[topher_m]

Hi
When it is recommended that you plug in no other USB attachments, find the special/best usb outlet, strip down all other computer functions, don't run antivirus, etc, etc in order to not get popping or drop outs it makes it sound like USB is not quite ready for primetime.

While I would completely follow the fully dedicated music server PC route and don't need to multi-task and run other stuff, it just makes me a little nervous. I would probably get a fairly good i5, 8 mb pc to run it all.

Are those guidelines more relavent to older computers?
Do a fair portion of users experience drop-outs, pops, poor sound until they find the magic outlet?
Do these things go away with firewire?

I appreciate caution, dedicated settings, etc but I think you get the gist of my concern.

How much have you noodled with JRiver?
I would much prefer that to Amarra, Pure Music, etc.
Seems to get very good reviews but not a lot of talk from you.
I know you have a MAC over PC preferrance but sounds like you aren't deadset against PC and windows based music software.

[BobMajor]

I think most of this advice really applies to older computers. I'm using a Core2Duo processor with only 3 GB of ram running Windows7 64bit. Admittedly this is dedicated to audio and not hooked up to the internet, so no antivirus but I haven't tried to alter the functioning of the program (turn off other functions). When I was running XP there was a whole script for disabling extraneous functions and I didn't have any problem. However, sound quality wise Windows7 is miles ahead of XP. Steve recommends Mac computers with Amara player, but I haven't jumped to that yet.

[JCarney]

Maybe this thread will help.

JCarney

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=96408.0

[audioengr]

Hi
When it is recommended that you plug in no other USB attachments, find the special/best usb outlet, strip down all other computer functions, don't run antivirus, etc, etc in order to not get popping or drop outs it makes it sound like USB is not quite ready for primetime.

While I would completely follow the fully dedicated music server PC route and don't need to multi-task and run other stuff, it just makes me a little nervous. I would probably get a fairly good i5, 8 mb pc to run it all.

Are those guidelines more relavent to older computers?

It depends on the PC computer, not so much the OS and age.  Certainly async requires USB 2.0 and more memory than older computers have.  Dells are notoriously bad for I/O speed.  I have had good luck with Toshiba and hp.  There are a lot of PC's and laptops that will work fine.

This is why I recommend Mac.  Macs have faster I/O and lots of USB 2.0 compliant ports.  Better designs.  It is rare to have pops on a Mac, but still possible if you use USB disk with it or dont have enough memory.

Everyone wants the latest technology, but to use their older computer with small memory.  This does not usually work.  If you cannot get rid of the pops with my help, you can return the Off-Ramp 4 for a full refund, less shipping.

Do a fair portion of users experience drop-outs, pops, poor sound until they find the magic outlet?
Do these things go away with firewire?

Usually there is one Firewire port and its own dedicated controller in the computer.  This makes it more likely to work without ticks.  There is no guarantee of audio quality however.  The ones that I have tested dont sound as good as my USB.

How much have you noodled with JRiver?
I would much prefer that to Amarra, Pure Music, etc.
Seems to get very good reviews but not a lot of talk from you.

I have a lot of customers using jriver with good success.  Again, its the particular computer that must be carefully chosen.

I know you have a MAC over PC preferance but sounds like you aren't deadset against PC and windows based music software.

PC can be very close in SQ to Mac (I use Foobar2K and Kernel Streaming on XP), however I think that Mac, particularly with Amarra 1.2 still beats all others.

Steve N.

[topher_m]

Thanks

Getting close to finally pulling the trigger on something!

I noted the Hynes regulator option on the Offramp is no longer available?

[audioengr]

Thanks

Getting close to finally pulling the trigger on something!

I noted the Hynes regulator option on the Offramp is no longer available?

Correct, I have made improvements to the existing discrete regulator, so I have eliminated the USB Hynes "kludge".  Also, the Turboclock has 2 Hynes regs on it.  I highly recommend the new Turboclock.

This is the configuration that Steven Stone at TAS has and JA at Stereophile has.

Steve N.

[Brucemck]

J River works great and sounds terrific.

Steve's products work well with J River. I've had zero issues with multiple incarnations of Off Ramps and Pace Cars.

Using Steve's products with J River I've had zero issues with Gateway, Toshiba, and Dell laptops.

[PLMONROE]

Let me chime in and add my $.02 topher. I have had a number of Steve's modifications and products over the years. Every one worked flawlessly and represent great value. While I do not have his off-ramp I do have the pace-car and Overdrive DAC. I have used these with Dell, Toshiba, and HP computers and with differing operating systems - XP, Vista, and Windows 7. I have used them with Jriver, MediaMonkey, amd just about ever player available for the PC. Further I am not careful with what is on the computer as all of them have had virus blockers, internet connection, and who knows what all other garbage. Maybe I am lucky but I have not had a single click, snap, pop , or anything else since my first setup which did make an occasional click but a little added memory took of that. Lest one think my equipment lacking, I feel my setup is fairly revealing and, while not the most expensive around, has a MSRP subntially greater than my neighbours Lexus.

Paul   

[Chromisdesigns]

While I would completely follow the fully dedicated music server PC route and don't need to multi-task and run other stuff, it just makes me a little nervous. I would probably get a fairly good i5, 8 mb pc to run it all.

Are those guidelines more relavent to older computers?
Do a fair portion of users experience drop-outs, pops, poor sound until they find the magic outlet?

I am running two different digital music setups on my ancient Dell 3100, P4, dual-core 2.80 ghz, with 1 GB of RAM, still on Windows XP (too old to run newer versions).  And it's NOT a dedicated machine, by any means.  It runs everything from email and web surfing to digital music and Adobe Lightroom 3...often at the same time.

My two setups are 1) my shop system, a Nuforce Icon paired with Nuforce S-1 speakers and an M&K sub.  The internal DAC on the Icon is plugged into one of the USB ports on the Dell.

I've fed this from audio CDs direct in the DVD drive, Pandora, iTunes vbr files, and most recently from my FLAC rips, using MediaMonkey as the player.  Never heard a click, pop, or dropout playing any local music.  Occasional dropouts with Pandora, but that's due to my sucky wireless network.

2) The main system just got treated to a SqueezeBox Touch, with SB Server running on the old Dell with everything else.  The sound is superb with the FLAC files, and no weird artifacts on that one, either.  Again, the sucky wireless causes an isolated pause or two -- but it's getting replaced with wired Ethernet cable real soon now...(For reference, the rest of the main system is a Parasound PLD-2000 preamp, Theta Cobalt DAC driven from the SB Touch, modded Hafler DH220, Proac Studio Twos, and an Energy EPS-150 sub.  Headphone listening through a Home Headroom and Sennheiser HD600 cans.  Mostly Kimber PBJ interconnects, old MIT speaker cables.)

When and if I finally do upgrade the shop computer, I will probably turn this one into a dedicated music server, if it's still alive.

Re the USB interface, the FLAC and iTunes librarys reside on an external hard drive running over USB 2.0, and there has never been any reason to suspect the interface isn't fast enough, especially for the music files.  I have my Lightroom library there, too.

I get just over 15 MB per second transfer rates from that drive on my machine, more than adequate for this kind of use.

So, don't sell an older Windows pc short (particularly if it's running XP, rather than the later CPU hog OS versions).  I find it pretty amazing what it can do.  Admittedly, it gets a bit slow when I do a big import of camera RAW files into Lightroom, but even so...if I was really upset about it, I'd just add another GB of RAM to fix it.

[bhobba]

Hi All

Just to add in my experiences.

Out here in Australia some of the local crowd have been experimenting with computer audio for a while.  Up until a few months ago a heavily tweaked and modified Marantz player at a local audio manufacturer laughed at computer audio - it simply blew any computer audio we tried away.  Then a game changer happened - we tried an Audiophello2 and a battery modified M2Tech.  It was instantly reversed.  Check out:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=93637.msg944499#msg944499

Because of this I have now ordered an Off-Ramp from Steve which he assures me is technically superior to the battery modified M2Tech.  This means what I am about to say regarding my experiences is likely to be even better with an Off-Ramp.

What we found was while there was differences between computers as a source, the software players used, and even the USB cable, the cheapest netbook computer with a bog standard USB cable and Foobar is a quantum leap better than any other source we can get a hold of.  The latest attempt was a transport that had really been hotted up - battery power and all sorts of stuff - no contest - the USB easily bested even that.  The next thing that will be tried is an uber tweaked top of the line Wadia.  Of course we will need to wait for the comparison to see what the go is, but the difference is so large many including me are not confident even that will best it - in fact I will be surprised if it does.  And once you get into that territory the cost and mucking around is very substantial - you would have to ask yourself why bother? In the words of the owner of the audio outlet mentioned previously, who has investigated tons of stuff that made substantial improvements such as Duelund Capacitors and lining loudspeaker cabinets with steel, this is the single biggest advance he has ever experienced.

