Soekris Dam Dac

[rickmcinnis]

jkeny I am in complete agreement about your noise assessment. It is not the noise that is obvious it is the noise that infects the signal.

AS Harry Pearson pointed out years ago, with analogue the noise is separate from the signal, with digital it has become intertwined with the signal.

And that noise is the key to making digital make music.

This was brought to light for me last night AGAIN. Got the RED TOP installed running the CPU. Listened to a few records and was finally seeing the goodness of what the SOEKRIS can now do. There is so much garbage generated by the CPU/switcher combo! Have gone through this many times and every time it is a revelation. I am ashamed that I was making such dramatic pronouncements with the PS so compromised.

Next I did what I had been instructed to do by the fellow who gave birth to paying attention to the operating system, Сергей Степанов, known as Serge at the cMP thread. He recommends, and he is absolutely right, that one needs to remove video duties from the CPU by using the lowest power video card you can find. I am using the ASROCK riser to power this with the RED TOP, also.

Now I am hearing something that approaches music. You fellows are missing out by not doing this. I will continue to bring it up in hopes you will!

I am starting to think there might not be anything wrong with my LiFePo batteries. I think I may have jumped to conclusions. (I know that surprises all of you) There is no question the two sources of 12 volts were dead. I had connected the JCAT card to the ASROCK riser which is connected to the 3.3 volts battery and nothing happened. I assume the battery has failed. I then try the JCAT card in my regular computer and it is not recognized there either.

This weekend I will substitute the smaller PANASONIC SLA for the P24 12 volts rail and see if the batteries are actually fine. I bet they are. Excuse all of the gnashing of teeth.

Them I should hear what I have been missing.

Yes, I know I need to remove those output filter caps. Will do that this weekend along with installing the new firmware and Paul's filters. One of those things I intended to do and kept putting off. Luckily that is easy.

Looking forward to hearing Randy's assessment of the FPGA caps mod. Of course, I should do it just because Nigel has done it. If my mother was still alive she would ask me, "if Nigel jumped over a cliff would you do it, also" and of course, the answer would be "yes". But my hatred and fear of SMD is such that I will need both Nigel and Randy to jump over the cliff before I follow.

Starting to think my level problem is with the autoformers. Should have troubleshot last night but whiskey and the music sounding pretty damn good convinced me to wait until this evening. I worry when I stupidly clipped those leads it might have sent a DC pulse large enough to fry the offending one. I notice a buzzing from the channel even with the level set to zero. The sound is basically fine through the thing so I think I have a short in there from melted insulation. Luckily, Dave can rewind them.

So my apologies for jumping to conclusions and being a bit of a crybaby about the SOEKRIS. Things are falling into place. I will stick with digital for about three weeks and then turn the LP system on again.

[rickmcinnis]

Nigel,

So you have replaced your beloved AMANERO with the DIYINHK converter?

Is this the device? http://www.diyinhk.com/shop/audio-kits/ ... s-pcb.html

Found this interesting comment in the text: No Via in active circuit (via inductance always create jitter problem)

Can't beat the price. Let me know if this is what you are recommending.

I must have missed the post.

And, yes, this weekend the REGEN gets jkeny's battery mod!

Ran home and found the level problem is definitely the attenuator. Firmware is not corrupted. Kind of wish t was the firmware ...

Take care,

[randytsuch]

Next I did what I had been instructed to do by the fellow who gave birth to paying attention to the operating system, Сергей Степанов, known as Serge at the cMP thread. He recommends, and he is absolutely right, that one needs to remove video duties from the CPU by using the lowest power video card you can find. I am using the ASROCK riser to power this with the RED TOP, also.

Interesting.

What video card are you using? I'm guessing low power is also the lower performance video cards, so they would be relatively cheap to try.

I've looked a little this morning, but they are so many choices.

Randy

[jrling]

Rick - Christmas is coming, so whilst you are shopping at diyhk, why not treat yourself to this - http://www.diyinhk.com/shop/usb-microsc ... scope.html!

Jonathan

[rickmcinnis]

JLing,

As you well know I have been giving myself too many Christmas gifts already this yea.

I could send the board to Christina Lowe and have her do it for a whole lot less than that! No room left on my kitchen table for that thing!

I figure after these caps are installed I will never have to deal with SMD components again! Luckily the caps are much bigger than the resistors and there is a chance I might be able to do this. Randy has the good idea of using two soldering irons and that might make it a little easier.

Randy,

Get the one with least memory, lower power. Look at used ones. Cheap is best!

I have no memory of who made the card. It was a known manufacturer just cannot remember which one and all of the stickers long ago fell off.

It is not a subtle change.

Something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-Geforce- ... SwAKxWX0Jk

I see now that this is DVI - should not make any difference if your monitor has one of those inputs.

This one is close to perfect: http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENUINE-DELL-AT ... Swv-NWaF6r

Grab it while you can! You will not need the fan if there is plenty of ventilation.

[rickmcinnis]

This is the ASROCK riser - makes it simple to power your pci-e cards and divorce them from the motherboard.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/card.asp? ... 0PRO%20Kit

You will have to modify it but that is very simple.

[randytsuch]

This one is close to perfect: http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENUINE-DELL-AT ... Swv-NWaF6r

Grab it while you can! You will not need the fan if there is plenty of ventilation.

Just bought it, and the asrock riser kit, thanks for the info.

I'm guessing the mod is to cut the +12V wire, and then supply +12 directly from my 12VDC supply.

Randy

[rickmcinnis]

The "article" .pdf is too large to upload so I will copy the good stuff into here.

