CuBox Project X

[Antoine]

Antoine, and others who may chip in...

This is your posting on the USB thread a while back...

Have you tried powering the USB cable with an external battery supply? You have to use a split USB cable in this case of course, but is this effort worth pursuing?

I have very little experience on USB cables and would like to get the best out of this little box...

Thanks..

Kunter

Correct, and I even contacted Devialet regarding the need for +5V. This is part of the response, and of course I don't buy into it for the full 100%.

EDIT 11-9-2014: The devialets don't need the +5V active, they need the USB ground connection active

Regarding the +5V power leads in the USB cable, there are no particular recommandations. If some high-end USB DAC allows this feature, the Devialet is working perfectly with a traditional USB connection, you won't hear "dirty PC” USB power, don't worry.

To this day I have focused most on my PC based music server that is connected directly to the Devialet though ethernet so I haven't tried powering the USB cable with an external battery supply. Yesterday I found out my music server PC can run in Windows 2012 R2 Core mode and support the Devialet USB input. As such I am planning to look into USB more when I find that it sounds better than ethernet (have to listen more first).

Indeed there are Y splitter cables available like the iFi Gemini dual headed USB cable that allow you to separate USB power and data.

General consensus on the Computeraudiophile and JPlay forums for PC based music servers seems to be that it's better to use a JCat, PPA Audio or SoTm USB interface card. These are audiophile plugin PCIe cards that can be powered by an external 5V power source (linear or battery) as well. The iFi iUSB power (http://ifi-audio.com/portfolio-view/micro-iusbpower/) isn't really favoured here as are battery supplies. Most people use a linear PSU.

Of course we can't use such a card for the Cubox so would have to look at a solution like iFi offers but there are other companies, like Kingrex, that offer similar products as well. Biggest question for me is will a Y-cable provide a better sound quality than a generally favoured 'regular' USB cable in combination with the Cubox. It seems not a lot of people have experimented with the Cubox yet so we might have to this ourselves. "Problem" for me is that I -really- dislike comparing cables, I generally let others do that and try to benefit from their experience.

[LBameule]

Antoine, I don't know about the CuBox, but I still have and use an iFi iUSB Power with another setup, not the Dev. It definitely makes a difference: everything sounds a lot cleaner, more precise, lots more detail. I haven't tried them with the Gemini cable, maybe that's an even better scenario. But I can assure you you will notice the positive differences.

Cheers!

L

[Antoine]

Thanks for sharing L, and of course I was only "summarizing" what I've read on the mentioned forums that mainly describe the effects on the mentioned USB interface cards. I don't have any 'hands on experience' yet. I found the iFi device very interesting as well, good to read you have such a positive experience with it!

[Kunter]

Thanks Antoine.

I intend to do a bit more testing on this but there are just so many parameters.

I also have in hand, from my Squeezebox days, a linear regulator of extreme quality, by Paul Hynes, designed to give up to 3 amps of 5v from any source giving 9-12v dc. Hence will try this as well instead of the battery solution...
Part of the fun is always part of the frustration.

Any first real experiences with Cubox and battery supply on your side?

Kunter

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Antoine, I don't know about the CuBox, but I still have and use an iFi iUSB Power with another setup, not the Dev. It definitely makes a difference: everything sounds a lot cleaner, more precise, lots more detail. I haven't tried them with the Gemini cable, maybe that's an even better scenario. But I can assure you you will notice the positive differences.

Cheers!

L

Hi L,

iFi has a lot of interesting and promising products... I also hope to try them soon...

Thanks for sharing...

Kunter

[Antoine]

Hi Kunter, nice! I've read many, many good things about the Paul Hynes supplies so using it/checking it out should be interesting! I've noticed the Cubox doens't last a full day up&running on a single charge of my Anker 13.000mAh so a linear PSU would be so much easier in daily use. I just kept it running but of course knowing this I'll simply press the power button on the battery to start/shut down the Cubox.

