Source computer's HUGE effect on fidelity

[DonH56]

All those things were before my time. Sadly, we'd never get away with such jokes nowadays. The best we can hope for is sneaking a funny comment into some source code.

At college a millennia or so ago the disc drive died in our DEC PDP-8 (or 11, I forget). Back then the drive was in a separate cabinet with big (12"?) discs that held something like 5 Mb each. They sent a new drive cartridge and I was trying to format it without success. A tech came out and was messing with it for a while, with a group of kids and profs crowded around watching, when an error message of "you can't f'ing get here from there, a'hole!" popped up (sans apostrophes). Tech turned red, killed the display, and called the factory. Apparently a leftover debug message that should have been deleted, or at least revised to be less profane and more useful...

 

[mansr]

Obscure error messages are fun. One of the better ones that I've encountered myself is "You do not exist, go away." I don't recall what I was trying to do at the time. Then there's the classic "values of β will give rise to dom!" Never saw that one.

 

[Nicolaas]

I have a 13 years old Sony Vaio laptop (Centrino Duo processor) with Linux Mint Xfce 19, Audacious and D90 USB DAC. And two 2 TB external USB hard disks connected. One usb hard disk with 16b 44.1k albums and 1 usb hard disk wit 24b 96k albums.
SQ of the 16b 44.1 files is good. However when I play 24b 96k files from the external USB drive then the sound is full of glitches/dropouts.
So my Sony is too outdated but I am proud to keep it up and running for 13 years now. With Windows Vista I would have been forced to dump it about 10 years ago
As a workaround I copy my high res albums to the Music folder of the internal 1 TB Hardwick of my Sony Vaio. Then I also switch off the ethernet network. With these precautions my high res albums can be played with great SQ and without any glitches. Yes I am a pennypinching/economical guy and hate to throw away electronic devices after only a few years...
However I am saving some money for a 10th gen NUC right now!

 

[mansr]

I have a 13 years old Sony Vaio laptop (Centrino Duo processor) with Linux Mint Xfce 19, Audacious and D90 USB DAC. And two 2 TB external USB hard disks connected. One usb hard disk with 16b 44.1k albums and 1 usb hard disk wit 24b 96k albums.
SQ of the 16b 44.1 files is good. However when I play 24b 96k files from the external USB drive then the sound is full of glitches/dropouts.
So my Sony is too outdated but I am proud to keep it up and running for 13 years now. With Windows Vista I would have been forced to dump it about 10 years ago
As a workaround I copy my high res albums to the Music folder of the internal 1 TB Hardwick of my Sony Vaio. Then I also switch off the ethernet network. With these precautions my high res albums can be played with great SQ and without any glitches. Yes I am a pennypinching/economical guy and hate to throw away electronic devices after only a few years...
However I am saving some money for a 10th gen NUC right now!

Are the DAC and hard drive sharing a USB host controller? Use the "lsusb -t" command to check. Moving one of the devices to a different USB port could help if this is the cause. I have a couple of ageing Vaio laptops, but I don't remember how the USB ports are wired.

 

[Blur]

Ah yes. Momentary brain fart.

I will summarize your testing: different computers produced identical results on a decent DAC regardless of test signal.

Yeah, the results look overlapped to me. So where is the issue. Both have the huge noise issue at ~20hz? I find this somewhat hard to believe as this should be very audible. Shows that it might be from something else and not the PC. It would be nice to see the same testing done with a PC that shows no noise etc. Perhaps it's the DAC / amp?

 

[Count Arthur]

However I am saving some money for a 10th gen NUC right now!

Have you considered a small form factor PC from Dell, HP, etc.?

They make a number of models that you can pick up pretty cheap, £100 ro £150, as refurbished ex-business machines. Depending on the model they'll have room for a DVD drive, a 3.5" drive and you can put in a small ~120GB SSD as a boot drive for Windows and your apps if you want to make it more responsive/snappier to use.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fast-HP-Core-i5-PC-COMPUTER-DESKTOP-8GBRAM-120GB-SSD-500GB-HDD-WIN-10-PRO-WiFi/312977583171?hash=item48deeaec43:g:q28AAOSwAeBeNa~c

 

[Neddy]

+1 on the NUC. I just got a two? year old NUC6i7 and couldn't be happier!
Re: debug/humor: company I worked at shipped with an engineer's hilarious "Jive" language option!
Same guy included an error code when the user poked the (disk) Read button too many times: "I'm A Workin On It!"
Spent a LOT of time burning new EEPROMs that week

 

[Jinjuku]

Lenovo 4205 based system for $100 on ebay

 

[Nicolaas]

Are the DAC and hard drive sharing a USB host controller? Use the "lsusb -t" command to check. Moving one of the devices to a different USB port could help if this is the cause. I have a couple of ageing Vaio laptops, but I don't remember how the USB ports are wired.

Hi Mansr, I am staring at the output of the lsusb -t command but "I cannot make much chocolate of it". I will try to switch my usb disks to different usb ports and check what happens. However my ethernet port on the main processor board also stopped working several years ago and I am now using ethernet via an usb hub. So mentally I am slowly saying goodbye to my Vaio and will probably go for a NUC this year. Thanks for your advise!

 

[Wes]

use a CDC Cyber - the long word length reduces jitter

 

[Feargal]

Obscure error messages are fun. One of the better ones that I've encountered myself is "You do not exist, go away." I don't recall what I was trying to do at the time. Then there's the classic "values of β will give rise to dom!" Never saw that one.

I just had to google that last one as it sounded familiar.
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html

 

[Nicolaas]

Lenovo 4205 based system for $100 on ebay

I think I want fanless! Thanks for the info!

 

[LTig]

The file server is in the basement and is a $299 Dell PowerEdge R620 with 10GBe SFP+ Fiber Multi Mode NIC.

Dell PCs seem to be quite robust. At my employer we installed a cheap 250 € Dell Midi tower PC running Linux as CVS backup in our server room (15 large racks) , and I got quite a few sarcastic remarks from the IT guy who helped me install it ("How can you buy such crappy hardware, just look at our nice windows rack servers!". Well after 12 years of uninterrupted service (longest uptime was 1 1/2 years, reboots were only necessary for longer power shut downs and twice for changing a hard disk after 3 years) this "crappy" hardware is the oldest in the whole room and still works. Nothing to complain, really.

Same with my Dell Optiplex 990 MT (midi tower running linux) I replaced recently after 8 years of continuous service (it runs 24/7 and I shut it down during vacation only) without any hardware problem so far. We moved it into our spectrometer room and my colleague continues to use it remote since it's much faster than his windows notebook when it comes to compiling and installing software. One infamous 'make install' takes 5 minutes on the typical Dell Windows 10 R&D Notebook (SSD, 2000 €+), 2.5 seconds (YES!) on this old Dell (1 TB HD, ~1000 €) and 0.5 seconds on the new one (Dell Optiplex 7070 MT, 1 TB SSD, ~1500 €). NTFS is a real nuisance...

 

[LTig]

Have you considered a small form factor PC from Dell, HP, etc.?

They make a number of models that you can pick up pretty cheap, £100 ro £150, as refurbished ex-business machines. Depending on the model they'll have room for a DVD drive, a 3.5" drive and you can put in a small ~120GB SSD as a boot drive for Windows and your apps if you want to make it more responsive/snappier to use.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fast-HP-Core-i5-PC-COMPUTER-DESKTOP-8GBRAM-120GB-SSD-500GB-HDD-WIN-10-PRO-WiFi/312977583171?hash=item48deeaec43:g:q28AAOSwAeBeNa~c

+1
There are companies which specialize in refurbing PCs thrown out by other companies with too much money. Last year I went to such a company (they employ almost exclusively handicapped people) and got me a nice Dell Latitude E7250 (12.5" Notebook with Windows 10, i5-5300U, 8 GB memory and 256 GB SSD) with docking station for 430 € (new ~1500 €). I noted that desktop PCs are much cheaper though.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

Have you considered dispensing with a desktop or laptop computer altogether? Don't you all have enough of it with them at work? To paraphrase the Bible, if the computer causes you noise (and to be tethered, and occupy large volumes and spend lots of money), cut off the computer.

 

[Count Arthur]

I think I want fanless! Thanks for the info!

As far as I know, none of the NUC variants are fanless, but have a blower style fan, similar to a laptop:

With other cases, you can always replace the fans with better qualtity, quieter fans, for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/NF-R8-redu...85P77XQP2JV&psc=1&refRID=C4J5CBFQJ85P77XQP2JV

17dba will effectively be silent from more than a few inches away.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

Fans? You need to think about fans and the thermodynamics of the system to play music? I rest my case.

 

[mansr]

Hi Mansr, I am staring at the output of the lsusb -t command but "I cannot make much chocolate of it". I will try to switch my usb disks to different usb ports and check what happens. However my ethernet port on the main processor board also stopped working several years ago and I am now using ethernet via an usb hub. So mentally I am slowly saying goodbye to my Vaio and will probably go for a NUC this year. Thanks for your advise!

Post the output, and we can help you interpret it.

 

[tomtoo]

How much influence has the operating system? Is linux or windows more audiophile?

 

[Wes]

Orville/Wilbur is the most audiophile OS