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Post by MartinT on Sept 17, 2018 11:59:55 GMT
The linear power supply has arrived from China. They declared a value of £12, so no duty or VAT to pay. Excellent  |
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Post by speedysteve on Sept 17, 2018 12:27:24 GMT
Just ordered one. It can either power my WaveIO and 5v part of Najda, or RPi and 5V part of Najda. |
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Post by MartinT on Sept 17, 2018 19:41:48 GMT
The linear PSU is now in place and powering the router. I need a different plug for the NAS, I suspect a 2.5mm rather than 2.1mm. It does seem to benefit the system no longer having a single SMPS in there. Either that or the ethernet link is quieter than ever. Good move, another source of noise removed.
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Post by naim1425 on Sept 17, 2018 19:59:31 GMT
The linear power supply has arrived from China. They declared a value of £12, so no duty or VAT to pay. Excellent which one did you get and what is the difference between Talema transformer,Bingzi Seal transformer and zerozone R-Core transformer,which is the best psu to get or does it matter,im looking for a 15v psu
thanks
Alan
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Post by MartinT on Sept 18, 2018 8:03:51 GMT
I talked about it here. It works very well. I specified it as 12V to run my router and NAS box. The transformer is immaterial in this application. |
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Post by MartinT on Sept 19, 2018 16:00:44 GMT
A small mod - I connected the Caiman SEG's earth tag to the special 4mm earth connection in the ifi AC Purifier, shown below.  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2018 16:51:27 GMT
Pretty sure we have maxed out the SEG today via another customer project, and it is sounding very nice even with stock leads and £30 I/C's!
Did have top drill and tap the grounding tag to accept a better bolt due to capacitor size behind the back panel which as Martin's mentions you can tie these in to a ground system. As that earth point directly connects to chassis ground.
Give it the full loom and power treatment and I would say it is now around a £3K dac performance (with a good source) nice sound for basic well thought out unit.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 19, 2018 18:00:07 GMT
I've seen cheap Entreqs go on eBay for not too much money. Wondering whether this is a way of gently exploring grounding boxes without jumping in deep.
Is your clock based on the Tentlabs module or something else, Tony?
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Post by John on Sept 19, 2018 18:29:26 GMT
I just added the Chinese PSU to my ethernet Nice improvement in sound quality as a drop in background noise.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2018 18:38:02 GMT
Hi Martin
Same fruit different tree, we redesigned them to have a smaller footprint due to the extra ultra regulation already present, but they still contain a very nice regulator as well, the clicks are specially designed for ultra low phase variants and use 15ma @12mhz which results in a more fuild, open sound with great three dimensionality
If you do pick up the vampire poo boxes pay very carefull attention to the accompanying ground leads they are of piss poor construction imho thus is one of the reasons I went down the grounding route 5 years ago as I was constantly being asked to make the things my yearly sales of grounding leads run into three figures because if this
Also note that the small Entreq boxes have limited ability to take only a small number if grounding leads hence why they charge £5k for the large one with 8? Outlets
I have a small footprint 8 way one you can try if you wish
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2018 18:48:55 GMT
Interesting how the sound changes with clock upgrades and how it goes worse before it settles down the SEG from last week which had the first of the new clocks in has started to really wake up this evening around 70 hours in it so far
Also the presentation of the WM chips offer a very different perspective from the usual TI and Sabre offerings it is definitely more mellowed and highlights other sections of the presentations not unlike able at all
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Post by MartinT on Sept 19, 2018 20:20:09 GMT
I agree it took a good while for the superclock to really come on song and then I swapped interconnects for ones that are glacial in their burn-in time!
However, the insight and overall musicality of the SEG is really something now. Enormously satisfying. Great chipset, as you say.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 23, 2018 15:11:02 GMT
After the success of my Black Cat Neo Morpheus cables, still improving as 200 hours approach, I have just bought a used pair of Black Cat Airwave 3200 interconnects. These I shall try in my preamp to power amp duties, to compare with the NVA TIS.
So far, Black Cat have impressed me more than any other cable vendor, both in terms of philosophy and product performance. I'm hoping it continued.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 25, 2018 10:13:17 GMT
The Black Cat Airwave 3202 cables have arrived. Looking forward to trying them out tonight.
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Post by John on Sept 29, 2018 18:36:47 GMT
A really good few hours visiting Martin
Straight away I could here the system had improved better timing detail dynamics and warmth. We listened to a lot of music both of us still amazed with the sound quality from Spotify.
Stan gave me his SEG 30 chip and this gave a more solid sound but also separation and detail had improved over the 22 chip. A very natural sound that you could listen to for hours without a sense of fatique but every now and again you feel that bass go deep into your body and you wonder where did that come from.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 29, 2018 19:05:48 GMT
Thanks for coming over, John, and introducing me to a couple of great tracks. We certainly revelled in some great music and, when we switched firmware in the SEG to Stan's latest experimental one, the system took another step towards very natural playback of music. Complex sounds became easier to differentiate in their strands, the whole sounding even less harsh with greater detail, easier to hear separate elements and being more musical overall.
We were listening to a cow bell and rain stick being played together, the two being somewhat 'combined' with the SEG-22 firmware, which became two very distinct sounds with the SEG-30. This is fantastic optimisation by Stan, a not inconsiderable task to better the already good SEG-22. I used Mode C which is for superclocks with glitch protection. Stan has also reinstated LED dimming for data sync, a nice touch.
A couple of outstanding tracks, new to me...
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Post by John on Sept 30, 2018 18:55:33 GMT
I just put in the new chip and been playing some of the tunes we played yesterday. It is a lot more eaiser to distinguish instruments and overall a very similar effect on sound quality. I notice a few differences in our sound from our systems. Your bass rumbles better in the body. Mine a tiny bit more nimble. Your sound has more warmth, mine does not really has warmth but it not clinical either. Yours have better treble, whilst mine has more mid clout. But we not talking big differences though defiantly noticeable.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 30, 2018 19:19:21 GMT
Interesting, John. Considering how different our systems are, it's remarkable that they don't sound more different than they do.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 14, 2018 17:56:03 GMT
I walked past HMV today, without going in. It felt strange, not buying music on media any more.
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Post by MartinT on Nov 2, 2018 7:49:18 GMT
I should summarise where my system is at since a few recent changes have made a disproportionate improvement to its presentation. The changes have been:
- Swapping the normal SMPS powering my 4G router to a linear PSU
- Adding snap chokes to SMPS all around the house
- Adding an ifi AC Purifier to the double socket feeding my P10 regenerator
- Switching from Volumio (free) to MyVolumio (subscription)
- Adding underclock and undervolt optimisations to the Pi's config.txt file
- Adding an SGS grounding box and connecting it to the DAC and preamp
- Adding a Tentlabs superclock to the SEG and updating to SEG-30 firmware, switching to Mode 1 for external clocks
- Swapping the S/PDIF cable to a Black Cat Silverstar 75
- Swapping the DAC to preamp cable to a Black Cat Neo Morpheus
- Swapping the preamp to power amp cable to a Black Cat Airwave 3202
The presentation is very out-of-the-box with the speakers often appearing to be doing nothing. That's some disappearing trick for large speakers. The soundstage hangs in space in front of me and around the room. It sounds very lifelike and exciting, pulling detail from the mix in surprising ways. Most of all, it's just very musical and enjoyable.
What's most satisfying about all this is that the system remains the same in terms of major components, with none of the changes being high cost items. Yet the performance uplift has been significant.
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