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RE: Has anyone compared running with disabled video and enabled network?

LOL! Mark, your post comes as I was about to mention something that runs - seemingly - contrary to what you just said about USB. In fact, contrary to what I had expected, given other people's comments in the past. So, this is just reporting in process, not "saying". I'll post more details later as I dig deeper. For now, I am just curious if someone has seen this before.

To put it in some context, I am tweaking this new cMP/cPlay box. Previously, I used cPlay in my HTCP box. The phenomena I'll describe ALSO happened in the HTPC with cPlay, albeit too subtle for me to be sure. (I now suspect it was being masked by it not being a dedicated box like the cMP box.)

Here we go. In recent days, I've had my "test music selection" in the internal hard drive only. Yesterday, for the first time, I plugged my music USB drive to the new cMP box. I was bracing for a drop in SQ. It never happened. Just the opposite.

The USB drive beat the internal one. I spent last night and today confirming and trying various config variations. No dice. USB is beating internal.

Like I said, this is not new. It was happening before. The difference in the HTPC is so faint (but repeatable) that years ago I chalked it up to "astral strangeness"...not worth mentioning here. Yet, on the cMP box the contrast is remarkable.

It is interesting that the ONLY difference between the USB drive and the internal one is the degree of glare. The internal drive has more. The USB drive barely any. The violins give it away very quickly but it really is pervasive as one listens. Nothing else changes. This "glare" difference is easily heard in speakers and headphones.

In the new cMP box, the USB card is a USB-3. In the HTPC box, the USB card is USB-2. The external drive is USB-2 (WD MyBook). The internal drives are SATA. All drive or partitions where the music is located are NTFS. However, I just realized the main partition (of 2) on the cMP box is FAT32 (I now have to try placing music in there to see if it makes a diff). The cMP box has no Windows cache in disc (it is all memory)

After many tests, one nagging suspicion is that the phenomena "could" be caused by the AMD chipset on both mobos (same chipset but different motherboard brands & AMD CPU types, though). The HTPC runs Win 7 Pro. The cMP box is XP Pro.

On a related subject, I just found something surprising. If one leaves a USB cable unhooked from the computer but hooked to the USB drive, the cable projects a major electromagnetic field (detectable 1 foot+ away). When close to other audio equipment, it can affect SQ. However, once the cable is connected at the other end also (the PC), the field collapses.

This came about yesterday. The equipment started sounding funny at one point. I ran my trusty electric field detector around. Amazingly, it was from the music USB drive that I had unhooked from the HTPC an hour before (planning to connect it to the cMP box later). The drive box had a strong field but the USB cable itself carried it all over! More by instinct than by design, I plugged it into the cMP box. The field collapsed instantly.




Edits: 01/20/13
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