One for the "Bits are bits" Brigade. NOT !!!

[Deleted]

During the last couple of days I have been experimenting with a USB Power Injector using a 9VDC transformer plugpack,and with the Corsair Voyager GT USB Pen plugged into it, then playing back from there, as well as ripping.wav files to there directly.
This may also be a worth while improvement for those who use USB DACs, where sometimes hum and other noises from the USB power may be a problem.

www.altronics.com.au/index.asp?area=item&id=K2910

Initially, I thought I would be clever and replace the 1,000uF electrolytic capacitor after the bridge rectifier with a 1,000uF low ESR type.. This is then followed by a normal 7805 voltage regulator which supplies a cleaner +5V to the Corsair. Much to my surprise, this resulted in the uploaded .wav files having added HF detail.
Although the soundstage was bigger , it didn't sound quite right.
This was confirmed also by several RG members. Next stage was to remove the 1,000uF low ESR electrolytic capacitor , and replace with a normal 1,000uF electrolytic capacitor.
This was once again confirmed by several RG members, including one from NYC, who then reported that the added HF detail was no longer a problem. A later stage was to plug in a 12V regulated PSU with a JLH instead of the 9V DC non SMPS plugpack.
This resulted in a further improvement, and now "Carly Simon-Youré So Vain" in 24/192 sounds absolutely fabulous.
A future enhancement will be to remove the bridge rectifier and 1,000uF and the 7805, and replace with a 7805 fed into a JLH.
This was also suggested by Leo.Alternatively, a Paul Hynes +5V regulator could be very worthwhile in place of the existing 7805 ?
Alex

P.S.
The attached is from a member who listened to all 3 versions of these files :

it would be comical if these had the same checksum

They do !!!

Attached is a link to the upgraded version to that of the kit supplied by Altronics, which uses the same PCB, but a single 1N5819 series diode, a 6V DC supply, and a Low Dropout Voltage Regulator instead of the 7805. It has greater current capability.

www.extremecircuits.net/2010/03/usb-power-injector-for-external-hard.html

P.S.
If anybody with better than average , 24/192 capable gear wishes to hear the track mentioned, feel free to send me a PM.

[Deleted]

UPDATE.
I am now feeding the USB Power Injector with a 12V regulated PSU with a JLH. AS already noted there was a further improvement.
Yesterday, I bypassed the bridge rerctifier diodes in the Injector, so that the 12V PSU connects directly to the 1,000uF filter capacitor.
This time there is a marked further improvement in the low end especially, on playback of freshly ripped test .wav files.
I expect this improvement will also be confirmed with uploads of the latest version of the Carly Simon 24/192 track.

The checksums do NOT change !!!

The ultimate could most likely be a regulated +5V supply followed by a JLH, ( or a Paul Hynes +5V shunt regulator ?) instead of the present +12V supply with a JLH followed by a 7805 regulator.
I note that Syd is presently doing something along those lines using a 9V Toroidal transformer and a +5V Voltage Regulator PSU PCB designed by Will, followed by a JLH. Syd has inserted this in the USB cable he is using to supply +5V to a HiFace USB to SPDIF Converter.
Alex

[FauDrei]

Hi Alex...

I do not follow... You wanted to say you ripped and re-ripped same tracks to same USB flash drive after each upgrade to your USB power thingie and that each further upgrade/re-rip sounded better with older rips with same cheksums still being on same USB disk and sounding worse when compared directly to new rips?

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2010 20:17:50 GMT FauDrei said:

Hi Alex...

I do not follow... You wanted to say you ripped and re-ripped same tracks to same USB flash drive after each upgrade to your USB power thingie and that each further upgrade/re-rip sounded better with older rips with same cheksums still being on same USB disk and sounding worse when compared directly to new rips?

Hi Valter
I will not be eentering into any discussions on this, as I had enough of the EEs in DIYAudio who just looked in software programs, examined waveforms and pronounced them identical and refused to even listen.
I have already done several tests with several RG members who have confirmed these reports. Including a member from NYC with valve gear that put's Miguel's to shame. (Miguel introduced him to some of it)
If you read a few reports elsewhere , including one from Tom recently in the SC HA area, you will see that people often have trouble wuth hum and noise into USB DACs. In Tom's case he cut the power wires in the USB cable to the DAC for a marked improvement. The JK HiFace mod may be doing something similar ?
I also forgot to mention here ( but not via emails ) , that a Sydney RG member heard the earlier stage improvements directly from my PC, and after leaving here he went directly to Altronics to buy a USB Power Isolator kit.
Alex
P.S.
If you want the link to the new rip of that 24/192 track, please PM me. I will be going to see an Optometrist shortly though.

