Build a dedicated Audio PC

[Ken Moreland]

Nige's recollection is correct, he did achieve US=30 and he was regretful that he hadn't gone lower and tried 20 or 25.Using my P4 AudioPC the best I could get using the same Ciúnas was around 150. Using the same P4 and CiUnas streaming in 2PC mode is around 120 and this has been due to the addition of a TP-Link network adapter in the P4.This is not entirely stable and sometimes needs to be upped to 135 or so and on high res stuff I sometimes get a blast of white noise. I think the Ciúnas is not the critical factor, it's the condition of the AudioPC including the Network Adapter. This is a good opportunity to discover the critical factors.
KM

[jkeny]

So just to clarify - the 30 US was with the Ciúnas on a single PC? What was the config & more importantly maybe what was the network driver chip & software version?

[nige2000]

It was a built in ethernet adapter same chipset as frizzups tp link ethernet
But was in single mode
I had very little tweaks done at the time prob just firewall and defender disabled

[Ken Moreland]

Nige, you're welcome to pop in en route to Fran's to confirm.
KM

[tony]

Thanks Fran for hosting this.Great evening. Pity I had to leave early as it was getting more interesting as the night moved on. Where did you end up? The speakers are a revelation. Fantastic job get the name,product promotion right and maybe you might be moving into the audio world full time.Truly Fabulous sound.Would have liked to compare the quads to them.

Many thanks to Nige for proving US works on my laptop.Now the effort has to go into figuring out what is wrong with the windows8 installation. Firewall is disabled and windows defender is turned off. Have to get a copy of that wtg usb stick and compare settings.

[Fran]

Full report to follow - I actually took notes!


But to more pressing matters: would anyone have picked up my laptop charger by any chance? It's a Samsung one and has little velcro strips on the cable?

Also, John your ciunas is still here, I'll pop it in the post ok?

Fran

[jkeny]

Very interesting night spent in Fran's - thanks Fran for hosting this.
Nige, Claus, Tony, Pearse, Derek were there.
4 different PC builds were compared (correct me guys, I may well have some details wrong):
- Nigel brought 2 PC builds - one an I3 CPU & the other an i7 CPU
- Fran's build, I don't know the details of - he might just fill this in
- Claus had a Intel NUC reboxed in fanless case called Blackpete ala MiniPC.de
- my Intel NUC in stock form

All configurations were fanless, except my NUC
Fran's & Nigels, were run from Linear Supplies, my NUC from battery supply

I'll let Fran reveal the outcome of all the swapping & changing :)

Edit: I think i have your Samsung PS, Fran - I'll post it down.

[nige2000]

Nige, you're welcome to pop in en route to Fran's to confirm.
KM

Sorry Ken was pushed for time, im sure we had us =30 that day
dont think we would had sorted it out in a short time, only would have annoyed me more
im think we had a big change switching between us 160 to 30 that day, we couldn't fint that much difference (if any ) with the meitner us 250 -20, on my old dac us size varies sound alot too

very interesting night

[nige2000]

Very interesting night spent in Fran's - thanks Fran for hosting this.
Nige, Claus, Tony, Pearse, Derek were there.
4 different PC builds were compared (correct me guys, I may well have some details wrong):
- Nigel brought 2 PC builds - one an I3 CPU & the other an i7 CPU
- Fran's build, I don't know the details of - he might just fill this in
- Claus had a Intel NUC reboxed in fanless case called Blackpete ala MiniPC.de
- my Intel NUC in stock form

All configurations were fanless, except my NUC
Fran's & Nigels, were run from Linear Supplies, my NUC from battery supply

I'll let Fran reveal the outcome of all the swapping & changing :)

Edit: I think i have your Samsung PS, Fran - I'll post it down.

i didn't start up the i3 john, thought there was enough for testing
you'll have to believe me its just as cabable

[Fran]

It was a very educational night, and I believe some important stuff was learned that would be a big aid to anyone thinking of going down this route.

Right, so anyone chime in here if I've missed anything...

PCs are as John described above:

Pearse: CAPS Zuma standard spec
Fran: close version of Zuma, but different make of SSD and powered by a linear supply. Not fanless, but fan run from a separate supply
Nigel: i7 2600k underclocked to 2.5ghz on an asus mobo, OS on USB 3 WTG stick, music on a separate USB3 stick in a USB2 port. Powered by linear supply, streamcom case
Claus: i3 version of NUC from minipc.de with 8gb ram fanless case and laptop PSU
John: NUC run from battery shunt supply

We all ran the same version of jplay, all with the same settings, and all the same 2 tracks.


*************
So when we started we listened to my build, then the zuma and then the miniPC NUC. And the general order of preference was in that order. When we tried Nigel's build, it bested all of them. The key difference there was that it used WTG on USB3 stick and music on a separate USB stick.

So then we booted up my build using Nigels USB sticks - this brought mine up to very close to his build, if not identical. When we later swapped to Claus' NUC (which originally had a thinner sound, and more sibilant than the others) which we powered from a battery supply and the USB OS/music sticks, it also came up to approx the same level.

This is a bit of a distillation of what we all heard on the night so I suppose the important summary is:

Linear PSU - both ones were the maplin supply, and best to buy the bigger 7A one
OS on USB3 stick, music on USB3 stick in USB2 port (ie different bus)
OS on USB3 stick - this was a clear improvement over OS on SSD (although this was only slightly behind both OS and music on separate USBs)

***************

All of the experiments thus far had been with single PC setup. We also tried some streaming and found that in all cases it brought an added benefit. As an example, using my build (OS and music on SSD) the improvement was a pretty large jump to meet the levels of Nigel'c PC with WTG sticks. We then streamed to his PC and there was still yet another improvement, although not as large a jump as with mine.


So from what we learned:

Full route:

Zuma, powered by linear supply with WTG on USB3 stick, if using single playback, music also to be on USB

Cheaper route, giving 95% at least of the above:

MiniPC.de build, using maplin supply, USB WTG sticks as above,


Personally, I will now be going off to get a USB3 stick and will probably leave the SSD in there, plus I will be continuing to stream. The only other tweaking will be to see does underclocking the CPU make a difference for me.


Fran