Build a dedicated Audio PC

[nige2000]

JC advised me to try 800mhz 5 5 5 14 for more detail a while back and hes right theres more detail over 5 5 5 9

[Sligolad]

Several members had an interesting get together yesterday at Tony's to see where we were at with our builds and to compare a few DAC's.
At play were the following:

Transports:
Tony's audio PC with batteries fed by Maplin Linears to Pico and 12v to board for CPU, Server 2012.
Nige's audio PC with Linears to batteries and more batteries with not a Pico in sight, again Server 2012 with PPA USB Card.
Meridian 596 CD/DVD transport using SPDIF out.

DAC's:
Ciunas with DC Supply
Ciunas without DC Supply (more later)
Lampizator 2.5 to 3 (think it is close to version 3)
Eximus DP1

Amp and speakers: Tonys Jadis and Quad ESL 57s.

Reviewers: Pearse, Nige, John Kenny, Maciej, Seb, Tony.

This is going to be a short report as other can chime in and correct me or add other thoughts.

Key learning's for me were the "Pico has got to go"....sorry Tony but it was a no brainer!!
Additional perceived detail can often be just noise....pulling the DC plug on the Ciunas gave a smother presentation and was more musical to listen to.
Think we all agreed the Ciunas with the DC plugged in sounded more etched but was more musical and enjoyable with the DC jack out...thanks to Nige for highlighting this one for us!!
Lampizator sounded lovely in midrange for me with piano really shining for me and maybe with an upgrade to level 4 or more could be a great bargain, bass was a bit loose and lacked a little definition but on Nige's audio PC it gained a lot of the missing definition back and sounded very good.
The Eximus was almost the opposite to me in that it had great control and musicality on bass runs, really drew me in to the bass on Oscar Peterson and piano was not as strong. Probably the best on the day for me though if it had some of what the Lampizator had on piano it would also be an excellent bargain.
The Ciunas without the DC plugged in was closer to the Eximus than the Lampizator for me and difficult to tell apart if you did not know which was playing.
The Meridian really surprised me and was a real contender against the best of Audio PC versus CD transport, the audio PC still won for me but there was very little in it which really surprised me, again this transport is a real bargain for anyone looking for a CD transport....amazing!!

Thanks to Maciej for introducing me to the Gregory Porter album, really enjoying it today!
Thanks mostly to Tony who as always was a great host on the day and to the rest of the family for putting up with us for at least 5 hours with so many repeats of Oscar Peterson they must have thought we were dead with the player stuck on repeat!

Cheers, Pearse.

[Aleg]

...
Key learning's for me were the "Pico has got to go"....sorry Tony but it was a no brainer!!
Additional perceived detail can often be just noise....pulling the DC plug on the Ciunas gave a smother presentation and was more musical to listen to.
Think we all agreed the Ciunas with the DC plugged in sounded more etched but was more musical and enjoyable with the DC jack out...thanks to Nige for highlighting this one for us!!
...

Cheers, Pearse.

Pearse

what was power the the DC-plug into the Ciunas?
USB, SMPS, Battery, ....?

Cheers

Aleg

[tony]

Agree with all Pearse's findings. Would need to hear the ciunas again with dc out as the track didn't work for me when I heard it but I might have been distracted. All others listening thought otherwise. Lampy won it for me as it has an incredibly special tone but some bass passages are a disaster(Too loose I don't mean it as badly as it is typed here but compared to the everything else the lampy does this was the weak spot)
Maciej is considering upgrade to level4 so it will be coming back to my place if I have to steal it!

Eximus as Pearse advises excellent all rounder holding it all together and to be fair it wasn't listen to for long enough across a variety of tracks to get the full picture. Loads of detail but not etched and tight control on bass. Throw in headphone facility and preamp and the variety of options it really is a great package.

On the Lampy again we were left wondering if usb output on the Lampizator is not the best or maybe needs to be run in. Not sure how much Maciej uses it. It would have been interesting if John had a converter to see how it would perform thru the pc then.

