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In Reply to: RE: cMP - the open source high-end Memory Player posted by cics on December 30, 2007 at 05:42:01
There have been a few comments about alternative HW in recent cMP/cPlay threads. So of course, I have some questions:
1. PS/2 mice. I really like this idea, especially if I can get entirely away from any USB processing in my system. But I really like the remote-ability of the wireless mice. Does anyone know of or has used a wireless PS/2 mouse or an adapter that will allow the use of a USB wireless mouse via a PS/2 adapter? I have USB-PS/2 adapters which will allow a wired USB mouse to work into a PS/2 port, but they don't seem to work with my wireless mice.
2. Transcend IDE Flash Module 1GB and similar. Mihaylov, I saw you mentioned this as a better alternative to the standard SATA SSD. What makes it better? I would have thought sticking with only SATA would have been better than a mix of IDE & SATA. Perhaps relatedly, FMAK posted about an IDE DOM (Disk on Module) drive for a small music server he put together here: http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=98415 . Anyone know anything about these?
3. Non-Native PCI Mobos. Ok, as Rick McInnis, Jack Wong & others have pointed out, the latest SandyBridge chipset appropriate to our purposes does not support PCI natively. Some of the boards using this chipset do appear to have non-native PCI slots. Also, Bibo01 wrote 'Q67 (also Q65) chipset microATX motherboards do have native PCI'. Has anyone used a Mobo without native PCI support with a PCI soundcard for their interface and can report on the sound? As Jack Wong said, these boards may be significant steps up from today's boards... maybe the suboptimal PCI processing will be swamped by the inherent SQ improvement? Or has anyone seen and/or used any of these Q67/Q65 boards that support PCI natively?
4. SSD Under-volting. Douwe01nl wrote a wonderfully intrigueing post with several HW tweak opportunities. One was undervolting his SSD. Anyone else tried this? Except for being focused on Juli@ mods right now, this would be an easy one for me to try as I have linear supplies with variable regulators on my SSD & HDD. But hopefully others have tried it, but just haven't reported.
More on Douwe01nl's thread.
TIA!
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
Follow Ups:
Hi all
I think I've been first in use of 2100T + H67MA UD2H B3 (now the same mobo is product with newer Z68 chipset)
http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=pcaudio&n=89089&highlight=audiodan@tiscali.it&r=&search_url=%2Fcgi%2Fsearch.mpl%3Fsearchtext%3D%26b%3DAND%26topic%3D%26topics_only%3DN%26author%3Dig%26date1%3D%26date2%3D%26slowmessage%3D%26sort%3Dscore%26sortOrder%3DDESC%26forum%3Dhug
and I can confirm his wide sonic superiority respect to my previous H55. I'm thinking that linear PSU couldn't be necessary now.
We all must approach the new HW problems in the future developement of cMP2 because PCI is dead forever but mainly XP will be no further supported in brief by new components. I suppose that new asincronous USB sound card, if supplied by good ASIO driver, could solves many problems about good and easier future cMP2 systems, but which OS will can use?
First, I had mentioned the EXA-U21 USB interface in my "Further Juli@ Follies" thread as what is likely THE hot USB-> I2S interface for computer audio for a DIY'er. But there's another available that looks to also be very good and less expensive:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/188902-xmos-based-asynchronous-usb-i2s-interface.html
and another that might also be a good bet:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/185761-open-source-usb-interface-audio-widget.html
Then there is the K&K I2S interface I mentioned that uses PS Audio's HDMI-cable-based standard. Again, the coolest thing about it is that they make a sender that is designed to mount on the Juli@ digital section. Well there's now another option:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/twisted-pear/201106-introducing-bit-teleporter.html
It does provide some level of isolation between the source and receiver and there is no ground connection between them. This means it might work better than K&K's when used with a DAC other than K&K's RAKK DAC.
And the Twisted Pear people mention in that thread that they are also working on a USB-> I2S interface that will likely compete in quality with the EXA-U21, so that will be another option in the near future.
Finally, a couple of questions...
Mihaylov, you have info on Juli@ clock upgrades on your website. It looks like you've done at least two upgrades, both of them changing just one of the clocks on the Juli@. Were the Juli@ cards still able to work for all of the standard sampling rates( 44/48/88/96/176/192) after the clock upgrade?
And for Rick McInnis, I remember you have a RAKK DAC. Did you upgrade to the latest MkIII version? If so, I have a couple of other questions for you.
