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Always interested in better (cleaner, low litter) transport of FLAC>I2S i was pointed to the Squeezebox receiver. Not really pc-audio, but interesting as comparison transport vs optimized cPlay/cMP config. I use a Buffalo32 as DAC with Juli@ card with I2S. The PC and Juli@ are feeded by Batteries. With the B32 DAC there's no need to upsample or resample. Plain 44.1 khz is enough to get the best out of this DAC. That fact is a nice opportunity to try the SBR as a plain transport FLAC>I2S vs pc based transport.
SB Receiver is only 88 euro in Holland. Without the remote control you have to use the so called UDAP commandline app to configure it once for wired or wifi use. I choose wifi to avoid interference from the cable. On a chinees forum i took notice that the SBR is the first SB that has the correct I2S to use for driving popular DAC's with I2S input. It is easy to locate them and connect wires.
I bought it and connected the I2S to my DAC using a big magnifying glass. (my eyes are not that young anymore ;-) Also i feeded the SBR with 9Vdc from a batterie. The server software i installed on my cPlay pc. I use my Android phone as remote.
Well, and about the result. It impressed me from the first moment. Its a crispy, airy and very, very clean. At first judgment it's outperforms a pc-transport is sense of clean and airy sound. Here a picture of the hardware. Feel free to ask or comment.
Follow Ups:
Hi Hans,
can I ask where you got your SBR for 88 Euro?
I really like to compare the I2S option of the SBR to my
modded EMU o4o4 usb.
May I suggest that you try the TeddyRegs for your Power Supplies.
I got them all over the place on all my modded gear. They even
work from SLR batteries better than straight battery power,
which surprised me.
Greets,
Klaus
Hi Klaus,
Here's our cheapest shop in the Netherlands:
http://www.mnm-computers.nl/product_info.php?products_id=12614
When feeding Vreg's with batterie i am not convinced that a shuntreg would by better then a low cost LM317 with low esr buffercap buffered.
Thank you,
I hope they will ship to Germany.
Greets,
Klaus
They won't.
With special thanks to Sonic, we found out more interesting tweaks to make the Squeezebox even better as I2S transport. There are 4 regulators in the SBR.
1.2V for the processor
3.3V for the controller and Ethernet
5.0V for the DAC
?? for the WIFI module (we did not measure, but suppose also 5 Volt)
The surprise is that only 1,2V and 3,3V are needed for the streaming functionality.
Wifi and DAC are shut off! When feeding these voltages with good external analog VReg's or batterie the I2S data is really good quality. It equals a top-tweaked cMP config with optimized LINUX environment. What's left is updating the clock. To be continued..
Wow Hans you are on a roll, keep it up...you are making it harder and harder for me to resist trying this.One question: w/o an iphone or droid would one need to get the Touch or some other SB remote?
Edits: 12/11/09
Hi Theob,
You don't need a phone to play music. Any pc or notebook is possible through the squeezeserver software or with remote control with VLC, VNC etc.
Everybody is talking about the touch, but it has a screen and higher clock rate. As we know from cMP we just want to lower or disable these disturbin factors. We will have to try it.
Thanks. I really appreciate what you share here. This stuff is very very cool.
Do you still prefer SB vs cmp^2?
I think it equals with straight unharmed 44.1Khz cd-data vs cMP. Sonic said to me that the SBR has excellent 'correctness' in music.
Keep in mind that we can't win a lot more in the transport function WAV> I2S. When the signal is clean with low jitter then it's done.
Thanks I really do appreciate what you, Sonics, Bertel bring to this forum. Well done!
Hi Hans.
Great that you bring it up again.
Not a new but still a great - to me the best - approach to go the ethernet route.
As I mentioned some time ago ethernet is IMO the way to go.
Why not using a Squeezebox for it - if done right!
With the Squeezebox you're decoupling 100% (also galvanically) from all
the physical and logical (not DSP) PC mess.
CMP/CPLAY/drivers/OS should become irrelevant if you don't do DSP work
on the PC side and if your player plays bit-transparent.
In the end the Squezzebox is not much different than my stripped down FitPC with a rt-linux, expect that the squeezebox comes with I2S and streams all the time and is much less flexible in terms of configurations.
The nice thing is that you can operate several clients at several
places by a lot of nice clients.
What will count is the local setup (HW tweaks) of your squeezebox, to "squeeze" the most out of it.
Further downsides: LowRes & Stereo only.
Thanks God. No more Firewire/USB/PC tweaks and setup discussions.
