I can hear my PC think through my speakers

[johny_2000]

Any suggestions on which one? The ones I find are not cheap

DSD TECH SH-G01L USB Isolator Supports USB 2.0 480Mbps High Speed Isolation https://a.co/d/9Qxb8lq

 

[johny_2000]

A cheaper solution is to use Optical to connect your E30 to the PC.

Many PCs have Optical output built-in, but if yours doesn't, then you can add that with a $20 Cubilux SPDIF converter.

Does the optical output from the motherboard go through the onboard DAC/driver chip first?

 

[Rainier939]

Maybe we can narrow down the problem a little.
- Is the E30's power supply connected to the PC or its own power supply?

- Have you connected the Wiim Mini to the E30 with an optical cable?

The E30 has it's own power supply that's plugged into the same powerstrip as the pc

The wiim uses an optical cable yes

 

[Philbo King]

When I suggested here a couple of weeks ago that PCs should never be part of a true hi-fi system, I received a load of unsubstantiated and hostile rebuke from some here!

I agree with you - PCs are not built with solely audio in mind and therefore should be used only for control purposes. Load your control app onto PC, iPad, phone, or whatever, but ensure the audio signal remains from start to finish within equipment designed solely for audio.

I'll await more hostile reaction - presumably from those who use their PCs for streaming, DAC, etc. It's a pity as most members at other audio forums will also avoid general-purpose PCs in their systems. Lots of modern hi-fi include elements from the PC industry but these are built specifically with audio in mind. I'll stick with "proper" hi-fi!

Weird thought for you:
My entire recording studio runs on a Win7 PC. It is not a laptop; it's a 15 year old 3-core celeron desktop. I've recorded perhaps a dozen CDs (and 2 of my own) on it. The only noise issues I've had were from an ancient Terratec 8in/8out PCI audio card that was plugged into the motherboard which, as noted in other posts, would generate noise on its output that varied with mouse movement, processor, hard drive activity. Oddly, it didn't affect the inputs. I think the ASUS motherboard has cheaply designed power regulation.

That all went away when I got a Presonus interface, adding 16in/16out via USB2. So the PCs themselves are not 'audio devil spawn' or whatever. Professional grade results are perfectly plausible, assuming competent design, setup and testing of the system.

Caveat/Disclaimer: I'm not endorsing Presonus here; mine has serious design defiencies that I had to analyse and work around. If I were to change it would be an RME.

 

[phofman]

The only noise issues I've had were from an ancient Terratec 8in/8out PCI audio card that was plugged into the motherboard which, as noted in other posts, would generate noise on its output that varied with mouse movement, processor, hard drive activity.

Classical ground loop currents. The soundcard single-ended analog outputs were connected to a device (amp?) which had the the input cable shield grounded, and the large currents running through the MB ground traces from the various components to the PC's PSU 0V grounded terminal split up and some part of them took a tour through the analog cable shield -> external device -> PE wire -> house power wiring -> PC PE wire -> PC PSU grounded 0V terminal. Since the single-ended cable shield serves as a return path for the analog signal currents, these motherboard-ground currents became part of the actual analog signal.

Oddly, it didn't affect the inputs.

Most likely the devices connected to the soundcard input jacks were not grounded and therefore no ground-loop currents were running in the input cables shield. It really has nothing to do with motherboard power regulation.

 

[Koeitje]

When I suggested here a couple of weeks ago that PCs should never be part of a true hi-fi system, I received a load of unsubstantiated and hostile rebuke from some here!

I agree with you - PCs are not built with solely audio in mind and therefore should be used only for control purposes. Load your control app onto PC, iPad, phone, or whatever, but ensure the audio signal remains from start to finish within equipment designed solely for audio.

I'll await more hostile reaction - presumably from those who use their PCs for streaming, DAC, etc. It's a pity as most members at other audio forums will also avoid general-purpose PCs in their systems. Lots of modern hi-fi include elements from the PC industry but these are built specifically with audio in mind. I'll stick with "proper" hi-fi!

This is logical fallacy and you know it. You are just putting up a strawman to take down.

 

[Roland68]

The E30 has it's own power supply that's plugged into the same powerstrip as the pc

The wiim uses an optical cable yes

And the Wiim Mini is connected to the E30 with the optical cable?

Does that mean that the E30 has a noise/hum in the output when you play something on the PC?

But with the Wiim Mini via the E30 you don't have any noise/hum in the output?

Is that all correct?

 

[Sokel]

Ok,that will sound weird but do you want to know real crazy?

Typical PC > foobar > DAC,ok?
All the nice CPU/GPU/mouse/fans/etc noises evident when played with shared output ,dead silent with ASIO output.

