I've installed the previous mods Soundcheck put on his Blocg and can say they make a good improvement.
The second version of his mods look even better...
worth a punt for sure.
http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.com...r-network.html
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I've installed the previous mods Soundcheck put on his Blocg and can say they make a good improvement.
The second version of his mods look even better...
worth a punt for sure.
http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.com...r-network.html
Can you elaborate some more on what kinds of improvements have you noticed (as well as what kinds of improvements have you attempted)?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
I've only tried forcing the SB server to convert FLAC to PCM before sending to the Touch, and it made audible improvement for sure.
Curious to know whether abandoning WLAN for Ethernet is worth the hassle...
No worries Alex...I THOUGHT you'd be one of the guys to notice the post... ;)
Like yourself I found getting the server to decode Flac (rather than the Touch doing the number crunching) made an improvement.
This is where the Soundcheck mods are coming from, stripping the Touch's workload back to the bare minimum.
His Linux scripts from the first version of the mods basically switched off unnecessary startup services making the most of the small CPU and memory resources of the Touch.
The new ones (available Sunday 9th apparently - he's sanity checking them before he puts them out there...) prove to go a step further, by switching OFF the Touch's display, which according to himself and john Swenson (He who is to be trusted in all matters Squeezebox...) makes the biggest improvement.
Like Soundcheck says on his blog, the mods he proposes reduces the functionality of the Touch to that of a Duet, but I use Ipeng on my Ipod Touch to control my music anyway, so if the improvement with the screen off is a big step up it wont be TOO much of a problem.
That said, I glance at the Touch to look at whats playing, how long to go etc, so maybe it will be a step too far.
But if its an improvement in sound worth keeping...great!
I found the mods gave the Touch more detail and the soundstage was better defined and more 3D.
There was less "hash" in the sound with the treble sounding smoother but more incisive.
Overall not night and day...but very worthwhile to eek the most out of the Touch.
Well worth trying and easily reversible with a Factory Reset.
Just out of interest Alex, another good "free" improvement IMHO to the Touch's sound is to upsample 44Khz redbook Flacs to 96Khz using the SOX within Squeezecentre.
More solid sounding with more air around instruments, particularly noticable with orchestral/live recordings.
Its just a matter of adding a text file in the Squeezebox directory on the server and changing a setting in SqueezeCentre itself, restarting the server and your done.
Hope this helps,
Gaz
I'll be trying all this too, fairly soon I hope. just waiting for a copy of XP to arrive, and I'll be flattening my old laptop, put the new XP on,and using it to run squeezeserver. Been used to the sound of the Touch as a standalone player, so it will be interesting to hear the differences.
Wha-hey!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
OK, first off, please send me more details on how to add a text file in the Squeezebox directory and how to change the setting in Squeezecentre. Would love to try that tweak!
I've been messing with converting some red book CD tracks to 24 bit, but I'm not able to detect any difference. Perhaps this tweak with increasing the sample rate will be more pronounced?
Like yourself, I'm not sure if I'm willing to sacrifice the utility of the Touch screen -- I am used to glancing at it for a quick info, rather than lifting my remote control.
What I'm mostly interested in is disabling the analog outs, and checking whether it makes any improvements. Have you tried that?
Another thing you haven't touched upon (no pun intended) is the WLAN vs. Ethernet. Is the difference that noticeable? I'm asking because going to the Ethernet might be a huge hassle for my listening room configuration.
Have you replaced the PSU on the Touch?
XP Ali...?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
thats so 2008...
remind me about fitting Win7 when its MY turn to get the the curry in... ;)
:lol: Yebbut I now have a superdooper 17 inch Sony Vaio laptop with quad 2.4 gig processors and 6 gig of RAM...
..so the plan is to flatten to old laptop, put a copy of XP on, and use it purely to run squeezecenter. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by magiccarpetride
That help? :)
Hey..that'll work!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
(By the way...6gb of Ram is so last Tuesday...) ;)
Thanks a million, Gaz. I'm with you -- Teddy Pardo PSU more expensive than Touch itself, what's the point? If it makes that much of a difference, I'd rather spring for the Transporter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Speaking of Transporter, I seem to recall that someone somewhere had made some serious comparisons between Transporter and the Touch into Caiman. Couldn't find the winning/losing side, declared the listening match a stalemate. I'd be curious to hear if the same comparative test could be now done between the Transporter and the Touch into gatorized Caiman? Judging from my initial impressions (as of last night/this morning), Touch into gatorized Caiman via digital coax is now seriously pushing the sound quality into the esoteric, multi-thousand dollars audiophile paradise. Curious to hear whether Transporter could keep it up with this new kid on the block?