A clarification.
The older rips also improved, but still paled in comparison to the new ones.
In any case , I still think it is fair enough to UL much earlier versions from the HDD, and compare them with brand new versions stored on the Corsair Voyager GT USB pen, as the checksums are still identical !

[FauDrei]

No, Alex... really, I do not want to mock you or anything... We went through many debates and I've learned to respect you and your ways.

Just wanted to confirm that you have earlier and later rips (before and after upgrades to your USB power) on same USB stick and that when you listen to them older ones sound worse?

Can you chime on this?

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2010 20:51:47 GMT FauDrei said:

No, Alex... really, I do not want to mock you or anything... We went through many debates and I've learned to respect you and your ways.

Just wanted to confirm that you have earlier and later rips (before and after upgrades to your USB power) on same USB stick and that when you listen to them older ones sound worse?

Can you chime on this?

Valter
On my "G"drive, I have many versions stored, a few even going back as far as 2008. Although some of the more recent ones have been uploaded, and may still be available for DL, I have had to delete some of them from my Corsair due to space limitations.
I will email you the DL link to the most recent 24/192.
Alex

P.S.
I further edited my earlier post.

[FauDrei]

Hmm... that could be the problem for me... my main rig can not do more than 24/96. I can do 24/192 on my laptop but I do not "trust" analog outputs from it. Do you have a 24/96 "downsampled" version? I can downsample it too, but...

So you chimed on my same tracks re-riped to same USB flash and sounding different question?

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2010 21:12:22 GMT FauDrei said:

Hmm... that could be the problem for me... my main rig can not do more than 24/96. I can do 24/192 on my laptop but I do not "trust" analog outputs from it. Do you have a 24/96 "downsampled" version? I can downsample it too, but...

So you chimed on my same tracks re-riped to same USB flash and sounding different question?

Valter
Unfortunately, I am running out of time ,but yes, I added a bit to an earlier post. If I search later I may even be a able to find some still active DL Links of the various Injector versions.
My X-DAC V3 and SC DAC only do up to 24/96, but downsample from 24/192 to 24/96. So the end results are likely to sound even better with good DACs that can natively do 24/192, such as the Buffalo (Sabre) DACs.You should be able to play 24/192 .wav files.
Alex

[FauDrei]

Oh, I see in your previous edited post... so even the older rips improved with USB power upgrade. I totally believe that.

Now only to sort out old vs. new rips sound differences...

P.S.
I am hearing good things about this Sabre thingie and will sure check it out in some form eventually, but for time being - I'm having a year long love affair with R2R PCM1704 machine and my efforts are mainly directed in upgrading gear on and around "her"...

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2010 21:22:39 GMT FauDrei said:

Oh, I see in your previous edited post... so even the older rips improved with USB power upgrade. I totally believe that.

Now only to sort out old vs.new rips sound differences...

Yes, but we are still extracting the same 1s and 0s from the USB pen !
Sorry, couldn't resist that.
Must go.
Alex

[Deleted]

Valter,

did you order a GDA NFB-11, as you posted.

I see they are sold out and taking forward orders on the next batch.

With reference to Alexs uploads, my playback gear is of vastly inferior quality to yours and I'm having no problems

[FauDrei]

No Chris, just missed the first batch...

...and then canceled my place in second since some upgrade boards I've been striving for quite some time are finally ready...

I was thinking though... I will get this ESS "portable" sooner or later... when I finally press the "Pay" button I just might be addressing the package to Mike to "burn it in for me" and give it a proper RG shakedown.

Of course, if Mike agrees to such arrangement...

[FauDrei]

No Alex, sorry... I can not hear the differences between two wavs you sent me. I've put both tracks on random and listened casually for an hour or so... then I put them in ABX comparator and switched instantly "on the fly" from track to track on interesting passages, but still no perceivable difference... I can hear the recording studio ambiance, I can hear the difference between each "shake", I can hear changing microdynamics of the flute... but the files between them - they sounded the same to me (and I've been "a good boy" - I didn't compare the file contents before or after).

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2010 16:09:55 GMT FauDrei said:

No Alex, sorry... I can not hear the differences between two wavs you sent me. I've put both tracks on random and listened casually for an hour or so... then I put them in ABX comparator and switched instantly "on the fly" from track to track on interesting passages, but still no perceivable difference... I can hear the recording studio ambiance, I can hear the difference between each "shake", I can hear changing microdynamics of the flute... but the files between them - they sounded the same to me (and I've been "a good boy" - I didn't compare the file contents before or after).

