A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[octaviars]

What was the voltage of the original capacitor and the new 3300uf one?

They are both 25V.

[cfwotzka]

hi all,

since I understood that the miracle is to change the PSU capacitor I was wondering shall I go for a better spec. with same value or shall I increase value. I decided to to do both at the same time and changed to a Mundorf 3.300uf cap. I had to extend the leads to get it under the hood and yes it's a miracle that this capacitor has such a great influence on sound. allow me the remark that you should know what you do otherwise it's better to send the unit to the experts.

[nicoludio]

@ Confused, firstly, thank you for taking the time to explore the various options in the market. I have been following this thread on and off. It certainly has been educational.

With respect to changing the caps and linear power supplies, it would not be inconceivable that such changes would have a significant impact upon the sound.

The improvements wrought are not due to the 1s and 0s being “improved” but due to a reduction in interference, noise and distortion from the introduction of such improved components, which means less of such “garbage” being transmitted downstream.

[baconbrain]

Confused,

Exactly which cable did you order from Habst?

Thx

[Confused]

Confused,

Exactly which cable did you order from Habst?

Thx

When I first contacted Habst, I just stated that I was interested in buying exactly the same cable as used by Mutec when demonstrating the new REF10 / MC3+USB at Munich 2017.

Apparently it is the Habst Digital BNC Habst 5N Cryo Reinsilber 75ohm 0.5m.  See link:

http://www.habst.de/index.php/digital-xlr-rca-bnc.html

If you look at the picture per the link, the "earth" connector is an RCA plug.  Habst can supply this as a BNC connector by request, however, their recommendation is that you have the RCA connector as shown on their website.  The RCA connector is supplied with an RCA to BNC adaptor suitable for connection to an unused BNC on the REF10 (or whatever), the idea behind having the RCA plug is that it provides maximum flexibility for where you can connect the earth lead, so if you want to connect it to a spare RCA socket in the future, you can. 

In terms of length, 0.5m is just right for the REF10 and MC3+USB if you want to stack them with the front panels aligned.

Whilst we are talking cables, it occurs to me that the to use the REF10 with the Network Bridge, I would need at least two decent clock cables, one between the REF10 and MC3+USB, and one from the MC3+USB, which would be generating a word clock feed, to the Network Bridge.  This makes me wonder if the word clock cable is as critical as a 10Mhz reference cable?  This stuff can get expensive!

EDIT:  The above reminded me of something that happened on Sunday.  The morning was spent with the system playing music whilst I dealt with few jobs and tasks.  With the tasks finished, I found that I had about 10 minutes before I needed to go out.  I had been thinking about the shorter clock cables in the SOtM kit, so I sat down and had a quick listen with the REF10 providing feed to the tX-USBultra and sMS-200Ultra.  One thing that immediately struck me was the bass power and dynamics, very good.  I then turned off the two REF10 clock feeds to the SOtM kit, I was immediately struck by the difference, a slice of the dynamics and bass punch was noticeably diminished.  I was VERY surprised to hear this much difference with just the "upstream" clocks.  I then noticed that one of the lights was flashing on the MC3+USB.  It turned out that I had accidently turned off the REF10 feed to the MC3+USB, so it had lost the clock reference.  So in a way, I had accidentally blind tested myself, I was listening to the influence of the REF10 on the MC3+USB, not the SOtM kit as I thought.  (I presume the MC3+USB just defaults to it's internal clock, if it didn't, the music would stop)  Of course, I should then have retried the experiment, but time was up, and I have not had a chance to listen to the system since.  I am very much looking forward to this weekend, when I will have some time, and the plan for the free time is just to listen to music!

[octaviars]

Whilst we are talking cables, it occurs to me that the to use the REF10 with the Network Bridge, I would need at least two decent clock cables, one between the REF10 and MC3+USB, and one from the MC3+USB, which would be generating a word clock feed, to the Network Bridge.  This makes me wonder if the word clock cable is as critical as a 10Mhz reference cable?  This stuff can get expensive!