Fast enough for the likes of me! :lolsign:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Anyway, stop knocking my beloved's Christmas pressie!!
Happy to help Alex, hope you find the Upsampling Tweak as good as I did!Quote:
Originally Posted by magiccarpetride
About the Caiman/Touch Vs. Traspoorter?
Its was a fellow AOS'er who used his Transporter into a STOCK Caiman as he found the overall sound quality better than the Transporter itself...
now,
couple THAT with the generally recognised opinion over on the Squeezebox forums (and I'm NOT paraphrasing - check it!) that starting from scratch most folk would spring for a Touch with a quality Dac rather than shell out for a Transporter, and you start to form a picture...
...and that was with a stock Caiman.
with your Gator Caiman and a Touch using Soundcheck Mods....your getting maximum bang for your buck.
Dont worry about how much bang for buck as compared to whatever.... ;)....just enjoy it.
The Caiman/Touch combo is one of those things you could spend $$$ trying to better...(as oppsed to make "sound different") best be happy with what you have till the next evolution comes along.
Hey..Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
all I got was a pair of socks and a Toblerone!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
You want a REAL upgrade?
Get a SSD hard drive for your laptop.
Flash drive instead of mechanical hard drive..
whoa..!
You mean an external one? I will, as soon as 1 or 2Tb are available at sane prices.
How much will 1 TB solid state memory be now?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
Consider this: I am keeping my music library (some 350 GB and growing rapidly) on 4 external 1 TB drives, just in case Mr. Murphy decides to pay me an unwanted visit. I'm now thinking about getting the 5th hard drive because one can never be too redundant with that shitty piece of technology (basically, the weakest link in your computing chain). The storage cost adds up in a hurry.
Maybe the day will come when it will make more sense to switch to solid state? You know, no moving parts, no cooling fans...
RAM can still fail :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by magiccarpetride
no an internal one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
They are of the 2.5" format, which means they will slot in a laptop no probs.
In my case, I fitted a 60GB one as my windows drive which made ALL computing stuff be INSTANT.
Open a program..it opens before you let go of the key on the keyboard.
Windows boots up in less than 10 seconds.
With a laptop its different I reckon, but with a desktop you fit a SSD to install windows on and use a traditional HDD to store all your stuff...
A laptop has one hard drive..I'd be temped to fit a SDD if I had one, but a 100MB SSD is still really expensive....
Wow, interesting. I must be behind with the program (read: retarded); I still thought that Transporter is considered bee's knees.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Great to learn that us poor working stiffs armed with nothing but a $300 Touch and a $400 gatorized Caiman can now kick ass on pretty much all these boutique multi-thousand dollars esoteric DS machinery.
Revenge of the downtrodden?
True, and that's why we have backups. But the failure rates for RAM are negligible compared with the HD failure rates.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reid Malenfant
Hi Gaz,
I am interested in doing this but dont understand:
You need to change Save as Type:Text Documents (*.txt) to "All Files" and change File Name to custom-convert.conf - MANUALLY type in.conf...)
ok?
I have copied it as a plain text document and put custom-convert.conf as the file name. What is the All files bit?
Sorry to be a thicko.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Covenant
Hey Jerry :)
when saving text files theres two things you can change:
"File Name:"
and
"save as type
you've already changed "File name" to "custom-convert.conf", which you need to do...but you also need to "Change as Type" from Text Documents(*.txt( to "All Files"...THEN save your file...
I just meant that BY DEFAULT anything you type into a text doument is saved as "text document" (*.txt) BUT you can save what you type in there as ANY type of file...you just need to click on the grey bar to the right of "Save as Type" (when saving your file) and change it from "Text Documents (*.txt)" to "All Files".
Thanks Gaz, got the All Files box. There is a third box now with ANSI in it-is that right?
I can see I have a long way to go, I don't have a bloody clue what you're talking about! :doh:
ignore that Jerry....Quote:
Originally Posted by Covenant
Ali, I can send you the file you need to stick in your Squeezebox directory, no need for complicated computer stuff! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
Right, thanks again for your help Gaz. I will have a poke around to see where its to go. Might leave it for tonight, open a can and play some tooons!:cool:
Cheers mate, it's not that, it's just I've never used squeezecenter to control the Touch as I've always just plugged the Drobo directly in.
