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Post by julesd68 on Oct 11, 2019 16:49:21 GMT
Dammit Paul - I'm expecting to hear it's a world-beating streamer for pennies!!
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 17:18:09 GMT
I'm playing some Jacques Loussier at the moment - his interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons - and even at this early stage, it doesn't sound too shabby for just over £120.00, Jules. As I mentioned, the USB cable apparently takes some time to come on song, and I'm not feeding it from the dedicated LPSU yet so there could be a long way to go. I chose this album specifically for its acoustic bass, and the bass is there, especially with my sub, but, if this makes sense, it's mostly depth and not enough tone. All boom and no beauty sort of sums it up.
Early days though
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 17:20:22 GMT
Mine is in its nice Akasa case and up and running again. Still sounding good on battery and shitty SMPS. Hopefully I'll be back home later tomorrow with my QP-1 and then we'll see just how good the Asus can be. So far, it sounds good with very strong bass, enormous palpability and a slightly rough treble.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 18:14:46 GMT
Asus Tinkerboard S in an Akasa case with 2 x Black Ravioli Pads.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 18:25:38 GMT
I have to say that the Akasa case is very nice, with supplied heat spreader blocks to conduct heat from the top and bottom of the Asus board major chips to the casework.
EDIT: it runs warm to the touch after 30 mins but no hotter than that.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 18:44:10 GMT
Slinger did you notice any improvement in the indexing speed of your NAS? I certainly appreciate its general zippiness.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 18:59:25 GMT
Slinger did you notice any improvement in the indexing speed of your NAS? I certainly appreciate its general zippiness. Now that you mention it, yes, I did. I've switched wireless off, by the way, and I'm running on the gigabit ethernet with a Cat 7 lead. I have the same findings as you about how hot it runs. I may get into the habit of powering it down overnight though.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 19:07:28 GMT
I've lost quite a lot of that initial treble roughness. I guess the lack of flexing in the rigid case and sitting it on Black Ravioli has helped with isolation. Also a new USB power cable burning in as the other one is still trapped in the Audiophonics case.
Playing that Jacques Loussier Vivaldi right now and it's a nice relaxed and open performance with lots of intricate cymbal work and the deep double bass contrasting with the piano.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 19:36:39 GMT
It's not a bad "test" album is it, Martin? Top end, bottom end, and plenty of space between the three instruments.
I've got a spare JuicEBitz USB cable, so I'll give that a go as a power lead from my LPSU before I consider anything else. I'll hook that up tomorrow and then run it for a week or so to see if the Oyaide lead settles down. If not I'll have to start looking around for something else.
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Post by John on Oct 11, 2019 19:53:08 GMT
I use an Oylide USB lead and works quite well when I use the Laptop but have to add two iFi silencers to help with noise from the laptop
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 19:54:04 GMT
I have two JuiceBitz USB power cables and have now released the bright purple one for re-use, after all it's GOT to sound more 'hoopy' than the black one?
Yes, good album and the first time I've listened to anything of his.
Another observation: did you notice that Volumio gives the option of saving the SD card to the Asus eMMC flash memory? Unfortunately, it says that my 16GB card is too large. I guess Volumio has to be installed on an 8GB card, then? Something else to explore if I can find an 8GB microSD card. Of course, its speed won't matter.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 20:55:34 GMT
I have two JuiceBitz USB power cables and have now released the bright purple one for re-use, after all it's GOT to sound more 'hoopy' than the black one? Yes, good album and the first time I've listened to anything of his. Another observation: did you notice that Volumio gives the option of saving the SD card to the Asus eMMC flash memory? Unfortunately, it says that my 16GB card is too large. I guess Volumio has to be installed on an 8GB card, then? Something else to explore if I can find an 8GB microSD card. Of course, its speed won't matter. Mines yellow. My JuicEBitz USB lead that is. Obviously. I can't save Volumio to the Tinker Board either. I get an : "Install to Disk failed: Cannot install on this Disk: destination Disk must be bigger than source disk" error. I'm using a 32Gb card, so no chance.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 22:02:50 GMT
I thought I'd struck gold when I dicovered a "Tinker-Config" tool. It doesn't do anything I want to do though. Here's the link tinkerboarding.co.uk/forum/thread-400.html I've installed and run it and all "Display Options" allows you to do is set screen sizes. e.g. 800x600. I was hoping there might be an "off-switch" in there somewhere. That should save you wasting some time, Martin.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2019 22:26:27 GMT
There is an HDMI out setting in Volumio, which of course I turned off. Whether it disables it at hardware level is something else to discover.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 11, 2019 22:57:49 GMT
Yes, I've got that switched off, but there's no way of telling whether it's doing any good or not.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 12, 2019 13:37:16 GMT
Just throwing this one out there, Martin (or anyone else... Tony?). I'm using an AQ Jitterbug at the Tinker Board end of my USB cable, so I wonder how the system would react to my adding an iFi iPurifier at the other end, plugged into the DAC. Would it have any benefits, or would it would bugger the signal up completely... or would it just do nothing at all as I'm still not totally convinced by either device? All hypothetical of course, sparked by seeing an iPurifier 2 on eBay.
I proved a point to myself by leaving the Tinker Board switched on (but not playing) overnight and, although it sounds bloody obvious I prefer to test these things to make sure, it does not get warm when it's not under any load, so I'm perfectly happy to leave it powered up permanently in future.
[EDIT] Revised to "slightly warm to the touch" when not under load. Still nothing whatsoever to get excited about though.
I've just hooked it up to the 5v LPSU. Let the testing begin.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 12, 2019 14:40:19 GMT
I don't think it would do any harm to try. The iSilencer3.0 is an active device, taking a tiny bit of power from the USB 5V and killing noise. Mine is USB A to A so goes into the Asus end. I'm not sure if they make a B to B type? Isn't the iPurifier for S/PDIF?
Mine stays at the warm level after being left on overnight and not streaming, so I'm not concerned about leaving it on. Is yours warm while the fan is running?
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Post by Slinger on Oct 12, 2019 14:47:03 GMT
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Post by julesd68 on Oct 12, 2019 14:49:03 GMT
There is an SPDIF iPurifier - I had one and found it useless in my system. There is also an iPurifier3 which is USB. If you are buying new I recommend making sure you can return it if necessary ...
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Post by MartinT on Oct 12, 2019 14:51:10 GMT
Oops - I got my A and B reversed - will correct it. I think it's well worth a try but you may end up using one or other but not both.
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