Build a dedicated Audio PC

[tony]

It is over to Ken on the sata cable. I was just posing the question. Again that can be changed out at any stage if one believed in voodoo magic.

If you are right about the processor that brings down the cost alright. Have to do some research on that. My belief was the faster the processor the easier the load for any program but if it is overkill and there is no degradation on sq using the cheaper chip great.

The power supply you are suggesting is better/larger than the zuma? So that part is fine I think.

Can these be assembled as plug and play or is there soldering involved? Would assume there isn't a need to solder.

Checked with Marcin and advice is 8gb for whatever reason I believe you could never have enough ram. Is 8gb the max on that board?

chip/ram/motherboard/ssd drive/sata power filter/case/power supply/windows8 is that it?
Is the network card on the motherboard?

On usb cables what is Kens audioquest cable doing for you? Nothing? A little? or very special?

[Ken Moreland]

I bought the Green Label Sata cable from http://ppastudio.blogspot.ie/ (way down near the bottom of the blog). This is from the same stable as Pearse's USB cable. Marcin raved about it on Jplay but although it was easy to install I didn't think it had any major impact. The PPA guy has a good reputation and he also does a USB card as well. You can see his thoughts on upgrading the Zuma.

[jkeny]

I bought the Green Label Sata cable from http://ppastudio.blogspot.ie/ (way down near the bottom of the blog). This is from the same stable as Pearse's USB cable. Marcin raved about it on Jplay but although it was easy to install I didn't think it had any major impact. The PPA guy has a good reputation and he also does a USB card as well. You can see his thoughts on upgrading the Zuma.

I have listened to Pearse's USB CABLE & my view si that it is flawed - it heavily favours the mid-range, to my ears & takes out some of the HF sparkle so I'm interested in your analysis of his SATA cable. Pearse already knows my view on the USB cable - interested in Tony's view.

[Ken Moreland]

The PPA Sata cable didn't have any night/day effect but didn't diminish the sound quality in any area of the spectrum. If anything it added some detail and sparkle. I never took it back out to compare though!

[tony]

[quote="jkeny]
I have listened to Pearse's USB CABLE & my view si that it is flawed - it heavily favours the mid-range, to my ears & takes out some of the HF sparkle so I'm interested in your analysis of his SATA cable. Pearse already knows my view on the USB cable - interested in Tony's view.[/quote]

Interesting as yourself and Fran felt the supertweeters were too much HF in my set up. Is this cable addressing that balance for me? I will find it hard to get time this week to switch back and forth and was having issues doing that which gobbled up too much listening time and became annoying. Over the weekend which was lat saturday and sunday evening I have used the jkdac32 in ordinary usb slot with direct connectors and then in the sotm slot with usb connectors and have changed to the usb cable now and listened to that mainly with the zuma and through the sotm usb but also used it in the laptop set up. Point of this long silly detail is that things start getting blurred.

What did you use as a test track as i will try that hopefully at some point?

[nige2000]

It is over to Ken on the sata cable. I was just posing the question. Again that can be changed out at any stage if one believed in voodoo magic.

If you are right about the processor that brings down the cost alright. Have to do some research on that. My belief was the faster the processor the easier the load for any program but if it is overkill and there is no degradation on sq using the cheaper chip great.

The power supply you are suggesting is better/larger than the zuma? So that part is fine I think.

Can these be assembled as plug and play or is there soldering involved? Would assume there isn't a need to solder.

Checked with Marcin and advice is 8gb for whatever reason I believe you could never have enough ram. Is 8gb the max on that board?

chip/ram/motherboard/ssd drive/sata power filter/case/power supply/windows8 is that it?
Is the network card on the motherboard?

On usb cables what is Kens audioquest cable doing for you? Nothing? A little? or very special?

i cant say anything about audio sata cables i have no experience of them. i am a bit wary of these things as i assume there are lots of audio products on the market that have no benefit only reducing your bank balance. id say add it on at a later date if you want.

building a pc these days is alot like lego one bit plugs into another just a bit of screwdriver work but not much. no soldering required. most soldering on computer builds are done because of modification by enthusiasts but not necessary on this build.

i had 16gb of ram on that build list, mostly because its not expensive, 8gb would be more than enough though

network card/ethernet is build into the motherboard , if you require wifi best bet is probably a usb dongle wifi adapter N rated one

i have kens usb cable its a good quality cable, i must do some more testing with it but i was fairly sure i couldnt find much difference between the audioquest and the one that came with the rpac dac its my old cable that ive been using these last few days.
i also have Kens interconnects definite vast improvement over the stock arcam rpac ones so cables make a difference. whether they make a difference on the digital side of the dac i don't know, but the noise filtering/prevention and not using poor cables may very well have an effect on sound on this side.

