XXHighEnd

I was very pivileged to visit Mani, Satty and their lovely family again today for the second time. Of course since my first visit there has been a new arrival in Mani's household (no no not the Swings!!!) but baby Reubben. What a lovely baby - we got on straight away (my little mate!). Thank you all for making me so welcome and especially to Satty for putting up with another "hifi nut" and I do agree with you Satty that hifi enthusiasts are all barking mad.

So what has changed since my first visit?. Well obviously Mani has implemented those changes that we all have to XX courtesy of Peter. So the big difference is (and those of you that follow this forum will know) that Mani recently replaced his Quads for a pair of Bert's Swing's speakers which I am sure you all know are 115db horn speakers. Mani picked these up for a "song" from some bloke who got them off the "back of an ebay lorry" (I think that is what he said anyway).
 
I liked the Quads they have fantastic delicacy in the mid range but for me they just do not produce the dynamics and presence of live music that I like. No such problems with the Swings they have all the dynamics to be exepected from a horn but also surpisingly good quality bass that is well controlled and pretty deep (not something I usually associate with Horns). So Mani's is a system I could listen to all night without any problems. A real connection with the emotion of the music - a great sound.

But it was not all plain sailing. Ihope you won't mind me saying Mani but when we first played the Swings I loved the SQ but there was an edge to the sound that I felt should not be there (at SFS=2). Being a polite Englishman it was not easy for me to say this immediately but we worked round to it and it turned out that Mani had connected inside his "PC" or le Beast (is that it?) 4 hard discs a DVD player and ? well all the usual stuff. So Mani unplugged the power and bus wiring from the DVD player and we went back up to the listening room. The result - immediately it is was obvious that the sound had lost much of its rough edge. And now his system started to really sound good. Mani is running SFS=2 and I have to say that what I heard today confirms totally what I have found with my system. And that is to run with SFS=2 everything has to been in good shape and if it is then the SQ is absolutely superb. If you run SFS=2 I recommend implementing Nicks tweeks they are crucial to getting the SQ. So a big step forward but I think that Mani can get to the holy grail if he rigorously turns off everything inside his PC not required. To anyone who does not have balanced power I would add that is essential as well - Mani, Nick and me have it -and it is cheap!!!.

I had great fun today thanks again for your hospitality Mani.

Oh and one rather important thing we spent much of time testing Peter's MYSTERY FEET. But as this is a subject in its own right I have posted separately here :

or I will later tonight ha ha - watch this space for a link!!!

Thanks Paul. You're welcome anytime. Sorry got to rush - it's Ruben's first birthday party... right now!

Cheers, Mani.

Hi Paul, although I´m sure that there are plenty of information about the balanced power in some posts I can´t find it. Would you please help me out and drive me where I can get more information on how to build the balanced power or where to buy one already built?.

Best regards,
Juan

Juan hi,


Just to chip in,

http://www.airlinktransformers.com/standard_balanced_power_supplies/61-BPS3110S.html

EDIT (put the wrong link in, now updated)

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1878.0

This is the transformer that Paula and I went for, Mani uses the 5000va versions. The company is great to deal with (very fast delivery to the uk). You could give them a call to see if they can do a version with Spanish plugs instead of uk three pin plugs. The versions on the web site are their standard consumer offerings they do other variants for studio / pro use. They are rather industrial units but the iron and copper inside deliveres the goods sonicly, very easy to recommend them.

You just need to go into installing one with eyes open from a safety perspective. You end up with the neutral wire of your equipment having 115 volts ac on it rather than 0 volts. It's ok but you just need to be aware of this and you may want to consider some additional fusing in the neutral lines of your kit. The thing that helped me was that the AirLink has circuit breakers and an rcd built in which provides a level of protection.

The last thing to consider is your PE (protective earth), you can pass thought the PE from your house wiring to your kit which is how the using comes standard. This is easy to do and gives a very nice improvement in sound. The alternative is to setup your own PE earth using copper rods and wire this into the side of the transformer that is used for hifi. This dedicated earth improves sound quality even more but you would need to research your local electritions code for electrical wiring to setup the dedicated earth safely.

Take a look and say if you need any more info.

Cheers nick.

Thanks Nick, I will read the posts carefully and consult with Airlink Transformers and with a technician here to resolve doubts.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan - Nick covers everything in his post when I ordered mine it was supplied with mains earth on the primary connected to earth on the secondary so I had to rewire it so that the earth on the secondary was isolated I then connected it to an earth rod that I installed in the garden so now my hifi earth (like Nick and Mani) is now not connected to the house earth. Airlink are very helpful and they will provide whatever configuration you require.

Paul

Thanks Paul for the information, as I said I´ll consult with Airlink after the Holidays. I live in downtown Madrid and I don´t have a personal garden, so I can´t put my own earth rod but I already have an independent electric circuit just for the music system. At least that´s something.

