Antoine's system

[Antoine]

Thank you Antoine.

There are a lot of details to master in this field and your expertise in very valuable indeed. Did the standard cooling pipes fit with the architecture of your motherboard ?

To come back to a broader picture, if I understand you well, there is a trade-off to accept between being able to upsample up to :

• DSD-256 with a very good server fed with a fantastic LPSU like the Paul Hynes SR-7
  
• DSD-512 with a lower quality LPSU (either via a more power hungry CPU or a GPU with Cuda support).
  

I still have to make up my mind about the importance of the LPSU on the server side. Having received my LPS-1, I have been convinced of the importance to have a very good and low impedance PSU on the NAA supporting device (sMS-200 in my case). But I am still waiting for my Paul Hynes SR-7 and have not been able to transform my iMac so far and I doubt I will make this transformation as I intend to buy a PC instead.

Can you hear a difference on your system when you power the server with your HDPlex instead of your Paul Hynes ?

Have you ever considered adding a T+A D8 DSD to your Devialet ?

I'm afraid I can't comment much on the HQPlayer requirements. I've never planned to use DSD512 upsampling since I don't have a DAC that supports it. Because of this I also didn't look into it much. There's multiple topics running on CA .com that discuss building a HQplayer server so it may be a good idea to have a look at those.

No, I haven't considered adding an additional DAC, like the T+A you mentioned, to my system. I do still want to experiment a bit with HQPlayer (just as a renderer with perhaps upsampling to 176.4/192kHz) in the near future but as long as I keep getting great results in optimizing for ordinary PCM it has a lower priority for me.

In general I think the lower powered hardware is better for SQ, it's also the reason Jussi from HQPlayer developped the NAA package. This way one can separate the intensive computing from the lightweight rendering process to the DAC. It must also be one of the reasons (low noise and thus higher signal integrity) the microRendu and SMS-200 sound so good. Of course there's multiple schools of thought, one example that comes to mind is the $16.000 Sound Galleries Music Server which is powerful enough for DSD512 upsampling (it has the i7 6700K CPU). They advise to use just this machine for optimum results.

Since this computer audio thing is a constantly moving target it could of course be that the above no longer needs to be true provided one uses the right isolator tweaks etc. What I do know is that the machine I built is a real improvement compared to the DIY NAS PC I previously used. Both at a distance (in a different room) using fiber optic ethernet cabling as well as directly connected to the SMS-200. Of course that PC had an 77W TDP i5 3570K CPU, SSD, multiple spinning disks, a 360W Seasonic SMPS ATX PSU and three fans.

In this new music server; the more dressed down motherboard, low power CPU, fanless operation and excellent power source directly into the mainboard without additional power conversions must have a direct effect. I also now no longer use any networking equipment in the 'signal path' between music server and SMS-200.

What I do not know is if the system would sound less good if I'd place a 6700K/7700K CPU in this system. These are 65W TDP so should work in this Streacom case, though I'd rather buy a bigger case with a greater cooling capacity or the higher cooling capacity HD-Plex mini ITX case. 65W is pushing it with the FC8 Alpha, reviews clearly show this. Without a GPU the Hynes SR7 should be able to power it too. (specced at max. [email=8A@12V]8A@12V[/email]). But again as I don't see a need to go higher powered as I don't need DSD512 upsampling there's no need to risk cooling issues or waste electrical power. The 35W i7 6700T I bought is already way, way, way overkill! 

edit: I see I forgot to answer some questions:
- Since I already had the SR7 running before I built this new music server PC I haven't tested with the HDPlex. (And no not going to either, I'm too lazy! )
- The heat pipes fit perfectly with this mainboard. I have to say I was a bit worried about this too. And although I looked very carefully at both pictures of the mainboard and the Streacom building guide before I bought the stuff you'll of course never know for sure until you actually build the thing. I all worked out!

To clarify; I will place this PC inside the 'low board' in which all the AV/Stereo components are placed. It should fit, like it did with my previous music server. This one is smaller.

Hi Antoine,

Might be a silly question, but I am curious as to your new motivation around building Music PC V2.x? I had the impression that your interest in the topic was "dampered" after you scrapped the old one.

BB

@SwissBear: I used to own a DAC 8 which I connected to the Dev. It was a great piece of gear but a bit to "analytical" for my taste.

This topic, and the pioneering work of the TS there, is the sole reason: https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forum...icrorendu/ :)

The thing I previously accepted to be true (read in reviews but which I never verified until now), namely that with the microRendu/SMS-200 the upstream hardware and network infrastructure no longer mattered, simply was not true. I also expanded more on it and other reasons in the previous pages of this topic, so please read back a bit.