[bhobba]

Just a short note to say finally got my M-Scaler and TT2 working. It's currently using some SPDF cables chosen by the tech that got it all working - do not know what happened but the M-Scaler only had one SPDIF cable - however he thought the one that was there somewhat basic so chose some mid-priced ones. He also made zip-chord speaker cables to direct connect it to the speakers, and used just an ordinary USB cable.. With this stuff he went over to the dealer I got it from to hear in his reference system that normally has a Grandinote amp and DAC plus a specially designed server with upmarket cables. Everything was against the DAC. It used the dealers reference 89 db speakers he designed himself. It has an 8 inch Peerless HDS driver, and Seas Exotic Tweeter. The crossover used Duelund VSF capacitors bypassed with Duelund bypass capacitors and 10 gauge air core inductors - 3rd order on the bass and 3rd order quasi on the tweeter with a small compensating network to keep the frequency response flat to 20k - the Exotic Tweeter has a slight dip otherwise..

When it was switched on nobody expected much - they thought it would be good, but good gear is put in that system all the time. Well despite it being hobbled by cables everyone was shocked. It simply sounded awesome. There is a tech that works in an office above my dealer - as soon as he heard it in his office he ran down to the listening room - he was that impressed. Is it better than the Grandinote that normally resides in the system? That's not known yet - a lot of careful listening needs to be done with better cables - but the initial listen was very promising.

The big plus with this DAC compared to the Grandinote is the Grandinote DAC is about $12k and the amp about $15k - all up $27k compared to $16k for the M-Scaler and TT2 here in Australia. Its because you do not need an amp with reasonably sensitive speakers.

More details with further listening. I will go down to my dealer and have a listen myself. I will also lend it to a Hi-Fi installer I know and check it out on his reference system. He has heard just about everything there is in his job.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Rob Watts]

But typically Rob’s DAis the sameCs use digital volume control and ‘DAC mode’ is just a volume preset. No hardware is usually bypassed.

@Rob Watts Is it the same for the TT2 given its different analogue stage (based on Power Pulse Array amp) from DAVE and the rest?

Yes TT2 is the same analogue philosophy - one global feedback linear amplifier with two resistors and two capacitors in the direct signal path. I would have a nervous breakdown if I made the analogue more complex!

 

[JamieMcC]

Yeah, roon nucleus+ is a rip off, but no doubt somebody will say it isnt.

Heat is the thing that concerns me, mine is 24w tdp and im not sure how hot it will run in a fanless case. I've seen 14w ones, which would be much better for a fanless case. I don't mind some noise, as long as it's not as loud or louder than my sky q box.

Let us know how your build goes.

OK after much deliberation going to give Roon a try

Ordered a new Intel Core i3-8109U Nucs for £187 + £9 shipping (next day only option) the seller has a few for sale on ebay and is accepting offers.

Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus 250GB, M.2 PCIe £65 (amazon)

Crucial 8gb DDR4 2x4 £35 (amazon)

Total £296

(I already have a external ssd drive to use) Probably go with a fanless case later on but will see how tit pans out noise wise as can locate in my porch as its a cool spot anyhow and close to my router.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Quad-Core-8th-Gen-i3-Short-NUC-Barebone-Mini-PC-Kit-NUC8I3BEK/163728562618?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

Just the TT2 now to order.

 

[Amberlamps]

OK after much deliberation going to give Roon a try

Ordered a new Intel Core i3-8109U Nucs for £187 + £9 shipping (next day only option) the seller has a few for sale on ebay and is accepting offers.

Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus 250GB, M.2 PCIe £65 (amazon)

Crucial 8gb DDR4 2x4 £35 (amazon)

Total £296

(I already have a external ssd drive to use) Probably go with a fanless case later on but will see how tit pans out noise wise as can locate in my porch as its a cool spot anyhow and close to my router.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Quad-Core-8th-Gen-i3-Short-NUC-Barebone-Mini-PC-Kit-NUC8I3BEK/163728562618?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

Just the TT2 now to order.