Later!
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
Greg,
Just want to let you know that stock Musiland 01USD sound slightly better than stock Julia@, when both were powered by the Mobo. If you like the SQ of Julia@, I think you would like Musiland 01USD too, and it has many rooms for modification. You have not considered Musiland probably because it has no I2S output, but I can tell you that I2S can be taken from the chip but it would involve very careful soldering work. I've done it on a Musiland 01US.
Stock Musiland may not sound best, but the chip it uses is similar to Hiface. Mine sounds very good after modification but I have nothing to compare to apart from Juila@ which remains unmodified. I bought it in China @USD55. It is a good choice for modification.
=Were the Juli@ cards still able to work for all of the standard sampling rates( 44/48/88/96/176/192) after the clock upgrade?=
- Yes, Greg. But the sampling rates 44.1/88.2/196.4 use internal stock clock resonator on the board of Juli and sampling rates 48/96/192 use external clock (I use LCAudio clock as world clock for Juli and CA DAC Magic due to that LCAudio clock have two outputs). My CA DAC Magic upsample any input signal to 96 KHz so I use only 96 output sampling in cPlay because I think that SoX in cPlay do upsampling better than DAC Magic.
Serge.
http://cmp2-mihaylov.narod.ru/
My cMP2: Windows XP SP2 Ru, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel Core i3-530, Corsair CM3X160C9DHX 1GB, system drive - Transcend IDE FLASH MODULE TS2GDOM40V-S, ESI Juli@, full linear PSU, NAS - WD My Book Liv
and I am pleased with it though I have never compared it to anything else for reasons given numerous times. It makes different recordings sound different which is how I figure a component is working well. No glaze of unwanted continuity spread over every thing you listen to.
I think the I2S adapter that Dave made for the music server company is not for me. He even said I was better off with what I have. My main concern is the power supply. I think we can do better on our own.
I remain completely unconvinced by USB. I am sure it has got better than when I first began using it but it was such a revelation moving to JUL@ and that has not stood still either with what we have all learned.
Not that I would mind of it turns out to be the killer format. But I will wait for the ole preponderance of eveidence before making that change.
Have you had a chance to insert one into your system or are you where I am - next to impossible to insert; which im my case there is an addition to that: I could, but the set-up would be so different as to make the comparison worthless?
Glad to hear you found a solution.
My experience with the remote mice seemed to involve instability. Maybe it was the USB connection and the PS/2 will be more stable but ever since I quit using a remote mouse I have never had the machine do anything strange.
With the remote mouse there were times the machine would stop and require clearing the BIOS. Who knows why? I figured I could use the exercise of getting off of the couch and having to go to the screen to use the mouse in the front of the room. I did like being able to switch polarity from my seat, though. I was using the keyboard for this before we found that cMP sounds better without the keyboard.
To use an PS/2 keyboard would require a new build and one wonders if Serge found the keyboard driver to be more troublesome than the mouse drivers? One of these days ...
The idea of the IDE "hard drive" is intriguing but unless someone says it sounds MUCH better than the SATA SSD I think we might lose as much as we gain. I like being able to easily switch SSDs back and forth between my music computer and my main computer for making changes. I guess this could be useful once all of this OS tweaking is done. I assume we could copy our final configuration to the IDE FLASH mounted in another machine?
I found my collection of various USB-> PS/2 adapters. I had remembered them all being the same type... WRONG! Only two were the same... and two others DID allow a USB mouse dongle to work into the PS/2 port. Not sure why some work and some don't, maybe one pin is not connected in some, but I got two now!
That explains why I did see some USB/PS/2 wireless mice sold.
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
If you must change your MB, it seems your choice is very limited and the H61 MB should be a good choice. It advantages are non-presence of unnecessary/unwanted peripheral (only 2 SATA and 2 USB controllers), hence less current consumption. I will listen to Julia@ on the H61-S2h and H55-UD2H respectively and compare with my USB converter to confirm if there is any degrade of SQ.The H55M-UD2H is a fine MB. I had no intention to change it until I tried the H61 MB, but I'm looking at H67MA-UD2H-B3, a discontinued top-of-the-line product with an 8 phase (12 chokes) CPU power circuitry. It should sound much much better than its elementary counterparts.
I like the latest Sandy Bridge chipset/CPU because the current consumption is reasonable, hence quality power supply is made more affordable.
