SDTrans 384?

[rickmcinnis]

Thanks, Greg. I will email you my address.

I agree that the batteries can make a difference, I have heard it for myself with the components I have used them on. Has anyone been as strident and obnoxious a proponent of the battery scheme as I?

But I did start with a big battery at the input so that is why I assume that the clock was making the big difference. I know many mediocre regulators have been taken out of the circuit along with all of the electrolytics which I removed. The only one left is the one for the display and I figured it did not make a difference sonically.

I agree, Nigel, that some kind of back and forth would be definitive. I wish I could assure you that THIS is the thing that matters the most. I go with the assumption that the clock I received is superior to the one that was installed OEM. It almost has to be unless I am the luckiest boy in the world and everyone knows that Pee Wee Herman is the luckiest boy in the world so there it is ... (in case you never saw PW's HBO special then that sentence sounds very peculiar, and that is BY FAR the best thing he ever did. In fact it is very good)

All I can assure you is that the end result is very impressive. Of course, I worry that I have made an opinion with too little time spent. When I get the thing working again I guess I could remove the power from the new clock and get the old one working again. Must admit I would rather keep the soldering to a minimum which is the thing persuading me from wanting to do that. These boards are not readily available and I would hate to break it I'll see how interested I remain by the weekend. If you really want to know this I will do my best to allay my concerns and yours.

I can say that Nigel needs to find a way to turn his display on and off as needed, If turning off the LED makes a difference with the SDTrans I cannot imagine the difference that turning off that DELUXE display on the CHINA board would make.

[rickmcinnis]

Through trials and tribulations with powering the IIS rail on the SDTrans (I have had two BELLESON regs fail here, nothing explains the failture) I have found that this rail benefits greatly from having a seaparte transformer and rectifier from the other rails.

Still using a BELLESON reg to charge the battery - thought the A123 was at fault so I substituted one of the big batteries I used with the computer. The combo (as usual I am too lazy to try different configurations) of big battery and compleltey separate power supply for the reg produced the most amazing sound I have heard from my system.

Dave Davenport was relentless in his recommendation that the purely digital stuff be powered from a different tarnsformer than the "analog" part for best isolation and there is something going on here that must be related to that advice.

My intention was just to get the thing working again. I did not start out last night with the intention of finding out what would happen with a different transformer (please allow this abbreviation, but that is the core of the idea), it was just the easiest way.

So it was with great surprise and pleasure to hear what happened.

Of course, I should listen through the weekend before making pronouncements but at this time this REDBOOK only setup sounds absolutely superior to the analogue setup. Since I have been using the analogue setup while dealing with these reg problems I am not using distant memories.

The sound is enveloping, just like with a good MC cartridge. I mean the illusion fills the entire room.

Have to add I think that the CD ripper OS has much to do with this but that is not for the faint of heart.

Sent a copy to Randy but it is not as portable as I hoped it would be. He cannot get it to work from the SNAPSHOT. I wonder if his XEON CPU is too different than the 4130t I use that it does not know what to do with the OS?

[nige2000]

hmmn.................
whats the current output of a belleson?
batteries are greedy

actually id go one further where possible
when not using batteries
you should use as many transformer as regulators and nearly for all components because (unlike batteries that have that large noise neutralising factor ) of cross contamination of noise and the separate ps system (for the most part)
will manage that much better

your talking a lot of the old hocus pocus on diya
i'm surprised you haven't been witch hunted and burnt at the stake :)

[rickmcinnis]

I think my sincerity is disarming them!!! SSASSEN has been silent. I wish he would take the challenge.

The first BELLESON was rated for 500 mA but the second for minimum of 2A depending on hestsinking and I used a good sized heatsik.

This same suspect battery did not cause a problem with the "separate" supply I am now using but to be safe I went with the BIG BLUE one. Wanted you to assure you I am still using a battery.

Yes, it is one of those old audio axioms to keep everything as separate as possible and now I wonder if I should go to four individual raw supplies for the SDTrans.

The thing is so damned good, astonishingly good. I am going to start buying lots of CDs.

Any particularly fine selections you would recommend?

What CPU are you using?

If you are using something like the 4130t I wish you would try this ripper OS. You may be missing more than you would ever believe. Sent a disk to a fellow with some selections of music I thought he would like and he says he can hear a difference. He is not reporting as much difference as I am hearing but then he might have had a better ripping regime than I was using before this.

I have sent a disk to Randy for his appraisal, too.

