Using one of the sinc filters with my TT2 was better to my ears than leaving the first three set to None - but this is without the Mscaler (I sold after getting my K30). I set these to None when I play music processed with
PGGB but sometimes forget to turn them back on when playing music that's not been processed.
Roon/Hqplayer, no filters is the least fatiguing combination yet. Any upscaling/filters is taken care of with PGGB.
AMS3.1 - I find it interesting all apps are installed as Antipodes previously stated to install only required apps so as not to degrade sound quality. Is this just a new gui and not a software improvement?
Thank you both for these details.. I know a lot of people have very high-end systems. I find it very disconcerting that the underlying player transport / architecture is degrading the sound of my system (even while the sound quality grows by leaps and bounds with power cable upgrades, acoustics improvements, etc.). Despite being employed in the technology world (nominally mind you) I have not yet been able to figure out a working HQ Player arrangement, although if I'm honest I haven't tried that hard. So, that's next on my list.
PGGB: I'm very attracted to the idea but I think I've already said here that PGGB was a change absolutely but not a net benefit in my system, which always seems to employ DSD-based DACs with their own elaborate upsampling routine. It's one of the reasons I didn't look very hard at HQPlayer initially, but I definitely take the point of the posters above that perhaps the first good thing HQP is doing is effectively removing RAAT and its widely-reported inferoriority from the chain.
Roon vs LMS / DLNA / MinimServer / every other UI: I guess this is where I'm drawing the line. I have crazy acoustic treatments, kilobuck power cables, tape all over my floor, and a pretty high level of general insanity to facilitate the best music playback I can create. But I can not, and do not, and I guess will not, go back to any other UX than Roon for playing music. Squinting at text UIs and organizing file trees and finding which volume of the cantata cycle has the one you're looking for and and and ... not to mention the inclusion of Qobuz and TIDAL which has fundamentally enhanced my music discovery capability .. I can't live without it. So I will get Roon > HQPlayer (no upsampling) working. I salute those of you who are able to go back to the older playback experience in search of sonic perfection but I will not join you. : )
On a few other recent topics:
streamed 24/192 vs local files (DSD/otherwise): I think someone pointed out that this is an extremely apples / oranges comparison. You have to compare the same files (at least the 24/192 version of an album MAY be the same mastering between Qobuz streaming and a local download, depending on where you got it) or else you aren't comparing anything. To that end I have done a lot of comparing of this newish album, which is totally enjoyable musically and quite good sonically. Herreweghe is working his way through a cantata cycle with real sensitivity and charisma, aided by lovely vocal performances from the Chapel Royale.
I do prioritize the local version as it has better tonal density and a little less hash in massed choral passages (my ongoing / most challenging test for how well a playback chain sorts things out). However if you were to randomly play me one vs the other I'm not certain I could tell you which one is playing. I would characterize the difference for this track local vs streamed as smaller than many other tweaks including USB cables and power cords.
So I do seek out and purchase DSD or high-rate PCM versions of recordings I want to own, and I do listen to a substantial amount (perhaps half) of streaming. In my system the difference is there if you want to A / B a bunch of times but I tire of that activity very quickly.
Audiophile switches: I too fell victim to the attractive price of entry of the ER, back when I was running the Bridge II (which now takes up space in my box o' tubes) on my PS Audio DirectStream (latest firmware of course). Plugging it in there with the stock power, I heard an increase in articulation and an increase in audiophile 'detail' and found it unpleasant.
Many changes later, I prefer the ER (with the Uptone LPS-1 power supply) B side connected to my EX, with a second ER (standard PS) connected to my CX and the rest of the network. In the current system configuration the two ERs add clarity and I haven't noticed a prominent change in voicing with them in. Notably, this configuration sounds better unequivocally than connecting the EX to the CX directly (even with both ERs upstream of the CX). However I have not done the 'unplug the cable' test -- and [..thinks for a moment] I cannot, because all my media is on the CX and the EX is the player (which is of course the point).
Innuos: Ah, Innuos. I always thought they were beautiful and expected to buy one. But I also found somethign very sensible about the Antipodes CX/EX approach (2 boxes make sense for 2 tasks) with the bonus of buying one then adding the other. So I did. However, I have a friend with the Innuos Statement > MS > DAVE and it is pretty great (the sound was pretty good until I pointed out he was using the wrong USB port, after it jumped to incredible). I think Innuos' decision to pull the key tech out of that server and sell it separately is a good marketing decision, and good for us. As it happens an industry friend has a Phoenix USB and brought it over. It made a notable if not dramatic improvement to a digital chain already fairly optimized, as follows.
consumer router > in-wall CAT7 > ER1 > CX (no upgrade), LPS-1/ER2 > AQ Vodka ethernet > EX (no upgrade) > Curious USB > P2 > PS Audio AC12 HDMI > DirectStream (Bridge II long since removed) > BHK Preamp > Focal SM9 studio monitors / JL Audio F112v2. (Various high-end power cables from AQ, Nordost, another great local manufacturer, and the good o'l PS Audio AC12).
