Nadac?

[Bruce B]

Right on. Have you compared it with straight from the computer to the NADAC yet?

There was a guy on the Acourate forum who was saying different routers with the HAPI changed the sound. Here's what he said:

"It is very interesting to tune DELL switch itself as an audio device.
It changes sound with power line quality, and termination of vacant
LAN ports. In my country, there sold a switch that is made for audio
use! (Baffalo BSL-WS-G2108M/A) I also bought this switch, but I prefer
DELL's sound unfortunately."


Another reason why I'm thinking the optical isolation will make a difference.

I tried my 2816 switcher on my MassCore and Native systems and also direct. No difference in sound, measured or subjective listening. If there is a difference, something is not configured correctly or something is broken!

 

[Blizzard]

Well oddly I reckon sound quality to my Nadac is best straight from my MBA rather than via my Airport Extreme ....

As you say Mike, another reason for fiber.

Hey if you think the i7 6550 is puny, try asking my MacBook Air (i5 1.3 Hz 4 Gb ram) to run the HQ Player math. It got fairly hot after a little while....

It can actually convert PCM to DSD 256 without stuttering?

 

[Blizzard]

Yes - good point well made. But it won't take much for me to through something together, and I have a spare copy of W7 Pro lying around. If it was in another room I wouldn't care.

I get way better performance using Windows 10 than 7 or 8.1. With my I3 broadwell NUC, DSD 128 upsampling is rock solid, and even DSD 256 will work, but not without hiccups. On 8.1, 256 wouldn't work at all and 128 had the odd hiccup.

 

[Blizzard]

For a potential fiber Ethernet connection, which is the smallest Dell available?

You need the 2824. I would never go that route. I'd get the 2808 and add an FMC.

 

[Blizzard]

I tried my 2816 switcher on my MassCore and Native systems and also direct. No difference in sound, measured or subjective listening. If there is a difference, something is not configured correctly or something is broken!

Didn't you say the same about the Ethernet cable too?

 

[Bruce B]

Didn't you say the same about the Ethernet cable too?

Yup!!

 

[Blizzard]

Yup!!

Seems to be mixed opinions on these matters. David Robinson sure had a lot to say about the Ethernet cable making a huge difference. Unless he was just doing a sales pitch for Synergistic. I can't wait to try myself.

 

[andrew_stenhouse]

Unless he was just doing a sales pitch for Synergistic.

It sounded like that to me when I read it.

In any event, I think Amir is correct in that, in a domestic setting, it is highly unlikely a managed switch will be necessary, or even desirable, and certainly isn't in respect of a direct connection. pro is something entirely different of course.

So I have ordered a custom server built - turns out it was cheaper to me than ordering the parts. I shall have Windows 10 x 64 loaded on it. I plan on hooking the Nadac up to the server directly via fiber (via the linked PCI card) and an FMC > Cat 6 to the Nadac. It will have a wireless connection, as well as a wired, in the event I want to control it over the network, and rearrange the furniture so the Modem/router head into another room - as usually happens in our summer - we have a lovely balcony and something of a view that we like to take advantage of in summer.

I'll run a 120 Gb m2 Sata for the OS and a 2 TB Samsung 850 Pro for storage. Should come in around A$3k all up. The storage is overkill but I like quiet in my listening space. Will get a i7 quad core 6700 to do the lifting and 8 or 16 Gb of ram. All heat pipes and passive cooling.

This is much fun, I have to say.

I want to thank Mike, Amir and all the other contributors to this thread for helping me along. Or (depending on your belief about whether cables etc make a difference) sending me on a wild goose chase. One or the other ha ha. Either way I am having fun and happily feeding my OCD.

Cheerio

 

[lateboomer]

I think 2 TB SSD for storage is way too luxury. I am just thinking is it doable to design the server with minimum 120 GB SSD storage and then emply FIFO concept to pull in data from external 4 TB drive (isolated with good LPS) or NAS storage? I think this will also achieve low noise requirement with less cost. Am I right?

 

[Blizzard]

I think 2 TB SSD for storage is way too luxury. I am just thinking is it doable to design the server with minimum 120 GB SSD storage and then emply FIFO concept to pull in data from external 4 TB drive (isolated with good LPS) or NAS storage? I think this will also achieve low noise requirement with less cost. Am I right?

I agree that the cost of going with an SSD over 1tb is hard to justify today. Especially since you can get 5TB 3.5" 7200rpm drives for $130 each. Use 2 of them in the tower. 1 for main storage, and 1 for redundant backup. But don't use RAID. Because then both drives are always working and wearing out at the same pace. The way I do mine is a nightly timed backup at 3am. If nothing changed during the day, the backup drive never even goes out of stand by. Then if the main one ever fails, simply swap the backup to the other position, and buy a new one for the backup. Best of all still only 1/3 the cost of a single 2tb SSD.