Quick additional question: this upsampling will only work on FLAC? I'm asking because I have other lossless files (WAV and AIFF).Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
There is also This PSU for the Touch...
Alisteir,
why dont you buy it and let us know... ;)
beware Greeks bearing Gifts....
(seriously, stick around on this AOS forum, the guys here have a "bullshit filter" (no disrespect to welbourne as I haven't tried their PSU) and theres 99/100 times a solution thats DIY or whatever thats just as good.
"The onus should ALWAYS be on the manufacturer to prove their claims, not for the punter to try it and be happy/unsatisfied" IMHO :)
Just tried the latest Soundcheck Touch mods...
bloody hell, is this that "expectation bias" I read about?
Or is it just a better sound I'm hearing? :stalks:
Give it a few days and swap back mate, then we'll see!
So what's in the latest batch of mods?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Go to the page and try 'em Alex.Quote:
Originally Posted by magiccarpetride
Honestly, dont ask me, just see for yourself. :)
its worth it.
I know, I know... :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Tait
and i always do..only way to "sanity check" any changes you make.
That said, you try 'em Ali, see what you think! :)
I will do, once I get the copy of XP, the post is still buggered, I've been waiting ages for stuff.
Being on the Mac, I feel screwed again. Where do I place this custom-convert.conf file on iMac?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Help!
No idea Alex, sorry! :scratch:Quote:
Originally Posted by magiccarpetride
Try Google? ;)
Hi Chaps,
Very interesting stuff, still trying to get my head round what you're up to...
Correct me when I go wrong;
1. You've done some software mods on the Touch to make it a more efficient 'client'
2. You're using the touch purely as a 'client'
3. You've added a SoX plugin to SqueezeServer which is up sampling everything to 24/96 pcm (is that the right term), and streaming that.
4. You're going to hard wire the touch via the Ethernet port. Probably essential because of 3
Now how does this affect my world...(he said in a selfish manner!)
In my main system I take the digital out from a receiver into my Audiolab 8000DAX (max sample rate is 48k), I've done plenty of A/B testing and can not differentiate between the receiver (playing FLAC), and my CDM cd transport.
So upsampling to 96k is futile for me at the moment due to my DAC limitations
I'm using 2 SB receivers, and one SB3, so bandwidth might be an issue, if I were to upsample there would be an increase in traffic of about 400%. So hard cabling would be essential.
I'd be interested in your comparisons between standard CD playback and the upsampled FLAC version (sorry if I've missed this already).
It would also be interesting to compare the standard receiver vs the standard touch as a DAC source playing 16/44.1 redbook, sounds like the touch may have a few too many bells and whistles, probably bad coding by logitech.
I've been trying to find the device specs for the receiver vs the touch but logitech aren't very forthcoming, as they are mini computers it would be nice to see their processor and memory specs.
I'm having a Jonny Nash moment :scratch:
I already know of someone who has purchased one and he has stated he had a decent improvement in sound quality...Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
It was a bit tricky, I think I may have found it. Now, I've applied the mods, but is there a way to tell that the mods actually took?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
Hardware detailsQuote:
Originally Posted by WAD62
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...wareComparison
Be aware that the Wolfson WM8501 DAC in the Receiver is a 24-bit 192 KHz BUT the CPU in the receiver is not able to handle the load; hence the default rules in the SBS server is to transcode (SoX) when playing highres on a Receiver.
Hi Jan,
Cheers for the info...
I've got 2 receivers (one into an additional DAC), and an SB3 (that uses the Burr-Brown PCM1748E which I think is 24/96 capable).
I thought I'd spotted that somewhere, re. the receiver's DAC hi res capabilities. Have you used it at a higher resolution?
I'm using 7.3.3 (SqueezeCenter) on a linux platform, and SoX is conspicous by its absence, what version of SqueezeServer are you using using 7.5? And is SoX bundled in with it, or is it an optional plugin.
Given that the DAC on my main system (Audiolab 8000DAX) is only capable of a maximum of 24/48 upsampling is rather pointless for me at the moment, but it might prove useful in the future.
Edit; One further thought, what are the implications of upsampling via SoX with respect to ReplayGain? (answered my own question below
Edit#2; I also run winamp against the same FLAC library I use for my squeezeboxes, this goes into an M-Audi 2496 soundcard.
