Crom

Great thread, thank you @UberK @KingRex and everyone. I'm currently investigating a battery / inverter system which will run the stereo system completely off grid and then charge from grid+solar. I hear your comments about supply @KingRex and I've done a lot to optimise mine but your expertise here would be welcome if you ever venture across the Atlantic to UK! I feel that it is worth looking into an alternative solution. Victron and Studer Innotec are the two brands of inverters I'm considering with the latter having the better THD specs. BYD batteries look good but I'm still researching... In case it's of interest, I came across this post recommending disconnecting the charger for critical listening: http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/Inverter_Power.html

Thanks for sharing all the pics and details of your efforts here! It's really inspiring and interesting to see all hard work and innovation that's going on.

It’s not easy to recommend settings because so much depends on the context. Off the top of my head. Finish up by putting the OS into rammode but do the following first: prioritise irqs appropriately for you reqs. set power for important usb or ethernet adapters to always on use extreme or extreme 2 settings set journal off (I had problems with this and ended up not being able to do it but sounded better off when it worked) there was one other setting near the journal setting but can’t remember what it was. I got better sound out of my nuc when I changed the psu to a battery one But they’re not the best sounding solution. no idea about euphony…I tried is but didn’t get on with it. Piero, the person behind AL, has always been super helpful to me and interested to drive performance forward. Hope this helps.

In case it's of interest, Taiko seem to recommend this one (I have one on the way, so I will confirm make/model if it's not possible to identify from the image): https://taikoaudio.com/taiko-2020/product/extra-dac-cable/ . There has also been a lot of discussion on this topic in Jabba's optical networking thread:

The amount has definitely changed...to 64GB not sure about the brand: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/introducing-olympus-olympus-i-o-a-new-perspective-on-modern-music-playback.37939/post-969643

128Gb DDR5-4800 (apparently) ...but...the CPU has changed since then so the RAM may have too. I bought this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116073407903 Source is here: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/introducing-olympus-olympus-i-o-a-new-perspective-on-modern-music-playback.37939/post-936680

I want to thank @lmitche for the above post that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but one that has proved quite astoundingly rewarding. An even larger shout-out to Piero for his continued work on Audiolinux - your latest release deserves high praise and wider adoption! The rabbit hole was a long-needed update to my audio server that runs Roon. It was getting a little slow and I didn't have enough RAM to load the entire Roon DB into memory - a feature that's available under audiolinux (which has definite audible benefits). I'd read that Emile at Taiko was likely using one of the AMD Epyc 9004 chips and investigated one of these as a possible replacement to my Intel i9 12900K. The CPU looked like fun and I hadn't done a server build since I used JPLAY about 8(?) years ago. I spec'd 256GB RAM and found everything I needed on Ebay - including an HP-branded Intel P4800X SSD. I found a Silverstone CPU cooler on amazon and I thought that my old 500W HDPlex linear PSU would be OK to test with but that I might need something with more poke. The motherboard took a while to come and wasn't exactly the one I wanted (I'd previously favoured supermicro boards but I couldn't get one). Anyway, it looked fine and plenty of slots (ASRock GENOAD8X-2T). I put it together and powered it up. The CPU cooler has a fan powered from the motherboard which I left connected for initial testing and I only did a little tweaking with audiolinux (network bridge and static IP, network card IRQ priority and application priority, zen4 kernel, ram load is all, I think). I powered it up and copied the Roon DB across from an old drive. I hadn't managed to get the P4800x to boot (thanks for ongoing support on this Piero) and still haven't, so I was using an old M.2 nvme stick as a boot drive. I got Roon running and the HDPlex PSU started to heat up...after 20 mins it was uncomfortable to touch...not sure this is a long-term solution...but I thought I'd go and see what it sounded like. I started with volume at 0, as I often do after the latest DIY experiment (just in case I'm about to blow the speakers with a load of noise) and when I turned the volume up I was initially taken aback and for a split second I thought there was a problem. The sound didn't sound quite right, it was out of focus...no, that's not right, what I mean was that it was coming from different places in the room that I was used to. After a few minutes of testing some well-known songs it became clear that the change I was experiencing was really quite something. Instruments had significantly more depth, more 3D positioning, a much more 'live' presentation, more decay, more presence, significantly richer midrange, fuller bass...not just fuller, more textured...basically, just 'more'! Three hours later, I'm still here...I really should go to bed but it's difficult to not just try one more track. I can't identify what is contributing to the improvements: Whether it's the CPU, the quality of the motherboard, the ECC RAM, the linear PSU, the Operating System, I don't know (primarily because Piero's latest creation will only run on certain chips) but I am hearing similar improvements to lmitche and it's the most significant change to my enjoyment of the music since I upgraded my speakers a couple of years back! In terms of scale of change this is well beyond any network changes I've made, well beyond grounding changes like Entreq or Troy... What now? I need to try to find the bios setting that will make the Intel SDD boot and sort out the power. I can split out the 12v ATX power to a separate PSU (I've got an Ian Canads's UC Pure kicking around somewhere) and that will give me isolated Ultra Capacitor....another day! Nice one Piero - Thank you!

Carston, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, my recommendation would be to take the sms200 apart and remove the power supply board. Supply the main board directly with a Paul Hynes supply (at the appropriate voltage of course). I did this a few years back and it gave me a good uplift to the sound. If you want to get more adventurous, you can upgrade the clocks on the main board. This yielded further benefits for me.

Thanks for the tip @Nenon - appreciate the input. I considered the dual Asus Sage but I'm looking for a CPU that supports zen4 following @lmitche's comment here: When I discovered that Taiko had picked the 9004...it kind of sealed the deal ;-)

It would have been helpful if I'd provided what will be hanging off the other end. In the back of my mind was the fact that I would be plugging this into an etheregen!

I was reading earlier comments about SFP28 being downwards-compatible with 1G/10G etc. I'm looking at various motherboard options for a new music server and this one looks interesting because it has 2 x 25G optic cages built in: https://servers.asus.com/products/servers/server-motherboards/K14PA-U12#Features I'm interested in Cisco AOC cables or similar and wondered whether I can just use a standard 25G to 25G like this: SFP-25G-AOC5M Cisco 5M SFP28 to SFP28 Active Optical Cable (https://serversfit.co.uk/sfp-25g-aoc5m-cisco-5m-sfp28-to-sfp28-active-optical-cable.html?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItMPj6YHqhQMVpZNQBh2Axwq7EAYYBCABEgJaUfD_BwE) or do I need to find a cable that takes care of the "downspeed" eg 25G to 1G? Thanks for any help.

Nice - I was looking at those. These are a few I've found: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/H13SSL-NT https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=GENOAD8UD-2T%2FX550&utm_source=GENOA+launch&utm_medium=11_landing+page#Specifications https://servers.asus.com/products/servers/server-motherboards/K14PA-U12 Back in the day, I thought the supermicro boards were really quiet and sounded best but the Asus above looks pretty cool...need to do some more digging.

Hmmm, sTR5 = 4844 contacts and SP5 = 6096 contacts. That's a no go then. I reckon that picture of the Asus TRX50 motherboard must have been a pre-production experiment with a Threadripper in it.

The Asus TRX50 has a sTR5 socket but the CPUs specified by Taiko are listed as SP5 socket. Are sTR5 and SP5 pin compatible?

I asked Linn and sadly, no.