digital backend options

Randy Myers said:
I would suggest researching into the capabilities of the Nucleus+ and HQPlayer. I know that it cannot do above DSD128 and I an fairly sure (but could be wrong) that it is a closed system and does not interface with HQPlayer. I also know that T+A specially states that Windows is required for DSD256 and DSD512.

Fairly certain that the Nucleus + would not be able to take full advantage of what your wonderful DAC can do. Again, it is possible that I am incorrect here... but I do believe I am correct.
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thanks randy -- good idea to definitively nail down the dsd512 capabilities in a non-Windows environment, but pretty sure the nucleus+ can transcode / upsample to dsd512 and pass it to a capable dac via usb

it certainly won't do HQPlayer -- i understand the later releases of roon dsp are much improved and imagine future releases will only get better. to maintain as simple system as possible which i think has multiple SQ and economic benefits, i am tempted/willing to forgo HPQ.
 
Of course, your call, but in my experience (being a person who truly loves Roon), I feel that HQPlayer is the best playback engine available. Maybe a very good reason that Roon added the ability to stream to HQPlayer to their software. You can easily add a HQPlayer zone to Roon.

But even more important, T+A states very clearly that DSD256 and DSD512 require a Windows machine. Therefore the Nucleus +, even if Roon has the capabilities to give you the performance you want, cannot play above DSD128 to the T+A DAC.

Also, you can get an amazing, and properly built machine by specialty companies, such as Falcon Northwest. I have assisted a couple AS members recently in configuring Falcon machines. Both came in at just below $3000. Installing and configuring Roon and HQPlayer is not a huge deal on a well built PC, in my view.
 
It is easy enough to go to Falcon's site and configure a computer to your liking. I personally recommend their Tiki compact size machine. They offer a variety of choices to accommodate your particular needs. SSD storage, RAM amounts, Graphics card level, etc.

The configurations that I would choose include i7 6 core, 12 thread, 5 Ghz CPU; 16 GB RAM; GTX1070 8 GB graphic card (for HQPlayer offloading); Intel M.2 SSD drives.... either one or my preference would be two. They only offer Silverstone Gold Standard, quite running, low ripple power supplies. Therefore how much power would be needed. I would go with a 650 watts to assure that any future expansion would be covered. Windows 10 Pro OS so that you can remote desktop to the machine.

There are all kinds of choices depending on how elaborate you want to get up to and including very customize paint choices, if you are so inclined. They are renowned for their extremely elaborate paint jobs... of course at a cost :)....
 
TU

One thing I can't determine in the Tiki is there a slot for the FEMTO lan card. Can't find a picture of the back
Also, all I want is the W10, HQP and Roon server loaded. 512 or 1G M.2? And for sure Intel over Samsung?
 
I like Samsung drives, but I do not believe they are worth paying more for :)... the Intel would be just fine in my view. I am not sure about the Lan card. I know that the boards they pick always have high grade ethernet ports... For anyone using a T+A DAC and wanting to do DSD512 I believe the special Lan port would not matter since you would be using USB.

For questions such as this I would probably suggest calling. Their sales/support staff are some of the best I have ever dealt with. A few years back my wife's brother passed. He lived in Medford, Or. We were up there for a week or so managing things. We had one off day and they invited my wife and I to come over to their offices. Pretty amazing people and facility. They are as good customer support as any company I have ever dealt with!

Oh, one other thing, they never, ever, put bloatware on their machines. When I re-purposed my Tiki I made sure to remove any additional software I had installed, etc. Talk with them... they will configure it however you want although I would believe that they would not install HQP and Roon, but I could be wrong :)....
 
Randy, why not recommend an 8 or 12 core cpu. I think you can run HQP at DSD512 with max settings without CUDA with one of these newer multicore 8th Gen I7's. I would email Miska on computer audiophile and see what he says since he is the developer of HQP. I feel that less hardware is more with an audio computer and if you don't need a video card you are better for it. A computer with bare bones software running HQP with only a high end CPU is the way to go IMO for what that is worth.

CUDA is useful if you don't have the CPU horsepower.