This approach can save a lot of people a lot of money and (might)
deliver superior sound at lowest cost.
I also order a box for playing around with it. No idea why I didn't jump on that train earlier. Probably blinded by my "Linux quest".
THX again - we'll stay in touch.
> > Further downsides: LowRes & Stereo only. < <
Have a look at the Squeeze Touch, 24/96
The Well Tempered Computer
On paper i'm not convinced that the Touch should be better a better quality transport for supplying clean and straight 44.1khz I2S data. It has a display (causes noise) and has higher clocks. Looking at cMP, lowering the clocks gives betters SQ.
Hi Hans,
Fantastic post.
Could I have your e-mail in order to exchange information. I have a North Star 192MkII DAC and your post has shown me that it is possible to extract I2S directly from the Receiver. I also use the receiver only with an Ipaq PDA.
I bought a Welborne Power Supply for my Receiver, but they forgot to include the circuit board, so I'm still waiting for that. What kind of cables did you use to connect the SBR to your DAC?
I hope that you can help me out.
Thanks a lot in advance
André
hanssatink@gmail.comNot ontopic but i did a another little experiment today with the SBR.
How about the inside Wolfson DAC? The Wolfson has -direct to use- analog output 1,7 Volt.
I took L and R right from the print to my amp.
I buffered the 5V PSU of the DAC with a Blackgate cap.
Fantastic sound!! Really vinyl like sound. The SBR has a lot of secrets!!
Edits: 11/15/09
You are quite daring, bravo. But please is that the squeeze box in the pc case? I recognize the Buf32s. If it is why is it in the case? So you have all power from batteries?I do see that yes that is the SB (because of I2S to Buf32s). So the advantage is use of a phone remote and possibly better sonics versus juli@? I would like nothing better than to get rid of juli@. So no Juli@ at all being used? If so that is fantastic. So SB is assembled as a pci sound card? Or not?
All you guys in Europe are unbelievably smart and always it seems at fore front of use of technology in service to the music.Once again very well done Hans!!!
Edits: 11/07/09 11/07/09
Hi Hans,
Very nice work. I could not wait, and ordered a SBR.
For the moment, I was also using cMP2 - Juli@ - I2S - Sabre DAC. Very nice sound, but the setup is not so user friendly. More, I have not found hirez music to be night and day compared to RB CD.
Have you also used the display/command that comes with the SBR ? Are there other ways to go ?
Other, I've just found someone else interested in the Squeezebox receiver (link).
Best Regards,
Alain
Hi Alain.
If you only buy the Reciever (without remote control) its enough just to stream music.
For setting up the reciever you have to use a commandline tool called UDAP. The ip adres of the router en server has to be programmed into the reciever. I can guide you through that.
I don't need the remote. I browse music with my Android phone and it's possible with the server software form Logitech. Very easy and comfortable.
Edits: 11/14/09
I use a desktop case for all my batteries(8) and loading gear. Everything is feeded by batteries. I placed the B32 in that case because that was the most easy. The PC case with juli@ is right under it. The squeezebox is lying on the batteries
Hans I have more questions in my original post which were editted in. Would appreciate your response to these questions (nice job).
The advantage of the SB is that the digital pad from Data> I2S is very short. The CPU is direct linked to the output chip. Also the pads are very short. In the pc its more complex with asiodriver and Juli@ driver. The only disadvantage is that it is only 44.1 khz plain.
The flac files are decompressed in the server software and sended to the buffer in the SB by (W)LAN. So there's no wired connection with the pc.
On request here how to use I2S from the SBR:
R18 = BCK = DCK @ Buffalo DAC
R19 = DATA = D2 @ Buffalo DAC
R20 = LRCK = D1 @ Buffalo DAC
Gnd = Direct from the SBR print
I cut the I2S traces to the DAC, but don't know if that is necessary.
Hi Hans are you still happy with the sonic results of this setup? Also you mentioned that an article explained how Squeeze Box indicated that SQ does I2S right while others do not. Can you say more about this or reference the article?
Yesterday i did a Cplay B32 vs SBR comparison.
I prefer SBR over Cplay/cMP/Juli@ with the Sabre DAC, no doubt.
SBR sounds more clean. There is more seperation, more rest, more easy to follow.
With the 'article' i ment that the past model's of the SB didn't have ready to use I2S. Left and right handed I2S if i say it correct. With that models you needed extra elektronic to convert it. I read it on (dutch) forums.
thank you.
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