Ayon Skylla II

[bhagwan]

Hi Bhagwan, Is this on some specific hardware ? do give some details of it .

Yes Arj;
I would love to share.
I met the J Play people in Munich & spoke to them for a 'long' [real long time]
What they had done made sense & could be incorporated; So I returned & did it.
I can put it here - I just do not want Sid to object - it should not become OT - since this is new DAC Thread - The Skylla II - so maybe I will mail it all to you.
But all said, what a difference this 2 machine playback has made - I do not miss my dCS anymore - really the biggest jump in audio I have ever taken in 1.5 decades. hyeah:

 

[neutral]

(or is it No S#x please, we're Indians!)
Cheers,
Sid

Actually a lot of wrong approved sex --------- that is why we are one of the worlds largest populations. And that applies to a lot of wrong things like wrong approved audiophile gear too

 

[sidvee]

I can put it here - I just do not want Sid to object -

No problem at all Bhagwan, please post it here, by all means.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[sidvee]

Actually a lot of wrong approved sex --------- that is why we are one of the worlds largest populations. And that applies to a lot of wrong things like wrong approved audiophile gear too

:lol:
Cheers,
Sid

 

[Nikhil]

But all said, what a difference this 2 machine playback has made - I do not miss my dCS anymore - really the biggest jump in audio I have ever taken in 1.5 decades. hyeah:

Bhagwan ... you have my attention now!!
As Sid has given his permission please elaborate on what you have done.

:licklips:

 

[bhagwan]

Bhagwan ... you have my attention now!!
As Sid has given his permission please elaborate on what you have done.

:licklips:

This is a mail I sent to ARJ - I have copied it here :-

Sir,

Hello !

I re-built my 2 computers;

a]
Black
b]
Silver

This will make things easy to understand - I hope

Both Machines have same - In Common
1]
M/B = ASUS Maximus V - Gene
2]
Ram - Cosair Vengence - 8 GB
3]
I-5 3rd gen - Low Heat - top spec processor
4]
SSD Drive - Win 8 - Cossair - GTX 120GB

Now the differences are :-

Silver has no HDD
Has an RME - AES 32 Hammerfall Card - my sound card
No DVD Rom
No Software - except win 8

Black has 10 HDD's - all my 16 + + TB of music is here;
DVD Rom
Win 8
J River
Foobar
J Play - mini
dB Power Amp - Ripper

Operation :-

I play music via J River - no critical listening in the Black Machine.
The Silver Machine 'hibernates' [basically shuts down] & the music
is played - sent from the RME Card to my DAD Dac.

For Critical Listening - I use the same set up but with J Play Mini.

Sir,
I cannot begin to explain it to you;
It is just so damn brilliant - I could never imagine that my house could
play like this. Just amazing.

I am very very happy.
The Best 1 Lac I ever spent.

I have now placed an order for Pure Silver Cryo Ethernet Cat 7 Cables.
This is used to cocnnect the 2 machines - I do know the snake oil story.
But it is like USB Cable - technically there should be no difference, but
in real life it makes a huge difference....

So this is what I have done & I am really satisfied & happy.

Best Regards,

Mazher

p.s. Satyam & Kiranbir did help me a lot with ground work here in Mumbai.
Set up issues etc.

12.06.2013

 

[hydra]

@sidvee, congrats for the Skylla!

@bhagwan, did you mean to say that you have JRiver and J-Play Mini installed in the Silver machine?

You use the Silver machine to play (and hibernate it while using JPlay-Mini), right? That is, if i'm right, the Silver Machine is the player, and the Black machine is the server?

Is there a benefit/improvement (over a single machine installation) while you play using JRiver using this setup too?

EDIT: More questions

Would a two-machine setup be superior to a Machine + NAS setup? Did this topic come up during your talk with the JPlay people?

Sorry for asking so many questions, but I'm quite interested to know more

 

[jls001]

I re-built my 2 computers;

Sir,
Does this have to have two PCs? Or are you just separating storage from player? Also, to play in the "extreme" hibernate mode, is it the silver machine or the black machine that must go into this mode?

 

[bhagwan]

@sidvee, congrats for the Skylla!
@bhagwan, did you mean to say that you have JRiver and J-Play Mini installed in the Silver machine?

You use the Silver machine to play (and hibernate it while using JPlay-Mini), right? That is, if i'm right, the Silver Machine is the player, and the Black machine is the server?

Sir,
Silver machine has no software on it - only win 8.
Every thing is on Black Machine.

Silver has no HDD
Has an RME - AES 32 Hammerfall Card - my sound card
No DVD Rom
No Software - except win 8

This is all part of J Play Mini - on their web site - it is explained;

 

[manniraj]

@bhagwan
Also I am curious to know how do you hibernate Windows 8 machine and still use its soundcard. I went through various forums in windows but could not find a way to do that. I think elaborating more will help other FM's as well.

