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Building the ideal(ish) Music Server


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Right @Chanh @Tasso anyone else, need a little advice

 

I have a spare room my wife wants audio in and she loves an old Antec HTPC case I have. The motherboard in it isn't quite grunty enough for the 4K display in there (it'll be for sale soon) so to get out of jail cheaply I've bought an Asrock J4105-ITX board to slot in there. Fanless and all that so less complaints. 

 

There's an ATX power supply in the box that I can gut out and plenty of room left after removing what was a mATX motherboard. I have a spare PicoPSU that's perfect for this role. 

 

Is there a ~19V very regulated linear power supply that I can screw into the chassis that'll do the ~30W or so the PC needs? Planning on teeing off a +5VDC on an LDO for the SSD.

 

(Then complete silence and happy wife). 

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On 27/01/2020 at 2:13 AM, brhifi said:

The Intel boards have two mini PCIe slots and a PCIe slot. 

On my new build, Control PC only, I am using the Mini-PCIe slot with 128GB Samsung MSata. It works well, near RAM-Disk speed for loading up the OS. However, you must ensure your mobo can support MSata in that mini-PCIe slot.  

 

Mixed of feedback w.r.t utilising the CF card for OS drive. With my very own extensive practical testings and listenings, had found it is compromised too much the resolutions, dynamic, and timing. Of-course, this findings is subjective to my personal hearing capability and system dependent. On the scientific side of things, CF has too much latency issue.    

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3 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

I have a spare room my wife wants audio in and she loves an old Antec HTPC case I have. The motherboard in it isn't quite grunty enough for the 4K display in there (it'll be for sale soon) so to get out of jail cheaply I've bought an Asrock J4105-ITX board to slot in there. Fanless and all that so less complaints. 

 

There's an ATX power supply in the box that I can gut out and plenty of room left after removing what was a mATX motherboard. I have a spare PicoPSU that's perfect for this role. 

 

Is there a ~19V very regulated linear power supply that I can screw into the chassis that'll do the ~30W or so the PC needs? Planning on teeing off a +5VDC on an LDO for the SSD.

 

(Then complete silence and happy wife). 

It is depending on your dc-dc atx modular. Most of pico unit has the flexibility accept dc voltage ranging from 23vdc to 19vdc. If your is one of that, perhaps, you could build your very own psu for approx $150. I can provide to you the detail via PM if you like? 

 

Ultimately, you need a bridge rectifier setup. Try sourcing Schottky rectifier diodes for your build, as these have strict tolerance. For 30W, you'd only requiring a 120 to 150VA tranny if using choke filter.  Get a choke with 3A 50mH will do the job, a 47uf film cap, and two 2200uf electrolytic caps, follow by two 220uf in parallel as output.  Lastly, a bleeder resistor at 3.3k Ohm with 20W rating.    

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Apologies for my lack of response here. I will update to you soon my new builds and formula/recipe should anyone like to mirroring. Would love to re-group with new faces, those with passion in computer audio and None Commercialise advantage.

 

Currently busy doing my wine cellar. When this is done..., i will finalise my computer audio builds with a gtg session one Sunday afternoon so we can exchange, collaborate your personal experience for your own build.  

 

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Edited by Chanh
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On 11/11/2019 at 2:17 PM, Chanh said:

Recently came across this server, cost insanely 24,000 to 28,900 Euro.  ?

 

This has motivated me somewhat to further R&D my existing dual pc setup with fine tune to i7-9500 or i9...?!? 

I have been very pleased with my CA setup though...., until now seeing this crazy server at nearly a Mini Countryman!!! 


Ideally - I am going revisit my ATX linear power supplies with individually choke input filter for all 7 rails linear psu to accomodate full spectrum ATX specs, including PSU for add on USB card and addon Ethernet card for complete isolation. A dual pc setup with Roon server Ethernet direct to HQPlayer 4.2 audio for room REW filter. Will be using windows server 2019 and operate as Ramdisk to eliminate M.2 and Sata3..... 

 

going to be interesting...  for sure! 

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Sorry but that price is embarrassing.     I am sure there are many posters on SNA who could build something similar for a 10th of the price.

 

$45,000 Aust for an audio PC is taking the P155.

 

Regards Cazzesman

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On 13/02/2020 at 2:16 AM, Chanh said:

On my new build, Control PC only, I am using the Mini-PCIe slot with 128GB Samsung MSata. It works well, near RAM-Disk speed for loading up the OS. However, you must ensure your mobo can support MSata in that mini-PCIe slot.  