I got my nuc on saturday, upgraded it to 32gig ram, 960GB Corsair M510 M.2 ssd, 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 ssd, A cheap Gigabyte 128 nvme SSD and a crucial 128GB sata ssd, as my nuc only allows the use of 1 M.2 port as the other is used for the embedded wifi ac and bt 5 chip. The evo is the boot drive, the sata ssd is for roon backups and the M510 ssd is for storage connected via the thunderbolt input, or I may use that as a boot drive for my desktop pc.

When taking the nuc motherboard out of it's case, which was a pain, I lost access to the micro sd card slot, as it's on the side of the nuc and when I put the motherboard in the fanless case, there is no access to it, so I will probably retrofit a microsd card the next time i'm inside the case.

To get the wifi and bt 5 back, I purchased an intel 9560 m2 wifi chip complete with pigtails and aerials for £20, it's the exact same chip thats in my nuc, but I only bought it for the pigtails and aerial, as when taking the motherboard out of the nuc case, I had to unclip the pigtails off the wifi chip, as the pigtails are hidden behind some metal and then soldered to another piece of metal, so I couldn't extract them without destroying the stock nuc case. I managed to save and reuse the 2 embedded microphones.

I also bought an ineo military std usb 3.1/thunderbolt M.2 enclosure for the corsair M510 ssd, that will give me 1TB of crazy fast storage and the 128 sata ssd will probably be used for roon backups. The gigabyte m2 128gb ssd, I'm unsure what I'm gunna do with that, put it in my desktop or send it back for a refund. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07MZ3HP7N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The enclosure looks cool.

The fanless case I bought was the akasa turin case, photo's don't do it justice, it is excellent and cools better than the stock nuc case even though it had a fan.

With everything in the bios thats not needed, disabled, the sound I'm getting out of the nuc via chords 768khz asio and wasapi drivers, it's amazing.

Compared to listening to my mscaler and tt2 from my main pc via usb, the difference is outstanding. The sound is much warmer than before, and no longer am I reaching for the remote to turn down the volume on tracks that would have harsh high's, they are much softer/warmer now.

I should of bought one of these things years ago. The music sounds so good, it's non fatiguing and much more enjoyable.

The difference between my desktop pc as a source and my silent nuc as a source, the difference is large enough even for me to notice.

I will have a look at your nuc in a minute, but I would advise that if buying the Tall version of nuc, choose the smaller one, as it will be easier for the motherboard to come out.

Iet me know how your build goes, oh, word of warning, trying to update the bios is a pain in the ass, out of the 4 different ways intel say you can flash it, only 1 out of those 4 ways worked for me.

Hint, if you set the wrong bios settings like fast boot, uefi boot and uefi shell, it will auto boot uefi shell command line, and you cant get back into the bios even if you turn the thing off and on again.

To get back into the bios. Turn the nuc off and then push the power button for 3 seconds until the button blinks orange instead of blue, once you see the orange blink, immediately remove your finger from the button, if done correctly, it will auto shut down and restart and then reset the bios and it will then let you get back in to the bios.

I was stupid enough to see what uefi boot, fast boot and uefi shell was like

 

[musickid]

Is there any advantage in sound quality with a high end or high quality server using optical to mscaler vs my late 2013 imac optical? If so why considering it's isolated.

The imac is nvidia discrete entry level graphics, 512gb ssd, plus the 27 screen makes roon look excellent. These days apart from roon it's just light surfing and with roon it's very low cpu useage around 5-6%. So separating the pc from the music argument considering the ssd drive and optical and low cpu useage may not apply here? Is it a convenience thing? If i didn't have optical/imac maybe i would think twice. Feedback to the first question appreciated. MK.