[Sligolad]

I would say leave the cable discussions and tests out of this at the moment as with all cables it is as much about synergy between components than anything else.
For me the PPA usb stays and the Ultraviolet is well retired, I have a lot of silver in my cable array so no issues with sparkle and top end.
Back to the Audio PC discussion I would recommend the CPU preferred by Marcin and Chris Connaker as these guys did a lot of testing over the past year and seemed to arrive at the same place.
The way Josef is going with low latency and Ultrastream engines it might just need good fast CPU power to carry out whatever magic he works in the background.

A word of caution on coming up with a new mobo, cpu, memory chip, Pico PSU as people have tried their own recipies and failed as can be read about on the Zuma forum if you go to the bottom of the page linked to below.

Worth reading Chris Connakers reasons why he went with the components he chose here http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conte ... s-v3-zuma/

With Item Audio it might be better to state which processor and memory you want and let them work out the final configuration so everything work together.

Glad to hear you found a very noticeable improvement Tony and I agree that Streacom case goes well in the HiFi Rack.

Again if you go this route of self build be prepared for some testing times as installing heatpipe technology on to the cpu is not for those without a delicate touch, you could blow your cpu very easily, i can help out later on this as I have completed heatpipe builds with all that messy thermal paste.

[Fran]

All interesting - thanks Pearse for the link, very useful indeed.

There seems to be a little bit of a split in philosophy between CA and itemaudio - one going the higher power route and the other trying to keep it all as small as possible.

Either way, it seems the picoPSU is the only way out for less than silly money.....

While the motherboard is not too bad price wise, the chip is a fairly hefty price. Would a lower spec one do the job without much effect on sonics I wonder?



Fran

[Fran]

Continuing on the journey:

W8 on SSD tried tonight vs very optimised W7 on regular 2.5" disc. W8 is a clear winner.

Not quite fair due to the 2 differing disc types, but if you were dithering over spending on the SSD+W8, just do it.

On a side note, I had to go through a lot of crap to get W8 running properly. This may well be due to the ancient PC Im running it on, but it seems stable enough for now (it'll probably crap out now having typed this!). Its very snappy indeed though I have to say.

Increase in dynamics perceived and also greater soundstage depth.


Fran

[nige2000]

I would say leave the cable discussions and tests out of this at the moment as with all cables it is as much about synergy between components than anything else.
For me the PPA usb stays and the Ultraviolet is well retired, I have a lot of silver in my cable array so no issues with sparkle and top end.
Back to the Audio PC discussion I would recommend the CPU preferred by Marcin and Chris Connaker as these guys did a lot of testing over the past year and seemed to arrive at the same place.
The way Josef is going with low latency and Ultrastream engines it might just need good fast CPU power to carry out whatever magic he works in the background.

A word of caution on coming up with a new mobo, cpu, memory chip, Pico PSU as people have tried their own recipies and failed as can be read about on the Zuma forum if you go to the bottom of the page linked to below.

Worth reading Chris Connakers reasons why he went with the components he chose here http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conte ... s-v3-zuma/

With Item Audio it might be better to state which processor and memory you want and let them work out the final configuration so everything work together.

Glad to hear you found a very noticeable improvement Tony and I agree that Streacom case goes well in the HiFi Rack.

Again if you go this route of self build be prepared for some testing times as installing heatpipe technology on to the cpu is not for those without a delicate touch, you could blow your cpu very easily, i can help out later on this as I have completed heatpipe builds with all that messy thermal paste.

didn't find any posts on that thread about failed cheaper zuma type builds could you link them for me id like to read them

do you think jplay will become more cpu hungry in the future, really cant see why it would need four cores when jplay will only utilise one

there are several youtube videos of building pcs and applying thermal paste first-timers will need to do a bit of research
ive put pcs together in 20-25 minutes before its not that big of a deal