 

Mixed of feedback w.r.t utilising the CF card for OS drive. With my very own extensive practical testings and listenings, had found it is compromised too much the resolutions, dynamic, and timing. Of-course, this findings is subjective to my personal hearing capability and system dependent. On the scientific side of things, CF has too much latency issue.    

Thanks @Chanh, I tested it.  On the Swedish Hakai streamer forum the "best" sounding os solution recommended is an Intel 320 SSD.  It sounds audibly superior by some way to Mini-PCIe SSD.  The Intel 320 SSD for the os sounds significantly better than any other SSD I've tried. I'm trying to find the best combination of recommendations from this forum and the Hakai forum (https://www.lejonklou.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10).  I hope you and @tasso don't mind me mentioning your content from here on the other forum.  I've an Intel 2500cc and Z2 pico on the way.

 

Good luck with the wine cellar! Grange, RWT & 707 are my favourite Australian wines. A colleague in my time in Sydney loved Old Adams Shiraz.  Wine and music mix well!

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Ultimately RAMDisk is the ideal way going forward. Get your OS setup and optimised it to your liking. There on ward, you can load it into RAM at every start... Typically, I don’t turn off my control PC, as it serves my entire home for every platform/room..., via Roon. 
 

I have not being able to find a better file management audio software outside Roon.  

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4 hours ago, frednork said:

What about SD card?its probly not as fast but anyone tried it?

I've a MiniPCIe MicroSD card adapter on the way.  I'll try it and report my findings.  The Intel 320 will be hard to beat but I'm trying all avenues.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 14/02/2020 at 12:42 PM, cazzesman said:

Sorry but that price is embarrassing.     I am sure there are many posters on SNA who could build something similar for a 10th of the price.

 

$45,000 Aust for an audio PC is taking the P155.

Please compare this price to prices of MSB DACs and you will see that it is not embarrassing.

 

So far all failed to approach the SQ of the Taiko Extreme.

 

There is a thread about it here:

 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-crème-de-la-crème.27433/

 

A very good report about the Taiko Extreme is here:

 

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2020/02/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-experience.html#more

 

Matt

Edited by matth
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On 24/02/2020 at 4:05 PM, matth said:

Please compare this price to prices of MSB DACs and you will see that it is not embarrassing.

 

So far all failed to approach the SQ of the Taiko Extreme.

 

There is a thread about it here:

 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-crème-de-la-crème.27433/

 

A very good report about the Taiko Extreme is here:

 

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2020/02/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-experience.html#more

 

Matt

Matt,

 

Nice to see you on here.  I've no doubt these guys could build the hardware.  But in my view the software needed to maximise the SQ of that build would be the major challenge.

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15 hours ago, brhifi said:

Matt,

 

Nice to see you on here.  I've no doubt these guys could build the hardware.  But in my view the software needed to maximise the SQ of that build would be the major challenge.

 Brian, 

 

thanks, you too. I came to this forum because interested in DACs from Gieseler Audio.

 

If you look into the provided links you see that they spend "extreme" efforts to get the software right as well.

 

It is a combo of a special stripped Windows professional server version and JPlay. No Linux at all.

 

Best

 

Matt

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  • 10 months later...

For those of you using snakeoil or a linux OS  I have been meaning to add some info following on from info from @rmpfyf a while back. At the time I was running an atom board but now am running a core board so can do some of the things I was having trouble with. Most of the stuff I have gleaned from internet so there are probably much easier/better/more effective/more useful ways of doing what I have done so please chip in. I really am useless at linux.

 

So to recap we had modified the grub file to get something like this

#GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_DEFAULT="1>Ubuntu, with Linux 4.19.37-rt19-x64-snakeoil"
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text clocksource=tsc 3 biosdevname=0 net.ifnames=0 isolcpus=2,3,6,7 processor.max.cstate=3 nosoftlock$
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
 

so changes from before are that as there are 8 threads in my current setup , 2,3,6,7 have been isolated which as I understand it means no system  processes will be loaded on these cpu threads.  Although there is a cpu isolate function in snake oil too. I assume it does the same thing.