I love the utility of the Phoenix USB -- it seems to clean up any USB signal (including that from say a MacBook or something) very nicely, and scales up in performance enough to improve an EX. I can imagine it would improve or perhaps just change the USB performance of a K50... has someone tried that?
Given the performance of the Phoenix USB, and with the valuable insights on this forum, I would try the PhoenixNet too. However I don't see it as an either / or; I will always need gigabit connectivity afaic for the CX, and I will move one of the ERs to use as a normal switch adjacent to my router.
Soo.... with one more purchase it's: router > ER > maybe another ER + CX > PhoenixNet > EX > Phoenix USB > P2 > DAC. No wonder people think we're crazy.
CX / EX 'OLADRA' Upgrade (and upgrades in general): Glad to hear people are hearing good results. I may have already said I'm a little hesitant to spend new retail dollars on upgrading a computer given the depressing depreciation in value as well as compaibility in any computer. Also given my configuration above I still wonder if the CX is "doing" anything besides just.. serving Roon (or even upsampling HQP if, say, I bought a Holo Audio May DAC and wanted to PCM 768/1024). One day I will buy (or more likely borrow) a Roon Nucleus and see what is the difference in SQ when there are two (or three?) audiophile clean-up switches between the core and the renderer.
With that in mind, I find myself inclined to focus my (increasingly stingy) future upgrade dollars on
renderer not server. As such I think I'm unlikely to splurge on the K series and will do S separates (and probably spend very nearly the same amount of money by the time I'm done) starting with S60, then S20, then S30. This is on the assumption that I keep the PS Audio DirectStream (for which HDMI is decidedly the preferred input, and which I am beginning to do the output transformer and external power supply for the analog board upgrades, another kettle of upgrade fish entirely)
Aren't all of these boxes trying to do the same thing?
An accomplished reviewer, "raydude", whose human name I don't know, usefully articulates this 'hypothesis for digital optimization' in his
audiophilestyle review of the Sean Jacobs DC4 / DAVE review
(which my Innuos Statement friend ALSO just got installed; we all have some friends we hate..)
- First Law: Invest in cabling, power, and digital hygiene to do as little harm as possible (directly or indirectly) to the DAC’s clock, ground plane, or reference voltage plane
- Second Law: Invest in a digital endpoint that moves bit perfect digital data from ethernet to a USB DAC with as little variability and as much timing and signal integrity as possible (aka, as close to precision real time data streaming to DAC as possible)
If I squint for a moment, I would say that all the ethernet boxes and power supplies are trying to address Law 1, and the EX / S30 / P2 et al are trying to address Law 2. Of course in a combined product like the K50 or Innuos Statement these all get mixed together.
The relevant question for me is: Do I get better SQ dividends investing at the end of the chain (in my case upgrading the P2 to an S20 + S60), the middle (upgrading the EX to an S30 + s60), or the beginning (let's say a PhoenixNET)? (For clarity let's assume away a new DAC, and all the software/protocol stuff [pretend I already figured out Roon > HQP no upsampling])
A corollary of this question: If I do enough cleaning up on the back end, does the clean-up on the front end become less relevant? In other words, if someone finally made the perfect optical/galvanical/unobtainiumal box that cleaned up the USB or HDMI or whatever signal just before the DAC, would all the network and whatever bits be rendered [sic] irrelevant?
To answer my own question, of course not. Every product claims to do this (like every DAC with an innovative never-done-before galvanically-isolated USB input which is impervious to any problems in the upstream signal). But all these products (including all the ones I own and all the other ones I've tried) continue to benefit from cables and other improvements made further up the chain. Sigh. It was worth a shot.
Drive Management in 2.8: I had this question too...
I feel like this is a stupid question, but how the hell do you safely eject a portable hard drive without turning the K50 off? I’ve searched and searched and nothing. If I pull the hdd out and put it back on my pc, I have to scan and potentially repair the hdd because Windows knows I pulled out the hdd out of my K50 without safely ejecting.
Is there any way to safely eject a portable hdd on the K50?
Every time I end up unplugging an external HD (in the hopes that there is some last scintilla of sound quality to be had by not having it connected LOL) Roon loses communication with it and the backups will not continue until I restart everything and set up a new backup. That gets annoying.
OK, end of rant(s). If I had time to post more frequently perhaps they would be shorter.
Perhaps.
But in the meantime there is no hint of brightness here with LMS/Squeezelite. The last time I used Roon I found Roon/Squeezelite smeared and muddled the mid / lower mid rather than altering brightness. When AMS3.1 arrives I will however try everything on offer including trying again the Roon options.
