Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

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bmxmen

Member
Joined 2012
Hi Im starting to think about daphile system, and wondering it is a good DSP for this program. For now i have foobar and geniue electric q DSP. Sound very good. But i need mini pc for a only audio, for remote control. What specification of mini pc will be good for audio use? Dual core? quad core? Thanks a lot!
 
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Triplefun

Member
Joined 2015
Depends on how much you want to spend and what you are looking for in the way of outputs. I am currently looking at an itx mobo with m.2 ssd and integrated WiFi. Spdif is a nice to have. For example see gigabyte b150n phoenix wifi. If you want dsd256 up sampling I suggest an i3 6100 which runs 30% - daphile seems to be less demanding than windows. Next is the music storage. This can be external networked (PC or nas box), USB attached or internal. Internal can be ssd (expensive for high volume) or HDD. I suggest 4tb 3.5" 5400rpm HDD on rubber mounts. Next issue is cooling and whether to go fanless. This will influence the choice of case. Fan based cpu cooling is cheap and there are good options from the likes of noctua and zalman. For fanless I am currently looking at streacom eg. Fc5. You may also want to include a CD drive for ripping and playback. The PSU is also an issue. Options include switched or linear and fan or fanless. The Silverstone sfx300 will only activate the fan when required. Streacom provide a number of internalised fanless options including the use of an optional external power adaptor. Also see the range of products from hd plex.

Other options are whether you want an 'audiophile' USB output (eg sotm or Paul Pang with optional internalised linear PSU) and or integrated DAC. For example you could internalise an ifi idsd nano (dsd256) or micro (dsd512) with the analogue and headphone outputs exposed at the rear of the case and internally connected to the internal mobo USB header. It would be useful if there was a good half height pcie card with integrated dac chip capable of dsd. I like DSD up sampling which is a key strength of daphile. A strength of doing a PC build is that you can add these as futures.

Note you could also consider a nuc, Gigabyte brix or notebook. Second hand notebooks are cheap (eg ex lease business notebook with ssd - see HP 8460p) and flexible but the usb port can be noisy.
 
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Julf

Member
Joined 2011
skypickle said:
why?
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If we are to believe Teddy Pardo,

Linear power supplies, such as those used in Naim power supplies are based on a transformer, rectifier, smoothing capacitors, and a linear regulator. When the AC at the output of the transformer is rectified and smoothed, a ripple is still present on the DC rail. This ripple has the form of a saw tooth which translates into noise at all audible frequencies and has a negative effect on the sound quality. The better the power supply can filter this ripple the better the sound will be. To get an idea of how much the power supply can affect the sound quality suffice to mention that almost all Naim preamplifiers are based on the same amplification circuitry and differ in their ability to connect more or better power supplies.
The amplitude of the ripple mentioned above decreases with the size and quality of the smoothing capacitors being used. Naim Audio uses a brute force technique for the HiCap; they use a 500VA transformer and rely on large low ESR capacitors. Not only that this technique is less effective in noise filtering, but over time, due to their chemical construction, the quality of these Electrolytic capacitors decreases (ESR increases), and as a result the ripple increases. This is the reason for which Naim power supplies require expensive re-capping every 10 years or so.
The most common way to reduce ripple is to use a linear voltage regulator such as the LM317. The core of a linear regulator is an operational amplifier which monitors the output voltage and correct it using feedback. In order to reduce cost, most monolithic linear regulators, including the LM317 used by Naim for their power supplies, make use of a simple operational amplifier which generates its own additional noise. According to the LM317 datasheet it has a typical output noise of 0.003% of the output voltage. For an output voltage of 24V the output noise will be 0.72mV, not negligible...
In addition, all linear (feedback) regulators, including the superior Jung SuperRegulator, have a limitation which is inherent to the way they operate, they can only fix a problem after it occurs. Since the speed in which they can fix the problem (regulate) is constant, their ripple rejection capability decreases with frequency. The LM317 has a ripple rejection of around 80db at 50Hz, which drops to merely 20db at very high frequencies (note that a -60db difference means x1000 times less!!!).
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(from Under the Hood | Power Supplies | TeddyPardo)

