy,... I think not.

strange not one mention of encoding and decoding (8-14-mod) as I say the bit stream from the optical block is demodulated electronically before being output from the drive.

All I'm doing is asking questions, and you post the preposition that if "I don't believe" I am inferring that other members are delusional.

How about instead of inferring that i am a moron you tell me how it works ;D

[Deleted]

For a limited time only, a copy of the HiFiChoice article referred to.
Why do they find that "bit perfect" rips from CDs are vastly inferior to those from the Naim hardware player, after all, the Naim player would be also getting the same "bit perfect" files from it's internal CD reader, then transferring it to it's selected HDD ?

Image removed due to copyright reasons.
Alex

[jkeny]

Sandyk,
I agree with you about PC audio up to this point - I, like robertkd, just can't see any mechanism whereby this bit perfect copy of the original source can sound any different from another bit perfect copy on the same HDD.

In your other PC audio premises, I tend to agree with you as I can understand how PS perturbations can effect playback - even if they arise because of background processes in the OS or heavier processor loads from different software. I've come to this position from various reading rather than direct experience but what is often forgotten is that so called digital is only digital when it's stored on the disk in binary bits - once it leaves this disk it becomes analogue as a voltage level then has to represent a 1 and another voltage level a 0 - all this in reference to a voltage reference - this is analogue!!!

Hmm, I think this might require a bit more research as to possible mechanisms - i.e what is the physical/electrical method used to represent bits on disk? It's width (& depth) of pits on a CD, I think & there are variations in these pits between different CD-R, CD-RW types & writers. So even though the data is considered bit perfect the heads need to do more work to retrieve the same bit perfect data from one disk than from another. Is this the mechanism whereby different CD's sound different? Can this concept be applied to HDD's in some other way?

[robertkd]

Alex,

Well there was not one fact in that article it's all based on the writers view point and I am sure the group he represents would like to sell more of these devices.

As for the data from the disc, you need to consider the requirement to encode/decode from the optical bit stream. This means that the data is encoded so that the resultant bit stream will not contain more then a number x, of consecutive 1's or 0's this is important to keep the decode data clock rate locked, and its encoding is based on NRZI. The encoding mechanism basically sets the (min/max) length of the pits/lands this recovered information is converted into the actual data that is output form the drive.

Next your telling me that 2 files which are exactly the same at the binary level, i.e. bit perfect copies can sound different, lets think about that for a moment

these are bit perfect copies,... How?

Robert

[Spirit]

I wondered how long it would be before this thread became a discussion of rips/bitperfect/damping... rather than playback machines.

Far as I can tell, the PLAYBACK machine I propsed on the previous page should be pretty much ideal.

[Don't let me stop the discussion however, I'm awfully interested to see how it ends...]

[jkeny]

As for the data from the disc, you need to consider the requirement to encode/decode from the optical bit stream. This means that the data is encoded so that the resultant bit stream will not contain more then a number x, of consecutive 1's or 0's this is important to keep the decode data clock rate locked, and its encoding is based on NRZI. The encoding mechanism basically sets the (min/max) length of the pits/lands this recovered information is converted into the actual data that is output form the drive.

Sorry Robertkd, I don't understand what you are saying here - can you elaborate?
The problem I have with all of digital is that it is an abstraction of reality & requires a lot of technical/mathematical expertise to know how well that abstraction represents reality. I don't have this expertise & my simplistic mind tells me that with magnetoresistance disk heads, NZRI encoding, Reed-Solomon error correction, etc that there are a lot of opportunities for the precious audio signal to be corrupted.

For instance, I can understand the idea that disk servos cause current spikes on the PS because of their relatively high current draw. This can often get into the audio chain through the ground plane noise. So defragmenting a disk is going to provide less head (servo) movement & hence less noise. Moving the audio file to RAM & playback from there is likely to lead to even less noise & better audio as a result.

As I said already we tend to fall into the trap of thinking digital is black or white, on or off (perfect sound forever?) without understanding the underlying mechanisms. Again my simplistic mind tells me that in fact it is all really analogue in that bits are not all recorded in exactly the same way, at exactly the same voltage to represent a 1 (or the exact same pit or land size). There is variation in this voltage (within an agreed tolerance) & mechanisms to deal with this variation. Could it be that signals recorded at the edge of this tolerance sound worse than signals well within tolerance?

Bear in mind that in all these examples bit perfection is a given - it's just a case of the differences required to achieve this bit perfection?

Am I way off here?

Spirit,
Sorry but it's probably necessary to purge ourselves & as you say it will be interesting to see how it finishes

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2009 14:45:02 GMT Spirit said:

I wondered how long it would be before this thread became a discussion of rips/bitperfect/damping... rather than playback machines.

Far as I can tell, the PLAYBACK machine I propsed on the previous page should be pretty much ideal.

[Don't let me stop the discussion however, I'm awfully interested to see how it ends...]

Phil
Sorry, but that wasn't my intention.
Robert once again trotted out the old argument that if the checksums are identical , then the files MUST sound identical.
This has not been the finding of quite a few RG members, and several DIYAudio members.
I agree that your playback machine would perform very well indeed , perhaps also benefit from the use of a linear PSU for certain areas. I did not realise that the Optical reader would not be located in the same box, but I suspect that it may be better with a direct SATA connection than as an external eSata device.
This discussion is unlikely to end in consensus, as people with very strongly held views are involved, and the more qualified members are often the least flexible when it comes to even trying anything that doesn't agree with what they have been taught,even when their is no financial cost to them involved.
Again, most of the SQ gains reported have resulted as a result of using the LG BR writer, and even with 3M dampening of a normal CD/DVD writer, the differences are quite subtle, although many with higher resolution playback equipment can still readily hear them,even after the files have been uploaded.
I would also state that this is not the 1st time that my subjective findings have been rejected out of hand by Engineers, including the late Neville Williams from Electronics Australia, Leo Simpson
from Silicon Chip, Graham Maynard from the U.K., and Douglas Self.
My subjective findings about very close balancing of the input pair transistors in an amplifier (differential pair) were first reported in 1987. It was late 2008 in DIYAudio after they were put to the test in a "Current Mirror" thread , where Nelson Pass was also a participant, that they became more generally accepted, and are no longer disputed by some very clever designers. Nelson Pass even joked that the amplifier with the trial balancing mods could be named "Woody" as Ostripper said that it was the amplifier that you couldn't wait until, morning to listen to.The front end balancing mod even features in the DIYAudio thread "Extreme ULD", as well as in the current RG Class A HA, where the improvement this balancing makes has already been verified by several members. Interestingly, the exact mechanism for these SQ improvements has yet to be determined, as is the case also with these present subjective findings with PC Audio.

Alex

P.S.
I intend uploading anther 24/192 track for evaluation purposes only,if there is any interest.
I believe that it will sound markedly superior to what you hear from the majority of SACD/DVD-A players.
I had in mind track 6 from a famous "Eagles" album