[rklein]

The original M2Tech HiFace thread had gotten a bit "long in the tooth" and I wanted to talk about the Boxed HiFace Mk II that I recently received from John Kenny.  Ted, if you feel that this needs to be moved to the original thread, so be it.

I have recently changed quite a bit of my setup.  A new tube amp & pre from Nightshade Audio.  New DIY speakers from Selah.  In addition, I sold my Bolder modded SB3 and started using foobar with kernel streaming on Win 7 on a Nettop with only a little Intel Atom 230 cpu, which allows it to be fanless. (Thanks to M Galusha for building this!)

After hearing Mike's system utilizing the Buffalo II, I knew I wanted to explore Hi Rez music as well. I have not yet chosen the DAC that will get me into the Hi Rez world but I am quickly narrowing down my choices and will probably go the DIY route. 

John Kenny's Boxed HiFace MK II differs from his MK I in that the MK II draws no power from the USB connection.  The MK II acheives this by containing a battery charger & an internal 5V supply.

This is a quote from John Kenny's website concerning the Power Supply needed for the internal regs in his MK II.

A word about the external Power Supply
Some consideration should be given to the external 9V to 12V power supply. Yes the switched mode power supplies that come with most modern appliances  WILL PROBABLY DO - you know the light ones. But it is better to use a better quality PS i.e. probably one with a transformer in it (i.e heavier). Remember, this is the feed for the 5V & 3.3V regulators in the MK2 modified Hiface box so the cleanest possible power is advisable.

Most of us are aware of the importance of have good power supplies. (just ask Bolder's or Paul Hynes' customers)  However, I wasn't sure if this would be overkill in this situation with the MK II.  This weekend, my son came home so that he could work on "pimping" his Nissan Altima Coupe 3.5.  In explaining what he was going to do he mentioned that he had bought a 12v output battery that he was going to have to send back as he didn't need it.  Long story made short...I bought it from him for the $25 he shelled out for it.  I took a picture and sent it to John asking if I could use this as my PS to the MK II.  The answer is yes.   I will be reporting back in a couple of weeks on how the MK II performs with the regs powered by this battery.  Below is a pic.




I just need to order the parts to make a cable with a 2.1 mm plug and I am in business.  I realize that my present DAC can only do redbook but the A/B test should still be valid.  I thought I would share this with those of you who have purchased the MK II from John.

Randy

[rklein]

I just realized that I failed to mention in the original post that I will be A/B'ing the battery with a plug in the wall AC/DC Power Supply that utilizes a transformer.   It is somewhat beefier than the run of the mill PS.

Randy

[kyrill]

Hi Randy
I find myself in an almost equally alike context music source wise as you
I Have a wonderful sounding SB3 modded by Wayne with Paul Hynes pws and so on. BUt have ordered the MK2 from Kenny as well
Will not sell my my Sb3 though, as it will find a happy second live as the main music maker for my wife. connected with a little Trend digital  amp and two small speakers from Silverline Audio (Menuet) firmly hold between wooden shelves   i made for her a wonderful sounding "mobile 'ghetto blaster' when she "cleans" the house haha ( she will kill me if she reads this, she is a dr. but ehh also my wife she wll have her music with her.

My picture is a 12V 7.5 A Panasonic battery with an internal R of only 12 millli ohm for the Mk2




I have a lot of records to digitize with m well Tempered turntable and Black lion super cool AD converter
so i can have 96Khz 24 bit flac copies of my LP's



PS also follow Kenny's advice about the attenuators

[rklein]

Hi Kyrill:

Good advice concerning the attenuators.  I have a 10dB at my DAC and a 6dB at the source.

Randy

[rklein]

Kyrill:

May I ask what you did concerning the cable from the battery to your MK II?  The cable looks very nice! 

Thanks,

Randy

[kyrill]

hi
The cable looks nice and is selfmade, it is made of multiple braided strands of cat 5 in teflon insulation

[kyrill]

Finally

I search for best music representation since my student days more than 30 yrs ago
ended up in the '90s with big 6 feet tall Martin Logan's electrostatics , Counterpoint dedicated DAC and Manley's tube gear and Well tempered Turntable with koetsu's  MCs reading every Harry Pearson's TAS magazine which trickled down through the mail. Still i could hear some "plastic card" coloration with The electrostatics. I sold everything (except well tempered) and started a new DIY life.
Ended up with self made OB active 3way speakers ( incl GR Research servo OB woofers) which sound so much better than the electrostatics ( more musical and "paper cone" like) steered by a heavily modded DEQX incl Danish super clock and heavily modded Jadis tube amps which sound like very transparent SET's of 30 watts ( modded by Guido Tent via M. van der Veen , Joe Rasmussen and others) and again heavily modded SB3 by Wayne and "PAT" and pws from Paul Hynes and 12 felixes, and so on. Very beautiful and musical music. Until  also because of the many info in audiocircle, i opted for John Kenny's HiFace MK2 and his advice to use attenuators

And I am so happy. The big positive change ( not small at all, depending on the DEQX i suppose) with the attenuators in the spdif IC between SB3 and DEQX, was doubled. I hear new things i never heard before ( except through the turntable) on the CD. main points being more intricate little details like opening up of the lips prior to the sound (voice actually) background noises outside the studio, for instance heavily muted crackling thunder of he bad weather) but even more important they have heir own place in 3D, not "touched" by the other sounds. More focus, much more focus. more and longer decays and shimmering, more different textures in the tone and so on. not (yet) more musicality, it is as musical as my system ever was before the MK2.
this brings me to the question, does the unit need playing-in time?

Now i am ready to seek for HD 96kHz 24bit music on the internet and anticipate a further improvement of the sound. If you think of the Hiface+ and dont need all the extr'as connections of The EVO, try out the MK2, which may even sound better than the EVO

[jkeny]

I have just been made aware of this thread, thanks Kyrill. And thanks for the many words in support of the MK2 & the RF attenuators.

I had a recent customer who sent back their trial Evo after getting the MK2 & comparing them - he said this " I've been listening to the Evo about a month and have very much appreciated the sound, until today. Compared to the Evo, the MK2 has a smoothness that allow the mids to really come forward. In the Evo the mids suddenly sound muted or congested. Wow."

I believe the Evo probably needs battery power to sound it's best but this still isn't as radical a PS treatment as my Hiface units where the clocks have a completely independent PS.

BTW, Kyrill, you will love the sound of 24/96 music & up (it's usually well recorded) - simply stunning & realistic sounding

Also, I'm interested in Randy & your impressions of the differences between different external PS i.e battery Vs Linear supply Vs SMPS

[jkeny]

Also, there's a mention on a head-fi thread http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/499012/m2tech-hiface-evo/15#post_7034672 about the MK1 causing kernel panics on a Mac when the Hiface unit was switched off.

In the MK2 this is address, as all the power is turned off with the switch - with the Mk1, the 5V supply was still coming from the USB cable & powering some of the Hiface chips which I believe was the cause of the issues on the Mac (it only effected 2 or 3 owners, AFAIK).

I also believe that a complete isolation of the battery charger from the unit when it's playing music is of benefit to the sound so my charger ONLY kicks in when the unit is turned off & will not recharge the battery while music is playing - a good thing, I believe. Added to this that the battery is capable of working for a week or more without recharging & you have a plug-in & forget system.

[Helge Gundersen]

This thread is getting old, but still:

I have ordered one of John's boxes, and was thinking of using an external battery for it, partly to save space in the wall outlets...

How did the comparison with the in-the-wall supply go?

How do you connect the cable to the battery terminals?