Could taking subsystems out change grounding and stuff?
My guess is that stuff like that magnetically or god knows how couple with signal apart from the usual electrical problems.

Creative and Gigabyte acknowledging the problem for example use shields,"clean" dedicated USB outputs,isolated paths and other silly stuff sometimes (advertising them of course) trying to minimize the chances (yes,luck) .
Also judging by my silly measurements with fans near gear (DACs,interfaces,etc) I get VERY measurable interferences even if fans are totally electrically isolated,what only matters is distance.
Next time I'll get one of those led strips kids use now in PCs to measure them the same way,I'm curious.
So it's not that simple.

 

[staticV3]

Does the optical output from the motherboard go through the onboard DAC/driver chip first?

It cannot go through the onboard DAC because optical is digital and DACs only output analog.

Not sure what you mean by driver chip.

 

[phofman]

Does the optical output from the motherboard go through the onboard DAC/driver chip first?

Standard PC onboard audio has two parts:

1) Intel HDA controller, part of the southbridge.

2) HDA codec chip linked to the controller via HDA bus. Typically these codecs are very complex a provide analog outputs, inputs, detection of inserted device type (e.g. line out vs. headphones). Most of the codecs offer SPDIF outputs too. Then the MB designer can just feed the SPDIF output to an internal pinheader, or to a TOSLINK transmitter at the board edge.

Most of newer HDA codecs support 24 bits, up to 192kHz.

So yes, the integrated SPDIF output goes through the onboard audio driver and the HDA codec, but not through the DAC part of the codec.

 

[Roland68]

When I suggested here a couple of weeks ago that PCs should never be part of a true hi-fi system, I received a load of unsubstantiated and hostile rebuke from some here!

I agree with you - PCs are not built with solely audio in mind and therefore should be used only for control purposes. Load your control app onto PC, iPad, phone, or whatever, but ensure the audio signal remains from start to finish within equipment designed solely for audio.

I'll await more hostile reaction - presumably from those who use their PCs for streaming, DAC, etc. It's a pity as most members at other audio forums will also avoid general-purpose PCs in their systems. Lots of modern hi-fi include elements from the PC industry but these are built specifically with audio in mind. I'll stick with "proper" hi-fi!

Please don't be mad at me, and this isn't meant to attack you, but such statements are just absolute nonsense that has no basis in fact.
And this can easily be proven with a bit of common sense, because anyone who says something like that has absolutely no idea how music is created and produced.

From start to finish, i.e. until the CD or LP is pressed or the final high-res file is saved, the music/data is recorded by Macs and PCs, edited, copied, goes through some analogue processes, is converted and re-recorded on Macs and PCs, etc.

And that is exactly the music that so-called audiophiles then claim cannot be played back with sufficient quality within a system on the same Macs and PCs? Seriously? Does something magical happen to the music after it leaves the studio or production so that it can no longer be played back as well as it was during production?
Who comes up with such nonsense???

Of course, cheap and bad PCs can also pollute the playback, introduce interference and produce dropouts. That is why high-quality PCs, workstations or Macs are normally used in music production.
As a former hardware expert in high-availability IT, I can recommend high-quality HP business notebooks/PCs or HP notebook workstations, Supermicro-based computers or Macs for something like this, but of course there is also other high-quality hardware. And it is not a question of price, as all of the devices listed can be bought used with an operating system from €100-150/$ with more than sufficient durability.

By the way, in a large project we also did blind tests, including with audiophiles, where this topic was also discussed, with audio devices up to the high 5-digit range.
Can you imagine how that turned out? None of the audiophiles found this test funny.
Special audio PCs are also nonsense, we compared them too. Over €5000 for an audio PC, and a used Mac Mini for €150 made things better. The manufacturer was present at the comparison and was absolutely disappointed afterwards.

 

[Soniclife]

From start to finish, i.e. until the CD or LP is pressed or the final high-res file is saved, the music/data is recorded by Macs and PCs, edited, copied, goes through some analogue processes, is converted and re-recorded on Macs and PCs, etc.

And when you stream music can you imagine the audiophile horror of the data center where the music is sent from, 1000s of machines jammed together in racks sharing the same power etc.

 

[Roland68]

And when you stream music can you imagine the audiophile horror of the data center where the music is sent from, 1000s of machines jammed together in racks sharing the same power etc.

Just like with pictures and videos when I download them from the other side of the world, half of the pixels are always missing...
These people simply don't understand that less is lost with such a data transfer than with any USB, SPDIF or analog audio connection. In my professional life I have backed up well over 50,000 TB of data via tunneled Internet connections. How much was lost, not 1 bit.
By the way, that corresponds to a quantity of around 1,000,000,000 Flac files in CD quality.

