Sound Galleries Music Server - il migliore PC per HQPlayer?

[EuroDriver]

Sorry duplicate !

See next post

[EuroDriver]

Credo che Sound Galleries consista quanto meno anche di Geoffrey Armstrong. Se ci sono altri partner, non lo so.
Forse nel progetto ci sono partners tecnologici tipo Pink Faun, ma questo solo Edward (EuroDriver) può chiarirlo.

Let me explain the relationships for the Sound Galleries Music Server project

Geoffrey Armstrong, is the owner and principal of Sound Galleries in Monaco, a High End dealer with a special competence in computer audio. Geoffrey has been an audiophile for over 40 years, and in the profession for over 10 years.

Emile Bok is the owner of Taiko Audio in Holland. Emile has been active in Audio building loudspeakers since he was the age of 12. Emile is a University graduate in computer science, but his love and passion is Audio. Taiko Audio's first commercial electronics product is the Kodo monobloc power amplifier which is based on Hypex NCore.

Emile designed and manufactures the input stage in Holland which features a very high input impedance, and a very high and wide frequency response. The Kodo amp is perfect for accepting input from DAC's with built in volume control. In fact we tested 3 very famous good sounding preamps between the T+A DAC 8 DSD and the Kodo's, and in each each case the T+A connected to the Kodo direct sounded better ! A price performance break through

I am EuroDriver, Edward Hsu.

I am in my 4th wave of high fidelity, and a very good friend of Geoffrey Armstrong's for the last 4 years. After the succesful Munich show last year, Geoffrey suggested to me that I should undertake the project of developing a Music Server.

So that's what I did, learning from forums such as this. One of my great teachers is Audiodan, and an important constant resource and friend is bibo01. Through my travels in Europe and USA I visited a lot of prominent sources of knowledge. I met Emile Bok in July of last year. He was running a 2PC system using Jplay system, and sometimes HQ Player and NAA. I also met PCM champions Pink Faun, who I asked to develop an OCXO PCB for the project which they very successfully did.

The three of us work very much as a team, each bringing his personal competences and 100 percent enthusiasm. As a team we have created the SGM 2015, the best sounding workstation class platform for Roon + Tidal > HQP >USB up to DSD 512

We are united in the task in delivering the best possible sound in computer audio. The SGM performance is at a level that we never dreamed would be possible 9 moths ago. The price is higher than we planed by 50 percent but the sound is 4 times better. So actually sound quality for the money is is doubled 27 Kgs does not come cheap

[EuroDriver]

Edward,

What motherboard does it use? What format?
Is there space for a card? At the back there is no provision for any slot.
However, I was thinking of possible future developments, for example a CUDA or fiber channel card...

The mobo is microATX size. We decided not to use miniITX as the microATX has more space, the traces are further apart and you typically find better and more phases for the CPU power supply. The supplier of the motherboard is ASUS Z-series which allows us to play around with the clock speed. The motherboards are modified by us, removing the chipset crystal and connecting our external OCXO module

There is space inside for add on cards. When we think an add on card would be interesting to add to the SGM, we would change out the back plate. The back plate will be machined on our own CNC milling machine and then Laser engraved with the labeling, serial number and warnings

CUDA is definitely on our radar to test !

[marcoc1712]

Let me explain the relationships for the Sound Galleries Music Server project

Geoffrey Armstrong, is the owner and principal of Sound Galleries in Monaco, a High End dealer with a special competence in computer audio. Geoffrey has been an audiophile for over 40 years, and in the profession for over 10 years.

Emile Bok is the owner of Taiko Audio in Holland. Emile has been active in Audio building loudspeakers since he was the age of 12. Emile is a University graduate in computer science, but his love and passion is Audio. Taiko Audio's first commercial electronics product is the Kodo monobloc power amplifier which is based on Hypex NCore.

Emile designed and manufactures the input stage in Holland which features a very high input impedance, and a very high and wide frequency response. The Kodo amp is perfect for accepting input from DAC's with built in volume control. In fact we tested 3 very famous good sounding preamps between the T+A DAC 8 DSD and the Kodo's, and in each each case the T+A connected to the Kodo direct sounded better ! A price performance break through

I am EuroDriver, Edward Hsu.

I am in my 4th wave of high fidelity, and a very good friend of Geoffrey Armstrong's for the last 4 years. After the succesful Munich show last year, Geoffrey suggested to me that I should undertake the project of developing a Music Server.

So that's what I did, learning from forums such as this. One of my great teachers is Audiodan, and an important constant resource and friend is bibo01. Through my travels in Europe and USA I visited a lot of prominent sources of knowledge. I met Emile Bok in July of last year. He was running a 2PC system using Jplay system, and sometimes HQ Player and NAA. I also met PCM champions Pink Faun, who I asked to develop an OCXO PCB for the project which they very successfully did.

The three of us work very much as a team, each bringing his personal competences and 100 percent enthusiasm. As a team we have created the SGM 2015, the best sounding workstation class platform for Roon + Tidal > HQP >USB up to DSD 512

We are united in the task in delivering the best possible sound in computer audio. The SGM performance is at a level that we never dreamed would be possible 9 moths ago. The price is higher than we planed by 50 percent but the sound is 4 times better. So actually sound quality for the money is is doubled 27 Kgs does not come cheap

Tanks for the explanation, I think is alwais better to make clear business involvment when talking about something meant to be sold.

My motto in building systems is: Simple (and cheep) as I can but not simpler (or cheeper) and I always like more free and open projects, but I wish you the best for your business.

[bibo01]

The mobo is microATX size. We decided not to use miniITX as the microATX has more space, the traces are further apart and you typically find better and more phases for the CPU power supply. The supplier of the motherboard is ASUS Z-series which allows us to play around with the clock speed. The motherboards are modified by us, removing the chipset crystal and connecting our external OCXO module

There is space inside for add on cards. When we think an add on card would be interesting to add to the SGM, we would change out the back plate. The back plate will be machined on our own CNC milling machine and then Laser engraved with the labeling, serial number and warnings

CUDA is definitely on our radar to test !

OK, I thought so that a change in the back plate was possible.
However, power requirements of a 900 or 1000 based CUDA card are high.
A GTX-980 has a 165W TDP. The new GTX-1080 (US$599) has a 180W TDP.
Do you think that your present power supply would be enough for it?

NVIDIA Announces the GeForce GTX 1000 Series: GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Arrive In May & June

• the system power supply must also have a maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 28 Amps or greater
• the system power supply should also have at least one 75-Watt 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connector. There are some non-reference design cards that require two 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors (e.g. Gigabyte GTX 960 G1 Gaming 2 GB [GV-N960G1 GAMING-2GD REV.1.0], Inno3D iChill Geforce GTX 960 2GB Ultra, etc.) or one 150-Watt 8-pin PCI Express supplementary power connector (e.g. EVGA GTX 960 SSC 2 GB [02G-P4-2966-KR], MSI GTX 960 Gaming OC 2 GB [GTX 960 GAMING 2G], etc.).

Talking about conversion to DSD256/512, in my view CUDA is really needed in multi-channel DSP. A high end CPU like yours is fine for 2ch DSP. However, when multi-channel is involved, I fear that even a high end quad core is not enough - a 4790k was brought to its knees for a 8ch DSP to Hapi DAC - and a 8 core is required rather than a CUDA. In broad terms Miska even indicated that 2 cores are needed every 2 channels.

[bibo01]

Edward,

Could you please tell us in terms of percentage how much it influenced adding a LPS to the motherboard and how much a new clock.

[EuroDriver]

Edward,

Could you please tell us in terms of percentage how much it influenced adding a LPS to the motherboard and how much a new clock.

It's pretty difficult to give numbers.

let me put the noise floor changes in to three groups

Very big - mobo power supply, SSD power supply, OS tuning
Quiet big - RAM optimization
Big enough to be clearly audible - different power cables, USB cables

The sonic effect of the OCXO is quite different from SQ which comes reducing RF noise. the OCXO effect is to deliver a pristine clarity and coherence to the music

[bibo01]

Recensione del Sound Galleries Music Server:

Sound Galleries Monaco Server (SGM2015) - Positive Feedback

Foto dell'interno: