Building a DIY Music Server

Another basic question, what is the EPS power supply rating?

2 hours ago, Nenon said:

And that concludes this DIY music server build. I hope you enjoyed the read. 

I have enjoyed this thread thoroughly. Very informative and helpful. Fantastic!

Nenon

Can I ask what is the gstp for? Something new for me, all I’ve been doing is 0-1, stylus 2-3, 4-7 hqplayer? 
 

thanks in advance

25 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Nenon

 

Can I ask what is the gstp for? Something new for me, all I’ve been doing is 0-1, stylus 2-3, 4-7 hqplayer? 
 

thanks in advance

gstp handles pretty much all the audio processes in my case (no Roon, no hqplayer, just Stylus player). 

stylus handles the web interface functions. I did not find isolating stylus to have an advantage on sound quality, but I did find isolating gstp to have a significant benefit. It's a little confusing, because one may think that using the Stylus player may mean that you need to isolate the stylus process. But the actual audio-related functions are performed by the gstp process. Obviously, since you use hqplayer, that's probably the most important process to isolate and assign more cores to. 

You may have a slight benefit by assigning 2-3 to gstp rather than stylus.

Try something like this: 0-1 gstp 2-3 hqplayer 4-7 

19 hours ago, Nenon said:

Played quite a bit with CPU Isolation today, and so far, for this build the following sounds best in my system:

0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-15 
 

That would also need tweaking for Roon later, but with Stylus I can hear more of the room ambience and the music gets even more engaging with these settings.

 

What do other people set those to?

 

 

Thanks for the heads up on this!  I haven't yet tweaked those settings but will do so later today and report back.  Also, this might already be on another thread somewhere, but I seem to remember reading about optimized BIOS settings in general.  Is there a summary (or link to a thread) of what this group has found to generally sound better? 

20 hours ago, Nenon said:

0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-15 

BTW, gstp does not generate more than 10 threads, isolating 12 is not necessary. That makes those two options next to try:

0-3 stylus 4-5 gstp 6-15

0-1 stylus 2-5 gstp 6-15

I have an i7-8700T, so 6 cores/12 threads. I settled on this a while back:

• 0-3 RoonServer 4-7 stylus 4-7 gstp 8-11

RoonServer and gstp are used when using Roon+StylusEP. Stylus and gstp are used when using Stylus.

I will try giving gstp even more resources and see if that helps.

In NUCi7 (8 logical cpus), looks like the default isolation is already configured to what one would have configured explicitly in the expert setting:

1127 /usr/bin/smbd : 0,1
1129 /usr/bin/smbd : 0,1
1130 /usr/bin/smbd : 0,1
1132 /usr/bin/smbd : 0,1
1134 /usr/bin/nmbd : 0,1
1682 gstp : 4-7
327 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald : 0,1
342 /usr/bin/lvmetad : 0,1
344 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-udevd : 0,1
450 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd : 0,1
452 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-resolved : 0,1
454 /usr/bin/haveged : 0,1
458 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon : 0,1
463 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-logind : 0,1
495 /usr/bin/dhcpcd : 0,1
683 wpa_supplicant : 0,1
875 nfm : 0,1
885 stylus : 2,3
973 avahi-daemon: : 0,1

PS: I especially like these kind of default small tweaks targeted towards sound quality in Euphony rather than being open ended and leaving much on the user for guesswork.

@Nenon

Thank you very much for this thread.  I love how you detailed out the power supply setup and more.  

I still have this niggle in the back of my head that a Xeon and ECC RAM might, just might be interesting.  (I have built one).   I think I want to go further with it.  I should have some JCAT cards on the way this week.  I am wondering if there is a full ATX motherboard that might be "magic" also.???    So many ideas to test!

Thanks again for sharing the project with everyone.

Bob

You acquired some special parts for the power supply, and had to protect the design.  I would like to know how to go about learning how you make a custom power supply, the rails, the caps, transformers, etc.  That is probably outside the scope of this thread because others seem to understand, but I’d like to know because it’s over my head. 

@Doug Bowerman If it's way over your head, I highly recommend you don't mess around with trying to design your power supply. This could be very dangerous. Leave that part to the experts in the field (like I did too). 

However, if you feel very adventurous there are many different modules you can aquire. A lot of them have been discussed in various threads here. 

12 hours ago, bobfa said:

@Nenon

 

Thank you very much for this thread.  I love how you detailed out the power supply setup and more.  

 

I still have this niggle in the back of my head that a Xeon and ECC RAM might, just might be interesting.  (I have built one).   I think I want to go further with it.  I should have some JCAT cards on the way this week.  I am wondering if there is a full ATX motherboard that might be "magic" also.???    So many ideas to test!

