Goodbye CAPS 3-Hello Roon

veindoc

veindoc

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Apr 5, 2013
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Northern California outside SF
Newest toy arrived. It is a single box Roon server 6TB network player with microrendu. It burns my cds, stores all my files, utilizes my existing DAC and sounds very good. Hope to activate built in Tidal for streaming soon.
The Roon interface is very user friendly but oh the connectivity to exploring other music via various links to other genres,composers, engineers and co-musicians is mind boggling and fun. The best album art and related images appears to be automatically displayed. Wonderful looking graphics and artwork.
Too early to discuss what if any sonic differnces exist.

Nick
 
Nick - Your new digital solution sounds very intriguing, and I'd be most interested in the details of your setup. Is it simply the Sonore Sonicorbitor SE with a connected external 6TB HDD and the microrendu with power supply? That appears to be a very efficient and cost effective digital solution, so any further details you can provide would be appreciated. Enjoy the tunes!
 
I read a bunch of stuff on this and I am little confused as to it's advantages. When reading many of the responses from Jesus R it appears as if you need a computer actually running the Roon Server software. If this is the case then what exactly is this little device doing? What advantage does something like this have over simply hooking my Roon Server computer directly to my DAC? Also I am sure it requires the purchase of a Roon licence :).... least people forget that is $499 for lifetime subscription. (I love Roon on my music server PC by the way)
 
Congratulations Nick. I'll have to check it out. Glad you are enjoying it.
 
Randy Myers said:
I read a bunch of stuff on this and I am little confused as to it's advantages. When reading many of the responses from Jesus R it appears as if you need a computer actually running the Roon Server software. If this is the case then what exactly is this little device doing? What advantage does something like this have over simply hooking my Roon Server computer directly to my DAC? Also I am sure it requires the purchase of a Roon licence :).... least people forget that is $499 for lifetime subscription. (I love Roon on my music server PC by the way)
Click to expand...

Its a dedicated PCB NAA. A network audio adapter, ie it isolates the Control PC that runs the playback software from the Dac. Thus your NAS or control PC will run Roon (plus HQ Player to get the best playback quality- Jussi's algorithm for PCM to DSD upsampling is without parallel) feed the NAA via ethernet or optocouplers (to reduce ethernet packet noise) and then the Linux based uRendu feeds the Dac via USB. This can be done cheaper with things like Minerva's suggested Intel NUC, but the quality of the uRendu will be better as its purpose built for audio only, not a general purpose PC. All these components need to be fed with a good power supply.

To get the best from this you need a chipless DSD Dac like a Lampi or T+A Dac 8 that can accept high rate DSD natively. The only drawback so far is that the uRendu is Linux based and I think the higher than DSD128 rate is a problem for some Dac at the moment. I see a clamour for the Dac 8 to have it's (Amanero) Linux driver updated to accept DSD256.

Minerva, did you get the updated version of that Linux patch to make AudioLinux compatible with DSD256 yet?
 
I wonder if you can run Roon Server on Caps V3 (Intel 2800 based).

Worst case scenario, you can convert your CAPS v3 to serve as Roon (or HQ Player) end point.
 
So it almost sounds like a USB Reclocker like the Wyred 4 Sound Recovery would give similar results. This has/is receiving rave reviews. I also added an iFi iPower supply to mine. I run Roon headless server off my dedicated PC and can play up to DSD256, which the Recovery and DAC can handle just fine.

The PC I configured uses the same mother board as many of the music servers out there, however I have a better CPU, faster and more RAM, liquid cooled, extremely compact high end case mounted on a granite base, utilizing high grade SSD, etc., etc. And absolutely the most important thing, a Gold Standard power supply. I have no unnecessary services or software running on the computer and by running Roon headless it is as slim and trim as a PC gets.

I then use a Surface Pro 3 as the Roon controller PC for full remote control. I assume this type of digital setup will hold its own against most any music server or other type of network connected system. I would love to have a Lampi DAC, but get by with what I have :)...

So basically, I use a super lean super high end PC running as dedicated headless Roon server, sending the signal via USB through Wireworld cable to the W4S Recovery (iFi iPower) and then through another Wireworld USB cable to the DAC. All being controlled wireless by Roon controller software running on a Surface Tablet PC. From what I can tell this is about as clean a digital file playing path as I can get (other than not having the level of DAC as the amazing Lampi).

Am I missing something. Is a device like Nick is talking about here able to add anything to the equation....
 
Randy Myers said:
So it almost sounds like a USB Reclocker like the Wyred 4 Sound Recovery would give similar results. This has/is receiving rave reviews. I also added an iFi iPower supply to mine. I run Roon headless server off my dedicated PC and can play up to DSD256, which the Recovery and DAC can handle just fine.

