Audio PC

I built my PC music server based upon information and listening to different devices as the music server to different DACs.

What I have is, an 8Watt (yes eight) commercial grade, two core fanless CPU. Not very powerful, and not high current use, or generating much heat.
Two SSD, one strictly for all software, the other just for media files.

JCat FEMTO USB card.
A 200Watt HDPlex linear power supply with four separate feeds, that feeds 5VDC directly into the USB card, and feeds 5VDC to the SSDs, and 19VDC to the motherboard and CPU.
I use a fanless PC case, with copper and aluminum heat sink.

The operating system is WIN Server 2012 R2 in core mode, software is Fidelizer Pro, Audio Optimizer, JPlay FEMTO.

There are no moving parts to create electrical noise, the power supplies are linear and isolated, the software is quite possibly the biggest player here as it’s designed to turn off processes that just aren’t helping my audio playback.
Everything is plugged into a Puritan PSM-156 power conditioner - cleaning the AC power with exceptional sonic improvement overall. I say cleaning, the PSM-156 shunts high frequency hash in two stages off the active and neutral lines to ground, leaving the AC sinusoidal wave completely intact with no loss of amperage, just minus the high frequency hash/noise.

I am hoping that there is going to be released an operating system written specifically for a music server PC that offers a suite of tools to make it as good as possible. I am still waiting, it may exist already and I have to discover it.

All music servers are computers, the best are designed and " built specifically for that purpose" YES, it makes a significant difference to SQ.

Depending where you live and what tools you have, are you handy man?
In the US, isolate the circuit by turning off the circuit breaker (make sure nobody can turn it on while you work).
Confirm that you have isolated the circuit, there are AC pens that light up, like the Southwire one I have, or a multimeter to measure the potential volts between the contacts, do measure on and off to ensure you’re getting contact with conductors. The guy in the video uses a doo-dad hahahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhwClKlh_G8

If you’re stateside, get a hospital grade outlet at the very least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGG_pYJdar4


What is best? there are many better options
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVBHXSJNTaQ

@auxinput - thanks, I'll be looking into that.
+1 brov

@auxinput, thanks yeah I'm looking at the threads.
I contacted memory player recently about their software - wow very expensive, much more than Euphony Stylus.

Have you personally used either?

@auxinput if you’re not interested in going dual boot, and are happy with Win 10 as your OS, maybe you aught to check out a trial version of Phil’s Audio Optimizer for free? There is a large PC music community and the information is quite good.

14 day trial for free
https://www.highend-audiopc.com/audiophile-optimizer
** If you do try it, please give some impressions? There will either be an immediate improvement heard in your system or not, there will be no waiting for it to run in. **

@snratio - I have heard of one (sorry I cannot recall the name of it) DAC that actually uses USB with checksum, but generally DACs don't store the stream, they process it in real time, and what doesn't get accurately read in by the DAC is lost.
This is the reason AFAIK why so much emphasis on the clean linear power, signal integrity and the least amount of work, or rather unnecessary handling and processing threads that are not essential for the playback of music help the system create less distortion and loss of data packets.

SPDIF is used with claims that because it's not an electrical conductor that it doesn't transmit electrical noise. However, from many reports (not done very recently I must confess) indicate that USB as a means of data transfer to a DAC more often than not, sounds better. Then of course the latest and greatest is TCP/IP Ethernet as the means of data transfer, or I2S over HDMI.
Honestly, I can't keep up, there's so many manufacturers out there, it's like trying to keep up with who makes the best sounding speakers in certain price brackets - does anyone actually know, and then how long until that knowledge is obsolete?

I should add, and I'm sure if I say this incorrectly someone will chime in with why, and how and I'll learn something I didn't know...

In order for a DAC to store the bit stream in a buffer, the protocols required to do so have to be processed by a computer. To do a checksum for example, registers (or data storage) need to set aside to evaluate and store information about the packets in order to determine whether or not the packets of data arrived correctly. So the DAC requires an onboard computer to store the data into RAM, evaluate the incoming bit stream to ensure it's correctly read in, or request the data rate is slowed down and data resent.

The bitstream is evaluated from raising and lowering voltage, or light intensity from one device, and measured on the receiving device, if it's either not sent with a very clean signal, the measuring of that signal may be wrong, and if there's no computer to evaluate the data packets it's discarded at best, or becomes corrupted.
We can read written language and within the contxt of the sentnce detrmine the meening of what was written, a DAC cannot.

The least dropouts of data packets, and the less electrical noise, a more accurate representation of the recording, created by transforming a series of voltage changes or light pulses into an alternating electrical signal that can be transformed by a electroacoustic transducer (speaker) into sound waves, the better. (Read that aloud three times without taking a breath, I'll have you put in a circus)

Memorial Day - Lest we Forget.