Regarding the H55M MB and i3 530/540, I just found some second-hand H55M-USB3 in China, which was a top model with low Rds(on) mosfets, similar to the H61/67 series. Since the power circuit is superior to UD2H, it may sound better. The MB is being shipped. I'll try it when I get it.I guess our CMP machines are moving on as new CPUs/Chipsets roll out and products discontinue. I'm looking forward to the 22mn CPU technology coming next year. I guess we may be able to power the 5V rail with 500ma of current.
Edits: 11/22/11
Hi Jack, great to read your very interesting posts on MB's!I changed to H55M-USB3 about a year ago, and chose this MB because of the cpu-power circuit. I must say i was a bit disappointed in SQ. At that time i moved from a medieval Asus-AMD-K7 (Athlon thunderbird) which runned @800 MHz. This board had a few interesting features, like no onboard sound, no onboard lan, adjustable VGA signal strength, very detailed BIOS. I bypassed all caps with Sikorel/Wima combo's (see photo, as per your directions, thanks a lot!), which had great influence on SQ. Of course this board couldn't do CPlay and i did SoX-upsampling by hand. This was all aimed on learning and trying to squeeze everything possible out of this 1999-MB. As a preparation for building my "real" CMP2.
The change to H55M-USB3 gave a lot nice improvements (RAMspeed, headless-opportunity, Cplay, upsampling, lower powerconsumption / battery-opportunity).
But i had expected more in terms of SQ. SQ was only a little better than the Asus/K7 board.
Other experience:
- changing CPU-speed on the h55m makes a lot of difference (900 lots better than 1200),
- playing with two cores it seems to sound tiny better than 1 core; just a little more depth and headroom. How could that be possible? larger L2 cache?I think the H55M-USB3 has good potential, but quiet a few needless noisy & powerconsuming chips have to be removed: IDE-chip, usb3-NEC, hdmi, dvi, sound, fan regulators. I think these chips overrule other improvements i did, for example on Juli@: just subtle improvements when linear psu-ing 5v and LifePo-ing 3,3v. Not the 'quantum leap' that other inmates describe. (MB has hybrid psu: linear+pico)
Since chip-removal is out of my league, and i don't need 192 KHz upsampling (88.2 is enough; my modded Benchmark-DAC1 upsamles to 176) i have a few questions:
1.
For going headless / 88.2 upsampling would it be possible / better to move to Atom?
Possible advantages:
- Asrock Atom D525 board, underclockable to 900 Mhz; fanless when underclocked
- simple design and few features (elegant)
- power consumption and -regulation is easier to control
- battery-power would be more simple
- removal of the two big regulators near CPU and battery-feeding (or replace the 78xx regs by lowdrop regulators)??
- not so many caps to bypass with Sikorel-Wima-combo
Possible disadvantage could be the small L2+L3 (1M+0M)
2.
Or should i stick to the h55m and try to cut the power-pins of the mentioned chips (and leave them on the board)?Thanks in advance!
Douwe
Edits: 11/23/11
Hi Douwe,I’m pleased that my posts on MB’s are of some use to you guys.
On the choices of MB, I strongly recommend you stay away from Atoms CPU/MB. Please see the posts below.
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/7/74567.html
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/7/74547.html
The 1st photo you posted is an Asus MB, not Gigabyte. I’m not sure the bypass caps are soldered to the right place as I couldn’t see the top of MB. Just a hint, all chokes, in particular those around the CPU and Ram need bypass caps.If you wish to change your CPU/MB, I recommend GA-H61M-S2P-B3 and Celeron G440, a low cost solution.
This MB doesn’t have many unnecessary devices, no DVI and HDMI chips, just sound and lan chips, 2 fan connectors. The bios is tweakable just like the S2V.
http://download.gigabyte.asia/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-h61m-s2p-b3_e.pdf
One more good thing about the Gigabyte H61M MB is that, unlike H55M series there are SMD chokes filtering the powerline before the lan and sound. As such, disabling the chip is easy, just desolder the chokes. You can cut off the legs of the mosfets next to the fan connectors.I will collect my 2nd hand H55M-USB3 after work today. May be worthwhile to wait for my report on this MB.
Edits: 11/24/11
On the choices of MB, I strongly recommend you stay away from Atoms CPU/MB. Please see the posts below.
I cannot comment on the GA-H61M-S2P-B3 but neither of the "tests" you cite strongly to recommend staying away from Atom MoBos is meaningful as the test conditions are not described. Atom boards have known limitations in our scenario; it is easy to get them to perform badly, not so easy to get them to perform well.
The D510MO would in any case not be the Atom board of choice (though I've used one a dual-boot setup).
Dave
Not the one Mr. Wong mentioned though.
The one's I tried I could not get JULI@ to install. Something would be weird so I put the MB back in the box and back to NEWEGG. Tried three fo them.
Under-volting the SSD? That just makes no sense to me at all. Certainly would not want to give it any more than the median 5 volts but I think I refuse to believe that could make a sonic difference. I do love being proved wrong, though!
I hope that board Mr. Wong has tried will work 'cause I do not know what to do with that processor!!! Thinking about getting one as an excuse to do find the minimal nLite install that will allow AWE.
You need to do another picture of the JULI@ board with some explanation of what is what. That is more stuff attached to JULI@ than I would have thought possible!
and there was no degrade in SQ when compared to USB.
Note that this board has Rev. 1.2 and 1.3. The 1.3 version has one choke and some components removed around the CPU, don't buy.
My suggestion for selecting a MB, apart from other requirements, is to look at the CPU power circuit. 6 or more chokes around the CPU is preferred.
Thank you, Jack! Good news.
Serge.
http://cmp2-mihaylov.narod.ru/
My cMP2: Windows XP SP2 Ru, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel Core i3-530, Corsair CM3X160C9DHX 1GB, system drive - Transcend IDE FLASH MODULE TS2GDOM40V-S, ESI Juli@, full linear PSU, NAS - WD My Book Liv
Agree, very good news.
Also interested in what you find with the 2nd-hand board.
Just to be clear, do the H61M-S2H have native PCI via the chipset or a bridge?
TIA!
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
Collected a 2nd hand H55M-USB3 in the evening. Couldn't wait to listen to it. I also borrowed an unmodified H55M-UD2H from a friend for comparison.
An Antec Earth Watt ATX PS, i3/530, SSD and USB DAC were used. First of all, listened to unmodified UD2H MB to get an idea how it would sound with stand ATX PS. Bios setting was optimized. Without a linear PS and MB modifications, UD2H was a bit dull and boring, things were hidden a bit in the background. Background noise was a bit high.
Bios setting for the USB3 was similar to UD2H, but since I'm not familiar with this MB I set the CPU and Graphic voltage 0.03V higher. When the USB3 fired up, things were a bit different. I must say that with the same PS, this MB has better rejection to poor quality of switching PS, probably due better power circuit. Everything is just better and it was more enjoyable listening to it than the UD2H MB. After a brief comparison, my initial impression was that the USB3 MB was better sounding than the UD2H MB. The major difference between the two MB seems like a better PS was used on the USB3.
H61M-S2H don't have native PCI.
Serge.
http://cmp2-mihaylov.narod.ru/
My cMP2: Windows XP SP2 Ru, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel Core i3-530, Corsair CM3X160C9DHX 1GB, system drive - Transcend IDE FLASH MODULE TS2GDOM40V-S, ESI Juli@, full linear PSU, NAS - WD My Book Liv
DOM is better because it's volume is smaller. The more volume SSD has more powerful processor. I want to use 256 or even 128 MB DOM.
Serge.
http://cmp2-mihaylov.narod.ru/
My cMP2: Windows XP SP2 Ru, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel Core i3-530, Corsair CM3X160C9DHX 1GB, system drive - Transcend IDE FLASH MODULE TS2GDOM40V-S, ESI Juli@, full linear PSU, NAS - WD My Book Liv
What about the Q67 chipset boards. Gigabyte currently lists one:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3824#sp
Not sure if it's available yet, Newegg doesn't list it.
Any thoughts on it? Are other Q67/Q65 boards with native PCI coming soon?
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
Therefore the BIOS settings might be very simplified w/o downclocking and downvoltage features. See for example the GA-Q67M-D2H-B3 manual. But there are the systemboards with suitable BIOS settings from other manufacturers for example Asus P8Q67-M DO.
Serge.
http://cmp2-mihaylov.narod.ru/
My cMP2: Windows XP SP2 Ru, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel Core i3-530, Corsair CM3X160C9DHX 1GB, system drive - Transcend IDE FLASH MODULE TS2GDOM40V-S, ESI Juli@, full linear PSU, NAS - WD My Book Liv
Bummer.
Thanks for the info!
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
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