Build a dedicated Audio PC

[sebna]

This past weekend I had finally chance to experimenting a bit with my hardware and software at home. On Eximus which uses same driver as Maitener I can get to US 20 with driver buffer set to 0. That is on my 8 years old trusted laptop (which is almost like part of my body by now ;)). This laptop is about 80% tweaked towards dedicated audio-pc at this stage.

On other machine I can get to 0/20 for all the other formats other that 192/24 files and I can do 8(driver buffer)/20us for all files resolutions. This PC is about 60% tweaked and at this stage its latency readings are still spiking quite a lot so I would hope that when I reach 80+ tweak level it will do stable 0/20 as laptop does. I would probably get away with running this PC fanless so it looks like perfect candidate for dedicated audio-pc.

It certainly looks like it might be down to the driver in use plus maybe some final touches on system setups.

Both PC work in single PC mode as I am trying out what can I squeeze out of them first in single machine setup.

On eximus 0/20 is very detailed some could say hyper detailed. 8/20 trades a bit of sharpness for a bit of more musicality or at least that is what I am pretty sure I hear :). Did not try much more then those two so far and few in between.

Other settings in jplay are directlink for all resolution other then 192 which is set to 2 samples.

Be careful with CAD script as it killed my laptop twice to state I had to reinstall and backup did not help as it got corrupted by the script effects! (There is a workaround for it. If you are using recimg or restore point do restart your machine before applying script or your backup will get corrupted).

What was killing my laptop was services part (the only one I was interested really as he goes beyond what is in the services.msc). Looks like he wants to cut too much for my laptop's liking. Might be just fine on your machines.

Thanks,
seb

[tony]

I would be very wary of that script. Sure it is fine but don't want the hassle of trying to recover from that.
Is the eximus working out well for you Seb? Interested to hear it whenever we have another meet up for dacs/pcs.

[nige2000]

I would be very wary of that script. Sure it is fine but don't want the hassle of trying to recover from that.
Is the eximus working out well for you Seb? Interested to hear it whenever we have another meet up for dacs/pcs.

Concur with all of that, cant see why we have to go mad shutting down processes on well capable pcs, a few of the worse ones will suffice, and even they didn't have much impact for me in regards sq.

like to hear the eximus at some stage too

[tony]

900 odd posts too many to check back on.Temp check is showing the core at 46 degrees and temp1 is a bit higher 50.
Is that in line? Case is luke warm only where the heatsink touches the case. I realise now when commenting on Pearse's case it was very cool. So is mine if you touch it on the other side to the heatsink!

Very happy with this yoke.streaming from the i5 just hibernate and us and everything sounds great. very melodic and to quote John who has disappeared a certain harmonic richness that makes one want to listen for hours.

[nige2000]

Must have done a good job with that cpu cooler id be happy with anything under 60 degrees but its the eighties before theres trouble

its great we all have made good progress

[sebna]

Which exactly i5 are you using in your builds?

[tony]

i7 3770 or S I am afraid Seb. In for a penny in for a tenner

[nige2000]

Which exactly i5 are you using in your builds?

Dont think it matters as much as people think. I started with a i3 2105 build which ken is playing with atm. And I have a i7 2600k which turned into my zuma build and a i7 3770k build and a i5 560 I think it is, I cant exactly remember its idol atm.
point being the i3 and zuma build were neck and neck in sound quality with single linear supply and pico psu maybe a slight advantage to the zuma because it was completely fanless. And ld be reasonably confident that I could rebuild any of them to sound as good as each other.
most of the guys went with the i7 to be sure to be sure and future upgrade ability. I didnt actually buy a computer because I already had them in abundance from my other addiction.
although I bought enough streacom case trilinear supply linear supply usb3 cards usb3 adapters and a new soldering iron . So I didnt exactly escape cost.
You should grab a chance to hear one of the dedicated audio pc builds and compare them to your laptop they do sound rather good

[jkeny]

Been out of the loop for a while & see all this activity (I'm still not getting email notifications of posts??) - glad I didn't leave it any longer or the number of back pages to read would have been too much.

Thanks for the link, Nige & for thinking of me - I got that mini-PCIe board for 18GBP & this riser board because I was a bit concerned about the length of the USb cables that came with the mini-PCIe board



I had been planning as close a connection of the USB sticks to the motherboard as I could & I think this is it - it plugs into the 19 pin USB header. The WTG stick will remain in permanent residence on one of the 2 USB3 ports. The other one I will experiment with either using USB3 music storage stick or plugging in the USB DAC. It's not exactly ideal as I would have liked a 3 port adapter. I should also be able to provide external 5V as there's a Molex connector on the MiniPCIe board.

Some nice USB3 port configurations here http://www.delock.com/produkte/F_467_eK ... B-3-0.html

When I get the time (haven't had much recently) I'll be working on making my NUC fanless using Flatcoolpipes & the alu case for heatsink - it may not prove to be effective enough (I know Fran's experiments with Flat cool pipes proved insufficient for his cooling requirements) but it's worth a try.

[nige2000]

I got some of them riser boards and tapped in the 5v to them (severed +5 from motherboard) the shortest route seems to prove best as it sounds better (not much mind) than any other configuration I've tried previous.

heres a unmodified one its just a matter of finding the +5 and breaking the connection there is only one live per side but several grounds


I've just ordered a similar riser that is longer with USB ports at 90 degrees think it will suit my case better

Nuc shouldn't be hard to cool