Nigel as per usual (has to be because he tests everything!!) has the best sounding transport. Would love to challenge the skeptics to listen to it and advise that the transport is irrelevant. I now have to go off again and get PPang usb card and try and take out the pico and understand how the lifepo4's are installed. Also think some of Nigels bios settings need to be applied to my pc if the mobo allows.

Thanks to all for making the effort to call up as it is a long way to travel to listen to one oscar peterson track and one Gregory Porter track for 5hrs!

[Sligolad]

Pearse

what was power the the DC-plug into the Ciunas?
USB, SMPS, Battery, ....?

Cheers

Aleg

It was an SMPS Aleg, we had a look at it thinking there may have been ground plane issues but it had a plastic earth pin so it must be the switch mode ps getting through in to the Ciunas so definitely worth looking at a good PS for the Ciunas or just listen without DC connected to see if it makes a difference in your system if anyone has a Ciunas DAC.

[nige2000]

another good day
as usual time is always an obstacle
really only got testing and two pc's and three dac's and one dvd/cd player with two tracks

i really liked the meridian and the lampizator,

both the lampizator and the ciunas use the same drivers due to the amanero usb to i2s, so that was handy
the lampizator had fantastic dynamic ability, gave great piano very smooth, but a little too smooth bass needs tightening up and a little more detail wouldnt go a miss, but yet id bring it home in a heartbeat because its very likeable. think with a picoless audio pc a solid state amps and a set of eist dubhs it would make a nice combo

the eximus as Pearse says is pretty much an opposite, we should have done a demonstration of the buffer and latency settings in thesycon drivers, i think we prefer the lowest latency and buffer settings on these xmos chipped dacs from previous meets. if i remember correctly raising these settings would smooth out and loosen or sound more like the lampi.
its a terrible shame we do not have the facility to alter these settings with the amanero

ciunas was the middle ground for me, if someone would pay thesycon to make drivers for it that would be nice

probably should mention that we used mqn 2,31 with the 100000 control, think theres better combinations we should have switched even if it was only the 1,1 control

the difference with the cheap smps charger (maplin so likely wasn't even cheap) connected into the ciunas vs not connected is only just become noticeable on my pc and ive many mods
probably should apologize for my cruelty for causing the confused faces because i pulled out the nonexistent fourth dac
for me theres a yet a lower noise floor, better dynamic and cleaner throughout especially the highs


would like to test with the lampi again especially if it visits home for a holiday. it could be possible if the amanero had not many hrs on it the bass and detail might have some improvement to come

[Sligolad]

Another little footnote on the day I forgot about...
At the end of the day Seb recommended taking the Meridian off the mains and plugging it in to Tony's AC Regenerator and this improved the Meridian even more!!
At this point the Meridian was really good and I expect some would have been happy taking the Meridian home over some of the other kit on display.

Been doing a little reading on it and it seems it does some clever buffering of the data, checks the data and does another read to make sure jitter is as low as possible or some sort of clever stuff like that, great technology from the end of the last century or somewhere the beginning of the current century.
It was about 4.5 grand back then but if you can find one now they go really cheap!

[tony]

What model is it Pearse? Certainly if one wanted to retain a cdp option or a really excellent transport it certainly was a bit of stunner.
The notion of going back to cdp's is a non runner for me just couldn't be bothered with the hassle of loading unloading putting the disks away etc but whatever they did Meridian have done it well. It would seem a bargain as a transport probably should have tried it standalone to see how it fared. The Wadia (simons) 861se I think is spectacular to me also. Funny nobody has ever bothered with a cdp thread!

[jkeny]

Yea, thanks Tony - great meet-up
The Lamp sounded very nice but my focus was the highs where I felt the tail-end of notes were slightly curtailed
The Eximus was very nice
The Ciunas sounded textured at first but later this was revealed to be an etching which was due to the SMPS PS powering the charger.
The Meridian 596 DVD transport was the surprise - sending SPDIF to the Lamp sounded surprisingly good & this sound improved further when power was being fed from the power regenerator, as Pearse said.

Very interesting meet.

[Diapason]

The Wadia (simons) 861se

Tis a 581se, Tony, but since the 861se looks identical I forgive you!