Tír Na HiFi

Did you fellows get together for the comparison test?

Would greatly appreciate hearing the appraisal.

We never really did get the time to do a good comparison test and I had cables made up and ready to go for Tony's Audio PC but we just ran out of time.
The main reason for running out of time was down to my own stupidity where i connected the Hynes 12v to a 5v connection in my rush to get up and running, i ended up blowing the PPA V3 USB card in the process and for a long time thought i had blown the Lampizator Big7 USB input as well.

After an hour or more i finally got the Big 7 working again and had to swap in the JCat USB card to get music playing with the power connected properly.

We did eventually settle on using the Big7 for playback and we swapped between my audio PC in core mode with JPlay and Tony's Audio PC in Minimal Server mode with Jplay for comparison.

Tonys had the home brew linear supply with batteries and we used the JCat USB card on both and i think we felt my Audio PC sounded a little better with the Hynes Supply but Tony's audio PC was compromised from my point of view and experience, Tony's Audio PC was reading music files off a remote USB hard drive and he did not have the PPA Mobo Clock on his system so it was not a like for like test.

We will have to organise another day to properly test like for like but I was surprised how good Tony's Audio PC sounded compared to mine with the Hynes PS, just goes to show that the home build PS using Nige's design gives great returns on value for money.
Cheers, Pearse.

Your conclusion sounds sensible - I am attracted to Nigel's system due to its cost.

Batteries are always a pain in comparison to something you just plug in and forget. Paul Hynes supplies are highly regarded for good reason. If one can get close one can be very pleased with their efforts.

If I could afford it (I just cannot spend that kind of money on digital stuff) I would choose the Hynes supply, no contest. But I can't and my tinkerer's heart wants to do it myself and Nigel's plan makes the most sense to me.

I think to get the batteries on the same level as the Hynes one would need to use about six of the A123s/ 3 parallel runs of 2 series cells to get the ESR really low. With time I will give this a try but initially I will keep it simple.

Always a pleasure to read what the TIR NA fellows are up to. In my unhumble opinion the most useful forum for digital audio. My appreciation to all involved!

Thanks for nice comments Rick. Would concur with Pearse's view but you couldn't take anything definite away from it due to the set ups. Some of the items we could easily have matched(usb hdd for music) but for A/B switching we didn't have two matching usb cards as well as the mobo issue.
After doing my upgrade I still find myself running up the hill to stand still as Pearse and Nigel march along the upgrade path(both in different directions!) BTW I also have not changed the 12v lead acid battery to lifepo4's yet but not sure if that will make any noticeable sound improvement. For what it is worth I am very happy with the improvements wrought so far and the only casualty has been a mobo. The next move with Mobo will involve purchasing a practice board and probably assistance from a certain innovator here.

But as Pearse advises and you conclude the differences are not massive and even with my implementation you are a long way down the road. The mobo clocks and possibly the Pang V3 card will get me as far as I can go without entering Paul Hynes territory.

Probably obvious but are you suggesting doubling up the batteries on each voltage rail but wiring them in series to provide potentially extra smoothing? Maybe I am reading it wrong.

Sorry for writing in shorthand.

When we place the batteries in series to get the voltage we need we are doubling the ESR for the five volts and tripling to get 12 so I figure to gild the lily we should use, say, three parallel runs of two in series to lower the ESR - especially for the critical 5 volts rail.

ESR is specified at 0.008R - two in series, 0.016R - three parallel runs of two in series, 0.005R.

Who knows if it would make an audible difference? One of those things to do just so you won't wonder about it while you are listening - seems like the proper obsessive thing to do.

ADDITION - I have no idea if this scheme would require some kind of management circuitry - just speculating ...

Should have placed in my other post - but, so far, all I can understand is the power supply aspect.

Your SLAs should be fine if they are big and have low ESR - great thing about those A123s is their small size and low ESR - some say they do offer an improvement over my SLA reference the OPTIMA battery certainly much easier to deal with!

I have removed components from the motherboard many times - back when soundcards were the way a few of us removed all of the USB stuff and extraneous video stuff - used PS2 and, of course, standard (de-rated) monitor settings - no HDMI and such remained - BUT installing the clock on the MB is not something I have tried though I am intrigued.

What clock are you using? Is this a standard frequency of do different mbs have different frequency xtals? I would appreciate your guidance on this.

I had not heard of the PANG card until learning of TIR NA and that was due to MQn. That thing seems really expensive. I am hoping nige2000 will come up with the cheap way to get 99% of the performance!

Take care,

Nigel when he is back online will deal with this much better than I can.
The mobo clocks seem to be relatively cheap (crystal)couple of euro each. I am sure Nigel checks out whatever the spec is for these clocks and matches them. The Pang card v3 has a ocxo clock and these are expensive.
All of us including Nigel I think favour(or recognise) the pang card(V1) brings an extra body (weight) to the sound.
Nigels clock in my opinion was not necessarily thinner sounding but maybe edgier in sound. Is this design/noise etc don't think Nigel knows yet. The oven clock thing Pang is doing seems to do something very positive also and Nigel will have to answer whether his can get to that level without the cost.
His card is cost effective especially if doing it yourself.

My board is standard no clocks but I currently have a Nigeboard(test one) on loan and he has soldered up two clocks. Will test that over xmas but haven't chanced connecting it up until I revert to Nigel to make sure I do not blow it up. It is semi set up but still needs + and ground to be connected up to it.

I think Pearse has a board with ocxo clock installed either on the way or maybe he used it last time!!
If that turns out to be great sounding can't see Nigel coming up with a cheap clock version to beat it but
all Nigels work to date on mobo's have yielded excellent results. Ignoring all the expensive stuff and just following the basic Nige formula gets you most of the way. The eureka special sound from my experience always costs lots of bucks

I share your respect and admiration for Nigel's efforts.

I am a fan without apology!

Will wait patiently for his next epistle.

Thanks for the note,

Sligolad wrote:
Tonys had the home brew linear supply with batteries and we used the JCat USB card on both and i think we felt my Audio PC sounded a little better with the Hynes Supply but Tony's audio PC was compromised from my point of view and experience, Tony's Audio PC was reading music files off a remote USB hard drive and he did not have the PPA Mobo Clock on his system so it was not a like for like test.

tonys pc definitely wouldn't be able to compete without mobo clocks, anyway there where other variables too
regardless the low noise floor, bass and speed of pearses pc is excellent and you dont get that without a top quality supply

We will have to organise another day to properly test like for like but I was surprised how good Tony's Audio PC sounded compared to mine with the Hynes PS, just goes to show that the home build PS using Nige's design gives great returns on value for money.
Cheers, Pearse.

yes undoubtably need to test this again, we need to be able to switch power supplies on the same pc,
otherwise we would just be guessing

rickmcinnis wrote: I think to get the batteries on the same level as the Hynes one would need to use about six of the A123s/ 3 parallel runs of 2 series cells to get the ESR really low. With time I will give this a try but initially I will keep it simple.

i like to use a 2 cell 5v pack per device ssd/dac/usb hdd etc but there could very well be extra benefit in having more on the mobo 5v on the 24pin but i suppose if theres several 5v packs on the same charging system it will amount to the same thing