MASTERCLASS FOR STREAMING & COMPUTER AUDIO TODAY (15 Aug) @ 18:00 Indian Time

[IndianEars]

MASTERCLASS FOR STREAMING & COMPUTER AUDIO TODAY (15 Aug) @ 18:00 Indian Time

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us05web.zoom.us/j/9751064661?pwd=qBIJY9hOeHzsPGOTHMJzmZKrMWTvo0.1

Meeting ID: 975 106 4661
Passcode: J9WWbC

The Session is completely free.

Alan Ainslie, a celebrated veteran of the digital music scene & Stewart from Melco will present *a 45 minute master class for Indian Audiophiles @ 18:00 Hrs, India Time, today (15 Aug)*

Topics will include:

• Streaming
• Digital Music Formats
• Streaming vs Local File Playout
• Introduction to Melco
• Why is Melco better?
  (Computers vs music servers)
• Q&A

A Bit about Alan
On hi-fi’s long march from analog to digital, Alan Ainslie has been continually at the forefront. At Technics in the UK, he was responsible for the massive success of the legendary 1200/10 (and has many wonderful stories to tell about this period). Taking an increasing interest in the nascent digitalization of music reproduction, he became a member of the committee that defined the Red Book standard for CDs. After spending some time developing network solutions for Naim, he moved on to become general manager of the Japanese company Melco about five years ago.

Stewart Day
General Manager at Audiophiles Digital Master Music Masters Ltd ( Melco Audio Distribution Company for Europe & USA )


Thanks to forum Member Mustafakk For Organising The Session

 

[Nikhil]

Thanks for sharing Dinyar! Will surely try and join.



.

 

[IndianEars]

A BIG THANKS! to all who joined and helped make the session successful.

There were some Great insights shared, including:

• SSD Use for Computer Audio
• USB vs Streaming feeds to a DAC
• High Powered processors for Computer Audio
• Destructive Nature Of A Switch in Computer Audio.

 

[Nikhil]

Very interesting session Dinyar. Thanks for the invitation.

I'm not fully convinced that using a computer is as bad as they make it to be. My current experience is that a good DDC intrinsically isolates the computer from the DAC making a lot of the hardware issues redundant. It was interesting to hear them talk about keeping the digital signal pristine etc but I am not so convinced about that. Ultimately it will need a direct comparison to hear what they are talking about. There is a difference of course between good enough and state of the art.

Very informative session overall and worth the time spent.


.

 

[mbhangui]

I couldn't join as I was busy having my drinks today being a holiday. But I'm curious what was discussed. I have jotted down my guess and I could be as wrong as Christopher Columbus having discovered India.

There were some Great insights shared, including:

• SSD Use for Computer Audio

My guess is SSD is bad because of many digital to digital converters leading to noise. Is the mechnaical hard disk better than SSD or vice versa for Music? I have never used SSD for music because I don't take backups and I have had more SSDs giving up in less than 3 years than the age old mechanical hard disks. And I use hdparm linux utility and smartctl to have my hard disks purring like a kitten and have a stress free life on all my computers. I do understand that the mechanical disks cannot compete with SSDs with data transfer rates.

• USB vs Streaming feeds to a DAC

So for I have had better experience with USB vs streaming, but It would be good to know which one is better and why.

• High Powered processors for Computer Audio

My experience has been higher powered processor more the noise. But I could be wrong. Again it would be great to know what is the general consensus. However for DSD, I have found the latest processors to be better performing.

• Destructive Nature Of A Switch in Computer Audio.

Why is this destructive? Would like to know as I use to many network switches in my house.

 

[bobbyndd]

They said SSD is better compared to SATA drives as there's no moving parts. However, the data we save on SSD keep relocating as an when we save and delete files on SSD drives ( disk defragmention ) which is bad.

The session was recorded and if this is available, it will help those who couldn't join .

 

[IndianEars]

I have recorded the session... Its 2 Videos:
1st Session 10 minutes (74 MB)
2nd session 57 minutes (515MB)

To reduce File sizes, I have reduced the files to Android Quality SD and obtained:

1st Session 18 MB
2nd Session 122 MB

WhatsApp will not let me share a 18 MB Video

Any suggestions how I share?

NOTE: Since the video is resampled to an Android Phone aspect ratio, the faces and slides are a bit elongated, but fully recognisable and text n pics viewable

 

[jai1611]

I have recorded the session... Its 2 Videos:
1st Session 10 minutes (74 MB)
2nd session 57 minutes (515MB)

To reduce File sizes, I have reduced the files to Android Quality SD and obtained:

1st Session 18 MB
2nd Session 122 MB

WhatsApp will not let me share a 18 MB Video

Any suggestions how I share?

