What is your configuration for Computer Audio?

[eastofthesun]

Hello guys , added the SOtM- sMS 200 ultra , SOtM - sPS 500 and the Roon Nucleus to my stereo family today. Will post pictures Shortly.
So my computer audio chain stands as follows:

Lacie d2 Thunderbolt 2 4TB (source) - Roon Nucleus - D-link switcher - SOtM sMS - 200 ultra powered by the SOtM sPS - 500 - msb DAC - Mola Mola Kaluga power amps .

Cheers!
Anand

 

[Fiftyfifty]

Curious Cables:

One of the best things to happen to my computer set-up. In recent times, all my upgrades appeared to follow the law of diminishing returns. With some changes, I would perhaps not be able to hear the improvement without first reading the review, or without knowing the price, or in a double blind test. But not this time! The improvement these USB cables made took my breath away!. I got 2 of these cables, one between PC and regenerator, and the other between regenerator and DAC. They replaced my Shunyata Venom, a worthy contender.

The regular 1 foot cables each cost $320 or so, but I got I the 8" patch cables directly from Curious Cables in Australia for $120 each. Great service too. Relatively small investment but, man, what performance. They come with an 8 hour burn in but recommended is 50 hours. To me, they are fantastic from the word 'go'!

Highly recommended for anyone using USB audio.
https://audiobacon.net/2017/09/18/curious-cables-usb-review/

Cheers!

 

[dheerajin]

Curious Cables:

One of the best things to happen to my computer set-up. In recent times, all my upgrades appeared to follow the law of diminishing returns. With some changes, I would perhaps not be able to hear the improvement without first reading the review, or without knowing the price, or in a double blind test. But not this time! The improvement these USB cables made took my breath away!. I got 2 of these cables, one between PC and regenerator, and the other between regenerator and DAC. They replaced my Shunyata Venom, a worthy contender.

The regular 1 foot cables each cost $320 or so, but I got I the 8" patch cables directly from Curious Cables in Australia for $120 each. Great service too. Relatively small investment but, man, what performance. They come with an 8 hour burn in but recommended is 50 hours. To me, they are fantastic from the word 'go'!

Highly recommended for anyone using USB audio.
https://audiobacon.net/2017/09/18/curious-cables-usb-review/

Cheers!

you may find below review for USB cables good
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...reaming/?page=123&tab=comments#comment-697211

 

[Fiftyfifty]

you may find below review for USB cables good
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...reaming/?page=123&tab=comments#comment-697211

Oh, there are hundreds of them. I just went by reviews and I did consider Lush, but preferred the characteristics of Cuious

 

[rikhav]

Curious Cables:

One of the best things to happen to my computer set-up. In recent times, all my upgrades appeared to follow the law of diminishing returns. With some changes, I would perhaps not be able to hear the improvement without first reading the review, or without knowing the price, or in a double blind test. But not this time! The improvement these USB cables made took my breath away!. I got 2 of these cables, one between PC and regenerator, and the other between regenerator and DAC. They replaced my Shunyata Venom, a worthy contender.

The regular 1 foot cables each cost $320 or so, but I got I the 8" patch cables directly from Curious Cables in Australia for $120 each. Great service too. Relatively small investment but, man, what performance. They come with an 8 hour burn in but recommended is 50 hours. To me, they are fantastic from the word 'go'!

Highly recommended for anyone using USB audio.
https://audiobacon.net/2017/09/18/curious-cables-usb-review/

Cheers!

Hello Kishore sir
Glad the cable upgrade worked for you specially when you already had a very good cable already in use
Cables are always hit and miss and it's impossible to get one to try before purchasing
Also good is these companies giving small sizes. Maybe with more and more people using some kind of usb regens shorter lengths always makes sense

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Fifty-Fifty, I use a headless mac mini. The largest improvements came from removing the wifi and bluetooth card physically and replacing stock HDD with an SSD. you get kits for doing this in a 2012 mac mini, and ifixit has video guides.

 

[Fiftyfifty]

Fifty-Fifty, I use a headless mac mini. The largest improvements came from removing the wifi and bluetooth card physically and replacing stock HDD with an SSD. you get kits for doing this in a 2012 mac mini, and ifixit has video guides.

If you physically remove the wifi and bt card, I didnt undersatnd how you control it remotely. I mean, how does the mac mini talk to the display used to view the music being played and the software? I use screen sharing via wifi to control the mac mini through my other apple device.