 

[arj]

just read through this
I believe Bhagwan is talking of the streamer mode where, basically the role of the transport is played by one machine and the other one is the player/spdif converter as both have jplay running on them.
and they feed to a DAC

 

[hydra]

Going by the above, it seems JPlay is installed on both PCs. The Hibernate PC (the one with the Sound Card) has just JPlay and Windows installed.

 

[bhagwan]

@bhagwan
Also I am curious to know how do you hibernate Windows 8 machine and still use its soundcard. I went through various forums in windows but could not find a way to do that. I think elaborating more will help other FM's as well.

Sir,
The J Play mini has an option to 'hibernate' the 'silver' machine.
It is all explained on this page :-
Manual | JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows
I would follow it to the 'T' !
I use Ultra Engine [on win 8] with hibernate 'on' for critical listening...

So Win 8 does not 'hibernate' it is the J Play that shuts down non critical functions of win 8 & then only allows the computer to behave as a 'transport'

 

[Nikhil]

Wow! This is killer ... Jplay Streamer mode is going to be really interesting!!
Bhagwan, thanks for sharing.

This seriously needs a dedicated thread - there's going to be a ton of stuff starting up.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I have now placed an order for Pure Silver Cryo Ethernet Cat 7 Cables.
This is used to cocnnect the 2 machines - I do know the snake oil story.
But it is like USB Cable - technically there should be no difference, but
in real life it makes a huge difference....

I do not take issue with your separating the functions of file serving and media playing over two machines. I think it quite unnecessary, but you are a demanding listener, and if it gives you benefit, then, for a relatively small expenditure, then why not.

All this network-cable stuff, however, is an entirely different issue. This is not snake oil it is a pure con. How can you possibly fall for it?

TCP/IP/Ethernet is about getting data from one place to another. It is like the postman. Do your letters read better because you postman came on a motorbike rather than a pushbike? No they don't, and no they won't.


Networking is very well managed by proper scientists and technicians working in the field. Let the music world take advantage of it, as it has with computer technology, but let it keep its sticky, money-grabbing fingers off the technology.

Why does a network cable carry the label "catn?" Because that is its specification. That is how it is certified to work, and that is how it does work in far more vital situations than us listening to music. As and when better comes along we get Cat-n+1 but, given that these networks carry gigabits/sec, that is waaaaay above our needs.

Otherwise, what next? Silver SATA leads?



(Sorry: it is everybody's right to spend their money as they choose. There is a lot in the audiophile world about which I am agnostic --- but on this, I am certain. The seller of these things should be prosecuted)

 

[manniraj]

Sir,
The J Play mini has an option to 'hibernate' the 'silver' machine.
It is all explained on this page :-
Manual | JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows
I would follow it to the 'T' !
I use Ultra Engine [on win 8] with hibernate 'on' for critical listening...

So Win 8 does not 'hibernate' it is the J Play that shuts down non critical functions of win 8 & then only allows the computer to behave as a 'transport'

How are both the systems connected via some router/switch?

Thanks

 

[manniraj]

Went thru the JPlay forum here. Post #15 talks about sandboxie to make I think a virtual machine and integrate both the machines what @bhagwan was talking about into one. Very interesting I think we can give this a try and see how it turns out to be.

 

[mowgli80]

@manniraj - Wouldn't that be against the whole 'hibernate' philosophy i.e. to reduce the processing on the streaming computer to reduce jitter. Infact running VMs would worsen the problem as you introduced additional VM/hypervisor processing to the mix.

As per my understanding, looks like the NAS PC will do major processing and decode the music file and send the raw stream to the PC connected to the DAC, which will add the clock information to the raw stream. The timing information will be more accurate as less processing (i.e. less jitter) is happening because of the 'hibernation' mode. In other words, looks like this is similar to Async USB DACs where the DAC will add the timing info using better and more accurate cystal clock chip to reduce the jitter.

 

[manniraj]

I am not sure how this might work out but was looking into this option but I agree that running a VM will definitely increase the load on the system and will go against the basic principle of JPlay to hibernate the system. Good point.

Thanks

 

[arj]

TCP/IP/Ethernet is about getting data from one place to another. It is like the postman. Do your letters read better because you postman came on a motorbike rather than a pushbike? No they don't, and no they won't.

But they get there faster and maybe with no sweat on them hyeah:
Just kidding.
TCP/IP is a packet based transfer unlike SPDIF hence clock/timing are not impacted so I am agreeing with you on technicality

But if someone has compared it and sees a benefit and a value i would let it be...:cheers: