[Whitigir]

You know you may be up for spending even more money. An audiophile usb pcie card may be an OCXO one and a really good usb cable like the black magic one. It's never ending. You should feed the Pink Faun to your ladder dac.

I know all the magic about USB cables (mine is 18Awg per wire ultrapure silver USB cables) and I have no problem spending more money for Pcie USB modules. Just at this moment, the lks004 cant sound as organic or as realistic as my ladder DAC.

 

[littlexx26]

I know all the magic about USB cables (mine is 18Awg per wire ultrapure silver USB cables) and I have no problem spending more money for Pcie USB modules. Just at this moment, the lks004 cant sound as organic or as realistic as my ladder DAC.

is your silver wire continuous mono crystal like the siltech one?

 

[Whitigir]

is your silver wire continuous mono crystal like the siltech one?

There is no such thing, silver is made differently than copper

 

[natemact]

There is no such thing, silver is made differently than copper

I’m familiar with Dr. Ohno's continuous cast research performed here at the University of Toronto. Can you please explain why you believe silver can’t be cast instead of drawn through a die?

 

[Whitigir]

I’m familiar with Dr. Ohno's continuous cast research performed here at the University of Toronto. Can you please explain why you believe silver can’t be cast instead of drawn through a die?

The method of how to make silver is different than copper

Check out this link and you will know

Silver is essential an extracted metal, where as Copper is Casted or Drawn, and OCC is like you said “Casting”

Silver can only have 2 grades now, common Silver, or Ultra Pure. Many manufacturers just refer to Ultra Pure Silver as OCC-Silver, because when people think of OCC, they think of something special....like a special grade of Copper (which is real), and they will automatically associated with Special grade Silver (which is fine) but there is no such thing as OCC silver

 

[natemact]

The method of how to make silver is different than copper

Check out this link and you will know

Silver is essential an extracted metal, where as Copper is Casted or Drawn, and OCC is like you said “Casting”

Silver can only have 2 grades now, common Silver, or Ultra Pure. Many manufacturers just refer to Ultra Pure Silver as OCC-Silver, because when people think of OCC, they think of something special....like a special grade of Copper (which is real), and they will automatically associated with Special grade Silver (which is fine) but there is no such thing as OCC silver

OK there's must be some type of confusion here because you're way too smart to believe this : ) What I get from that bolded sentence is that you don't believe silver can be drawn, forget casting for now lol. Please tell me this is not what you meant.

What did you send me? That was a link on how to extract silver from silver ore

Honestly, I would've just left this alone if it was someone who I didn't think it really mattered if they knew the truth or not. But we can't have you going through your life not believing in OCC silver : ) You've taught me a lot following your build and I feel I should reciprocate something back.

Firstly, and forgive me if you already are privy to any of this, there are other ways to get a metal free from grain-boundaries. A company like AudioQuest purchases drawn copper and silver then polishes the grainy texture off the cable either in a one or two step process, instead of purchasing OCC metals. Both processes are trying to replicate the very same thing, a cable surface free of boundaries allowing for uninterrupted signal flow.

Secondly, I'll also mention that the purity of the metal always meant more to my ears then whether it's OCC or not. Cardas is a great example. They are only one of two cable companies in the world that draw their own copper in house. Cardas actually sells it's copper to dozens of cable manufacturers, with AQ and Kimber being only two of the notables. Nordost is the other cable company drawing their own copper (they silver-plate). Point is, neither of these massive cables companies - possibly the two with the biggest reach in the world - neither of them use OCC. Purity, draw speed and die quality, polishing and construction is what makes a cable, but OCC has it's purpose if you start with very pure metal. Namely polishing 24-28awg wire evenly and consistently is an expensive process. More expensive then just purchasing OCC metals from one of the three manufacturers in the world.

Onto the silver OCC myth. There's some very well credentialed links at the bottom if you'd like to peruse.

This gentleman with an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering with specialty in Metallurgy and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in robotics, runs a very successful cable company out of Toronto and his father worked on his Ph. D. degree in Chemical Engineering at U of T at the same time as Dr. Ohno in the early sixties and they went on to become lifelong friends ever since. Btw I'm good friends with this gentleman and have been shown mulitple photos from multiple years of his father and Dr. Ohno together. So the story definitely checks out.