 

Thanks again for sharing the project with everyone.

 

Bob

 

@bobfa

I see that @Marcin_gps liked your comment. He was the person who came in mind when I read your message. I believe he was using the Supermicro X11SC L-F motherboard. That might be a safe bet. 

This weekend I made a coping mistake and lost the core isolation code I used. I have a notepad with possible codes but didn’t mark the code in use. So I put in the code I thought it was but while listening something was off. It sounded muddy, not accurate (0 gstp 1-2 stylus 3),most cores to gstp . I remembered the temperature pattern the cores give so it was not to difficult to get the original code back  and liked it much better, 0 gstp 1 stylus 2-3. So giving the most cores to stylus.

Maybe it is all different when you have 6 or 8 cores to play with I do not know. But if you have the bare minimum cores for the core isolation function to play with I prefer giving the most cores to stylus.

4 minutes ago, RickyV said:

This weekend I made a coping mistake and lost the core isolation code I used. I have a notepad with possible codes but didn’t mark the code in use. So I put in the code I thought it was but while listening something was off. It sounded muddy, not accurate (0 gstp 1-2 stylus 3),most cores to gstp . I remembered the temperature pattern the cores give so it was not to difficult to get the original code back  and liked it much better, 0 gstp 1 stylus 2-3. So giving the most cores to stylus.

Maybe it is all different when you have 6 or 8 cores to play with I do not know. But if you have the bare minimum cores for the core isolation function to play with I prefer giving the most cores to stylus.

I guess the results vary in different systems. 

As I have mentioned earlier, stylus is doing the web ui processing, not the audio-related functions. gstp is doing all the caching and playing. But maybe stylus needs at least a couple of cores for better load distribution.

Have you tried "0 stylus 1 gstp 2-3" instead? Just curious of splitting gstp between cores 1-2 sounds worse than keeping it on 2-3.

12 minutes ago, Nenon said:

0 stylus 1 gstp 2-3

Seems to sound a bit more dull compared to 0 gstp 1 stylus 2-3 which sounds more airy.

Perhaps that's the winning formula for a quad core CPU then. 0 gstp 1 stylus 2-3

I would have to think hard to understand that one. BTW, have you tried 0-1 gstp 2-3? That would give stylus two cores shared with the rest but would isolate gstp. It would be interesting to report on that one.

In my system it is really easy to hear the benefits of isolating and assigning more cores to gstp. But that only proves again that what works best in my system does not work best in others. 

On 1/20/2020 at 2:58 PM, Nenon said:

 

BTW, gstp does not generate more than 10 threads, isolating 12 is not necessary. That makes those two options next to try:

0-3 stylus 4-5 gstp 6-15

0-1 stylus 2-5 gstp 6-15

 

 

I'm using an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X which is 8 cores, 16 threads.  This was a tough call to make but I ended up deciding that 0-3 stylus 4-5 gstp 6-15 sounded just a slightly more open and airy (and in my opinion better)

1032 nfm : 0-3
1042 stylus : 4,5
1127 avahi-daemon: : 0-3
1287 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1306 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1307 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1309 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1311 /usr/bin/nmbd : 0-3
14295 hqplayerd : 0-3
1444 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1445 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
1498 gstp : 6-15
2210 /usr/bin/smbd : 0-3
449 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald : 0-3
463 /usr/bin/lvmetad : 0-3
471 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-udevd : 0-3
602 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-resolved : 0-3
604 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd : 0-3
607 /usr/bin/haveged : 0-3
613 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-logind : 0-3
620 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon : 0-3
659 /usr/bin/dhcpcd : 0-3

I also settled on 0-3 stylus 4-5 gstp 6-15 for now. That might be a good formula for an 8 core / 16 threads CPUs.

Also, the server shipped to its owner. Both chassis combined together were 45 pounds. I am now impatiently awaiting feedback from the owner :). That is the most important thing after all! 

This has been a fun and informative thread.  It is permanently bookmarked.

Are you using external power for the Pink Faun USB card?  Do it benefit from it or is that only to pass power to the DAC?  I can't tell from their website.

1 hour ago, dminches said:

Are you using external power for the Pink Faun USB card?  Do it benefit from it or is that only to pass power to the DAC?  I can't tell from their website.

 

 

I believe that is for sonic benefits, as I am doing this too but I have not compared between internal vs external powering myself. It will also benefit (probably greater) the powering of DAC I suppose but it depends on how much power the DAC needs. It is recommended for a 5V/3A supply. If the DAC needs more power it may not be adequate.