 

[Ropeburn]

Please don't be mad at me, and this isn't meant to attack you, but such statements are just absolute nonsense that has no basis in fact.
And this can easily be proven with a bit of common sense, because anyone who says something like that has absolutely no idea how music is created and produced.

From start to finish, i.e. until the CD or LP is pressed or the final high-res file is saved, the music/data is recorded by Macs and PCs, edited, copied, goes through some analogue processes, is converted and re-recorded on Macs and PCs, etc.

And that is exactly the music that so-called audiophiles then claim cannot be played back with sufficient quality within a system on the same Macs and PCs? Seriously? Does something magical happen to the music after it leaves the studio or production so that it can no longer be played back as well as it was during production?
Who comes up with such nonsense???

Of course, cheap and bad PCs can also pollute the playback, introduce interference and produce dropouts. That is why high-quality PCs, workstations or Macs are normally used in music production.
As a former hardware expert in high-availability IT, I can recommend high-quality HP business notebooks/PCs or HP notebook workstations, Supermicro-based computers or Macs for something like this, but of course there is also other high-quality hardware. And it is not a question of price, as all of the devices listed can be bought used with an operating system from €100-150/$ with more than sufficient durability.

By the way, in a large project we also did blind tests, including with audiophiles, where this topic was also discussed, with audio devices up to the high 5-digit range.
Can you imagine how that turned out? None of the audiophiles found this test funny.
Special audio PCs are also nonsense, we compared them too. Over €5000 for an audio PC, and a used Mac Mini for €150 made things better. The manufacturer was present at the comparison and was absolutely disappointed afterwards.

It's the same with opamps and the relatively recent "rolling" craze. There's people who seriously claim that a cheap NE5532 or comparable cheap models aren't good enough for listening, even though all their music has been running through dozens of them during production - these are literally everywhere in professional audio gear.

But during listening, they suddenly degrade the signal so much, it's justified to put a pair of sparkos discrete ones for 80 moneys each into a 200 moneys amplifier.

Same with cables. Studios use bog standard material and plugs. It's just copper wire soldered to a connector! Dozens of meters running back and forth in the average studio, all cheap stuff. But for proper listening at home, you suddenly need RCA cables for 500 per meter, anything below that would degrade the signal!

There's such a large disconnect between a certain group of audiophiles and musical-technical reality. This whole PC thing is nothing but yet another example of it.

 

[Rainier939]

And the Wiim Mini is connected to the E30 with the optical cable?

Does that mean that the E30 has a noise/hum in the output when you play something on the PC?

But with the Wiim Mini via the E30 you don't have any noise/hum in the output?

Is that all correct?

Correct

 

[phofman]

@Rainier939: In the whole thread I could not find what your preamp/amp behind the E30 DAC is.

 

[DLS79]

My pc is not top spec but it has a 80plus gold PSU with a mid tier graphics carb.
The entire floor doesn't have grounded sockets and rewiring is not on my to do list.

This is by far your biggest problem (in more ways than one).

At a minimum you should at least get yourself some GFCI outlets.

 

[johny_2000]

So yes, the integrated SPDIF output goes through the onboard audio driver and the HDA codec, but not through the DAC part of the codec.

Thanks for the good explanation!

That's what I thought, and I was wondering if the digital data gets any manipulation this way, like bit depth or sample rate conversion, from the codec chip or its driver. So some tools will be needed to check the bitperfect status of the TOSLINK connection of the PC's onboard audio system.

 

[DEF]

Thanks for the good explanation!

That's what I thought, and I was wondering if the digital data gets any manipulation this way, like bit depth or sample rate conversion, from the codec chip or its driver. So some tools will be needed to check the bitperfect status of the TOSLINK connection of the PC's onboard audio system.

I do not trust my on-board S/PDIF / TOSLINK ON MS-7D51 Motherboard https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/MEG-X570S-UNIFY-X-MAX
First - they don't work on Linux, second, on WIndows - I have the feeling something is off.

 

[staticV3]

Thanks for the good explanation!

That's what I thought, and I was wondering if the digital data gets any manipulation this way, like bit depth or sample rate conversion, from the codec chip or its driver. So some tools will be needed to check the bitperfect status of the TOSLINK connection of the PC's onboard audio system.

I do not trust my on-board S/PDIF / TOSLINK ON MS-7D51 Motherboard https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/MEG-X570S-UNIFY-X-MAX
First - they don't work on Linux, second, on WIndows - I have the feeling something is off.

A $20 Cubilux SPDIF to USB converter is the only tool required to check the motherboard's SPDIF output. The Hifime UR23 can also be used.

The software is free (Room EQ Wizard/Multitone Loopback Analyzer).