You will have to extrapolate the instructions for your motherboard.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. HARDWARE AND BIOS update
As many still remember, we were suggested to use an onboard graphic chip on our Biostar,
Gigabyte G31 ms2l and Gigabyte G55 UD2h mobos. The idea that removing a separate add-on
video card was beneficial, seemed very natural. However, long tweaking shows, that all things
video, software and hardware wise, have a grave negative impact on sound. So, what about a pci
express, that we have on our mobos? It is a SEPARATE circuitry and a different bus altogether. At
first I made a mistake and installed a simple pci card - a 2mb of memory in an s3 trio - It doesn't do
the trick, as it does NOT allow the CPU to drop its video duties and disable the graphic core, then I
got another USED pci EXPRESS card (it is a different type) and installed - the magic was here
and instantly.

After installing it, power the cmp computer and enter BIOS setup.
Find there:
ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES
get inside and find Init Display First, it shows now ONBOARD. Change it to PEG (probably Pci
Express Graphics), but not PEG2.
ASUS NVIDIA 7300 LE
or anything like this one

Lower, it shows ONBOARD VGA. Turn it to Enable if No Ext PE Next go MB Intelligent Tweaker,
enter it and find: Advanced frequency settings, find PCI Express(MHz) set it to 100, find PCI
Express Clock Drive, set it to 700mV.

Get to the upper menu and enter advanced voltage settings. Find Graphics Core and set its
voltage to 0.200V (it can't get lower, it's just a drip feed voltage). Exit MB Intelligent Tweaker.
Just as You are passing by, enter Integrated Peripherals. Find SATA Port0-3 Native Mode and
ENABLE it (I have an external sata hdd attached, so be careful with this one. Anyway, if it stops
Your hdd from booting, which I doubt, You can always revert to disable setting).

Now comes the "tricky" part. Your video card is installed, the BIOS settings are made, now it's
time to reboot. Before You do, just save the current bios configuration by pressing F11 and
entering the name for a new slot. You can save it only when you are at the top level of bios setup.
Save and reboot, when computer starts to reboot, just unplug the monitor from the mobo and plug
it into the video card. Don't be afraid, You won't burn anything. If You did everything correctly, the
system will boot OK and it won't even notice the changed graphic adapter. No drivers are needed
for a slimmed down cmp, and, I suspect, for non-slimmed, just tell windows to use vga.
The benefits of this tweak are immediate and very pronounced and growin the next 24 hours
considerably.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(I have no idea why Serge is so nervous about the above - nothing to fear)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have the video card on the attached pic. It's an ASUS Nvidia 7300 LE (limited edition is such
because it carries only 64 mb of memory). There are several variations of this card, most have a
second output and up to 256 mb of memory. They all should work fine, all have PASSIVE cooling,
so no fan, if You get one with a fan, I think, it can be unpowered, because my card wo a fan is not
even warm at 1024x768x256 colors.

You can easily buy such a card at numerous computer junk sites. A quick search here shows half
a dozen an then there are some who sell wholesale?! but will always send you a single one. The
trick is to get the weakest (le), but any will do. There are even older and weaker generation 6
nvidia cards, but I do not know if the fit, so it is up to those of us, who are more hardware wise to
tell us. The cost of such card can be anywhere between $12 to $25 depending on the sellers
greed only.

Now a question may arise - who benefits from this tweak. Answer - Everyone with a pci sound
card. Especially inmates with a mobo that uses Core i3 or Core i5 any generation processor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More stuff about memory settings from the same article. Most of this is well-known but just in case I thought I would copy it, here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go MB Intelligent Tweaker M.I.T.
Get inside Advanced memory settings
Set DRAM Timing Selectable to Expert
Enter Channel A Timing Settings
set them as follows:
CAS Latency Time 5, tRCD 2, tRP 2, tRAS 2, tRC 15, tRRD auto, tWTR auto, tWR 5, tWTP 10,
tWL auto, tRFC 35, tRTP auto, tFAW 10, Command Rate(CMD) 1, Static tRD auto.
get out of advanced memory settings and enter Advanced Voltage Settings in M.I.T.

Set
Load-Line Calibration Enabled
Graphics core 0.200V
DRAM Voltage 1.300V
DRAM TERMINATION to the aesond lowest 0,390V (it won't go lower if you want it to remain rock solid)

Now get to advanced Frequency settings, enter
advanced CPU Core Features
and set CPU CORES 1, Multithreading - Enabled, CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) to ENABLED.
Disable everything else

In Power management setup Enable HPET Support and set HPET Mode to 32 bit.

After making sure that your pci express video card card is perfectly stable, you can change the pci
express buss frequency. Just do it with care, as it changes frequency of the bus on all mobo, not
just the video card. Depending on the card You can probably get to as low as 94-93 Mhz.Do it in
steps and always make sure the system COLDstarts .

This is all about bios settings. Just for the sake of prudence do them in several steps
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Depending upon your MB there will be different names or the stuff mentioned is not even there. But you get the idea of where this is going.

Again, I know Nigel is not going to learn anything from this but others might find something of interest here.

Hope this is useful for someone.

[rickmcinnis]

Randy,

OF COURSE, you know what to do!

Cut the power connection back to the PCI-e board connector but keep the ground. There is a brown wire that I have no idea what it does but I left it intact.

Are you using a PCI-e USB card? If so, you will want to use a riser here, also. Long USB cables are not a problem here. Marcin Ostapowicz (JPlay) thinks they are an advantage. Easy way to divorce your USB card from board power.

AND THEN if you have a PS2 keyboard and mouse (and two PS2 jacks) you can turn off USB in your BIOS which is why I am really missing having a working PCI-e USB card. Makes a big improvement whenever I have done it.

[rickmcinnis]

Nigel,

Please advise about the DIYINHK converter.

I like the idea of getting rid of any regulator.

That site has so many versions of things I would like to be sure I am looking at the one you are using.