Sorry, I haven't had the time to really listen and compare the Cubox to AIR except for one single evening. During that session I found the playback very relaxed and musical but maybe a bit too 'dark'. This however in no way is a conclusion I always like to listen more than once spread over several different days. Also, currently I'm trying/changing too many things at the same time which makes it even harder to compare so I need to slow down a bit. I think I'll focus on the PC music server first now that I've found it possible to use Devialet's USB input in Server Core mode, also the Apexi PCI/PCI-E power filter was delivered today so again something new to try out.

The Akasa Lokstor ESATA enclosure has also been delivered today so I'll test this at a later time as well. First I'll just use the SSD currently in my PC music server and power it using the same Anker battery.

Have fun playing with the Cubox once your enclosure, cable etc. are delivered!

[Kunter]

Update:

My eSATA enclosure and additional battery arrived.

Sounds incredible!

just one hiccup... Somehow, Mubox did not mount the sata disk initially... It was recognised under /dev/sda1 so I just created a folder /media/ata1 and mounted it there. Running an "update" command, and a local cache update on MPaD brought all my files. This is with my "very" limited linux skills so I am open to any suggestions as to how to accomplish this easily...

I will see if things will burn in further. But the detail and musicality is just scary.

I initially powered both the disk and Cubox from the same battery. Running them from separate batteries further improves the sound.
And, yes, using a USB drive definitely degragates the sound in the form of mostly unstable soundstage, less clarity and harshness... All is gone with the eSATA disk. Missing a little on the bass depth currently.

Will report back as I play around with things...

Cheers

[Andre737]

Thanks a lot for sharing your CuBox project.Sounds too good to be true
Is there a possiblity to integrate Quboz in this setup somehow?

[Kunter]

Thanks a lot for sharing your CuBox project.Sounds too good to be true
Is there a possiblity to integrate Quboz in this setup somehow?

Sorry, this one fell off the cracks...

Yes, it is possible. Using Squeezebox/lms setup. I have not tried to install that yet though...

Kunter

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edit: tip for Kunter and any future owners of the Cubox. The real time tuning settings (http://mubox.voyage.hk/realtime_kernel_cuboxi) are not persistent and thus lost after a reboot. I created a script and call that from rc.local to reapply these settings after every reboot.

Code:

for IRQ in /proc/irq/* ; do echo 1 > $IRQ/smp_affinity ; done
for PID in $(pgrep ci_hdrc) ; do taskset -pc 1 $PID ; done
echo 2 > /proc/irq/72/smp_affinity
echo 2 > /proc/irq/75/smp_affinity
taskset -pca 2,3 $(pgrep mpd)
chrt -f -p 49 $(pgrep cifsd)
ps -eLo pid,group,lwp,rtprio,priority,time,cmd | egrep "cifsd"

I just found an easier way...

in the web interface to Mubox, there is the "system" tab and under that, there is a "cron" tab.

You can edit the crontab file in the window provided. It basically is a scheduler.

For anything you want to be run at startup, just put a @reboot in front and write the command over there.

So my crontab file looks like this now:

# m h dom mon dow command
#*/5 * * * * ( /etc/init.d/voyage-sync sync
@reboot mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /media/ata1
@reboot for IRQ in /proc/irq/* ; do echo 1 > $IRQ/smp_affinity ; done
@reboot for PID in $(pgrep ci_hdrc) ; do taskset -pc 1 $PID ; done
@reboot echo 2 > /proc/irq/72/smp_affinity
@reboot echo 2 > /proc/irq/75/smp_affinity
@reboot taskset -pca 2,3 $(pgrep mpd)

The first mount is to mount the eSATA drive to the media folder so the MPD sees the files inside.

Cheers.

Kunter

[Antoine]

Thanks Kunter, the power of Linux shows again, so many ways to get results.

(I still haven't found the time to experiment with the Cubox because of all the changes to/work in my music server PC. It has to be really good though to beat it! )

[ogs]

I've noticed that the voyage.hk web site is unavailable at the moment. Does anyone know what the reason is?