USB versus Ethernet - a study reveals the winner

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
I'm not worried.

I really like the idea that I can make my experience better and better, sometimes without spending any money at all, such as Minimserver and Kinsky. Freeware!!

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Marcin_gps

VIP Donor/Industry Expert
Jun 24, 2015
232
163
420
jcat.eu
And the complications and convoluted drama of computer audio just go on and on.

At least all this is an entertaining read as long as I don't have to get into the weeds myself. I'll continue to happily spin my CDs, free of worries.

And it will never stop as computer audio is a complex and complicated field that is constantly changing in both hardware and software areas :)

I'm not worried.

I really like the idea that I can make my experience better and better, sometimes without spending any money at all, such as Minimserver and Kinsky. Freeware!!

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

+1
Steve, give Bubble UPNP Server a try - create a proxy server for your MinimServer library and choose that Proxy from Kinsky instead of 'the real' MinimServer library. Makes a nice improvement.

BR
Marcin
 

jkeny

Industry Expert, Member Sponsor
Feb 9, 2012
3,374
42
383
Ireland
Yea, shunting to ground current leakage which comes from all power supplies, including linear but mainly SMPS, is a great & inexpensive tweak

Once one's system reaches a certain level of refinement reducing these sources of ground noise intrusion pays sonic dividends
 

nonesup

VIP/Donor
Feb 15, 2017
1,044
623
355
Spain
I know Minimserver. When I buy my Lumin together with NAS Synology it is the software that I installed. In fact it is the one that recommends Lumin. Subsequently, the generic Synology was changed to a Melco N1ZH60-2 and it had a version of Twonky (currently version 8) installed. I installed Minimserver in Melco and I can only say this: music library manager is much better than Twonky, as a music server for Rock, Pop ..... also, for classical music I prefer Twoky in my configuration. In the end I unmasked it (although I still have it in the Synology)
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
I know Minimserver. When I buy my Lumin together with NAS Synology it is the software that I installed. In fact it is the one that recommends Lumin. Subsequently, the generic Synology was changed to a Melco N1ZH60-2 and it had a version of Twonky (currently version 8) installed. I installed Minimserver in Melco and I can only say this: music library manager is much better than Twonky, as a music server for Rock, Pop ..... also, for classical music I prefer Twoky in my configuration. In the end I unmasked it (although I still have it in the Synology)

Twonky is very good, however I found that Minimserver beats it for realism, at least on my Mac.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
Steve, give Bubble UPNP Server a try - create a proxy server for your MinimServer library and choose that Proxy from Kinsky instead of 'the real' MinimServer library. Makes a nice improvement.

BR
Marcin

I did this and it does sound even better. Not so sure about stability though. I'll have to use it more.

Thanks,
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
Steve are you going to the Chicago Axpona show this year?

I usually only do one and sometimes two shows a year. This year maybe LA Audio show if my room partners get their act together in time.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

katylied

Well-Known Member
Sep 7, 2011
69
0
913
Torino (Turin) - Italy
....as a music server for Rock, Pop ..... also, for classical music I prefer Twoky in my configuration. In the end I unmasked it (although I still have it in the Synology)

You need to better customize the Minimserver tags view in order to get the most also from classical music. Also don't forget that the server can rely only on the metadata that are in the files so you need also to be sure that all the information you need are actually available. The dbpoweramp CDRipper can try to download many useful data but those are not always available in the database and many download doesn't have all the metadata needed. In my setup, I can look at my music library by artist (the actual performer), by album title (and I add the composer first on the title), by composer, by instrument, by period (ex: baroque, classical, romantic, etc..), etc....
 

nonesup

VIP/Donor
Feb 15, 2017
1,044
623
355
Spain
I used dbpoweramp. With Minimserver I did not have any problems, by composer, artist ... With Twonky it's a disaster, just browsing the directory does it well.
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
I did this and it does sound even better. Not so sure about stability though. I'll have to use it more.

Thanks,
Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I have been using BubbleUPnP as proxy with Minimserver and Linn Kinsky for weeks now and it is definitely the best digital audio I have ever experienced. ( I have tried Amarra, Jriver, Twonky, Foobar2K, Audirvana and others) I customized the tags so that it shows sample-rate and format. This is all I need.

This is such a big improvement over any USB playback that it is a game-changer.

The latest improvements to my Ethernet interface in my Overdrive SX DAC and my stand-alone Interchange renderer are now delivering 10 and 8 psec of jitter respectively. The liveness factor is stunning. Never heard anything like this from even the most expensive vinyl systems. I only play wav files, no FLAC or other encodings.

See measurements at the end of this thread:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=156409.0

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Jeffy

Well-Known Member
Apr 27, 2014
475
171
348
Orchard Lake, MI
I'm using J-River as my player on my PC running through DLNA to my dac. How would I use Bubble UP and why would it be better than this. I don't want to transfer all my files to a different system.
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
I'm using J-River as my player on my PC running through DLNA to my dac. How would I use Bubble UP and why would it be better than this. I don't want to transfer all my files to a different system.

If you must use Jriver, I believe you can add BubbleUPnP as a server for it. Not sure how you do this. I would start by installing bubble and open it and configure it. Then see if you can select it inside Jriver.

Also, I highly recommend you try Linn Kinsky and Minimserver for better SQ. They are freeware. You can start and stop Minimserver at will, so you can do a comparison to Jriver.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

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