There seems to be a lot of knowledgeable people building them
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Knowledgeable in science/technology/physics, or knowledgeable in marketing? :)
 
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chumtoad

Member
Joined 2016
Julf said:
If we are to believe Teddy Pardo,

(from Under the Hood | Power Supplies | TeddyPardo)

Knowledgeable in science/technology/physics, or knowledgeable in marketing? :)
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In Teddy's defence he made his name selling replacements for Naim gear, so it's understandable that he should have some 'views' on their products

I read his comments not as suggesting that LPS is an inappropriate choice, rather that poorly made LPS are perhaps not ideal

The other issue is what is the alternative? I was under the impression the SMPS were very noisy by nature of their design
 
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Julf

Member
Joined 2011
chumtoad said:
I read his comments not as suggesting that LPS is an inappropriate choice, rather that poorly made LPS are perhaps not ideal

The other issue is what is the alternative? I was under the impression the SMPS were very noisy by nature of their design
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Poorly made linear supplies are a bad idea, so are badly made SMPSs. A well-designed SMPS is not intrinsically noisy, but linear supplies and SMPSs have different noise patterns. The SMPS noise tends to be outside audio range, and of a form that is generated by digital circuits themselves in any case, so for digital circuits a linear supply doesn't offer any benefits.

What would you say if somebody offered an expensive upgrade linear power supply for your desktop PC, and claimed that it makes your spreadsheets more precise, graphics brighter and games more engaging? :)
 
D

dziki

Member
Joined 2014
Julf said:
....A well-designed SMPS is not intrinsically noisy, but linear supplies and SMPSs have different noise patterns. The SMPS noise tends to be outside audio range, and of a form that is generated by digital circuits themselves in any case, so for digital circuits a linear supply doesn't offer any benefits.
...)
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Hi Julf and thanks for the knowledge.
Could you give us some examples of well-designed SMPS ?
Thanks in advance
 
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tripwr1964

Member
Joined 2013
yeah every time i plug in a wifi dong this thing goes crazy and goes thru all those start routines.

i tried panda 300mbps and edimax usb wifi dongles.

then if i remove the dongle and reboot... it wont. goes thru same routine.

ONLY way to reboot is to put a fresh copy of daphile on stick and reboot with ethernet.
 
SRMcGee

SRMcGee

Member
Joined 2004
Paid Member
Folks:

I'm in the process of re-ripping my CDs following the unexpectedly early demise of my SSD. I imagined I had more time to evaluate my back-up options and was wrong. Dumb. With a new drive in place and countless hours swapping CDs into cheap USB drives, Daphile is finally running again and I'm noting two issues. Your advice would be appreciated:

1. I raised this question some time ago and never got much of a response. Is there a fix for the "Unknown Album" / "Unknown Artist" errors that plague me? Rescanning doesn't help. I assume the Gracenote license is up to date. Is there a third party app that can scan the unknowns and update Daphile's records? The vast majority of these CDs are commonplace; no pan flute music from Antarctica in my collection.

2. For some reason Daphile no longer recognizes music genres in my collection. I can't find the "on" switch to turn genre recognition back on. What am I missing?

Thanks for helping this dope out.

Kudos, as always, to Kimmo.

Regards,
Scott
 
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Tromperie

Banned
Joined 2015
Is there a fix for the "Unknown Album" / "Unknown Artist" errors that plague me?
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As far as I am aware, no.I get the occasional unknown and not for obscure artists either. The easiest fix, I've found, is to use MP3Tag (for Windows). On installing, it gives a right-click option to open a folder with it. You need to ctrl-A to select all tracks, add some basic info, save, and then use the built-in tagging options. It can also add album art.


For some reason Daphile no longer recognizes music genres in my collection.
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Mystery to me too.
 
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