Hi Valter
You will also have seen the posts by Ian in reply 66
rockgrotto.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=talk&action=display&thread=5839&page=5

and others too. Imagemaker18 (Israel) who is an 80yo retired U.S. Professor of music, hears these differences too.
I know that you have been able to hear other differences,
so I don't doubt that you can hear things, so the only thing I can think of is that for some reason the system you are using has a fair amount of Jitter.
Did you DL the .wav files to a HDD, or was it directly to a USB pen ?
A non moving storage device is preferred.
If you had them on a USB pen, you could perhaps give the pen to your friend from the other test a while back to listen to ?
I mean the colleague who thought he heard differences originally,
which were correct, but he could not repeat later on.
Regards
Alex

P.S.
Perhaps it may be even better to circumvent your system and give the DL links to your colleague to DL directly to a USB pen, and have him play directly from that ?

[FauDrei]

Fair amount of jitter? Don't know... my main rig never sounded better: dual core, Win 7 x64, kernel streaming from Foobar2000 tweaked to high process priority and dedicated core affinity, full RAM file buffering, DPC latency under 50μs when playing, battery HiFace as only device on one USB controller connected via quality 50cm shielded USB cable, 0,7m Oyaide BNC SPDIF cable, low jitter DIR9001 used as DAC's SPDIF receiver, buffering and reclocking in DAC's programmable filter... Sure, there are few more tricks/tweaks that I will do to this transport chain of mine, but I reckon it is quite good in it's present state.

Will try the pen thing tomorrow... Yes, I might even give the files on USB (or let him DL the files to his USB stick) to my "treacherous" colleague to see what he makes out of it.

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2010 21:03:58 GMT FauDrei said:

Fair amount of jitter? Don't know... my main rig never sounded better: dual core, Win 7 x64, kernel streaming from Foobar2000 tweaked to high process priority and dedicated core affinity, full RAM file buffering, DPC latency under 50μs when playing, battery HiFace as only device on one USB controller connected via quality 50cm shielded USB cable, 0,7m Oyaide BNC SPDIF cable, low jitter DIR9001 used as DAC's SPDIF receiver, buffering and reclocking in DAC's programmable filter... Sure, there are few more tricks/tweaks that I will do to this transport chain of mine, but I reckon it is quite good in it's present state.

Will try the pen thing tomorrow... Yes, I might even give the files on USB (or let him DL the files to his USB stick) to my "treacherous" colleague to see what he makes out of it.

Valter
It is also possible that you are unable to discern these differences.
Greg Erskine is the only person who was unable to hear these kind of differences directly from my PC. BUT, I am pretty sure that Greg heard these kinds of differences at a recent listening session via speakers.If nothing else, he was able to appreciate the marked improvements compared to the previous listening session at a friend's place .That mainly involved files played from my Corsair Voyager, which was achnowledged to be markedly superior to direct playback of the original CD from a Marantz SA11 into the same DACs, or directly via analogue out. Also better than copies made to another friend's Corsair Voyager from mine, which surprised .From memory, I think he had borrowed my Corsair Voyager, and did the copying on his laptop (?)
Alex.
P.S.
The Filt. pin on the DIR9001 (pin 22) benefits from using 1% or 2% polyproylene capacitors.(4.7nF and 68nF)

[Deleted]

Valter
The main differences between the 2 listening sessions were that the earlier session we had to use USB from the laptop, either into a Benchmark USB DAC, or direct playback from the same Corsair Voyager files.The results were far below expectations.
The more recent listening session used a new PC with USB3.0 capabilities, and SPDIF from the internal soundcard , or USB via the Benchmark.
The best performance by far, was from the Corsair Voyager plugged into a WD TV Live using an outboard linear 12V PSU.
As you will have gathered from other posts too, I don't particularly like USB Audio.It can be very good, but it can also be noise prone.
Alex

[FauDrei]

Ya, might be that I can not discern them... and might as well be that you have discovered existence of "ghost pseudo bits" information that physically follows ordinary information on our storage devices... (which just gave me an idea... I might be PM-ing you later)

As for DIR9001, not sure, but I think I have that covered already:

[Deleted]

Hi Valter
The 2 caps in question are the generic white caps in your photo labelled 4n7 and 683. They are unlikely to be better than 5% tolerance at best.
The 68nF polyprops are fairly large physically, but the Panasonic type that I used had the leads cranked out to 5mm spacing.
Alex

[FauDrei]

Oct 25, 2010 21:40:00 GMT @sandyk said:

The main differences between the 2 listening sessions were that the earlier session we had to use USB from the laptop, either into a Benchmark USB DAC, or direct playback from the same Corsair Voyager files.The results were far below expectations.
The more recent listening session used a new PC with USB3.0 capabilities, and SPDIF from the internal soundcard , or USB via the Benchmark.
The best performance by far, was from the Corsair Voyager plugged into a WD TV Live using an outboard linear 12V PSU.

Had opportunity to hear USB Benchmark - it's USB implementation is just mediocre. Many recent USB transports surpass it. HiFace is definitely one of them, battery modded HiFace even more so.

I am no fan of internal sound cards either: I find their DAC capabilities inferior to dedicated external components. I even do not like them as mere SPDIF transports. You can surely explain better than me the effect of computer internal "dirty" PSU power on sensitive SPDIF clock(s).

As for WD TV Live... I happen to have this toy... I use it to watch films though. What kind of WD TV Live output you use when listening to music?

[FauDrei]

Oct 25, 2010 22:04:40 GMT @sandyk said:

The 2 caps in question are the generic white caps in your photo labelled 4n7 and 683. They are unlikely to be better than 5% tolerance at best.
The 68nF polyprops are fairly large physically, but the Panasonic type that I used had the leads cranked out to 5mm spacing.

Would 68nF Vishay MKP1837 do the trick better than 683? What about some polystyrene instead of 4n7?

That would be pretty easy fix.

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2010 22:08:40 GMT FauDrei said:

Oct 25, 2010 21:40:00 GMT @sandyk said:

The main differences between the 2 listening sessions were that the earlier session we had to use USB from the laptop, either into a Benchmark USB DAC, or direct playback from the same Corsair Voyager files.The results were far below expectations.
The more recent listening session used a new PC with USB3.0 capabilities, and SPDIF from the internal soundcard , or USB via the Benchmark.
The best performance by far, was from the Corsair Voyager plugged into a WD TV Live using an outboard linear 12V PSU.

Had opportunity to hear USB Benchmark - it's USB implementation is just mediocre. Many recent USB transports surpass it. HiFace is definitely one of them, battery modded HiFace even more so.

I am no fan of internal sound cards either: I find their DAC capabilities inferior to dedicated external components. I even do not like them as mere SPDIF transports. You can surely explain better than me the effect of computer internal "dirty" PSU power on sensitive SPDIF clock(s).

As for WD TV Live... I happen to have this toy... I use it to watch films though. What kind of WD TV Live output you use when listening to music?

Valter
I use Toslink Out into the SC DAC.The main problem with the WD TV Live is that it downsamples hi res material to 48KHZ, although it doesn't miss a beat when playing a mix of 44.1 and high res files.
The WD TV Live also greatly benefits from the use of a Linear regulated 12V 2A PSU with a JLH.
I made one specially for mine, which can be seen in the DIY area of RG.
Alex

P.S.
Regarding your photo, Googling will reveal that normal film caps at the input to a SPDIF receiver are not so great at higher bit rates than 44.1. Several of us now use polyprops there too.
Also, have you tried the 74HCU04 instead ?
Many new designs specify them, due to less internal stages with very high gain as in the normal 04.The nornal types can also be noise prone with no signal, even oscillate !

[freddypipsqueek]

Alex.

I don't mean to hijack this thread but have you found an addin PCI-E USB3 card better than on board USB 2 ports when feeding a usb DAC. I find my USB creates a hum which I believe is a common ground issue.

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2010 22:21:01 GMT freddypipsqueek said:

Alex.

I don't mean to hijack this thread but have you found an addin PCI-E USB3 card better than on board USB 2 ports when feeding a usb DAC. I find my USB creates a hum which I believe is a common ground issue.

Hi
I haven't tried USB3 yet myself.
"Whittie"(Tom) had problems with hum and noise via USB .(SC HA thread) Tom broke the leads in the cable that supply +5V and got a very worthwhile improvement.The problem with the laptop at the earlier listening session was undoubtedly due to poor USB power implementation.
Some even run their laptops off battery power when ripping etc. for this reason.
You aren't off topic, because this present thread is about perceived problems with typical USB power implementation to external devices.
Alex

[FauDrei]

Oct 25, 2010 22:15:19 GMT @sandyk said:

Regarding your photo, Googling will reveal that normal film caps at the input to a SPDIF receiver are not so great at higher bit rates than 44.1. Several of us now use polyprops there too.
Also, have you tried the 74HCU04 instead ?
Many new designs specify them, due to less internal stages with very high gain as in the normal 04.The nornal types can also be noise prone with no signal, even oscillate !

Thanks for WD TV Live tips.

As for my photo... Thanks for the tips, I'm just still learning... Did not know that inverter can also be "overclocked"...