Thanks

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

I had an apple desktop so used screen sharing to control. Then i changed over to a self built PC for my home use, so screen sharing was no more possible. Hence i took a 20 meter ethernet wire all the way from my router, pinned to my wall skirting very low so that no one can notice it, took it all the way around to the mac mini, stuffed it in at the back in the lan port, removed the wifi and BT, used my mobile on the same wifi SSID, and everything is smooth. The difference is very big indeed. Earlier I used to employ another router kept nearby without internet, connected with lan cable to mac mini, switch my mac desktop to that router's ssid, operate the mac mini to activate its wifi, switch everything to the main wifi for downloading software etc. into the mac mini, then do everything in reverse, finishing with wifi being disabled. I used to be very satisfied with the sound, but as often in audio, only when you see a major improvement do you realize what you have been missing all along. Now that leaves the problem of 1) how to transfer files into the mac mini - that I can do using windows explorer which can see the mac mini being on the same network and 2) downloading software into the mac mini (like latest version of Audirvana etc.) - that can be done by temporarily connecting a mouse, keyboard and the TV's HDMI to the mac mini and disconnecting everything later and rebooting. For this I opted to leave the HDMI cards inside rather than plucking that out also. Later I will try that also, though life will become more difficult. May be the answer is to buy a small old Apple macbook to use as a controller with screen sharing.

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Also consider the following - http://www.getbettersound.com/quarternotesv4i1.html
Jim smith the author uses "Cocktail"...an interesting optimisation schedule for macbacbook pro. I havent used it, as I don't have a DAC as of now. But when I get one, I will consider this. Along with some of the uptone audio tweaks like MMK etc.

 

[Fiftyfifty]

I had an apple desktop so used .......small old Apple macbook to use as a controller with screen sharing.

That's a cool fix. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Fiftyfifty]

That's a cool fix. Thanks for sharing.

I use a MacBook Air with screen sharing to control the Mac mini. No head and no keyboard. Bluetooth disabled. WiFi is active for screen sharing purpose and to play Tidal and similar services

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Remember, there is a major difference between disabling BT and physically removing the BT card. It can be put back should you wish to resell. Disabling is a minor improvement by comparison. All the best.

 

[Kannan]

Remember, there is a major difference between disabling BT and physically removing the BT card. It can be put back should you wish to resell. Disabling is a minor improvement by comparison. All the best.

What difference does it make to sound quality or noise proliferation? I mean disabling versus physical removal. I also use a headless mac mini running barebone windows 7 via bootcamp as my audio source. I either use RDP or teamviever to control the mac mini from my laptop.

 

[manniraj]

I think both Teamviewer or RDP consume lot of processing to render or run. Thats what I can see on my audiophiler software which suggests me to always switch off and I have done that running on a Gigabyte fanless PC with Win2012 R2 release. If controlling your playback is the only intention of running them, then use some mobile app of your preferred media player to control and get rid of them.

 

[Kannan]

I think both Teamviewer or RDP consume lot of processing to render or run. Thats what I can see on my audiophiler software which suggests me to always switch off and I have done that running on a Gigabyte fanless PC with Win2012 R2 release. If controlling your playback is the only intention of running them, then use some mobile app of your preferred media player to control and get rid of them.

Not at all, the RDP or teamviever hardly has any impact on processing.
See the screen shot which shows only 9% utilization with foobar and RDP running.

I have also run latency tests and it is absolutely clean.

Here is the screenshot taken a few minutes back.

 

[Kannan]

Infact I have still not fully optimized the windows 7 running on the mac mini for audio, I will be disabling lots of processes tomorrow

 

[manniraj]

Thats interesting as I used to run the Teamviewer on my PC some years back and my processor used to run at least 30 to 40% high. Hence got rid of that and the only purpose was to control the music on Foobar, so I just bought the paid official app. But then to load new music on the Foobar I still need to connect to the display as I could not do that using the mobile app.

 

[Kannan]

Thats interesting as I used to run the Teamviewer on my PC some years back and my processor used to run at least 30 to 40% high. Hence got rid of that and the only purpose was to control the music on Foobar, so I just bought the paid official app. But then to load new music on the Foobar I still need to connect to the display as I could not do that using the mobile app.

RDP and teamviever give me complete control, I have more or less settled on RDP. Also you should set to only control over LAN netowrk. I have disabled WAN feature for RDP

 

[Kannan]

Same thing for teamviewer. You should access the host computer by its ip address instead of the number. This ensures that the control is only within the local network, making it faster and less resource hungry

 

[Fiftyfifty]

Why do you guys prefer Windows on the Mac rather than Mac OS (from the music playback angle alone)? I have found Screen sharing using another Apple device to be less resource hungry than using any mobile app. It gives complete control to play, download, transfer or stream music without ever needing a keyboard or a wired display. Then, upgrading the USB cable from the Mac to the DAC and other downstream changes produced the maximum improvement, more than any Mac tweek. USB cables are notorious for noise.