Item Phase IV Computer Audio Recipes

[nige2000]

linear supplies aren't a pain in the arse

use a recommended 1150 mobo
turn on linear supplies then turn on pc
off turn off pc turn off linear supplies

think the older mobos were more trouble

depends whether you want a good sounding std atx ps or something better?
is making three decent linear supplies too much work?
suppose you have to be into it, or spurred into it by hearing "the difference"

[rickmcinnis]

The pain is in the packaging, as I wanted to make clear.

They certainly sounded better than any ATX supply when I was using them.

THREE? In my setup there were six with their heatsinks, transformers, power cords all crowded in a very large box I built for all of the stuff which still was not big enough so there was other stuff peeking out the sides, on the floor.

My point was that there is no reason someone cannot make a switcher that is as good. If LINN and NAGRA can make good switchers it is a matter of time before someone finds it worthwhile to do it for computers. Who could complain about that?

How close have you placed your regulators to the motherboard? If more than an inch away, and an inch is not too good either, your load regulation is rather iffy. Mine were, as I said, a foot away since I was using a typical ATX loom. The typical three pin regulator's performance is so poor at the high frequencies as to make them of little use other than to simply assure a contant voltage. When it comes to noise, not very impressive.

Once I get over the phono stage obsession I might try it again with getting the regulators close to the motherboard - but in the interim I will use the switcher though I retain the linears for the ancillaries and P4, which is easy.

[nige2000]

The pain is in the packaging, as I wanted to make clear.

They certainly sounded better than any ATX supply when I was using them.

ok thought you were suggesting it wasnt worthwhile

THREE? In my setup there were six with their heatsinks, transformers, power cords all crowded in a very large box I built for all of the stuff which still was not big enough so there was other stuff peeking out the sides, on the floor.

three was for least trouble minimum
know what you mean these diy ps units seem to grow like weeds

My point was that there is no reason someone cannot make a switcher that is as good. If LINN and NAGRA can make good switchers it is a matter of time before someone finds it worthwhile to do it for computers. Who could complain about that?

agree, dont think were anywhere near that though

How close have you placed your regulators to the motherboard? If more than an inch away, and an inch is not too good either, your load regulation is rather iffy. Mine were, as I said, a foot away since I was using a typical ATX loom. The typical three pin regulator's performance is so poor at the high frequencies as to make them of little use other than to simply assure a contant voltage. When it comes to noise, not very impressive.

using direct from lifepo4 which could be up to 6 inches away, but still happy with the preformance

Once I get over the phono stage obsession I might try it again with getting the regulators close to the motherboard - but in the interim I will use the switcher though I retain the linears for the ancillaries and P4, which is easy.

think we need a pc alternative theres just too much stuff to fix

[tony]

This reminds me of the beginnings of the buildanaudiopc thread. Kyrill more or less pointed out the route to take but somehow we all missed it for nearly a year. I take it that is not Serge Auckland you are referring to?

Nice that you have added in some more work for Nigel to investigate. What forum was the stuff discussed on Rick?Welcome btw. Can understand how you get browned off with it. Sometimes the spirit wanes can't see myself deserting but have fallen well behind the leaders.

ON windows 2012 find a student as Microsoft or sign up as one. Not sure how it works but google it there is a way of getting there.

As one involved in the cMP/cPLAY adventures in quieting dedicated PCs for music it is gratifying to see this thread.

One thing not mentioned was "Serge's" recommendation of using a PCI-E video card to get the video function away from the processor, or, at least, that's what he opined it would do.

Does seem to add something. Find an old card with as little memory as possible and hear if it works with your system.

Another thing I have yet to see mentioned is removing unneeded audio and video chips from the motherboard. Once you get the hang of using a heat gun it is pretty easy if still nerve wracking. This was Jack Wong's idea. I would love to know what Jack is up to these days. A fountain of knowledge and ideas.

I had got six months ago a ROSEWELL power supply, the one with the heatsink and no fan. It is made by the SUPERFLOWER folks. I thought it was an improvement over what had been available.

Years ago I assembled a linear supply, powered all of the rails with their own transformers and BELLESON regulators - P4 powered separately along with the drives, mouse, and keyboard. Needless to say this is a one computer system so I need all of the peripherals.

Wondering if anyone has any idea of how much further along this new recommended supply might be from the ROSEWELL I have? It looks like no other computer supply I had ever bought.

One thing with linear supplies - they are a pain, some motherboards are not happy with them, regulators need to be as close to the circuit as possible and mine were at the end of the same wire loom that attached to an unused supply. No anywhere close to ideal. I suspect I really do not know how good a linear supply can be and, at this point, I have lost interest. Just the packaging of all of that stuff is something I can only deal with when I am in DIGITAL ONLY mode. AS long as my phono system is working well I am not as interested in the sacrifices needed for using the linear supply.

I agree with others that there will be an ATX supply that will work as well as any linear and with some luck even better.

Sure wish we could find a way to crack the file protection service in SERVER 2012.

[nige2000]

This reminds me of the beginnings of the buildanaudiopc thread. Kyrill more or less pointed out the route to take but somehow we all missed it for nearly a year. I take it that is not Serge Auckland you are referring to?

Nice that you have added in some more work for Nigel to investigate. What forum was the stuff discussed on Rick?Welcome btw. Can understand how you get browned off with it. Sometimes the spirit wanes can't see myself deserting but have fallen well behind the leaders.

ON windows 2012 find a student as Microsoft or sign up as one. Not sure how it works but google it there is a way of getting there]

There was endless amounts of stuff we found out the hard way that others already tested and documented on forums

Not sure I'm into it enough to remove all switching regs on the Mobo
Clocks and maybe ram will be the extend of my motherboard mods

Dunno about windows protection maybe jc will know

[wushuliu]

Installed the 850 G2 and so far am very impressed: smoother, lower noise floor, improved presence and detail. After rebate and selling the Seasonic I'll only be out $75 and two hours time. Well worth it.