Bottom line here is don't get too worried about what computer to use etc - you will be getting cutting edge sound quality regardless. That said I will tell you what I have found sounds best as a baseline to work towards - a Mac Mini with software tweaks to shutdown things like spotlight, finder etc, the Essential Signature USB cable, and the Audirvana player.  Others have reported using a SSD improves things but I haven't got around to doing that yet.

Thanks
Bill

[adydula]

I have stayed away from pc music for years, but recently I have dabbled in to the pc audio world in several ways and lots of AB testing in my listening room with my ears with well known source material.

My main source has been via a modded Oppo BD83SE, using the ESS Sabre Dacs to a high quality preamp and a wonderful tube amp. Redbook CD in the player, music out thru the preamp and amp to a pair of Salk SongTowers.

I also added a set of 'high' dollar headphones that have  very good resolving power, to help listen to any differences while playing around or AB comparing. They are Audeze LCD2's.

So first I converted all cds to FLAC via dbpoweramp. Then loaded on a laptop. I used both Winamp and JRiver Media Center as players (also used Foobar).

I also used a headphpone amp attached to the tape outs in the preamp so I can do some fast swithing back and forth between the same flac file playing etc.

In the laptop I have several things going on technically but to make it simple, I have a USB dac to the preamp for this path.....

I also have the wonderful ability to take the FLACS and output bit perfect via ethernet via software called Asset UPnP and DLNA. The Asset transcodes the FLAC bits back to PCM and the DLNA allows transfer or stream to the Oppo, and out to the preamp, amp or headphone amp etc..

So I can play a flac file via a player (Win7 OS) AND at the same time play the same FLAC file to the Oppo via enet.

So after playing many CDs CD in the Oppo and comapring it to the ethernet connection and honestly hearing no real world difference...I then compared the FLAC to USB Dac path to the cd from the oppo player...again no real work difference...The ethenet DLNA and winamp/JRiver USB path are identical to each other on the output end.

I then turned off the main amp and used the much more resolving headphones with a head amp and used the preamp as a switch to be able to go back and forth between the same song, one from the USB Dac and the other from the enet path.

I did this on many, many tracks and I can honestly say I hear NO real world difference in the two...the bit perfect songs via enet and DLNA etc compared to the USB Dac version are identical to me on a very good set of cans.

The DAC I used is a HRT Technologies Music Streamerii....($150) hardly high end if price is considered. It is running is Asynchronous mode with Win7. The USB cable is one I had lying around...not a $350 high end cabl.e etc..

I did hear considerable differences with changing out headphone amps and changing out amps...but the sound from the USB dac etc was the same...compared to the CD player playing the same CD or the Enet path.

So this is telling me that you can get great sound from pc audio, as long as you have great source material and is a non-lossy format ie FLAC etc...

I dont mind spending money on speakers, electronics etc if they really make a diffence...striving for bit perfect is what I want and think I have achieved.

As always I will play with those things that make real world differences...mainly lookng for great source material, cds mastered well etc...and electronics that really can impact the sound, tone etc...oh and the room.

All the best
Alex

[audioengr]

So after playing many CDs CD in the Oppo and comapring it to the ethernet connection and honestly hearing no real world difference...I then compared the FLAC to USB Dac path to the cd from the oppo player...again no real work difference...The ethenet DLNA and winamp/JRiver USB path are identical to each other on the output end.

The problem is the preamp.  Even the best preamps "homogenize" the sound so that most sources sound virtually identical.  Get rid of the preamp and you will discover how superior computer audio can be.  One way to do this is to use a transformer linestage.  I dont like using digital volume control unless you can do some attenuation with the DAC first.

My Overdrive DAC effectively eliminates the preamp.  There is no actual preamp in the DAC but it does control volume, and not by decimating digital bits.

Steve N.

[adydula]

Hi Steve...am listening to the headphones now with no preamp on. Just flac via the usb path.

Also when the oppo is on the preamp is not.

The L/R audio out of the oppo goes into the preamp which again is OFF as a switch only..

The oppo is not acting as a volume control, its digital destructive volume control capabiltiy is always at 100% and never reduced.

The comparison between the 2 is nothing that i can hear on the lcd2's. thru a very good headamp.