The PC I configured uses the same mother board as many of the music servers out there, however I have a better CPU, faster and more RAM, liquid cooled, extremely compact high end case mounted on a granite base, utilizing high grade SSD, etc., etc. And absolutely the most important thing, a Gold Standard power supply. I have no unnecessary services or software running on the computer and by running Roon headless it is as slim and trim as a PC gets.

I then use a Surface Pro 3 as the Roon controller PC for full remote control. I assume this type of digital setup will hold its own against most any music server or other type of network connected system. I would love to have a Lampi DAC, but get by with what I have :)...

So basically, I use a super lean super high end PC running as dedicated headless Roon server, sending the signal via USB through Wireworld cable to the W4S Recovery (iFi iPower) and then through another Wireworld USB cable to the DAC. All being controlled wireless by Roon controller software running on a Surface Tablet PC. From what I can tell this is about as clean a digital file playing path as I can get (other than not having the level of DAC as the amazing Lampi).

Am I missing something. Is a device like Nick is talking about here able to add anything to the equation....
Click to expand...
The NAA will isolate the Roon server from the Dac.
SG Server uses Windows 10 and optimizes it for audio use. In Win10, the DLLs are "intelligent" and can be made to give priority to audio playback and upsampling computations.

Here is what you MAY miss compared to an expensive Sound Galleries Server (CompAudiophile forum):

The rollout has been delayed due to the need to redesign the case to handle the cooling loads which come from doing PCM to DSD 512 conversion. Along the way, we also upgraded the power supply to the motherboard which now has ripple in single digit microvolts

On the OS side we have made great strides in doing a Windows 10 build that has a small memory footprint and a low thread count

The OS has been set up so that HQ Player and Roon server have their own computing environments.

Another data point we have is Audiodan at the Italian Nexthardware forum. He has been running NAA for a longtime, and always told me that the spec and implementation of the NAA was very important. Audiodan has been running a DSD 256 self-built chipless DSC converter, on which he claims he can hear every little change upstream.

Another point to think about is we find NAA implementations sensitive to the power supplies used for the network switch, and the power supply used to power the fibre media converter when we have fibre optic isolation on the PC's Ethernet connection.

Our experience is that there is no free lunch when using Ethernet for audio, although for most installations it does work well.

=====================

Originally Posted by tranz
emoji651.png
️ This is big news. Up until now NAA was touted as the way to separate the noisy computing environment from the delicate DAC side.
The NAA architecture is still valid and beneficial to most of us that use regular PC for the Hqp. If the noise could be handled efficiently in the PC (as does the SGM), it does avoid one hop processing and latency.


The SGM motherboard is still off the shelf board assembled with carefully attention to parts selection and various upgrades (clocks, power supply, bios tweaked, etc). The uRendu is a dedicated board and designed especially for audio. I think a bigger question to ask is how does the SGM sounds in comparison to PC + uRendu w/ high end power supply in Hqp NAA mode and doing DSD512.
=========================

10 months ago, we were getting very good results with NAA, but when we moved from a MOSFET power supply to a dual choke power supply for the motherboard, the performance of a NAA arrangement was no longer better than a one box solution, but actually inferior to a one box solution.

Our take is that with the lower noise floor which we achieve with the dual choke supply, the noise that comes with passing data over Ethernet becomes audible. Ethernet is a well isolated solution, but it does come with its data overhead, and the Ethernet receiver is not noise free either
===================


I would like to take the opportunity to give some of the background why the server costs what it does. Successful heavy computation for an audio application to sound good needs three things, control and suppression of RFI, dissipating about 50 watts heat from the CPU and maintains stable core temperatures, and improving the clock timing of the computation as much as possible.

- The mother board power supply is a big and heavy affair with 660,000 farrads of Mundorf Audio grade capacitors, over specified Cree Shottky rectifiers and 2 chokes which weigh over 3.5 Kgs each. The ripple from this arrangement is in the micro volts, not milli volts. When we started this project, we had a very nice mosfet regulated power supply that sounded great with a i7 4970. However as we upgraded to a Skylake, we were no longer able to get the mosfet supply to perform reliably with the power draw spikes of the i7 6700 K, and we had to start from scratch with a different PS concept. We decided to try out an old analog amp practice, a choke power supply design in a similar vein to Uptones JS-2 design, which we knew had great results powering Mac Mini's. We tried bigger chokes and more caps, and the sound got better and better. The last interation had a bill of materials increase of 300 euros, but the sound stage depth was way way deeper. What were we to do, keep the cost down or increase the price and deliver a soundstage with added realism ?