Please have a look at his thoughts on OCC. I'm sorry but until anyone speaks with folks as close to the OCC process as Steven has, and continues to this day, no one should be allowed to argue against the point when he stats that, "Ohno Continuous Casting...can be used with a wide variety of metals including copper, silver, aluminum, tin, bismuth, and others." He uses both OCC copper and silver in his cables and would basically tell you, who are you to claim his silver isn't OCC? He may be an a**hole about it now, but he's a correct a**hole : )

https://www.dagogo.com/an-interview-with-steven-huang-of-audio-sensibility/
https://audiosensibility.com/blog/technology/ohno-continuous-casting-occ/
https://audiosensibility.com/blog/2017/04/19/sad-news-dr-atsumi-ohno-passed-away/

 

[bearwarrior]

OK there's must be some type of confusion here because you're way too smart to believe this : ) What I get from that bolded sentence is that you don't believe silver can be drawn, forget casting for now lol. Please tell me this is not what you meant.

What did you send me? That was a link on how to extract silver from silver ore

Honestly, I would've just left this alone if it was someone who I didn't think it really mattered if they knew the truth or not. But we can't have you going through your life not believing in OCC silver : ) You've taught me a lot following your build and I feel I should reciprocate something back.

Firstly, and forgive me if you already are privy to any of this, there are other ways to get a metal free from grain-boundaries. A company like AudioQuest purchases drawn copper and silver then polishes the grainy texture off the cable either in a one or two step process, instead of purchasing OCC metals. Both processes are trying to replicate the very same thing, a cable surface free of boundaries allowing for uninterrupted signal flow.

Secondly, I'll also mention that the purity of the metal always meant more to my ears then whether it's OCC or not. Cardas is a great example. They are only one of two cable companies in the world that draw their own copper in house. Cardas actually sells it's copper to dozens of cable manufacturers, with AQ and Kimber being only two of the notables. Nordost is the other cable company drawing their own copper (they silver-plate). Point is, neither of these massive cables companies - possibly the two with the biggest reach in the world - neither of them use OCC. Purity, draw speed and die quality, polishing and construction is what makes a cable, but OCC has it's purpose if you start with very pure metal. Namely polishing 24-28awg wire evenly and consistently is an expensive process. More expensive then just purchasing OCC metals from one of the three manufacturers in the world.

Onto the silver OCC myth. There's some very well credentialed links at the bottom if you'd like to peruse.

This gentleman with an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering with specialty in Metallurgy and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in robotics, runs a very successful cable company out of Toronto and his father worked on his Ph. D. degree in Chemical Engineering at U of T at the same time as Dr. Ohno in the early sixties and they went on to become lifelong friends ever since. Btw I'm good friends with this gentleman and have been shown mulitple photos from multiple years of his father and Dr. Ohno together. So the story definitely checks out.

Please have a look at his thoughts on OCC. I'm sorry but until anyone speaks with folks as close to the OCC process as Steven has, and continues to this day, no one should be allowed to argue against the point when he stats that, "Ohno Continuous Casting...can be used with a wide variety of metals including copper, silver, aluminum, tin, bismuth, and others." He uses both OCC copper and silver in his cables and would basically tell you, who are you to claim his silver isn't OCC? He may be an a**hole about it now, but he's a correct a**hole : )

https://www.dagogo.com/an-interview-with-steven-huang-of-audio-sensibility/
https://audiosensibility.com/blog/technology/ohno-continuous-casting-occ/
https://audiosensibility.com/blog/2017/04/19/sad-news-dr-atsumi-ohno-passed-away/

LMAO. I think you should invite this gentleman to tell us OCC instead of yourself.

It is also my first time to hear that the grain boundaries can be polished off. If you meant to talk about annealing, that process can reduce the amount of grain boundaries but will not transform the crystal into single crystal. If you or someone else you know can do that, the Noble Prize of this year is nominated.

Please stop spreading fake science in this well-appreciated forum.

 

[xiamen]

LMAO. I think you should invite this gentleman to tell us OCC instead of yourself.

It is also my first time to hear that the grain boundaries can be polished off. If you meant to talk about annealing, that process can reduce the amount of grain boundaries but will not transform the crystal into single crystal. If you or someone else you know can do that, the Noble Prize of this year is nominated.

Please stop spreading fake science in this well-appreciated forum.

"Spreading fake science in this well respected forum" ??? Wow. So much for civil to your fellow posters.

 

[natemact]

LMAO. I think you should invite this gentleman to tell us OCC instead of yourself.

