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In Reply to: RE: cPlay - the open source high-end audio player using ASIO posted by cics on May 05, 2008 at 12:31:58
I start this comparison with the caveot... your mileage may vary. Watching the oversampling vs no-oversampling discussions currently taking place just reminds me that how a particular piece of gear or tweak will sound to a person will vary based on their listening bias and their system. So this is MY comparison... you may hear other differences and come to different conclusions.My setup is a highly-tweaked cMP... 7 separate linear supplies, one each for P4, ATX-24 (provided by a modified PicoPSU), HDD, touchscreen/USB, Juli@ digital, Juli@ DAC analog supply, and Juli@ analog output stages (see my threads "PSU Follies" and "Revenge of the Power Supply Follies"). I've applied all the customizations and blazed the way a bit for the GA-EG45M-UD2H... I still need to write a report on setting up that m-board. I'm using the analog outputs of the Juli@, which are performing very well with some mods (see my thread "Juli@ follies"). I used a 256Mb stick of ValueRAM at 3-3-3-5 on both motherboards, preferring it to both the 512Mb Mushkin and 512Mb HyperX RAM. It's cased in a damped Zalman with everything taken out or off that is not needed to run the system... for example, I've even removed the door that hides the front ports.
The rest of the system is a pair of modified Eminent Technology LFT-IVs planar magnetic speakers driven by Electronic Visionary System's 500M's (modified B&O ICEPower 1000ASP modules), a home-built shunt attenuator using a Vishay series resistor and a silver-contact Shallcross switch, and various cables, most of them hard-wired at one end. AC filtering is provided by a couple of Hammond chokes, one for the amps and another for the cMP. I'd also had a few days off for the US Memorial Day holiday and I spent some of the time catching up on my system tweak backlog... rebuilt the speaker crossovers (now all film-caps), braiding a Rylands-inspired extension cord for my dirty supplies, rebuilding my m-board and dirty supplies with larger filter caps (15kuf->47kuf), plus a few tweaks to the m-board supply regulators. These all helped make the system a bit more natural and revealing for the comparison.
On the GA-EG45M-UD2H... I did a new WinXP install for it, disabling the un-needed devices in the BIOS before the install to minimize un-needed devices that needed to be disabled later. I've also gone a bit farther on some of the other customizations, going after all networking drivers I could find in Autoruns and disabling all USB devices except the one providing the connection for the wireless mouse and touchscreen. My latest BIOS settings for this board are on the cPlay 2.0b25 thread and as I said above, I'll publish a lessons learned post in the near future. Also in preparations for this comparison, I updated its BIOS to the latest F3 version from the Gigabyte website, which didn't add any new settings or make any sonic difference as far as I could tell.
To setup the comparison, I configured two harddrives (same models ordered and received at the same time) with a Windows setup for each board (this is made easy by having a separate system partition on the drives AND using imaging software to make and restore system partition backups. Then when I put in the G31, I spend a few hours first updating (to F6), then re-configuring the BIOS (this was not the board I used for my cMP before, but the one out of my ripping machine) and performing some of the additional system configuration tweaks I'd learned setting up the EG45M. But ultimately, I need to do a fresh install of WinXP for the G31M... it was my first successful cMP setup and and I now know some better ways to do the install and configuration that will make it a slightly cleaner install (that may sound a little better too, I hope)... but see below, it was pretty good without doing that.
And I stuck with cPlay 2.0B25 for the comparison to limit the variables, as B26 had just become available and it looks to need some tweaking to perform optimally with SOX (my next project!).
So enough of the preamble... how'd they compare?
On the side of the GA-EG45M-UD2H, as I'd mentioned in my preview, it has a very robust sound... bass and midrange sounds are strong and full. This was noticable from the start and was enhanced the BIOS settings were moved towards optimum. But also as I mentioned in that preview, the highs and level of details lagged behind the G31M.
On the side of the GA-G31M-S2L, first, even though the EG45M has a very 'robust' sound to its bass and mids, the G31M does not sound deficient in those ranges... it's just that the EG45M has a stronger sound there. And the G31M did have more delicate and detailed trebles which provided an increased sense of details and a "see-through' quality to its sound... as I have mentioned in the past, the cMP with this board gives even average recordings a sense of being a direct-to-disk recording, something not evident with the EG45M. But I was surprised by what I had not remembered about its sound... I get a much more engaging and emotive sound out of the G31M. PRAT and drive are better... I find myself being draw more into the music and wanting to listen to more and more recordings... something I didn't get with the EG45M. Bass was very detailed and tuneful and the overall sound is very dense with details... yet all are there and separate from each other. During the setup and breakin of the EG45M, I'd gotten used to its sound and forgotten about that aspect of the G31M's sound. I should say that the EG45M is not bad, but in my setup, with my listening bias, it does not provide the magic that the G31M does.