[nige2000]

Installed the 850 G2 and so far am very impressed: smoother, lower noise floor, improved presence and detail. After rebate and selling the Seasonic I'll only be out $75 and two hours time. Well worth it.

power supply best bang for buck sq wise
glad your happy with it
(still much more sq to be had because not like upgrading amps etc the pc wasnt designed for audio so much can be achieved)

[rickmcinnis]

The "Serge" I was referring to is Сергей Степанов.

He was the first to my knowledge to experiment with XP files and drivers slimming and registry modifications. He came up with a great many things to try many of which were very worthwhile.

I have asked JC if he has any idea how to defeat file protection with SERVER and he does not and, unfortunately, no one else does either. At least no one has come forward with a method.

We all know there has to be a better solution than using PCs for a digital transport but until that occurs we might as well see how far we can go with this.

From what I have seen all of the simplest solutions have OTHER problems that seem to me to be just as bad as what the PC presents to us, just different. I guess we all get to pick what we think is most important. I have found the player to be most important and one uses the platform the player requires. AS long as MQN remains the best player we have no choice but to continue working with PCs.

To be clear I have not removed any dc-dc converters from motherboards. Only components whose functions are easy to see and you know you do not need like audio and video chips and USB mosfets for ports that will not be needed. One can reduce the power requirements a surprising amount which was important when using the linear supplies, the five volts rail being the power hungry one.

Glad to hear turn on is no longer tricky with new boards. I am currently using a GIGABYTE H81 board, the one with the low noise USB power jack. I thought it might also include something superior for the signal aspect but I think it only addresses the power and I use external power for all USB devices, anyway. Lack of turn on drama might be just enough for me to set the thing up
again.

Thanks for all of your comments and for this forum to discuss this stuff.

[item_audio]

Welcome Rick! Although I've been publishing DIY recipes and doing these builds since 2008, I've always worn on my sleeve a debt of gratitude to CICS/cMP. As far as I'm concerned it's the seminal source for all computer audio information.

Unfortunately, the mainstream of this community has been lured into meandering around the cul-de-sac of variously broken CAPS builds (“Lynx SPDIF” “No, SOTM USB”, “power supply doesn't matter”, “No, power supply does matter”, “Use a £1000 battery funneled into a £20 switcher”, “Search me what to do with the OS!”). If more people had picked up on what cMP were doing back in 2006, computer audio would have gotten a lot further a lot faster.

We followed the footnote on that site to build the first commercially available three-rail linears at the back end of 2009, and encouraged the use of cheap multrail bench supplies with compatible boards (finding them not easy). However, as you say, Linn, Nagra, Teddy Pardo and others have thoroughly shown how placing a switcher at the heart of an audio component need not be a compromise. The knack is how you take it from there . . .

The Leadex/Superflower/EVGA is definitely a 'coming of age' product: good and cheap enough to then spend money on improving - and, crucially, with the headroom to accommodate proper DSP and resampling, which I think represents the next level . . . and (finally) more revolution than evolution of the cMP ethos.

[wademcinnis]

One thing to remember about the cMP adventure, the fellow who came up with the software once he decided it was done he quit participating.

He certainly gave us the basic idea of how to improve computer audio.

He is a very fine fellow with an excellent set of components and a good set of ears. He made the software so his young daughter could listen to music on his system without incident. She is a young lady now and is probably allowed to use the system as she likes!

When Serge started his deletions the developer lost interest. One good reason is it would remove the main impetus for the thing - we made cMP/PLAY tweaky and difficult to use. Mr. cMP, when he wanted good sound would go to his AERO CAPITOLE player. He wanted cMP simple for the young girl to easily use.

I think there was as much sport as anything involved in the deletions. It was fun finding the limits of what was needed and we found there was very little needed at all. We were getting down to just under 17 mB with a registry around 24 kB. It has been awhile I might have the registry amount too high.

The aforementioned "Serge" was the instigator for deletions. His Moscow "nemesis" Mihaylov also joined the group. He was the first to take the knife to the registry. I was inspired by his deletions and took them almost to the end when it became a very friendly competition between Jack Wong and myself to find the absolute minimum. Jack "discovered" that every character you can remove makes a difference. Most of my initial work involved the left column and Jack showed the way with the right column. Once one shows you what can be done it is much easier to take it on from there. I never considered myself an innovator, more of an accountant looking at things that might have been missed.

All the while there was power supply experimentation. Mihaylov was the first to show a linear regulator he had assembled with a friend. Using the ubiquitous LT 3 pin regulators I was not very impressed. Certainly more impressive than those absurd PICO things. Killed me these folks thinking they have done something wonderful by replacing a full switcher with a bunch of DC-DC converters and thinking they no longer had a switching supply.

So now we have SERVER which is an impenetrable fortress compared to XP. The biggest leap for users of XP was the ability to disable file protection and then when someone brought nLite to our attention and one could start with a significantly slimmed files and registry along with file protection disabled without having to use the hex editor it made the whole process pretty easy.

Do you think we will ever know how to disable file protection in SERVER? The nLite guy says he is working on a version for 8.1 which could be very interesting but seems no progress has been made. I try to console myself that maybe all of these gymnastics are not needed with SERVER but I would rather KNOW than hope this is true.

Have you tried using a PCI-E video card? Does that MB you like have a PCI-E slot?

Wish I had been aware of your work before this thread. Ashamed to say I did not.

Best of luck with your tinkering! I look forward to hearing what you think and find.