[mcullinan]

Nice development in this thread!

I guess the reason I like tubes in my audio system is due to my father having to manage them in the military computers he cut his teeth on!

We brough back the first Commodore 64 to my neighborhood from the US one summer, and were the envy of the neighborhood.  I remember learning to program Basic on the PET... had to be late 70's or early 80's.

I learned basic too and made a lil video game...a text adventure game w a lil graphics and I was oh 14 and in a room there were two breasts mounted on the wall and if you grabbed them you were milked to death and then I made the screen go all different colors and you collected gold pieces on the way...
never finished making the game though...
was fun but you can def tell I was a teenager
Mike

[mcgsxr]

I would have loved that game at the time.

Not sure what that makes me!   

[PhilNYC]

Beat this, original Apple with AMBER monitor . . . . added a 10 MEG external HD the size of a shoebox for only $900! "No way we'll ever need that much storage space" 

I had an Apple II with a 3-digit serial number (#900-something), 16K of RAM.  "Monitor" was my TV, and storage was a cassette tape recorder....

[kenreau]

Isn't the only drawback slowing down of the interface/processing time?  I did the update and the music folder searches were frustratingly (2-3 seconds) slow so I de-volved back to v 6.5.4 and it improved considerably.

My CPU has 1GB of ram and I did just order another 2GB of additional ram to see if that helps the SC processing speeds.

MSRP, YMMV.

Kenreau

OK, my new 2GB (2x1GB) of ram arrived from Newegg.com and I installed it Saturday.  Initially, I moved the existing 2x512mb sticks from motherboard slots 1 & 3 over to 2 & 4 and then installed the new 2x1GB sticks at slots 1 & 3.  The expectation was I would then have 3 GB total ram.  I fired up the desktop and it seemed to stutter along and work really slow, much slower than just the 1GB.  After rebooting a couple of times with no apparent improvement, I decided maybe the mix of the 512 and 1 GB sticks was not compatable.  (I confirmed both sets of ram sticks are DDR 400).  I pulled the 512 sticks and just used the 2x1GB sticks and restarted the machine and everything appears to be working properly again. 

The speed of the boot up and getting to login pages is marginally faster.  I went to the squeezecenter interface and updated the firmware with the lastest info.  Everything appears to be working properly and about 2x as fast before.  While not as fast as I was hoping for, the interface is now fast enough to be tolerable and not completely annoying.  I would estimate the SC interface speed when paging back and forth through my music folders is now ~1 second whereas before it was generally in the 2~3 second range.  I have all my music files on a separate internal 1TB eSata drive (drive K:) from the main C:drive with the Windows XP os, etc.  I checked my music folder album count and I am currently at ~970 albums, all in WAV file format, so I imagine that explains some of the processing burden?

All in all, I am pleased with the $50 2GB ram upgrade.  I wish it would have resulted in significantly faster processing, but marginally faster is still a worthwhile improvement imho.

Does anyone know if the mix of the old 2x 512 sticks is troublesome mixing with the new 2x 1GB sticks?  (I confirmed they are both the same DDR400 333 speed, non ecc).  According to what I read on the Asus website, my motherboard will only recognize a max of 3 GB without replacing/reflashing to the latest bios.  I would rather not attempt the bios reflash on my own.

Also - another idea just materialized... would the SqueezeCenter processing improve if I was to reload SC on the same independent internal drive that the music files reside in?

Thanks,
Kenreau

[Dan Driscoll]

I had to work Saturday and my wife dragged me out shopping yesterday, so I didn't get a chance to update. I did manage to install the latest & greatest version of EAC and rip some new CDs I haven't gotten to yet.

[jonwb]

Some of the bugs fixed in the latest version are related to the operation of the DUET controller.

BUT...

I do find the current official release to sound very good with modded SB3 and the DUET.

Very recommended 

Wayne & company, I've not upgraded my SB2 since I bought it (and you so effectively modded it!).  I have no idea what version of slimserver I'm running, but I know it's OLD.

I have always not bothered w/ sever software updates because of an issue w/ inverting phase (or not) on "newer" versions of slimserver.  Is that still an issue?

edit:  Actually, now that I think about it, isn't the phase inverting thing a function of the firmware on the player?  And if so, is the latest Slimserver software compatible w/ the older firmware(s)?

[mcullinan]

Have you checked the flux capacitor for any signs of trouble?
Mike

[Wayne1]

jonwb,

The phase inversion happens because the analog section op-amp has been removed as part of the mod.

The VERY early firmware, 15 and older, also inverted the phase. Using firmware 15 and a modded SB2 would keep the phase "correct"

Over the years, the software and firmware has improved a great deal. More features have been added and bugs fixed.

A phase inversion "switch" has not been part of the improvements. If you do update the firmware, the phase of the analog signal will be inverted if you are using an analog modded SB2 or 3.

I personally feel the improvements in the software and firmware are worth changing your speaker wires polarity around to correct the phase.

mgalusha has written a firmware selector so you can run different versions of firmware with the software. I am not sure how well firmware 15 works with SqueezeCenter 7.0 and later

I am also working on a tube analog section for the modded SB2/3 that inverts phase to normal and increases the gain to standard CD output level.

[DSK]

FWIW, I held out forever on 6.2.1/FW15. Eventually I updated to 6.5.4/FW83?. Last week I updated to the current SQ/FW versions.

The result? I could not swear to being able to hear a difference between any of these three versions. 

[jonwb]

jonwb,

The phase inversion happens because the analog section op-amp has been removed as part of the mod.

The VERY early firmware, 15 and older, also inverted the phase. Using firmware 15 and a modded SB2 would keep the phase "correct"

Over the years, the software and firmware has improved a great deal. More features have been added and bugs fixed.

A phase inversion "switch" has not been part of the improvements. If you do update the firmware, the phase of the analog signal will be inverted if you are using an analog modded SB2 or 3.

I personally feel the improvements in the software and firmware are worth changing your speaker wires polarity around to correct the phase.

mgalusha has written a firmware selector so you can run different versions of firmware with the software. I am not sure how well firmware 15 works with SqueezeCenter 7.0 and later

I am also working on a tube analog section for the modded SB2/3 that inverts phase to normal and increases the gain to standard CD output level.

I'd be cool w/ swapping the wires at the speakers, but the speakers (and amp) also serves duty as the front two channels of my HT setup (through a humble RCA jack switcher) and I don't what that gear out of phase if I can avoid it.

Your tube analog output sounds like a great idea.  Gain isn't such a problem now w/ the AKSA LF100, but getting the phase correction and some tubes in food chain would certainly be nice.  So, for now I'll just keep using my old FW and slimserver setup.