Sound Galleries music server debuting at Bonn Audio Show Oct 3-4

EuroDriver

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Sound Galleries made quite a splash at Munich High End 2015

http://www.audiostream.com/content/lampizator-hq-player-audiopax-avante-garde-digital-done-right

Requests from the industry persuaded Geoffrey Armstrong to undertake a project to assemble the best music server possible for delivering Redbook content converted to DSD 128 and DSD256.

Pink Faun of Holland, a 6 moons award winner for their AV streamer, and a big PCM fan, saw that there was a similar passion for great sound in the Sound Galleries team. So a PCM proponent and a DSD proponent are joining forces to deliver the best experience possible in PCM and DSD in their respective music server offerings

The Sound Galleries server shares a chassis with the Pink Faun AV streamer, but that's pretty much all. The CPU, motherboard, and power supplies are all different. What works best for PCM is not the same as what works best for DSD.

Pink Fauns expertise in digital electronics has produced a OCXO module for Sound Galleries with sonics that were significantly better than the OCXO module Sound Galleries were using previously.

The demonstration room will be using Mola-Mola preamp and monoblocks and Giya G4 speakers. Cabling is Tellurium Q

The music selection software is iTunes, Kodi Qobuz and Tidal, and JRiver which then deliver the content to the software engine for upsampling and converting Redbook to DSD256 which is HQ Player. Roon is bundled with the Sound Galleries server, and uses Foo-ASIO to do the PCM to DSD256 conversion. Roon integration with HQ Player is on track for release by the end of this year.

All of the music selection front ends are operated from an iPad

Easy of use, sound realism you need to hear to believe, and online support, what could be better ?
 

bonzo75

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Geoffrey is also a super guy, he has has the Avantgarde Trios with bass horns, Audiopax, used to stock Analysis Audio, and knows his conductors, orchestra and music. Quite a gentleman to talk to. He has also always been on top of streaming, and on computer audiophile forum
 

amirm

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Is this the server they are talking about?

 

EuroDriver

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The photo above is the PC built for Munich High End 2015. The performance of this little box impressed a cable manufacturer and a loudspeaker manufacturer enough to say to Geoffrey Armstrong you have go on to commercialize the Music Server.

And so the journey began, numerous trips, meeting with passionate audiophiles, sharing knowledge and insight into the processes going on when PCM to DSD conversion is going on.

The prototype server that will be demoed at the Bonn show is so much better than what we had in Munich, it's embarrassing ! Since May, we have had a sonic breakthrough about every 3 weeks

After each break through in sound quality and realism, we think it can't get better than this, we have another breakthrough.

The team is spread across Europe and we had to verbalize the sonic differences we were hearing. We picked on the Regen as the measuring unit to quantify the differences we heard. Example "This custom clad stick of RAM sounded 1.5 Regens better than a popular gaming RAM"

What's interesting is the return on investment one gets from the various tweaks. With the software OS, the return is infinite, but can have a cost in reduced performance for non audio tasks. There were tweaks that brought big improvements like 1.5 Regens, that we said, even though it was not in the original concept, we have to build it in as it is such good sonic value for the additional cost. We also found tweaks that had a Regen of improvement but cost € 1,500, and then we said, very nice, but we will leave that tweak out.

Also to be noted is that not all Regen differences are equal. There are tweaks that are in the noise reduction category where you get lifting of the veil, and then there are timing improvement tweaks which seem to improve the perceived harmonics, focuses the sound stage, and improves the separation of instruments. Sometimes there is a difference which is 0.75 Regens, but it's a side ways move, can't say which is better, or the pluses are about the same as the minuses.

One thing we have been conscious of is to have a wide age sample of our test listeners, with a few 30 something's with very good ears. I have the oldest ears on the team, and I trust mine the least. I have been fooled enough times in the past that I can usually not fall into a trap when a change sounds initially very good, but actually it's not, as it turns out to be fatiguing and it's an over stimulation of auditory part of our brain

So how many Regens is the Bonn prototype better than Munich ? more than I ever expected, but you need to hear it to believe it ;-)

In this vein Sound Galleries will try to arrange in a home demo for interested audiophiles in Europe initially, and North America later on.
 
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EuroDriver

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I first met Pink Faun in July, and 3 weeks later we had this prototype of the OCXO clock module

Breadboard.JPG

A couple of weeks later we had this

OCXO PCB.JPG

We now have 3 versions of this clock module running and will pick one to go in the production server. The choice will be made on the basis of sonics and not cost, the development team would not have it any other way
 

EuroDriver

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The Sound Galleries Music Server will look like this but with a different face plate

PF Chassis.jpg

It's going to have a dedicated and optimized LPS for the Uptone Regen. We have found nearly every USB DAC benefits from having a Regen in front of the USB. If the customer DAC does not sound better with a Regen, the LPS can be used for a Fibre Media Converter, which is highly recommended for the Music Servers LAN connection
 

EuroDriver

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Thanks for the explanation. I didn't see it 'till now :eek:.

What is the oscillator board for?

The Pink Faun OCXO module replaces the H97 chipset clock crystal. The frequency stability of the OCXO is an order of magnitude more stable than the crystal oscillator it replaces.

After a lot of testing, we still like the sound quality difference it makes. The adjectives which we think describe the quality which the OCXO brings are, "pristine" and "clear"

We have also tested this OCXO when the Pink Faun PCI to I2S Bridge is installed, and also find this quality coming through when doing Redbook to 24/192 over I2S. Needless to say, the guys at Pink Faun are very happy too. They had been thinking about doing a OCXO module for some time, but during our first meeting, they got fired up enough by our reports on the results we got with another OCXO module, that they had to do an OCXO implementation using all of the digital knowledge that they have accumulated over the years through designing numerous DAC's
 

amirm

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Thanks. Would you please create a signature in your profile? I think it will be useful for membership to reach out to you with this question and such. At first I didn't realize you were one of the principals behind this product :).
 

EuroDriver

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A further update on the work up of the server for the Bonn show this Saturday.

The various LPS, are sounding better and better, but for the show we can not squeeze them into the Pink Faun chassis any more ! We have now put the PC into a separate PC chassis and have 2 outboard boxes housing the various power supplies. The pre-production prototypes and the production models will be all in one chassis.

A nice finding over the weekend is that with the Sound Galleries Music Server, the sound quality gap between PCM converted to DSD 256 and DSD 64 converted to DSD 256 has widened again (after a long period of getting closer and closer). This gap had dramatically narrowed once we had HQ Player running under WS2012 + AO. Now with the OCXO and better linear power supplies, the sound quality of DSD64 converted to DSD 256 is taken a nice jump. There is more texture in the timbre, subtle but quite noticeable.
 

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