Best regards and Happy New Year for everybody here in the forum.

Cheers,
Juan

I really wanted to post this in Nick's original thread, but couldn't for the life of me find it.

In any event, I tried disconnecting all music HDDs and having just a single HDD with the OS, XX and music stored on it. This really provided a nice step up in SQ. There's a vibrancy to the sound that having more HDDs seems to mask.

Nick recommended using a linear PS for powering the HDD. This is the only thing that I haven't yet implemented from his recommendations. At this moment, I'm using a fanless SMPS for the mobo and an identical second fanless SMPS for the HDD. At some point I'll get around to ordering a cheap 3-output bench PS to try on the HDD.

But for now, let me put forward a hypothesis: (BTW, whenever I've done this on the Phasure forum in the last 4 years or so, I've proved to be utterly wrong.)

An interaction between similar devices/components destroys the sound.

What I've noticed is:

1. more than 1 USB device on mobo destroys the sound (better to have none and use a PCIe USB3.0 card for DAC)
2. more than 1 SATA device on mobo destroys the sound
3. more than 1 mobo-powered fan destroys the sound (better to have none and use air/liquid cooling)

Once I've tested it, I may be able to extend this to:

4. more than 1 SMPS in the system power supply destroys the sound

Maybe there's an interaction between similar components - perhaps their noise profiles or something. I know Peter believes something like this to be the case for USB. But his solution is totally different - overload the PC with as many USB devices as possible and randomize the USB noise totally. It's true, you can 'crack a nut with a sledge-hammer', but maybe a better approach is to eliminate the interacting noise in the first place?

Anyway, just a hypothesis.

Mani.

Hi,

Some of my experiences:

I rather have no usb devices and no runnng fans on my pc. That is none for the cpu and psu. Used as videoconverter I never had any temp problems with this passive setup.
The no usb is something to keep an eye on, thats why I use a mobo with ps/2 ports for both keyboard and mouse.

Smps on the powerstrip kills the bass and some of the magic. That is all smps, including the ones for the usb drives, routers, chargers, etc. they are on a seperate strip which I can switch off.

I tried the linear power for the discs with two cheap labsupplies. Grounding was a bit of a puzzle. This didn't work out as intended for sq and I am fine now with the smps. The latter makes imho quite a significant impact on sound. I tried a few and you can recognise them immediately by their sound signature.

Too bad one sata device cannot contain my current music collection.

Good luck with your further experiments.

Regards, Coen

Hi Coen.


Yep, same here. I'm using liquid cooling for the 3960X CPU - passive cooling wouldn't be enough with XTweaks.


Exactly how I do things. But in my case, the PC sits in the basement and I use two 5m PS/2 extenders.


Yep, I arrived at the same conclusion a while ago. But a linear PS for a powerful PC is just a no-go. So I use two independent 5KVA balanced transformers (connected to the same isolated earth in a 'star-earthing' arrangement) for all linear and switch-mode power supplies respectively.


Ah, now that's interesting. I think I'll still go ahead and get a cheap lab power supply though, just to play around with.


I use a NAS to store all the stuff I don't listen to very often, and for backup purposes. But I agree, this is the biggest current obstacle to using just a single SATA drive.

Ha, it just occurred to me that I have one of Peter's PCs sitting in my basement still sealed in its box. I've been helping a friend set up a NOS1 and I ordered this PC on his behalf. If I can find the time, I might try to compare it to my own PC before I deliver it to my friend's place. But these things just take sooooo long and there are so many more enjoyable things to do...

Hey Peter, why don't you find some time to make a visit and we can compare together?

Mani.

And spend the time on booze and food ? Sure !

Interesting to hear of Mani's findings. As a result of visiting Mani's I decided to get rid of all fans in my system. I also liked the look of Mani's "cooling tower" (Zalman Reserator) they are discontinued now but I found one on ebay. So now I am "fanless", just one HDD, disconnected DVD drive. My impressions (for what its worth) of the changes to SQ resulting from these changes are:

1.  DVD drive - disconnecting is easily the biggest and most immediately noticeable improvement. When connected it gives a hard edge to the music and leads me to the SFS bigger settings to ameliorate its effects. This effect was just the same in Mani's system when I heard it. It seems to me that in Peter's "noise profile" theory the DVD player stands out as having a different noise profile to everything else and its best without it.

2.  HDD's definitely better with only one but the effects are not as noticeable as DVD drive.

3.  Sans Fans - when I first listened without fans the change did not "smack me in the face" but then the more I listened the more it became apparent that there was a whole level of low level hash removed. Extended listening and it was clear that this was a very worthwhile improvement. Subtle for sure but very worthwhile.

So a visit to Mani's has resulted in improvements to both Mani's system and mine. And a good day as well. Good stuff.

P