On the cooling side, the arrival of the T+A DAC 8 DSD doing DSD512, dramatically increased the computation and wattage of the CPU. The only fan less way to cool the CPU was to custom machine finned heat sinks from solid copper billet, very heavy and expensive, but cools very well. The cooler block we use on top of the CPU, is the same cooler block that is used in a German army battle tank, but we had to modify it so that we have individually adjustable pressure pads, again custom machined

on the SSD, it took us 4 months to find a power supply that sounded better than a Li-Po battery, and we commisisioned a supplier in Sweden to do a custom power supply with a very high frequency bandwith

to improve the timing, we removed the mobo clock and replaced it with first a TCXO, then 50 ppb, and then 5 ppb OCXO's. The 5 ppb OCXO easily sounded the best

and so it goes on
+++++++++++++++++++

At such high retail price, how does it compare to an Aurender W20 ?The W20 is one of the best, if not the best low power, small RF foot print ,bit perfect delivery server out there.

IMHO it's forte is delivery a very high quality SPDIF output, very RF clean, and a very stable clock. The Aurenda has a OCXO built in from the same supplier as one of the two that we have extensively tested.

The software player that comes with the Aurenda, and the only one that the W20 works with is based on the open source Linux MPD Player. Aurenda have done a commendable job of library management and developing tablet apps that work with their MPD player.

The digital music delivery of the SGM 2015 is completely different. The SGM has been designed, engineered, and built to employ computational intensive algorithms to convert all digital formats to DSD512. The reason why we have built this server is to provide the best computing platform for HQ Player to do its magic converting Red book lead into DSD512 Gold.

This weekend has been a highlight of our digital audio journey, we had the chance to spend quality time with Jussi Laako. There are some things I have learned that I want to share with forum friends and put on the record

Jussi Laako spent 7 years in the Finnish Navy. Part of Jussi's job was training sonar operators, an intensive 6 months after which the operators had any amazing ability to identify the sounds of different ships and submarines passing by. How many audiophiles have undergone 6 months of 5 days a week listening training LoL ?

Jussi's other job was to write new computational algorithms for processing sonar returns. Every couple of weeks Jussi would have a new version to test, HQ Player users, does this sound familiar ?

Then Jussi went on to work for Nokia. All cellphones use 1-bit sigma delta modulation. There are no PCM speach phones, have not been for decades !

Now Jussi works for Intel in Finland, I wonder why Intel has a R&D facility in Finland :-)

Let me share with you, some computional bits with you. All of the processing stages have an output in 64 bit floating point format. To maintain the precision of the out put of some stages, Jussi actually inputs 80 bit floating point data, so that the output will have 64 bit precision. To do the 80 bit manipulations, Jussi has had to write his own assembler code. There are no compilers available in the public domain to handle 80 bit floating point.

HQ Player's processing of PCM and other formats is totally another world from the small footprint, bit perfect MPD world inhabited by Aurenda and Antipodes.

On the user interface front end, the SGM has as it's default software Roon 1.2. Roon absolutely is the busiest piece of media management software out there, which requires a heft amount of CPU power but comes with its RFI baggage as well. There is a reason why Aurenda have decided not to support Roon, and I can fully understand Aurenda's decision at this time.

By contrast, the SGM's sledge hammer approach to audiophile computing allows the running of both Roon and HQ Player at DSD512 in the same box. Not an easy task, just ask Lukaz of Lampizator who was taking pictures of the CNC machined copper heatsinks, on Friday night after dinner :-)

enough for now, have to jump in the shower to make it for breakfast with the Roon guys !
 
Thanks Norman. Appreciate the feedback. I can see how the high end Music Servers are more refined in their approach, which is cool. Some good incite there on optimizing. It has given me some ideas on ways of improving my server a little more even!

Starting a new thread, sorry, don't want to hijacks Nick's thread....
 
Randy Myers said:
Thanks Norman. Appreciate the feedback. I can see how the high end Music Servers are more refined in their approach, which is cool. Some good incite there on optimizing. It has given me some ideas on ways of improving my server a little more even!

Starting a new thread, sorry, don't want to hijacks Nick's thread....
Click to expand...

Perfect.

Let me know how it works out.
Lmitchie from CA had done some optimization scripts for Win10 and there is a thread about that at CA. Also, the Audiophile Optimiser (AudioPhil) had a beta testing program for Win10, with the aim of releasing a commercial version.
 
veindoc said:
I believe a 32bit version did exist that would work for Caps3.
Contact Roon for download link.

Nick
Click to expand...

I had 64-bit system installed on my CAPS v3 in the past (Win 8/64). The only drawback was no VGA driver for Win 8/64, which limited onboard graphics potency.
 
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