Dont you need two MC3+USB so you can feed both 44.1 and 48 wordclock at the same time so the network bridge can choose the right one? I asume you can swith what wordclock the MC3 outputs just to try it?

[sam1000]

OR you can do NB->MC3 and Ref10->MC3 and let MC3 choose the clock.

Since NB has 2 AES outputs (one each for L and R channel), I'm assuming, we are forced to use other outputs than AES?

[octaviars]

OR you can do NB->MC3 and Ref10->MC3 and let MC3 choose the clock.

Since NB has 2 AES outputs (one each for L and R channel), I'm assuming, we are forced to use other outputs than AES?

You can use only one AES on the NB to output L+R up to 192 kHz.

[baconbrain]

When I first contacted Habst, I just stated that I was interested in buying exactly the same cable as used by Mutec when demonstrating the new REF10 / MC3+USB at Munich 2017.

Apparently it is the Habst Digital BNC Habst 5N Cryo Reinsilber 75ohm 0.5m.  See link:

http://www.habst.de/index.php/digital-xlr-rca-bnc.html

If you look at the picture per the link, the "earth" connector is an RCA plug.  Habst can supply this as a BNC connector by request, however, their recommendation is that you have the RCA connector as shown on their website.  The RCA connector is supplied with an RCA to BNC adaptor suitable for connection to an unused BNC on the REF10 (or whatever), the idea behind having the RCA plug is that it provides maximum flexibility for where you can connect the earth lead, so if you want to connect it to a spare RCA socket in the future, you can. 

In terms of length, 0.5m is just right for the REF10 and MC3+USB if you want to stack them with the front panels aligned.

Thanks, any particular reason why you chose 75 ohm as opposed to 50 ohm?

[Confused]

@baconbrain - I shall start with your question because it is an easy one. The Mutec MC3+USB's reference clock input is 75 ohm, in fact, all the BNC connectors on the MC3+USB are 75 ohm. As an aside, I specified the SOtM kit with 75 ohm BNC connectors as well, this is to allow some flexibility swapping cables in the future. The REF10 has both 75 ohm and 50 ohm connectors.

@sam1000 & @octaviars - I think there are many ways to include the Network Bridge and REF10 in the system. You could do as sam1000 mentions, and not bother with word clock feeds to the NB, and then feed the NB AES3 to the MC3+USB. You could use MC3+USB to generate a word clock signal, and then connect the NB direct to the Devialet. You could connect the NB to the MC3+USB AND use the MC3+USB to provide a word clock to the NB at the same time. So many options. The NB will of course work fine without any external clocks, but if you want to use the word clock inputs, it is best to have two feeds using 44.1kHz and 48kHz family rates respectively, in which case I think you would need two MC3+USB's.

If I were to try a NB for a demo, I think I would simply use Roon and up-sample everything to 24/192, that way I would only need the 48kHz word clock.

I am not sure which of the above combinations would work best. I can see pro's and con's either way. I think sending AES3 to the MC3+USB has the advantage of providing the very lowest jitter feed to the Devialet, it has to be better than feeding the MC3+USB a 10MHz reference, and then using a second clock cable to provide the word clock to the NB. On the other hand, connecting the NB direct to the Devialet is a shorter audio signal path which avoids the SMPS powered MC3+USB. I doubt there would be much in it, but you never know.

In terms of a demo, I was actually thinking of trying the NB exactly as sam1000 suggests, with it feeding the REF10 clocked MC3+USB. The advantage here is that I could set up both the NB and the SOtM kit as Roon zones, and run both simultaneously into the MC3+USB with the same music. It would then be a couple of clicks on the MC3+USB's front panel to switch between the inputs for SOtM kit and the NB. This would allow an almost instant switch comparison between the two and you could use the HQPlayer volume to level match perfectly.

Thinking about all this makes me realise that my current "spaghetti" solution is actually quite simple in use. The MC3+USB and SOtM kit all accept a 10MHz reference clock feed, you can feed the sMS-200Ultra any sample rate you want, and it just works. The SOtM kit also works with HQPlayer, which the NB does not.