 

[Amberlamps]

Is there any advantage in sound quality with a high end or high quality server using optical to mscaler vs my late 2013 imac optical? If so why considering it's isolated.

The imac is nvidia discrete entry level graphics, 512gb ssd, plus the 27 screen makes roon look excellent. These days apart from roon it's just light surfing and with roon it's very low cpu useage around 5-6%. So separating the pc from the music argument considering the ssd drive and optical and low cpu useage may not apply here? Is it a convenience thing? If i didn't have optical/imac maybe i would think twice. Feedback to the first question appreciated. MK.

Possibly MK, I've found that only having ssd's and nothing mechanical and disabling everything in the bios that you don't need, helps with digital audio via usb. But, it could also help for optical also, as more things plugged in and enabled in the bios mean's more sources for problems to occur.

The change that has happened to my sounds is cool, but I'm using a decent usb cable that has enclosed ferrite's on it. Maybe that's affecting the audio also ?

I wouldn't dump your macbook, if it work's ok for your music, keep it for that. I would.

 

[Whazzzup]

Wow you lost me at pig tails...congrats

 

[Amberlamps]

Wow you lost me at pig tails...congrats

Pigtails are tiny aerials that plug into the wifi card on laptops and phone's etc, extremely thin wire and the male connector is 1.5mm in diameter. Thats on the card, the female end on the pigtail is 0.45mm.

And they are not easy to get plugged back in if they come out, and to make things worse, the actual U.F.L MHF4 connector is built to only withstand a few disconnects and reconnects.

This is what they would look like.

You can see how tiny the MHF4 connector is, it's microscopic. Thats not the one I bought, it's just an example.

 

[Deftone]

Is there any advantage in sound quality with a high end or high quality server using optical to mscaler vs my late 2013 imac optical? If so why considering it's isolated.

IMO no but some people believe feeding USB that has been isolated as well as optical using various gadgets/ high end streamer sounds better because there is a possibility of the optical receiver on the dac end creating noise. This well in to the obsessive category that i dont want be a part of because just feeding bitperfect 16/44 through optical is enough for me.

 

[rkt31]

Xduoo x10t (first version) optical out is extremely clean. I fed to m scaler and it sounds lot more naturally warm. I thought it may be due to some processing inside but my test file of dsd encoded into FLAC was decoded by mscaler perfectly indicating there is no processing inside xduoo x10t and output is bit perfect. Any processing inside would have jumbled up the dsd flags and m scaler couldn't have decoded the dsd in FLAC container. Xduoo x10t has small screen and no streaming capability but this little transport is one of the cleanest I have heard. Xduoo x10t Version 2 is now available which is also a transport but does not mention about the dedicated chip for clocking as version 1 mentioned.

 

[rkt31]

.

 

[rkt31]

Then I experimented with laptop. I used ifi isilencer along with ifi idefender usb power isolator. Adding one more isilencer in series with first one cleaned the data further as touted by ifi . With idefender I supplied 5v battery supply ( 4x NiMH ) that way usb data cleaned by 2 isilencer inserted and power replaced by idefender with battery power. Asio as output was used with full memory playback through foobar. It was by far the best multi format transport compatible with all high resolution files. (Xduoo x10t optical out is limited to 24bit 192khz only ) it ended my quest for best transport. No expensive streamer required.

 

[rkt31]

.

 

[Whazzzup]

De crapifiers are just that, decrapifiers. Don’t think a 75-plus $ decrapifier does what a quality server does, but the marketing works. I tried aq jitterbug have not tried if-i so no offence but ya. The solution does what it does which may offer benefit .

 

[rkt31]

There is no reclocking in ifi isilencer so decrapifier is not correct word. Also ifi I defender is just power switch. All quality server need a usb interface to dac. A laptop with ifi idefender just replaces that. Also with asio and foobar you are 100% sure for bit perfect transfer. Jitterbug vs isilencer , I found jitterbug though good but found isilencer better because of more focussed sound.