NOTE: Since the video is resampled to an Android Phone aspect ratio, the faces and slides are a bit elongated, but fully recognisable and text n pics viewable

A Google drive link may work

thanks for the initiative

 

[IndianEars]

I couldn't join as I was busy having my drinks today being a holiday. But I'm curious what was discussed. I have jotted down my guess and I could be as wrong as Christopher Columbus having discovered India.

My guess is SSD is bad because of many digital to digital converters leading to noise. Is the mechnaical hard disk better than SSD or vice versa for Music? I have never used SSD for music because I don't take backups and I have had more SSDs giving up in less than 3 years than the age old mechanical hard disks. And I use hdparm linux utility and smartctl to have my hard disks purring like a kitten and have a stress free life on all my computers. I do understand that the mechanical disks cannot compete with SSDs with data transfer rates.


So for I have had better experience with USB vs streaming, but It would be good to know which one is better and why.

My experience has been higher powered processor more the noise. But I could be wrong. Again it would be great to know what is the general consensus. However for DSD, I have found the latest processors to be better performing.


Why is this destructive? Would like to know as I use to many network switches in my house.

I am responding to each (except the 1st ) of your queries, based on What I understood of what was said / explained by the presenters:

1. Is SSD Better or otherwise & Why ?
I went of to get my drink, so I missed part of what was explained. I believe they said that the an ordinary SSD continuously reallocates data on the SSD. Hence MELCO uses an Enterprise Grade SSD and disables the continuous data shuffling. They have promised to send additional info on this data shuffling done by SSDs. I will share once received.

2. USB vs Streaming feeds to a DAC
MELCO believes that USB to the DAC is FAR Superior to Streaming via Ethernet (Optical or Cu), because, during streaming the sequence of bits received at the end is random. It does not follow the sequence in which the data is sent. That is an additional task for the Streamer to sort out / rearrange the received bits of data.

When transmitted via USB, the sequence of data is retained.

MELCO said the main reason they offer Ethernet for Data transmission, is that ROON requires it, and Roon is very popular.

Stewart the junior of the 2 presenters confessed that he personally prefers the sound of Ethernet. (Subjective preference)

3. "DESTRUCTIVE" NATURE OF THE SWITCH
The presenters did not use the term destructive... I am taking liberties......
This is an extension of what was said for USB being better than Ethernet....
The MELCO switch is optimised for audio streaming by:
a. Being a Managed Switch, so that sequence of the transmitted bits is maintained.
b. The switch also reshapes / reconditions the data bits with sharp leading & falling edges to lower errors and jitter.

They went as far as saying that a drop in substitution of the Melco switches A(they offer 2 models) into even a non Melco setup will provide instant sonic improvements.

4. High Powered processors for Computer Audio
According to the presenters, High Powered Processors add noise and degrade the audio quality.
Further, High Powered (Multi Core) processors, break up the Serial data stream and redirect / allocate the data to be processed to different cores. This once again breaks up the Serial data Stream, which is reassembled at the Processor output ... Not an Ideal situation.

Before I conclude, the disclaimer again... what I have written above is what I have understood during the presentation. The presenters may or may not have said that !

I have the Video recordings, as mentioned in my post above, and I await suggestions on how to share these large files ... If anyone is interested in watching the videos.

 

[IndianEars]

A Google drive link may work

thanks for the initiative

Good suggestion, but I do not have space to spare on my Google Drive

However, I am sharing via a Dropbox Link:

1st 10 Minutes Video Link (18 MB File Size)

Remaining 57 minute Video Link (122 MB File Size)

I dont think the Dropbox link will stream... You will have to probably download each file into yr device & then view the videos.

If the above links dont work, do let me know.

NOTE: Since the video is resampled to an Android Phone aspect ratio, the faces and slides are a bit elongated, but fully recognisable and text & pics are viewable

 

[Yelamanchili manohar]

Good suggestion, but I do not have space to spare on my Google Drive

However, I am sharing via a Dropbox Link:

1st 10 Minutes Video Link (18 MB File Size)

Remaining 57 minute Video Link (122 MB File Size)

I dont think the Dropbox link will stream... You will have to probably download each file into yr device & then view the videos.

If the above links dont work, do let me know.

NOTE: Since the video is resampled to an Android Phone aspect ratio, the faces and slides are a bit elongated, but fully recognisable and text & pics are viewable

Thanks a ton for sharing the vids

Would have loved to watch it live, but my restricted internet doesnt allow that. Will watch whenever I can manage to download the vids. Thanks

 

[Nikhil]

I just looked up the Melco website and was surprised to see their dealer network.
I had no idea they had a decent presence in India until now.