You can also contact Miska here-

https://www.signalyst.com/contact.html
 
I was not sure what this Nucleus + was so I looked it up. I was at a local show 6 or so months back and the Roon rep was there. He thanked me for using Roon. Very nice guy. He was giving a demonstration on Roon and I believe the Nucleus +. Its was Roons top of the line black box installed in an audio system consisting of the Audio Research integrated amp with Sonus Faber Speaker. A Linn TT was also attached. After the demonstration I started asking him questions about the power supply and my intensions. He was quick to note the unit is not designed to be an audiophile streaming device. It is for the average consumer that wants all the benefits of Roon access to your stored music etc. It is a make life easy to enjoy good sound, but not designed to provide great sound. Then again, compared to a laptop with your music stored on it, it sounds great. I guess it's all about what level do you want to take the sound quality too.
 
Companies like Falcon should offer a headless setup for audio.

Keyboard and monitor do not belong in an audio system IMO.
 
Kingsrule said:
Companies like Falcon should offer a headless setup for audio.

Keyboard and monitor do not belong in an audio system IMO.
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You can use the computer without the keyboard and monitor and use a tablet to control it.
 
wklie said:
With your DAC, you can run Roon on Windows. As far as I know, currently you cannot get native DSD from Linux-based Nucleus+ with your DAC.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/ro...-with-t-a-dac8-and-microrendu/47509/2?u=wklie
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peter, thank you for the information and for finding and posting the roon community link. i also contacted t+a support directly and their reply indicates the same -- dsd512 is not possible for nucleus or any other linux based server.

"With the Roon Nucleus+ music server we have no experiences yet. If it is based on Linux, it it is not possible to play DSD512 audio files. Under Linux it is possible to play DSD audio files up to DSD128.

We hope to get a new firmware for the AMANERO USB receiver, that supports DSD512. AMANERO already offered a new firmware, that supports DSD512 under Linux. But this firmware still has some major bugs and does not work correctly under Windows. So it is not possible for us to update DAC8 DSD with this firmware. We hope to get an updated version from AMANERO, so that we can offer an update for our DAC8 DSD."

looks like there will possibly be a firmware update at some point to address this, however, as discussed in another thread that would mean sending the dac8 dsd back to the factory for owners who do not also have the t+a mp8 multi source player (which when connected to the dac8 dsd can perform the upgrade).
 
Mechnutt said:
Randy, why not recommend an 8 or 12 core cpu. I think you can run HQP at DSD512 with max settings without CUDA with one of these newer multicore 8th Gen I7's. I would email Miska on computer audiophile and see what he says since he is the developer of HQP. I feel that less hardware is more with an audio computer and if you don't need a video card you are better for it. A computer with bare bones software running HQP with only a high end CPU is the way to go IMO for what that is worth.

CUDA is useful if you don't have the CPU horsepower.

You can also contact Miska here-

https://www.signalyst.com/contact.html
Click to expand...

I believe balancing the machine, and a 6 core 12 thread CPU will do the job nicely. However for those that want an even higher CPU you can go all the way up to a 16 core CPU (i9) now. The motherboard to accommodate this is pricier, requires 32 Gb + RAM, and can only handle one M.2 drive... but can add SATA SSD drives if you want.

Therefore you are pretty much doubling the price of the machine. I felt the configuration that I recommended was giving the best bang for the buck and was one hell of a machine keeping at the $3k range. But if you are comparing against some of these "music server" machines, and don't mind being only half their price... well... knock yourself out.
 
Kingsrule said:
Companies like Falcon should offer a headless setup for audio.

Keyboard and monitor do not belong in an audio system IMO.
Click to expand...

Agreed... I use my strictly headless. Falcon does not include monitors, keyboard, or mouse standard. They do offer these as options because most of their customers are buying a computer first. It is just a unique sub-set of crazy people buying them as an audio component :).
 
aKnyght said:
peter, thank you for the information and for finding and posting the roon community link. i also contacted t+a support directly and their reply indicates the same -- dsd512 is not possible for nucleus or any other linux based server.

"With the Roon Nucleus+ music server we have no experiences yet. If it is based on Linux, it it is not possible to play DSD512 audio files. Under Linux it is possible to play DSD audio files up to DSD128.

We hope to get a new firmware for the AMANERO USB receiver, that supports DSD512. AMANERO already offered a new firmware, that supports DSD512 under Linux. But this firmware still has some major bugs and does not work correctly under Windows. So it is not possible for us to update DAC8 DSD with this firmware. We hope to get an updated version from AMANERO, so that we can offer an update for our DAC8 DSD."

looks like there will possibly be a firmware update at some point to address this, however, as discussed in another thread that would mean sending the dac8 dsd back to the factory for owners who do not also have the t+a mp8 multi source player (which when connected to the dac8 dsd can perform the upgrade).
Click to expand...

Yea, T+A specifically states in their manual that a Windows machine is required to play DSD256 or DSD512 with their DAC. This does not bother me since I would never have a Apple product in my house anyway :D.... , also most everyone of the smaller basic "music servers", such as the W4S and Nucleus are Linux based... and really do not allow for customize software such as would be needed in this discussion.

The firmware front is another story. There is a service center in GA that can perform this firmware update. But again, I do not want to send my DAC 3000 miles to get a firmware update at this point. It works great and there is no compelling reason to need the update other than wanting the latest. In my view, this is still one one major flaw in the T+A unit.
 
Randy Myers said:
Yea, T+A specifically states in their manual that a Windows machine is required to play DSD256 or DSD512 with their DAC. This does not bother me since I would never have a Apple product in my house anyway...
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yep - i mistakenly took this as specifically a mac / network thing rather than a limitation of the dac8 dsd itself.

this pretty much sends me back to square one. dsd512 playback would certainly be nice to try out in my system, just not sure the diy route is worth it solely to enable this... lots to consider now.
 
I love up-sampling everything to 24.6 Mhz. Even rips of Redbook CDs sound high res now! A PC running HQPlayer and Roon is not that difficult to do. Pretty straight forward actually. But you got to get what you are comfortable with.

It is actually more a Mac/Linux thing then a fault of the T+A DAC itself. The Mac does have a limit of DSD128 and most every Linux configuration have this limits also. I know there are certain Linux configurations that can do DSD256 & DSD512, but if you are intimidated by Windows then this would throw you off the deep end because you are now talking computer geek/hacker type stuff :D... The lower end "music severs", i.e. things like the W4S and Nucleus, among others, use Linux for several reason... I suspect mainly because it is free :), but they do not support custom configuring... and yes I have heard of some people hacking these to customize.... but then again you are now back in the computer hacker world. All in all a Windows machine does not seem like a bad choice :D.....

"How would one do that?"

In this type of configuration you would run Roon Server (or what I believe they call Roon Core now). No actual GUI is running on the server itself. HQPlayer has a GUI, I suppose, if you want to call it that :).... but that you just run it and use it only for setting up the HQPlayer settings. You just leave it running but never use it to actually control what music you are listening to, etc.

On your control device, a computer either PC or Mac, or a tablet, iPad, Android, or Surface, you run Roon controller software. The controller software will attach to the Core running on the server and you are off to the races. From there all of your interface with Roon, what you are listening to, meta data, etc., is from the controller... for me my main controller is a Microsoft Surface, but I also sometimes use a Android tablet.
 
Randy Myers said:
I believe balancing the machine, and a 6 core 12 thread CPU will do the job nicely. However for those that want an even higher CPU you can go all the way up to a 16 core CPU (i9) now. The motherboard to accommodate this is pricier, requires 32 Gb + RAM, and can only handle one M.2 drive... but can add SATA SSD drives if you want.

Therefore you are pretty much doubling the price of the machine. I felt the configuration that I recommended was giving the best bang for the buck and was one hell of a machine keeping at the $3k range. But if you are comparing against some of these "music server" machines, and don't mind being only half their price... well... knock yourself out.
Click to expand...

I am not sure what balancing the machine does. An 8 or 12 core CPU will do all the work. No need to balance as these cpu's are made for things like this. No need for a 16 core cpu.

Randy, I am not questioning your recommendations, I am just trying to understand. I sent an email to Miska to get his thoughts.

Sorry to be beating a dead horse with a stick:)
 
Yes I know how to access Roon! U can't access HQP without a monitor/keyboard. Updates,etc. .... ditto

Not exactly what I was talking about....but I think u know that
 
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