Tír Na HiFi

seeteeyou wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 1:09 pm Thanks Pearse and Patrick for your updates, I'll keep an eye on this thread.

There's something else I'd like to know as well, someone in Taiwan actually spent almost 5500 bucks / 5000 Euros (600,000 yen) on some kinda Ian's FIFO DAC

http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread. ... -HI-FI電腦訊源（連載）&p=240486#post240486

Somehow they're assuming / believing that for whatever magical reasons, merely throwing Ian's FIFO into the mix would achieve that "Holy Grail" called source immunity. Did that stuff sound more like unicorn or something? Everyone should be looking for such creature in the wild but it's nowhere to be found. And then the funniest part should be paying VERY good money for a megabuck product while getting a pair of cheap TCXO in return, not even OCXO or anything like that. Dude, maybe they could very well have that "legendary" DuCULoN for burning such serious cash.

I still recall that Patrick should have tried quite a few clocks on Ian's FIFO before, it's mission critical to get the best clocks one could afford since they're playing such an important role. I just couldn't stop laughing when those clocks were put under the spotlight. If source immunity were actually a piece of cake to achieve, Patrick wouldn't need to try so many different sources over the years.

!! 5000 euros on a FIFO hybrid, better to buy from Ian :)!!
I think I might have got this from one of your posts @seeteeyou
Compared to the cost of the Duculon ($1500?) the NZ2520SDs (dropped into the SD card) are a real bargain and the best clock I have used to date.
I have my eye on Andrea Moris next group buy which should be happening very soon..

I reckon theres a bunch of us watching that group buy!!

Fran wrote:I reckon theres a bunch of us watching that group buy!!

[emoji106][emoji4]


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Basic question.. has anyone found out why some music files do not show up on the SD card screen? - this is across different SLC cards. Is it just a random bug?

I've been using the player more and more lately as I love the SQ. I just added Ian Canada's new I2S to HDMI module to send I2S to my PS Audio Directstream DAC and it's the best so far (and I found out what Pre-Emphasis is and how to disable it by covering pin 15 on HDMI cable)

No,I don't think so. There are a few glitches that I've seen happen. Another example is a burst of white noise that is related to the metadata stored in the file - strip that out and it disappears. I wonder if renaming the folder or files would make a difference?

Fran wrote:No,I don't think so. There are a few glitches that I've seen happen. Another example is a burst of white noise that is related to the metadata stored in the file - strip that out and it disappears. I wonder if renaming the folder or files would make a difference?

Thanks Fran. I’ll try that. I did play around with naming and copied styles and numbering from files/folders that work but not much luck.

However one album that didn’t work one a card did work on another one so can’t make sense out of it yet. It might have something to do with total number of files and characters on a card.


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I have 2 folders on the card here, set to the very exact same output parameters as all others, but for some reason the card skips tracks. It will play track 1, then maybe 4, then 5, then 7. Go back and manually select 2, 3,6 and they play 100% no problem. Only happens on these 2 folders.

The white noise burst happens when you have album art link included in the metadata. For this reason, I think its possible that the glitchy behaviour is due to metadata.

Fran wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:17 pm I have 2 folders on the card here, set to the very exact same output parameters as all others, but for some reason the card skips tracks. It will play track 1, then maybe 4, then 5, then 7. Go back and manually select 2, 3,6 and they play 100% no problem. Only happens on these 2 folders.

The white noise burst happens when you have album art link included in the metadata. For this reason, I think its possible that the glitchy behaviour is due to metadata.

I'm not getting the white noise thing and I have album art in most of my folders.. all very strange. I used to spend hours tweaking local file metadata on my server running linux especially with classical albums but this seems more erratic and I can't yet decipher what's going on... Most albums do not even follow basic numerical order which really messes with older albums which were written to flow from one track into the other. I'm living with it for the super SQ.

New year, new energy (yea, right) to look into this again :)

First of all, I want to check a couple of things & give my thoughts before I put too much time into what might ultimately turn out to be a waste of time.

Again, I'm thinking of a better UI than the screen & buttons currently used on this SD player - something like, sending files via WiFi to the SD card & controlling playback - all via phone or computer. So no need to remove SD card or use any other device other than PC/phone to play back audio on this.

I was thinking that I would only use Flashair SD cards - the ones that have WiFi built-in. Both for WiFi function & as a way of standardising on a particular SD card. Has anyone found glitches in the SD player with these cards?

I'm basically thinking that the SD card would operate as a data buffer for the STM MCU. AFAIK, the STM MCU currently works by reading files from the SD card into an external memory chip & plays back from this memory - this is probably one of the secret sauces to the good sound from this player - not much else happening in the MCU except playback (output of I2S) of audio file ?

I tested sending files to the SD card via WiFi & it seems to work well & is speedy enough. I still favour amplitudeJS as the best software/interface to operate on either phone/computer which can act as the central control app. It has a lot of things going for it - open source (essentially it's a nice interface to JavaScript, can operate on all platforms that JS can operate on with the same interface. can send files via WiFi & here's the final piece that I'm looking into - sending start/stop/pause controls via Bluetooth to a Bluetooth receiver inside the SD player

Initially we were looking at infrared to do this but too many interfaces needed to use this so I'm looking into BT as a control interface.

What interest is there in a fresh initiative, resuscitating this idea?

@Fran, I know you blew a SD player trying to electronically bypass the control buttons - have you any thoughts on what might have happened here?

Hi John,

No, I never got to the bottom of why that happened - it wasn't like I shorted something or an obvious muck up.

I don't know about the loading into memory bit - the resident coder here reckons that the memory chip only holds the code which gives the MCU its instructions. Its more likely that the file is read then sequentially from the SD card? That would make sense with larger hi res files too.

The other thing that is now apparent that might influence the flashair thinking is that SLC cards sound significantly better than MLC..... i think we got here as far as writing arduino code with an ESP8266 to send files from a laptop to the flashair card and tell it to play. I think that was where we stopped though.

FYI Pearse has a new gizmo with a bluetooth remote that looks very sexy and uses an SD card player. Might be worth looking at that rather than reinventing the wheel. I don't think I have the appetite!! We also put in a USB XMOS receiver into the dac builds so we always have that to use as well. Some are using daphile or other PC base with remote control to play....