.

 

[skk]

Thanks for sharing, very informative. I was able to stream from dropbox directly without downloading the files.

 

[keith_correa]

And I use hdparm linux utility and smartctl to have my hard disks purring like a kitten and have a stress free life on all my computers.

What specifically do you set in hdparm & smartctl to enhance/extend the life of your HDD's?

 

[mbhangui]

What specifically do you set in hdparm & smartctl to enhance/extend the life of your HDD's?

It is acoustic managment and allowing disk to spin down. This is done by hdparm. I'm using smartctl mainly to report the health status of the disk. Allowing the disk to run quieter comes at the cost of speed.

These two commands after reboot allow the disk to spin down if there is no activity for 16 minutes 40 seconds

sudo hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing -s 1 /dev/sda1
sudo hdparm -S 200 /dev/sda1

The hdparm command has other two options that I use. The -M option to enable automatic acoustic management and the -B option to enable power management. The moment you run the -M command, the sound coming from the hard disk totally goes away. If you are holding the hard disk in your hand, the vibration also becomes extremely less.

-M
Get/set Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) setting. Most modern harddisk drives have the ability to speed
down the head movements to reduce their noise output. The possible values are between 0 and 254. 128 is the
most quiet (and therefore slowest) setting and 254 the fastest (and loudest). Some drives have only two levels
(quiet / fast), while others may have different levels between 128 and 254. At the moment, most drives only
support 3 options, off, quiet, and fast. These have been assigned the values 0, 128, and 254 at present, re‐
spectively, but integer space has been incorporated for future expansion, should this change.

-B
Get/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the drive supports it. A low value means aggressive power man‐
agement and a high value means better performance. Possible settings range from values 1 through 127 (which
permit spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do not permit spin-down). The highest degree of power
management is attained with a setting of 1, and the highest I/O performance with a setting of 254. A value of
255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management altogether on the drive (not all drives support dis‐
abling it, but most do).

See this

hdparm acoustic management: Reduce hard drive's noise level

In this tutorial, you will see how to install the hdparm utility on all major Linux distros and use it to reduce the noise level of a hard drive.

linuxconfig.org

and

Linux HDD sleep - how to enable and disable with hdparm

In this linux hdd sleep tutorial, we cover instructions to enable or disable hard drive sleep via command line and GUI in Linux.

linuxconfig.org

 

[MIOM]

I have never used SSD for music because I don't take backups and I have had more SSDs giving up in less than 3 years than the age old mechanical hard disks. And I use hdparm linux utility and smartctl to have my hard disks purring like a kitten and have a stress free life on all my computers. I do understand that the mechanical disks cannot compete with SSDs with data transfer rates.

Then you must be using some cheap SSDs cause I've got some Samsung SSDs going back to 2015 and they'll still chugging along. I've 3 SSDs + 2 NVMe drives in my main rig... all running in that build since 2019 without issue.

I also run JRiver Media Center from that rig with my files on both SSD and HDD from my NAS. No noise or oddities here. Here's my audio system built around my PC. Components here.

 

[mbhangui]

Then you must be using some cheap SSDs cause I've got some Samsung SSDs going back to 2015 and they'll still chugging along. I've 3 SSDs + 2 NVMe drives in my main rig... all running in that build since 2019 without issue.

There were the macbook pro SSDs inside the macbooks and each of the macbook pros that failed were heavily for grahics designing using adobe photoshop and this involved heavy writes.

 

[MIOM]

There were the macbook pro SSDs inside the macbooks and each of the macbook pros that failed were heavily for grahics designing using adobe photoshop

Whether Mac or Windows (I'm strictly Windows) I still say those were cheap drives failing like that. I'm also a photographer who uses both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop so....

 

[mbhangui]

Whether Mac or Windows (I'm strictly Windows) I still say those were cheap drives failing like that. I'm also a photographer who uses both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop so....

Apple uses either samsung or toshiba drives. The one's that failed for me (actually for my employees) were all samsung SSDs.

 

[MIOM]

Apple uses either samsung or toshiba drives. The one's that failed for me (actually for my employees) were all samsung SSDs.

Well, all I know is many, me included, have not had the issue you report. And you can even ask around in the Windows forums, I'm currently at elevenforums.com, though I also belong to a few other tech forums, including Seven, Eight, and Ten forums. No one is reporting Samsung SSDs drives have a short life span so.... But if you say that's your experience, well, that's your experience.

I'll move on.