It is also my first time to hear that the grain boundaries can be polished off. If you meant to talk about annealing, that process can reduce the amount of grain boundaries but will not transform the crystal into single crystal. If you or someone else you know can do that, the Noble Prize of this year is nominated.

Please stop spreading fake science in this well-appreciated forum.

Sorry I misspoke. I was referring only to the grain imprinted on the metal via the process of being drawn through a die. This is indeed polished off (redrawn) in house by AudioQuest - due to the skin-effect - and annealed. They claim it reduces grain boundaries as well, but no, will not magically transform into single crystal. I shouldn't have used the word "free" and for this I apologize. Do you accept my apology?

While a single crystal of metal is beneficial to the transmission of signal an argument can be made that an extremely smooth surface (smoother than OCC unless polished afterwards) may be of greater consequence. Purity is still king tho.

To how you started off, Had you've briefly checked out the links I provided you possibly could've saved yourself acting such a schmuck.....doubt it tho considering your handle doesn't exactly scream "I love puppies". May we never meet again

 

[Whitigir]

Thanks guys, I have been pretty crazy about materials and purity for Audio performances and I previously believe in OCC silver too, but it turned out that these are “ultra pure” silver instead. Anyways, back to the original question, yes, I am using Ultra Pure Silver (OCC as claimed by other people or whatever) USB cables .

 

[Paul Staples]

Finally pulled the trigger and bought two: Samsung 250GB 960 M.2 (2280) Evo PCIe 3.0 (x4) NVMe 3D V-NAND SSD MZ-V6E250BW.

One for the O/S and music apps.
The other for music files only.

 

[xiamen]

Never mind, I got the Jriver to do this on the fly D512, Christ! What a pain. Time to observe the performances.

Gotta use Combo384 ASIO 1.03(ASIO) for device driver
Buffering 500ms
DSD over PCM or DOP
Output encoding to 8XDSD in Native format
Using prebuffering to 20 seconds
And I am sitting at BW08 woaaa, surprisingly for D512, so Amanero isn’t that bad if the PC is powerful enough with the right configuration

What is your guys BW when Upsampling to D512 on the fly guys ?

I play mostly at BW09. At lower BW, I can get hiss switching between PCM and native DSD tracks. In my case, I feel BW level doesn't make much difference when your music server is dedicated and high spec. I actually feel that BW10 may be a better level than 8 or 9. You should be able to play dsd512 dsf files simply by turning dsd bit streaming on, but keep 8xdsd for your PCM files. For me, playing native dsf doesn't allow you to lower your BW by much. I think the BW level is determined more by what goes into the DAC rather than if the source is native dsd or upsampled on the fly dsf. PCM being of much smaller size allows the DAC to decode at lower BW. On my machine, native dsd reduce the load on the cpu, and core wattage usage on jriver drops from 25-30 watts to about 15-16 watts. Generally core temperature is 40C except for the core with the load is 60C since jriver is not a multi-threaded application. Technically, using less power should mean less noise interference to the audio. But any difference (if any) I can hear is minimal. Playing on HQPlayer allows you to play at lower BW (about BW06-07). HQPlayer is multi-thread and load is spread more evenly across the cores. But the up sampling algorithm on HQPlayer seems more complex and wattage usage actually is higher at close to 40 watts. Temperature is also somewhat higher about 45-70 C. Playing native DSD512 has similar stats to Jriver. It should sound better than Jriver with better up sampling algorithms and multi-threaded but I don't hear it myself.

 

[Whitigir]

I do think the 100Mhz clock inside the lks004 is the element that limit the lks004 performances. What is possible upgrade here ? Pulsar ? I saw someone was about to perform the mod, but he doesn’t post anymore. The board seems to be ready for a Dip-socket type, which make Pulsar mod a huge possibility.

Also wonder if replacing Nichicon fine gold into Audio grade Nichicon capacitors, it may improve the performances too 47mF

 

[Paul Staples]

I do think the 100Mhz clock inside the lks004 is the element that limit the lks004 performances. What is possible upgrade here ? Pulsar ? I saw someone was about to perform the mod, but he doesn’t post anymore. The board seems to be ready for a Dip-socket type, which make Pulsar mod a huge possibility.

Also wonder if replacing Nichicon fine gold into Audio grade Nichicon capacitors, it may improve the performances too 47mF

worth asking LKS about this to see if they concur with you?

 

[littlexx26]

anyone tried Fidelizer Nimitra as a source? or buying a gaming board to build myself yield better results?