In my Pi and Asus days, booting from SD cards worked fine. A good Samsung Class 10 will boot a bit quicker. SD cards are an order of magnitude slower than SSD, but less noisy.

My Rendu also boots from SD, but after that everything runs from RAM.

Yes, and there is little difference in performance between the Class 10 cards.

I guess so, technology moves on.

Really not convinced you'll see a worthwhile performance increase in these boot-only environments, though.

So today l rolled up my sleeves today to tackle another mod on the R26.

Today's task, remove the cheap 50 Ohm cable for the 10Mhz Clock input,and replace by direct feeding to the board using a BNC to MXC adapter by Amphenol.This was the best l could find, and if your interested it's part no 242204, l purchased it from Farnell.

Well l am happy to report, that good old Rodders was on the money. lt's given me a big gain, placement on instruments,more micro information, for myself a big gain that has caught me by surprise.
l shouldn't be that shocked, l have actually tried the Coax as a clock lead in the past, and didn't like it.

All that's needed is for another Zero Zone 01 supercap psu to arrive for the server, then lan to Fibre, and lm done...for a bit

As it stands,my set up sounds the best it has ever


A good example is the Rush album 'Hold Your Fire',l'll be straight, l love the album, but not a fan of the drum production, in particular the cymbals. I have few albums like this, the cymbals are placed lower in the mix,and come over as being rolled off,similarto Dolby Noise B Reduction, this is no longer the case, as the cymbals no longer sound rolled, yes they are still low in the mix, but they now sound like a cymbals, with zing and sparkle. This is not so noticeable on well recorded material,but apparent on the recordings that are not quite their.
You'll have to forgive my way of explaining the improvements,but it's a noticeable improvement.

Today... Well been busy,craming in what l can.

Firstly l have NUC 5150 running as it should headless,on Dabian 12 so happy with that.
Secondly added an additional Zero Zone 01 Ultra Cap psu for the NUC. This seems to have brought additional calmness to the table,more slam on lower frequencies.
Thirdly..l paid attention to more sheilding on USB leads,and the UHS-2 HAMA card holder
Speaking of which, l can detect no difference in sound between my Class 10 SD card or the UHS-2, so l am still to the UHS-2,as it boots slightly faster,but operationally it access Volumio 3 at lighting pace,should l need too. However Volumio 3 just sits there doing nothing.

So l can happy report, the set up is sounding superb, l couldn't be happier.

This leaves just a bit more tweeking, trying out Fibre, l also have to DIY a XLR cable,l am expecting that to pay dividends, l'm lucky, as l have some pure 99.9 % 5n silver, kicking around, back from the 90s,when it was cheap then, and you could have considered using gold or platinum, but those days are gone.

Hopefully l haven't bored you all to death.

I like these upgrades/mods, they bring nice gains that you’d have to spend substantially more money to get elsewhere.

I’ve a huge amount of shielding to experiment with inside my Dac with all the transformer leads. I will leave it until winter to tackle though when I’m indoors more.

I did get a sheet of this and cut tiny pieces and placed them on various chips and above the digital screen inside my dsp.

www.mouser.ie/ProductDetail/3M-Electronic-Specialty/AB7050HF?qs=qI3sF1OJRWhp30e5xa13yA%3D%3D

I then sat the remaining 90% of the sheet against my power regenerator until I get a chance to try more piece’s elsewhere.
The absorber helped imaging and inner detail.
If you’re interested I could send you a piece of the sheet to cut up and try as I’ll never get through it all.

Well today, after a lovely lunch with the family at Zivvi's ,l grab a few hours to finish construction on my DIY XLR Lead.

lt's bits l have had kicking around, some 5N Pure Silver 99.9 1mm,Teflon tubing,l wrapped each wire with some multiple layers on Tin foil, wrapped each cable over like a platt,copper sheilded both ends,and use metal based ,gold pin Nautrik XLR, very DIY.

Very pleased with the results, mids and high frequencies sound nice, and not forced, bass has lost a bit of bloom, which l am happy about,l always find Copper tends to over egg the Bass region.

lt's great when you can reuse items,l know this would cost me £££ just because of the price of metal these days, these easily out perform my Neutrik XLR l tried out a few weeks ago by a country mile.
Today's a good day.... Tomorrow.
all being well TFLEX 405

Have you been down to Tottenham Court Road recently D? It's totally unrecognisable and I don't think there is a hifi dealer left anymore! The tech shops hung on a bit longer but there is only a handful of those left now.