Squeezeboxes and things

[TopBalcony]

A few weeks ago I decided to have some fun playing with computer audio. I had never used a pc as a a source, and was put off by the obvious/apparent difficulties of the other stuff the pc has to do besides outputting music.

However I have also had Squeezebox products for a number of years, most recently the SBT. Being a natural, but untalented pc nerd, there were some posts on the Slim Devices forum that caught my attention. These centred on the point that it would be possible to output a usb stream from the SBT. Aha I thought, well if I can't do this, at least I could plug it into the computer and see what all the fuss is about.

FF a couple of weeks and I now have a HRT music streamer II+ (the latest 2011 model). I was tempted into this after some some comments by John Swenson on the Squeezebox forum, most notably one that said simply, of his experience with SBT and HRT streamers, "wow". The HRT is a USB only DAC (asynch for the technically minded(not me!)) so it requires a bit of fiddling with the SBT firmware. I must say however that the results are fabulous.

I have never before heard a digital source that could make me think of giving up LPs. There is a flow, a rhythm about this thing's reproduction that just draws you into the music and makes you smile. It kind of reminds me of applying the passive mod to Stan's dac, but to a much greater degree. This is with the Soundcheck mods applied (but for anyone happy to do the usb conversion these should be straightforward). It is an improvement to the extent of me wanting to stay awake to listen to all my cds again (the old "night and day" cliche). The thing I hang onto most is I suppose the detail - listening to a familiar piece of music and eg a keyboard motif will just jump out of the background and demand to be followed. All this in a musical whole that just demands one more track.The only equivalent experience I have had with hifi was listening to an extremely expensive Whest phonostage.

Absolutely no associations, just wanted to give the heads up to SBT users. I think there a few places online that you could get a HRT on trial or return. I just think there is a special synergy here that is well worth trying to see if it fits your system.

PS - have also tried the pc running a trial of J River, but for whatever reason, the SBT is far ahead.

[electric beach]

Interesting.


Still getting to grips with a Touch myself.

[Mike]

Bah... I'm gonna have to get a Touch!

GoogleTime!

[Tim]

A few weeks ago I decided to have some fun playing with computer audio. I had never used a pc as a a source, and was put off by the obvious/apparent difficulties of the other stuff the pc has to do besides outputting music.

That pretty much nails it, to get the best out of file based audio you really have to dedicate your chosen device to doing nothing but playing music, stripping everything else out. Plugging a good DAC into a laptop or PC can often outperform many so called high-end CDP's, but strip everything else out the way and you can elevate that performance by a considerable margin

It can take a good deal of trial and error, but it will pay dividends in the end. In my experience one of the biggest things that can mess with your SQ (apart from Windows) are device drivers.

[TopBalcony]

Should have added a couple of points. Firstly, there is a potential downside in that you are limited (because of the SBT) to 16/44 output - not a big issue for me (I think anyway the quality of the recording is more important than the bitrate used). Also, if you want to try and follow the instructions from JS on the SB forums, I found that Win SCP (recommended by Soundcheck) is a lot easier to use than (I think its called) "Putty" that JS used.

I don't know why this little thing sounds so good, but intuitively it feels as though it must be something to do with a low load on the SBT processor (due to some extent no doubt on the Soundcheck mods), and the asynch interface (I know this may be controversial!). Also I guess the fact that it specialises in a single input and getting the best out of that.

[Vincent Kars]

Touch can do up to 24/96

[TopBalcony]

Touch can do up to 24/96

If you know how to do this without clicks and pops via USB over a HRT streamer then please tell me.

[Vincent Kars]

Didn’t understand this was about problems with the USB performance.
Sorry

[lovejoy]

Good to hear you have USB output working nicely.

I've applied some of the software mods so far - volume locked to 100%, wi-fi switched off, screen off, buffer made smaller, and they all make a difference. So far I've found that switching the screen off, to my ears, has made the most difference. In stock form there is some hardness in the midrange on the touch and switching the screen off seems to address this somewhat. Don't get me wrong though, even in stock form, there is something VERY musical about the Touch which I've rarely experienced with computer based audio.

From what I can gather, the problem with the USB output at the moment is that the Touch runs an older Linux kernel which does not support the 24-bit format that your DAC (and mine) needs to get rid of those clicks and pops - 24-bits in 3 bytes I believe - whereas the Touch outputs 24-bits in 4 bytes. I've not managed to get USB output working to my Audiolab 8200CDQ at all yet and I'd really like to hear this, but I guess it will come in time. There still seems to be a lot of heavy development going on with the Touch firmware.

[WAD62]

Good to hear you have USB output working nicely.

I've applied some of the software mods so far - volume locked to 100%, wi-fi switched off, screen off, buffer made smaller, and they all make a difference. So far I've found that switching the screen off, to my ears, has made the most difference. In stock form there is some hardness in the midrange on the touch and switching the screen off seems to address this somewhat. Don't get me wrong though, even in stock form, there is something VERY musical about the Touch which I've rarely experienced with computer based audio.

From what I can gather, the problem with the USB output at the moment is that the Touch runs an older Linux kernel which does not support the 24-bit format that your DAC (and mine) needs to get rid of those clicks and pops - 24-bits in 3 bytes I believe - whereas the Touch outputs 24-bits in 4 bytes. I've not managed to get USB output working to my Audiolab 8200CDQ at all yet and I'd really like to hear this, but I guess it will come in time. There still seems to be a lot of heavy development going on with the Touch firmware.

Hi Rich,

Why do you want to use the USB output of your touch rather than the Coax, into your Audiolab?