The cd which is the source good or bad is ripped to bit, then played back etc..via a player in Win7. out to the usb dac...so i can use the manual switch of the OFF preamp as a switchbox to compare..the minor pain is getting both tracks starting at the same time, which after some practice is not that bad..

My headamp is acting as the volume control. Preamp not needed.
Alex

[audioengr]

Hi Steve...am listening to the headphones now with no preamp on. Just flac via the usb path.

Also when the oppo is on the preamp is not.

The L/R audio out of the oppo goes into the preamp which again is OFF as a switch only..

The oppo is not acting as a volume control, its digital destructive volume control capabiltiy is always at 100% and never reduced.

The comparison between the 2 is nothing that i can hear on the lcd2's. thru a very good headamp.

The cd which is the source good or bad is ripped to bit, then played back etc..via a player in Win7. out to the usb dac...so i can use the manual switch of the OFF preamp as a switchbox to compare..the minor pain is getting both tracks starting at the same time, which after some practice is not that bad..

My headamp is acting as the volume control. Preamp not needed.
Alex

Same thing.  The headamp just has the preamp in it.  This does not eliminate the preamp.

Steve N.

[adydula]

Steve,

Understand and yes the head amp is an amp...pre or otherwise.

Your dac has a volume control on it, so does is not have amplification applied?
Would this not be a pre-amp as well???

I know you said its not a preamp, but does control volume, so how are you doing this magic??? Changing volume kind of implies controlling drive or amplification...???

Would the output of your DAC be capable of driving headphones 50 ohm etc to 500 ohm or so?

Also will it drive normal amps to their capacity as well...

Thanks for your input...u have me wondering..

Alex

 
UPDATE: Ok Steve, I found your website and did some reading...about changing the reference voltage on the DAC but you still have an Class A transistor in the output. So this to me is the 'pre-amp' part of your DAC.
Good news to me it sounds like you have a great design but its way out of my price range!! :>(

[audioengr]

Steve,

Understand and yes the head amp is an amp...pre or otherwise.

Your dac has a volume control on it, so does is not have amplification applied?
Would this not be a pre-amp as well???

No, actually its not.  There is no other volume control like it on the market.  If you read the details on the webpage you will find that it changes the DAC reference voltage.  That is the voltage that the D/A uses to set the output analog voltage steps.

I know you said its not a preamp, but does control volume, so how are you doing this magic??? Changing volume kind of implies controlling drive or amplification...???

Old thinking.  It controls neither.  There are no resistors or changing gain stages in teh signal path.  It is EXACTLY like connecting your current DAC line-out directly to your amps.

Would the output of your DAC be capable of driving headphones 50 ohm etc to 500 ohm or so?

Only high-impedance headphones like Sennheiser.

ll it drive normal amps to their capacity as well...

Of course.  There are two gain settings, but usually the low gain setting is plenty.

UPDATE: Ok Steve, I found your website and did some reading...about changing the reference voltage on the DAC but you still have an Class A transistor in the output. So this to me is the 'pre-amp' part of your DAC.

No, this is the power output driver.  It has low impedance in order to drive cables, headphones and capacitive loads.  All DACs should have this stage.  It has no feedback.  Just an emitter follower single transistor.  There is no way that you could adjust volume with this.

Steve N.

[adydula]

Steve what is the DAC chip used?

Alex

[audioengr]

Steve what is the DAC chip used?

Alex

I would rather not make that too public, as the Chinese are keen to copy my products.

Steve N.

[adydula]

Steve,

I understand completely...did some research and found some DAC chips with this type of function....always nice to learn new things...

Also my friend Mr. Van Alstine is quite pround of his new preamps and posted this about the phone section :

The headphone circuits in all new AVA tube or hybrid preamps are small no feedback high current unity gain current buffers connected internally to the active line circuit outputs. They have nearly zero distortion (0.0003% THD and a slew rate of 3000V/uS. They add no sound of their own at all.

This is not the same for the main outs to the speakers and he cites the tube rolling affects etc good, bad or indifferent.

All the best
Alex

[PLMONROE]

my friend Mr. Van Alstine is quite pround of his new preamps

As indeed he should be! They are VERY good! That said, I don't think there is a preamp in existance for under 25K (and maybe even none above that) that doesn't change, detract, or add "something" to the sound which can be detected by soneone out there with very acute and trained ears. Sadly that is not I. 


Paul