While doing the comparison, one thing I noticed was the difference between processor chips... I kept the one I've been using in my cMP in the EG45M and used the one from my ripping maching in the G31M. That one would not allow as low of a VCore setting as the other... .77500v or so was about as low as it'd go. So I swapped processors between the boards... no significant sonic differences that I could tell (one is a 7200, the other a 7300) except that the 7200 goes down to 74375v and may go a bit lower and this provides some subtle, but important benefits in the darkness of the background.
I did try turning back on 'Spread Spectrum' on the G31M board to see how much of a difference it makes in the sound... it made a noticable dent in the purity and clarity of the highs and details, but it didn't make the G31M sound like the EG45M in the treble. If I get time over the next week or so, I'll try duplicating the EG45M's processor speed settings on the G31M to see if that is the cause of the differences. The G31M will give a stable processor speed of 900Mhz while the EG45M bottoms out at about 1200Mhz... this along with the absence of a setting to turn off Spread Spectrum are the two most significant (AFAIK) omissions in the EG45M BIOS settings. cics provided a few welcome suggestions to the EG45M BIOS settings which are noted in the cPlay 2.0b25 thread that eliminated some of the other omissions I could see.
Bottom line... the GA-G31M-S2L is staying in my cMP, I find it more musically satisfying and engaging. I put my $ where my heart is... there's a vendor with a few of these boards on Ebay and I purchased another as a spare. I really, really hope that we can get an update to the BIOS of the GA-EG45M-UD2H board as the delicacy and PRAT of the G31M combined with its robustness in the bass and mids would be killer... but for me, the G31 has the magic, the EG45M does not.
Greg in Mississippi
Edits: 05/31/09 05/31/09 06/01/09
Carcass,Thanks for filling me in on this. DANGED, another setting we need on this board!
Have you tried using 3rd-party software like Double-Dawg (http://www.mark-knutson.com/dawg/) to make these settings changes?
cics,Thanks for the suggestion. I will give that a try on the GA-EG45M-UD2H (and also try the Mushkin and HyperX RAM again), likely this coming weekend. And of course, I'll report my findings.
Greg in Mississippi
Edits: 06/01/09
Ok... put DoubleDawg on the cMP and with the G31M on my fully-configured cMP, there are no other PCI connections shown except for the Juli@ card.
That's a good thing, right?
Greg in Mississippi
You need "PCI Latency Tool" - link below.
This latest version 3.1 is not the best, in the way it 1) doesn't always show the soundcard itself, and b) installs a device under Hidden devices. But it's still useful, since it allows you to see all onboard devices - I guarantee you'll see at least 5-6 of them, more if USB is enabled etc. Not all of them are programmable, those that have default setting of 0 are most likely not.
I actually use version 2.7, which should be still available somewhere on the 'Net.
Ok... I installed the PCI Latency Tool 2.7 on my cMP tonight and it showed several (6, I think) more PCI devices, but all already had a latency of 0. Only the sound card was at 128.
A couple of them were devices I'd disabled while doing the cMP optimizations.
Am I good now?
Greg in Mississipp
So, is it true for both G31 and G45?
I only tested the G31 last night. I'll publish results with the G45 when I get it back in the system... now looking like a week or two out.
Thanks for confirming that I've got the PCI Latency setup correctly now and also thanks for educating me on how to do that and what tools to use.
My only disappointment is that I didn't have a sound quality improvement to gain!
Greg in Mississippi
Thanks for the info.
I've located what is supposed to be v2.7... will try it tonight and report results.
Greg in Mississippi
I'm suggesting this as this mobo forces a higher RAM speed and your current 3-3-3-5 setting may be too aggressive.
At the BIOS level, that is correct, both m-boards provide a single setting for PCI latency.
Of course, if you're using one of these boards for a suggested cMP configuration, that is not an issue as you have just one PCI card being used.
Is this an issue for how you're using it?
Greg in Mississippi
... also setting latencies for all other (on-board) PCI devices. In my system, based on "old-fashioned" Biostar mobo, you can easily hear an improvement from setting latency for couple of devices to 0 (directing them to release bus immediately), in addition to setting sound card to 128.
As I understand from some other posts, neither of these two boards allows setting PCI latency individually by device using PCI Latency config tool - although they allow setting it for all devices in BIOS (cics recommended 128).
Is that correct?
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