I would send one to you if you would like. Give me an idea of what you would listen to. If you are interested email me your address with some suggestions.

[nige2000]

I think my sincerity is disarming them!!! SSASSEN has been silent. I wish he would take the challenge.

more like persistence :)

The first BELLESON was rated for 500 mA but the second for minimum of 2A depending on hestsinking and I used a good sized heatsik.

ive seen them pull up to 5a

This same suspect battery did not cause a problem with the "separate" supply I am now using but to be safe I went with the BIG BLUE one. Wanted you to assure you I am still using a battery.

Yes, it is one of those old audio axioms to keep everything as separate as possible and now I wonder if I should go to four individual raw supplies for the SDTrans.

The thing is so damned good, astonishingly good. I am going to start buying lots of CDs.

Any particularly fine selections you would recommend?

everybody knows i only listen to oscar peterson trio we get requests (06 you look good to me) on loop:)

What CPU are you using?

ive a couple of 4130's here

If you are using something like the 4130t I wish you would try this ripper OS. You may be missing more than you would ever believe. Sent a disk to a fellow with some selections of music I thought he would like and he says he can hear a difference. He is not reporting as much difference as I am hearing but then he might have had a better ripping regime than I was using before this.

I have sent a disk to Randy for his appraisal, too.

I would send one to you if you would like. Give me an idea of what you would listen to. If you are interested email me your address with some suggestions.

ill try the ripper os in time
im sure theres a good difference as the difference between wmp and db poweramp was pretty big
probably when i finish the amp (which is fricken awesome)
yea sending me a disk sounds like a great idea
what disks are supposed to be good i need to get some?
what sort of music do you suggest?
maybe a surprise and something im familiar with

[rickmcinnis]

Trying the ripper should be easy now.

I had thought my idea of first installing a minimized nLite XP OS was the way to get the MBR and partitions set so the SNAPSHOT would fit right in - but Randy reported he got only a cursor.

I had been busy ripping disks and did not try this out myself much to my embarrassment that I have wasted Randy's time - though it wasn't wasted since his input was valuable.

It has been awhile since I worked with this stuff so I am slowly remembering things. Yesterday afternoon while working in my yard I remembered that SNAPSHOT has the facility to restore these things to any disk so I connected another disk to the machine, just to be sure I used DISKPART to clean the disk and then installed a FAT32 partition of the same size as the SNAPSHOT was made from (2000 mB - for a 32 mB OS - I will eventually shrink it). Marked the partition ACTIVE, went to SNAPSHOT and asked to restore image and when I got to where you select the disk to restore to I right clicked on the ID panel (to the left) for that disk - this gives you the option to restore the MBR and the partition structure. I did them both and then proceeded to write the image to the disk and it booted to dBpoweramp like the original. Still waiting to hear from Randy if it worked for him but it should unless there truly is some conflict with his CPU.

When I tried to just write the SNAPSHOT image to the disk I got the same result as Randy - nothing but a cursor on the screen so i hope this means he will be able to get it to work.

You must select SATA IDE mode in BIOS before running XP.

I would be glad to send you a disk and I do not mind surprising you but I would want you to listen to the thing. I worry the surprise might be greater than your tolerance.

I am using battery power for the SATADOM OS drive and the laptop drive for collecting the music. I think I should try a battery power supply for the CDROM but as yet I have not. I am using the OPTIMA for the CPU and the video card. All else is supplied by the POWERFLOWER supply. I would like to try the PANG SATA cables between the CDROM and to the music disk but can't begin to bring myself to spend the money. I connect the CDROM and the music disk to SATA 2 ports.

From what I have read I have chosen to use a spinning disk (formatted to FAT32 since the ripper has had NTFS removed and FAT makes better aesthetic sense to me) to collect the music files. Tony Lauck made mention of the busyness of the SDD moving stuff around and feared that since this occurs during the ripping process could well be harmful to the quality of the file. This makes sense to me.

To finish off the operation, put a copy of SLITAZ on a CD/DVD to run LIVE. Attach your SATA SD writer to a SATA 2 port. I have only two SATA 2 ports so I have to move the cables around when changing modes. First select SATA AHCI mode in bios. Select SLITAZ core at start up and when it loads go to SYSTEM TOOLS/FILE MANAGER and make your copy.

If you need to format the disk there is the excellent GParted as part of the SLITAZ package. SLITAZ is close to perfect for this aspect. It shows 52 mB of memory is used. I figure, with the ripper, at 32 mB the OS is on the memory even though I have done nothing to MAKE it do this. I tried removing stuff not needed from SLITAZ but, so far, cannot get it to work. I do not think I could remove enough to make any difference, anyway.

I am using a 2 gB memory though 1 gB would be plenty. The 2 gB stick sounds better. It is a low latency MUSHKIN stick.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146742

Looked for a low latency 1 gB stick and none of the available 1 Gbs are as low latency as the 2 gB one I linked.

I am running memory and CPU at 800 mHz - CPU one core and everything I can turn off is turned off.

I would hope you would be able to use your battery powered board for this. It could only be better than the POWERFLOWER on P24.

I have little experience with the "high rez" formats but I have trouble believing it could sound better than this. The SOEKRIS as far as I am concerned is not really well suited for "high rez" so I figure I would need a different DAC to try it properly.

When I look at what is available in "high rez" I find very little of interest so I am not in any hurry to bother with it. I think there is much more to REDBOOK than I would have thought possible. I feel confident you will come to the same conclusion.

I have no Oscar Peterson CDs.

I am using the garden variety SANDISK 32 gB disks I get from AMAZON for $9.40 each. I have no interest in buying the more expensive disks since I cannot imagine them having much of a useful effect. I figure as long as you do not make too many writes these are all you need. I plan on having a library of the disks that will remain as is. If a disk becomes glitchy I would simply make another one.

Snapshot: http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ will work for 30 days for no charge. Don't feel bad I have purchased two licenses to you can pretend your are using one of mine. It will restore forever, you will lose the abiolity to make an image but I doubt you are going to do that anyway, but if you do need such a facility this is a great tool.

SLITAZ: http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/ I am using the stable version. Please use the LIVE CD so you can turn USB off in the BIOS when you use this system. I am going to remove the USB xtal one of these days from the motherboard.

The ripper would be useful for computer audio. One wonders if the SD disk would be superior for computer audio? I think it might be. The fact that the SD disk does nothing to the files once they are written would have to be an advantage..

The only disadvantage is that one cannot take the disks in and out of the reader/writer while the machine is running. This is the case at all times, you must turn off the system to remove or insert disks. With the SDTrans you must not remove disks while they are playing - must be the same mechanism.

The computer talk above is a stop gap - for real musical pleasure from digital the SDTrans is the way. In my most unhumble opinion ...

[rickmcinnis]

SO some details on this amp you are a-working on?

AS far as music I would send - no audiophile type stuff since I do not have any of it.

It would be music I think is interesting.

My idea is to find ways to make the music I care about sound the best it can.

Where are your limits? Not that I am into heavy metal and its even worse permutations but I do like rock music that is out of the mainstream and orchestral music of the 19th and 20th centuries.

I have been listening to music obsessively since I was eight years old. First the Beatles grabbed my attention, that is when I discovered rock and pop music and since have had an ear for those who want to make the ordinary interesting again. No interest in the weird for weirdness sake stuff. I "heard" the SEX PISTOLS when they came to Atlanta for their US tour, first stop. Terrible concert but very interesting proceedings, there were more press people there than ticket holders. But the record was mostly good. Went to all of Elvis Costello's shows which were the opposite - great musicians, incredible concerts.

I do not have that many CDs and tend to obsess over a few favorite bands. I do not have the SEX PISTOLS CD. Sorry. I do have the LP from the first pressing, though! Much preferred Public Image Ltd.

So my CD collection is heavy with plenty of Bruckner and Weill for orchestral stuff. A little bit of the rest just not very extensive. I am wanting to change that.

Not much jazz - Thelonius Monk, a few Miles Davis records, and Charles Mingus is about it. Those fellows are the only jazz people who interest me now. I listened to lots of jazz in high school but over the years, I blame FUSION, the music has become a caricature of itself. I have lots of LPs but not much on CD. I probably will increase my Monk and Mingus now.

Rock - Beatles, Kinks, Who, Rolling Stones, Procul Harem, Soft Machine (first three), Pavement, Replacements, Pixies, King Crimson, the first two The Band CDs - got bored after that - actually I usually get bored with any of them with their third records, Rickie Lee Jones (first three), James Brown, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel (first four), Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Henry Cow, David Bowie (the odder ones), Beach Boys (again the odd records), well, you get the idea. I would put in Simon & Garfunkle's BOOKENDS since I think that is their great achievement - only one I have. Plenty of other one album bands.

If this sounds like a mess then you probably do not want me to send you a disk but if not ...

I am going to send you the copy of the ripper again.