There's a SoX input plugin for Winamp, FFSox, now downloaded and installed, with some very interesting results...
Firstly when checking my current playback form the M-Audio mixer I spotted that it was at 48K, I'd used the default settings which was using the Multi media codec and not the stereo one. So after switching to the stereo codec I was back to 44.1, with a noticeable improvement.
FFSoX for winamp page;
http://in-ffsox.sourceforge.net/
FFSoX is an input plugin, which provides not only upsampling capabilities for multiple file types, but also respects replaygain both album & track, and additionaly replaygain pre-amp. So one has to turn these off on the standard playback options, as the 'effect' is already being applied by the input plugin.
I've set the upsampling to 24 bits & 96khz (highest quality conversion), the highest my card will support, along with Album ReplayGain and +3db ReplayGain pre-amp to emulate my previous playback settings, and turning off Winamps own Replaygain processing.
There is a definite improvement in sound quality, particularly in the smoothness of the top end, everything seems more controlled (not in a bad way)...I like it :):):)
Not only is it an improvement on the original FLAC, but it is also an improvement on the original CD (which sounds identical to the FLAC). Is it the 24bits or the 96Khz or both? Time for some research ;)
N.B. there is an overall increase of around 10% cpu usage for one stream, so this technique may give rise to a performance issue on the squeezebox server when running multiple clients ;)
Regarding upsampling Flacs to 96khz...
Klaus (Soundcheck) reckons his mods work better with 16/44 "native" rather than with upsampling the Flacs to 96khz...
Will try that one tommorow.
Interesting...
Yes very...it's certainly noticeable through my soundcard from winamp @ 4608KBPS!!!!:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
I doubt I'll bother with SoX on my SB server as it won't have the grunt...
However I am going to try some dBpoweramp .wav upsamples (I wonder how the upsampling algorithms compare) on my SB receiver , at least I'll see if the Wolfson DAC really is 24/192. Not a strategy but worth a test ;)
Edit; Neither the receiver or the SB3 will play anything above 48k, unless I've ducked up the conversions... :doh:
Edit; That appears to be their limit due to processing limitations, despite the DAC's capabilities.
Think I'll start a separate thread on upsampling in general...rather than hijacking this one :)
I'm just joining the fray in singing the unreserved praises to this batch of mods. As of last night, I too am the one who took the plunge and applied many of the software mods to the Touch.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
The only mod I wasn't able to try out was switching from the wireless to the wired ethernet (reportedly the most important mod of all). Still, with this vital piece of the mod missing, I am happy to report that the other mods made a hell of a positive difference.
I warmly recommend to all Touch owners to go ahead and apply these mods. Actually doing the mods is easy-peasy, there's absolutely nothing to it (even for me, and I'm a certified Luddite and a guy notorious for being allergic to technology).
My main objection was turning off the screen on the player; however, now that I've done it, and in hindsight, I kind of feel that the screen was a bit tacky and cheesy. Since I'm using the remote anyway, I really don't need it at all.
So now it's all about the sound quality. And my god, the improvements in that compartment are nothing short of breathtaking! On tracks where I thought I've heard it absolutely all, I'm now hearing brand new details in crystal clear clarity. I'm not going to say that now everything feels much louder, but it does indeed feel much more PRESENT.
I can't wait to get to the point where I can apply the WLAN mods, as these are supposed to really open the player up (apparently the wifi module in the player is the biggest culprit in introducing the noise and other disturbances; obviously, getting rid of as much noise as possible allows the music to bubble up to the surface in its full glory).
Anyway, see fer yerselves, you won't look back after you apply this super easy, 10 minute walk through a very straightforward menu that Klaus so generously prepared for the community.
Soundcheck is at it again, this time offering the biggest bang for the buck. Over the weekend he had just unveiled his touchtoolbox20BB1, which purports to fix the volume at 100%, and KEEP IT FIXED.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazjam
You can read more on his blog: http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.com...beta-blog.html
To my ears, this mod, of all his other mods, makes the most dramatic improvement in the sound quality. Going back to the non-fixed volume, after experiencing this fix, reveals how soft and wobbly the signal is when not truly fixed (even when forced to be at 100% loudness).
That's not to say that some people will not prefer the soft and wobbly sound. YMMV.
Thought this the best place to post this (apologies if wrong):
Logitech Touch - £189.99 (delivered)