 

Then I made a file to setup the other bits

 

#!/bin/bash

# comments start with a '#"

pida=$(pgrep squeezelite)
taskset -cp 6-7 $pida
pidb=$(pgrep eth0)
taskset -cp 2-3 $pidb
#echo "2" | tee append /proc/irq/125/smp_affinity_list
echo "4095" | tee --append /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/max_user_freq
echo "8192" | tee --append /proc/sys/dev/hpet/max-user-freq
sysctl -w vm.stat_interval=3600
swapoff -a
for x in /sys/devices/system/cpu/*/cpufreq/; do echo 800000 | sudo tee $x/scaling_max_freq; done
 

pida=$(pgrep squeezelite) :this code finds the process id (PID) of the player (squeezelite) in this case and then isolates it to the cpu's 6 and 7. Although snakeoil does this ok I was using Roon and it seemed that snakeoil had trouble isolating it using the gui so I added some extra code to do it in this file.

 

But I also use it to isolate the ethernet connection in the next few lines. Using this method you could probably isolate whatever you want.

 

If you want to find what processes are running and what they are called I used  ps -ejH so you can try these things before you commit.

 

the other things not really illustrated earlier are the swapfile removal command  swappof

 

and the last line which shows how I restrict the speed of the cpu to 800000 which is the lowest mine will go. 

 

If you havent tried these tweaks (and are willing to get very frustrated) I think it does make a reasonable difference and its free, so why not?

 

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Attaboy @frednork, this is what we like to see. FWIW with others my script is a little different in that I use different players and I call the Ethernet and and player tasks explicitly, and limit them to one CPU core each. What works and sounds best will depend on your CPU, whether you enable hyperthreading or not, and your OS build. 

 

In the event you've got a motherboard with a 25MHz main crystal and you want to try an OCXO, I have a few good ones kicking around - get in touch and if you can be stuffed building a power supply for them, I'll give you one free. 

 

Make sure to cut your C-states to limit setting the cache dead in your CPU. BIOS should force it though you can limit through the OS also. 

 

If you're on the fence about this sort of stuff remember that you can change what CPUs you limit to during playback and literally listen to the difference. Play something, ssh in, change it as you go. 

 

There is one significant mod beyond this that I found made a difference that I'm surprised not to see in many approaches. 

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24 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

Attaboy @frednork, this is what we like to see. FWIW with others my script is a little different in that I use different players and I call the Ethernet and and player tasks explicitly, and limit them to one CPU core each. What works and sounds best will depend on your CPU, whether you enable hyperthreading or not, and your OS build. 

Ok interesting,  initially this script was from the server which runs roon which needs more than one thread to run as it is a power hungry thing.  This one is from the renderer box. so only runs a player. Is one thread enough for most processes? What sort of explicit processes are you limiting.

 

27 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

In the event you've got a motherboard with a 25MHz main crystal and you want to try an OCXO, I have a few good ones kicking around - get in touch and if you can be stuffed building a power supply for them, I'll give you one free. 

Strangely I have ended up with the same gen cpu as you have/had (i7-4770T) just by happenstance so if the ocxo suits I am up for it. 

 

30 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

Make sure to cut your C-states to limit setting the cache dead in your CPU. BIOS should force it though you can limit through the OS also. 

Ok, this is in addition to limiting cstates in the grub? How does one do this?

 

31 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

If you're on the fence about this sort of stuff remember that you can change what CPUs you limit to during playback and literally listen to the difference. Play something, ssh in, change it as you go. 

Is there a theoretical approach to this? , should I be trying to keep system tasks together ie 0-4 and rest for isolated stuff. How much to reserve for system?

 

21 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

There is one significant mod beyond this that I found made a difference that I'm surprised not to see in many approaches. 

Arghhh!! What is it???

one thing I havent gotten happening is timings for everything. I had a look at the bios and it all went over my head. will need to revisit.

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4 minutes ago, frednork said:

Ok interesting,  initially this script was from the server which runs roon which needs more than one thread to run as it is a power hungry thing.  This one is from the renderer box. so only runs a player. Is one thread enough for most processes? What sort of explicit processes are you limiting.

 

I use aplay for critical listening though if you wanted to be a full anorak you'd use mpd - that'll take 1 process. If you're game - because Roon is frankly very convenient though not the last word in playback - I'd setup a boot menu that lets you go either way. 

 

4 minutes ago, frednork said:

Strangely I have ended up with the same gen cpu as you have/had (i7-4770T) just by happenstance so if the ocxo suits I am up for it. 

 

 

Should work; or you it's free, I owe you one. PM me when you want to drop by and collect. It's a Rakon unit, stratum 3E spec. You'll want to build a nice PSU for it. HiFiDIY and their ilk have kits. Check how many crystals you have - on the 4th gen boards a dedicated Ethernet port typically has it's own 25MHz, and so you can wire the one OCXO to both. 

 

4 minutes ago, frednork said:

Ok, this is in addition to limiting cstates in the grub? How does one do this?

 

 

It'll be an advanced CPU setting in the BIOS.

 

4 minutes ago, frednork said:

Is there a theoretical approach to this? , should I be trying to keep system tasks together ie 0-4 and rest for isolated stuff. How much to reserve for system?

 

 

Playback without a GUI is pretty lightweight, I'd not worry about it. I'd try your luck without hyperthreading though - less switching and routing overhead, and it's a good bit of code out of the OS. A lightweight system will run fine on 1 core. 

 

4 minutes ago, frednork said:

Arghhh!! What is it???

one thing I havent gotten happening is timings for everything. I had a look at the bios and it all went over my head. will need to revisit.

 

 

I mentioned it earlier in the thread though this is a gargantuan thread - compile the OS without optimisation, as in force no optimisation. The result is certianly different.

 

(Now we sit back and wait for the usual types to pipe up with 'ah yes, I discovered that, I've been doing it a while' etc)

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40 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

I mentioned it earlier in the thread though this is a gargantuan thread - compile the OS without optimisation, as in force no optimisation. The result is certianly different.

You must be getting sick of hearing this from me, but , how do I do that? Is that doable with snakeoil?

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2 hours ago, frednork said:

You must be getting sick of hearing this from me, but , how do I do that? Is that doable with snakeoil?

It's a job for Kith, and not trivial.

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4 minutes ago, frednork said:

He has just released a new  version which is different to the others, apparently it will allow you to generate your own kernel built on ubuntu 20.04 LTS. 

Generating your own kernel - possible, easy when you know how

Changing optimisations within that kernel - not trivial

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You should attempt using HQPlayer if SQ is your priority. 

personally, I have never looked back since made this transition to HQPlayer and Roon combo. 
HQplayer 4 is again better than HQPlayer 3.xx. 

 

While talking about SQ optimising... I have a switch on it’s way which is confidently assured that superior to Upton Regen..., and better built with affordability. Happy to lend to those of interest... 


@frednork With the USB card power supply I put together for you. Can you advise which USB card you will be using, so that I can optimise to suit best SQ performance. note, you might need to buy your own dc-cable unless want me to also butcher one up for you? If so, it will be similar to Uptone JS-2 dc stock cable. Will cost approx $50 for 1m length. 

 

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49A9AD80-9896-41EB-892E-ABC49F62CF4C.jpeg

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On 25/02/2020 at 12:05 AM, matth said:

Please compare this price to prices of MSB DACs and you will see that it is not embarrassing.

 

So far all failed to approach the SQ of the Taiko Extreme.

 

There is a thread about it here:

 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-crème-de-la-crème.27433/

 

A very good report about the Taiko Extreme is here:

 

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2020/02/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-experience.html#more

 

Matt

I would like, if opportunity allows, compare this taiko against/to my dual server setup. It will be against my very own diy ATX built with true linear power supplies. 
 

Taiko uses JPlay with OS Windows 10 PE. 
I use WS2019 core with HQPlayer. 
 

surely, Taiko must be better for its asking price... better be that is...! ??

Edited by Chanh
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4 minutes ago, Chanh said:

surely, Taiko must be better for its asking price... better be that is...! ??

 

Doubtful. And there's likely more engineering/research in yours. 

 

That you run this as a hobby only is a crying shame. 

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1 minute ago, rmpfyf said:

 

Doubtful. And there's likely more engineering/research in yours. 

 

That you run this as a hobby only is a crying shame. 

Thanks @rmpfyf
I have a day job... That in itself is stressful enough.... ?

I found it’s more rewarding to help others to achieve their SQ goal from their budget diy server. ?

 

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13 minutes ago, Chanh said:

You should attempt using HQPlayer if SQ is your priority. 

personally, I have never looked back since made this transition to HQPlayer and Roon combo. 
HQplayer 4 is again better than HQPlayer 3.xx. 

 

I will need to revisit it. 

17 minutes ago, Chanh said:

While talking about SQ optimising... I have a switch on it’s way which is confidently assured that superior to Upton Regen..., and better built with affordability. Happy to lend to those of interest... 

Havent heard much about the renolabs, look forward to your reports.

 

25 minutes ago, Chanh said:

With the USB card power supply I put together for you. Can you advise which USB card you will be using, so that I can optimise to suit best SQ performance. note, you might need to buy your own dc-cable unless want me to also butcher one up for you? If so, it will be similar to Uptone JS-2 dc stock cable. Will cost approx $50 for 1m length. 

Its a Jcat XE. Will need a cable so might pm you on this. 

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