I'm not sure any of those isolation tricks for the harddrives, powering with LPS etc will have any impact if you are using the optical isolation. I'm going to be doing some experimenting when my optical gear shows up on Wednesday. Those are all measures to reduce noise. But I don't know how the noise can pass through the non conductive plastic and glass cable. As long as the data makes it through uncorrupted, it should be devoid of any of the impact server hardware tweaks will make. Besides SRC/SDM, DSP etc. But that's all software tweaks.

The big question is, how much EMI/RFI does the FMC put out that's connected to the DAC via copper. I'm sure the tranceivers, FMC's power supplies etc will all have some sort of impact. Although it may be much smaller than the impact of the big noisy computers, routers, and long copper runs. Reading through all the threads on the matter over on CA, it seems to be unanimous that the results were positive.

Maybe Amir would be up for running tests like he did with the REGEN on this setup. At least if it proves to add noise, there won't be an angry mob of protesters, because it's not actually an audiophile product.

 

[andrew_stenhouse]

Good points.

Hmmm having network problems after all. I can connect via the AE, but can't use the apps - way too much lag. Interesting. Perhaps a managed switch is necessary after all to run headless.

 

[Blizzard]

Good points.

Hmmm having network problems after all. I can connect via the AE, but can't use the apps - way too much lag. Interesting. Perhaps a managed switch is necessary after all to run headless.

once you have the dual networks, you won't be bogging down the network that communicates with the apps. Also your low powered computer is probably overworked. I'd wait till your new setup is up and running before buying a new switch.

 

[andrew_stenhouse]

Dual networks?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Dual networks?

Yup. One for the server and the NADAC. The other for the server and everything else.

 

[amirm]

So I have ordered a custom server built - turns out it was cheaper to me than ordering the parts. I shall have Windows 10 x 64 loaded on it. I plan on hooking the Nadac up to the server directly via fiber (via the linked PCI card) and an FMC > Cat 6 to the Nadac. It will have a wireless connection, as well as a wired, in the event I want to control it over the network, and rearrange the furniture so the Modem/router head into another room - as usually happens in our summer - we have a lovely balcony and something of a view that we like to take advantage of in summer.

I am glad you chose to go this route. Even though I am going to document how to build my server, it is not easy to source the right parts and the build while not rocket science, is significantly more complicated than putting together a normal server. Compare that to people who do this for a living and they can put one together in their sleep.

I'll run a 120 Gb m2 Sata for the OS and a 2 TB Samsung 850 Pro for storage.

While we have been talking about networks and NAS all the time, I think the dream scenario is putting all the bits on a local SSD in my opinion. Networking no matter how good, goes down. My NAS for example is connected to UPS but my switch is not currently (its UPS died and been to lazy to put in the replacement in the rack). Now half the time we get a power glitch/failure, the NAS disappears from the network. Power cycling fixes it but it takes 5 minutes.

Before I did this, I put some of my music on a 256 gigabyte USB thumb drive. 100% reliable and boy, was it fast. Album art and such would instantly snap into Roon user interface on my tablet. Locally it ran at lightning speed. In such a configuration the NAS is just your backup, not primary drive.

The issue of course is capacity. 2 Tbyte though would come awfully close to holding as much music as you would want to have access to at any time. Programs like Roon can be told to manage multiple storage devices and ignore duplicates. That way, even if your main library is say 5 Tbytes, you could put 2 Tbytes of it on the SSD and have Roon look in both places for the rare albums that are only on NAS. Of course ideal situation is to have it all on SSD.

 

[Blizzard]

Dual networks?

The optical NIC will be running the NADAC connection only. Which will leave your wireless connection dedicated for all the other internet, and ipad app communication.

 

[Bruce B]

Seems to be mixed opinions on these matters. David Robinson sure had a lot to say about the Ethernet cable making a huge difference. Unless he was just doing a sales pitch for Synergistic. I can't wait to try myself.

What were his measurements? :roll eyes:

I've used the Audioquest Diamond and found NO difference between that and the $5 CAT-7 cable that Merging sent me.

 

[Blizzard]

What were his measurements? :roll eyes:

I've used the Audioquest Diamond and found NO difference between that and the $5 CAT-7 cable that Merging sent me.

Well I don't think you will ever find a reviewer backing up sonic claims of any cable with measurement data. There was some fancy features with the active cable he used that may of had an advantage over the Audioquest you used. But to me is shows that there may be a chance different setups could have a sonic impact. Merging does recommend optical as a option, but they don't say anything about any sonic impact.

 

[andrew_stenhouse]

Don't see myself being able to use eg the volume control app for the Nadac

 

[Blizzard]

Thanks, yes I understood that is what mike meant, I'm just unsure how to go about achieving that with my proposed set up.

Server > Nadac

Server > everything else

Can someone explain how this will happen with an AirPort Extreme as a router. Don't see myself being able to use eg the volume control app for the Nadac

The NADAC will still have full communication with your system. It will just have it's own dedicated pipeline for the music DATA streaming from the computer to the NADAC. Your Airport Extreme will just provide the internet feed and communication to your IPAD for the Roon app, NADAC app etc.