Tír Na HiFi

jkeny wrote:Tony,
You won't have to wait too long - I've ordered the Intel NUC from here http://www.dabs.ie/products/intel-ice-c ... -8FSB.html
Along with Intel 520 60gB SSD it comes in at €388 including VAT & delivery

This is a well tried, standard configuration so reliability of elements should not be a problem.
Only left to see if it sounds good.

Fair play to you John.Just get it assembled and fired up and lets try and compare asap. I have the zuma until next friday.
Be great to do the same type of test as last week i.e same interconnects,same dac,same usb cable and David Byrnes wasp like sound in the background.The effort here is to try and make byrne sound like pavarotti

This is light relief from the rugby match!

The Intel 520 SSD is the one favoured by the Jplay guys. I installed one (180Gb ) at the same time as Windows8 in my i3 PC and the combination was much better than the old W7/HDD combination. Start-up is very fast and reliable.
Most of my music is on USB external HDD but as I had some room left on the SSD I loaded a few albums onto it and the sound quality difference was major between SSD and HDD.
This was when Jplay was single PC so everything was in the same box.Now with 2PC mode the SSD in your AudioPC will only contain the Operating System and Jplay, but I think it's still very much worthwhile.

It probably won't be delivered until late next week.
There's no real assembly required - plug in RAM, plug in SSD, plug in WiFi card. Done!
I'll give you a call when I'm ready.
I think expecting David Byrne to sing in tune would require more than what we have available

Yea, Ken, that's why I went for a 60GB SSD - it will only contain the OS

jkeny wrote:I think expecting David Byrne to sing in tune would require more than what we have available

I don't do LOL's but if I did this would merit 6 of them. Nice pick me up after the turgid italy match

Hopes pinned on Johns nuc yoke. If it delivers my wife will be over the moon. Otherwise it is bread and water for the kids for the next 6 months raei

Would be interested in hearing John's new box as well, looks like a nice compact unit so hope it works out well.

Hold on to the Zuma for as long as you need Tony as it is in all our interests to understand what makes a positive difference and what adds nothing to the table.

I think we are all at the frontier here trying to figure out what makes a cost effective difference....seems everything makes a difference when it comes to PC based playback but trying to quantify the ones with the best bang for your euros is the difficult part.

I still have the iUSB power unit to try and then applying all the EMI/RFI damping material will be another days work.....hopefully that is where it will end this year for me!

I'd be very interested to hear that too.

As Pearse says, we are at the frontier of finding out what does and doesn't work. Bear in mind that The intel mobo was chosen primarily because of ease of passive cooling = supposed longevity, not some magic property that was going to sound better for audio. Those kinds of ram issues are more common than you think. Also, he is using the smaller of the picoPSUs and it may well be that the other rams modules mentioned pulled a little more power than was available.

In the PC world shit happens. For example, I have had a lot of instability issues on a win8 build here - which I think I have now traced to the SSD. I will be doing a firmware update on it and hopefully that will fix it. How could you know that other than by figuring it out!

Fran

Yea, it's more interesting to try to tease out what is important for sound rather than just copying others. I don't know the particular philosophy behind the Zuma build - it's a pity that item_audio quit posting here as I thought his experience in all this would be helpful.
Anyway, I didn't order any RAM for this NUC as I figured I should have a fair selection among my 3 laptops here - this might yet bite me in the bum?

Does it take the same size ram as a laptop?

What were you plans for the 19v input John?

Just realised I have a Teddy Pardo PS on loan with Sebna which might be worth getting back to test with the NUC.
It is an 18 volt unit I had for the Young DAC and might be worth a try to see if it adds anything?
http://www.teddypardo.com/products/powe ... AC-PS.html