TP1 Posted August 31, 2016 Author Share Posted August 31, 2016 (edited) edit Edited August 31, 2016 by Tasso Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agisthos Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 I paid out Clones earlier for claiming the SHAAR was handmade. I presumed they had batches of surface mount PCB's done at a fab house, like every other manufacturer does. Well mine did not work, and was found to have a missing solder joint. So it seems this handmade aspect is true!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AccuTidal Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 (edited) 9 hours ago, agisthos said: Well mine did not work, and was found to have a missing solder joint. So it seems this handmade aspect is true!! Has yours getting sorted? Edited September 1, 2016 by Chanh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agisthos Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Yeah its been fixed and on its way back here. Good to hear it is better than the SOTM, and it's half the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 just got an update email for MC22 users, below list of improvements for those interested, going to try last 2 items Partial List of New Features in JRiver Media Center 22 NEW: View Extras -- You can now right click on any file and view extra images or pdf files that you've stored alongside the media file. NEW: An option to "Show more values at a time in the file info panel" for Theater View. NEW: Fields can be configured as "Linkable" so that they'll show the little link icon next to them. NEW: Text color can be configured for Text-based video subtitles that do not have their own styling info. NEW: OSD text color can be configured. NEW: The DLNA server Audio Advanced DSP studio is active for all functions including sample rate changes. NEW: The Sox Resampler is a well regarded way to upsample or downsample audio. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7799/asrock-beebox-intel-core-i5-6200u-mini-pc-review/index.html it might be step up from last year N3000 models for some due to new M.2 socket (instead of msata) and DDR4 support but other than that I do not see any need for higher computing power for streaming purposes...consumption also went up significantly so will require more powerful PSU bad news is that it requires 19V supply instead of 12V from last year, good news is that old N3150 fall below AU$200 On the other hand increased performance might be beneficial for those seeking for server or resampling activities...I believe there will be more similar products coming out soon from other producers/brands Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agisthos Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 The Clones Audio SHAAR pcie card is substantially better than stock USB out on a PC. For $300 I think this upgrade is a must for those who use a music server of PC setup. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 10, 2016 Share Posted September 10, 2016 For those it might interest; just managed to do a decent A/B between two CPUs with different L3 cache: i3-4130T vs i5-4590T. One has 3MB L3 cache, one has 6MB. Kept as much as possible the same: same max TDP, no hyperthreading (BIOS or kernel, not sure the latter supports it anyway), no multi-core scheduler (both running on a single core, with audio on a reserved core), both limited to the same C states (cache on at all times) and same speeds (800MHz CPU, same bus/RAM/GPU etc speeds). Both playing the same series of PCM out of RAM, with all convolutions/adjustment applied before play and no video output (both have onboard graphics). Not really a contest! The CPU with more cache sounded very different, on this system at least - far more natural. If you're not in the Atom camp, I guess @acg and others have a point with slow-clocked CPUs with big caches. Also tried another motherboard - more CPU power phases than my Gigabyte H87 (six vs four), NVMe and some other nice bits. Possibly the most irritating BIOS ever. Didn't sound fantastic on Daphile out of an SSD, now rebuilding a custom kernel and some hardware tweaks to tinker a little more. Have an ARM (and then some) based board around here too that's up and running Ubuntu, might get around to seeing how that runs audio at some point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwerter Posted September 11, 2016 Share Posted September 11, 2016 Has anyone compared SOtM card with upgraded clock to Shaar card? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AccuTidal Posted September 11, 2016 Share Posted September 11, 2016 ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jventer Posted September 15, 2016 Share Posted September 15, 2016 Has anyone looked at/tried the Pine A64? Any opinions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 Keen to see what this SHAAR work turns up. Meanwhile some nice 24MHz OCXO's went on Taobao and I missed out. Grrrr. Would have been useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eltech Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 On 10/09/2016 at 6:00 PM, rmpfyf said: Have an ARM (and then some) based board around here too that's up and running Ubuntu, might get around to seeing how that runs audio at some point. Wouldnt surprise me if the low powered board craps all over the expensive stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 2 hours ago, eltech said: Wouldnt surprise me if the low powered board craps all over the expensive stuff. It doesn't - yet- but it's close. NVIDIA Tegra CPU/GPU. Nice little dev board to play with though. Runs Ubuntu, feels familiar. It has to be run very lean to make better sound though - gets out of cache and into system RAM if you use it like you would a PC - for the rest of PC-like things, it's perfectly usable and uses bugger-all power. Really impressive stuff. If one made a dedicated effort to be super lean, it'd fly for audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 it's all about power supply and noise, everything else is minor if detectable at all... http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/measurements-of-sonore-microrendu-streamer.577/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 7 hours ago, kukynas said: it's all about power supply and noise, everything else is minor if detectable at all... http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/measurements-of-sonore-microrendu-streamer.577/ For a PC? Nup. But that's the start of a very long discussion. Best not have it. Certainly for a renderer it's a PSU/noise argument, if the design (many things) are optimised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 for any device acting as streamer/renderer and it doesn't matter if it's PC, Pi or anything else... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jventer Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 IMO please let's not go down any road where "amir" is involved. Please leave that on the forums where he is involved.I think what is relevant here is the OP's topic and items that are relevant. Do agree that from the posts here the power supply is very important. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 I don't care about Amir or his ego but I do care about his measurements unless someone else owns AP and can measure different figures...anyway might not be relevant for you guys so will stop posting these things On ?9?/?19?/?2016 at 2:47 PM, rmpfyf said: Meanwhile some nice 24MHz OCXO's went on Taobao and I missed out. Grrrr. Would have been useful. I bought this 3 months ago, if you add this and good ULN regulator you should get excellent solution on reasonable budget but changing anything without having sorted out PSU is waste of money and energy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jventer Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 14 minutes ago, kukynas said: I don't care about Amir or his ego but I do care about his measurements unless someone else owns AP and can measure different figures...anyway might not be relevant for you guys so will stop posting these things I bought this 3 months ago, if you add this and good ULN regulator you should get excellent solution on reasonable budget but changing anything without having sorted out PSU is waste of money and energy Daniel I find the measurements interesting. Please don't stop posting about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 (edited) 2 hours ago, kukynas said: I don't care about Amir or his ego but I do care about his measurements unless someone else owns AP and can measure different figures...anyway might not be relevant for you guys so will stop posting these things I get it, but Amir's not the only person taking measurements. We're not all here being subjective... some of us do actually take measurements. Nor is data visualised an absolute statement of knowledge. And at the end of the day - this is just a discussion forum. The fun's in the exchange of ideas. 2 hours ago, kukynas said: I bought this 3 months ago, if you add this and good ULN regulator you should get excellent solution on reasonable budget but changing anything without having sorted out PSU is waste of money and energy I use different components to the same end. 24MHz is flexible as it's native high speed USB, also newer Core CPU PCH's, etc... and that particular OCXO is very nice. For what it's worth I like your approach. Not just in your last post, but generally. Spending moderate amounts sensibly is something I (and I suspect everyone else) respects. No disrespect to those spending big, were just not all able/willing to do so. I don't think you'll find anyone on this thread that hasn't made efforts to sort out their PSU. Edited September 22, 2016 by rmpfyf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 than it seems like everyone's measuring but nobody posting , it's rare to find measurements of streamer dependency to the DAC distortion so I'm glad that there are some, another here from SW perspective even if not with such high accuracy as from AP... apologize for stressing so much about PSU but people sometimes tend to overlook dependency of certain investments in audio parts and I'm not trying to point it out to those who knows this very well but in general to anyone who reads this thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Spectral performance of streamer to DAC arguments at best are fraught with the notion that distortions aren't purely in analogue domains. They're just measured so, and beyond what's easily visible we get into differences not easily acquired with conventional lab equipment. I get where you're going with that, though anything subscribing to this thread couldn't miss the importance of PSU. It's almost, almost a thread on people's experiences with CA PSU development. It is quite literally a global epicentre for DIY CA PSU exotica. By comparison I somewhat limp by on a HD-Plex 100W LPSU. Slowly gathering bits for something better; this thread's been much an inspiration. Your posts included. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kukynas Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 if we are able to measure selfnoise of the DAC and it's output stage than we should be able to measure the added distortion from the source, better or worse or hidden behind DACs noise floor... agree, I just hope peoples expectations are clear btw, do you plan to use renesas USB solution? even if USB native frequency is 24Mhz I thought that internal PLL is set to 4mhz with multiplier to align different clocks through microcontroller and that's why every manufacture combine external oscillators accordingly i.e. FPGA using 12Mhz etc. so always times 4, too long I haven't looked at it so not sure now but definitely harder/more expensive to find good 24Mhz xtal, that was the reason I chosen ASmedia chip... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rmpfyf Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, kukynas said: if we are able to measure selfnoise of the DAC and it's output stage than we should be able to measure the added distortion from the source, better or worse or hidden behind DACs noise floor... Well, that's the start of a discussion, isn't it - just on determining what a baseline condition actually is. There's an entire theoretical debate over whether a comparing a DAC output with no source input is actually a viable baseline (we could keep that one going a while, but let's not). And IMHO what we're seeing in spectra for everything that's not an RF scope is really just accounting for power issues. Jitter effects (assuming your power's sorted) are going to tough to see without some serious 'scope speed, resolution and intelligent use. And most of us don't have a $25k scope sitting around all the time. At some point, for reasons of cost, time, complexity, ineptitude, etc... data acquisition falls to a glass of wine, music and if we're lucky, good company. And IMHO that's OK. 1 hour ago, kukynas said: btw, do you plan to use renesas USB solution? even if USB native frequency is 24Mhz I thought that internal PLL is set to 4mhz with multiplier to align different clocks through microcontroller and that's why every manufacture combine external oscillators accordingly i.e. FPGA using 12Mhz etc. so always times 4, too long I haven't looked at it so not sure now but definitely harder/more expensive to find good 24Mhz xtal, that was the reason I chosen ASmedia chip... Sure, which is why we see 12MHz etc clocks in existence and others. Occasionally there's some old stock of very nice OCXO that were made for a custom order at some weird frequency (e.g. 24MHz - who needs that, other that some obscure audiophile anoraks or people selling to them). When it's surplus stock it's cheap to have a little fun and see what's what. I was amused to see that stock mentioned appear and disappear pretty quickly; I can't imagine anything other than USB having an immediate use. I'm frankly still working out the influence of what these xtals do on an async USB connection (happy to have this explained, I'm pretty sure some people would know e.g. WA crew). For all the clocking in the world USB still sends packets which need to be reconstructed into a stream at the receive end, so clock beautifully and there's still inherent delays pre getting to I2S. So buffers etc help, and we'll always find something new to... spend money on Edited September 22, 2016 by rmpfyf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts