USB Nervosa Thread Decrapifiers, pro interfaces, and bears oh my

Thanks to all for your advice!

I decided to purchase a Matrix Audio Element H PCIe to USB card which came with an external switching power supply. It arrived and I installed it... coming up two hours now.

I am upgrading from another cheaper PCI to usb card

I am very, very, pleasantly surprised. Perhaps even shocked. Everything has taken one big step up in realism. That encompasses timbre, texture, impact, micro and macro-dynamics. The headphone's staging is mostly similar, but imaging feels holographic now. This effect is somewhat indistinguishable from the heightened sense of realism.

I apologise to readers for the gushy and broad terms I am using, but unlike most headphone mods I made, or even upgrading to the Yggdrasil A2 and Mjolnir 3earlier this year, there have not been specific areas of improvement. Rather it is easier to name the things which have stayed the same. Basically, the intrinsic qualities of the headphone are the same: FR and size of the headspace. Everything else is improved one big step. It's overwhelming.

To put this in context, when I first purchased the HD800 five years ago perhaps 50% of songs were listenable (from MCTH and SDAC combo unit), even by my very low standards at the time (I was just embarking on this journey). I would now possibly consider close to 0% of songs listenable in that condition. Anyway, just removing the dustcovers improved that to 70% for me at the time. After hardwiring, removing rear grilles, doing a weird remount of the headphone driver, I felt that 90% of my music was listenable. So, I just avoided 10% of my collection.

Throughout this process, each upgrade showed me that I didn't know my music preferences at all. Rather, I had simply been listening through a certain lense prior to the upgrade, which was more or less favourable to any particular song. Each upgrade lifted a veil which allowed me to appreciate more of my collection, but also appreciate my entire collection more!

Fast forward to a year ago, I had done a ton of mods to the headphone and felt I was close to the limit of its potential. 98% of my collection sounded listenable, but my standards had risen a lot too. Then I bought Mjolnir 3 and Yggdrasil A2 shortly after. I was underwhelmed. Sure, some things were a step up. I wasn't going to return them. But I wasn't hearing what others described. Things like holography (imaging and depth) and timbre had improved slightly but felt irrelevant compared to what was still missing: engagement, macro dynamics, immediacy. I bought A1 cards, planned interconnect upgrades, and, frankly, lost interest. I had hit 99% listenable but it felt like a technical achievement rather than bringing satisfaction. Bad mastering, harshness, dullness, and a sense of dynamics being compressed still haunted me.

I figured that the source must be holding me back, and so recently after a little research made this purchasing decision. I have jumped straight to 100% listenable!!! Not a 2x, 10x, or even 100x improvement, but rather everything sounds simply fantastic now! I can finally hear that bad mastering is not a problem unless your system also has problems which will exaggerate it. I can hear every little flaw if I want to pay attention to them, but none are shoved in my face. Instead, everything is both accurately but also flatteringly pleasant.

Someone here once wisely said (might have been @Hands) that they would rather have a mid-fi dac and good source than a top-tier dac but a bad source. I can now attest to this.

TLDR: PCI card to USB worked for me even though it's feeding the "source agnostic" Unison usb, in a BIG way.

 

I am still stuck to my chair. Cant go to bed.

Just wanted to add that my preferred listening volume has risen from 10:30 to 11:30 on the MJ3 dial. Pretty huge difference tbh. It has been my experience that preferred listening volume has risen over the course of the journey I described above.

 

Thanks for the above. I had already removed the dust covers a while ago at @ext1's mentioning doing so, and that really helped move the needle, but hadn't thought to remove the grilles too. Looked it up and found a YouTube, was super simple to do and it's audible. Unsure if I've got the skillset/mettle to hardwire (not fond of precluding future cable rolling, either) or mess with the driver mounting, but generally find I tend to ignore the meat and potatoes of doing something to the 800's themselves in favor of fussing with everything upstream of them.

Re: USB cards, I've tried a Paul Pang and a JCAT. JCAT was better, but only by a smidge. If you're gonna do anything else, probably just get a cheap LPS to power the card. Something like an Uptone Audio LPS-1 on eBay or something would work. Gonna get diminishing returns there, though.

 

There are a lot of issues with stock 800 for sure, but what most people don't realize is that most of those stock 800 issues can be alleviated or solved by focusing on the system outside of the headphone. So most people think stock 800 sucks for that reason.
It's also true to note that not everything can be solved with the system, though. There are definitely stock 800 limitations. Otherwise I wouldn't have developed my 800. But I've found that with a sensible system, stock 800 can get pretty listenable. Removing or controlling things like electrical noise helps a lot. I think maybe if I knew about this when I was developing my 800, I might have stopped development because the whole purpose was to make a great 800 for myself, lol.

 

Hi @ext1
this is so cool to get a chance to talk to you! Yes, I 100% agree. the HD800 are rough both because of their strengths (thus revealing upstream problems) and also their many weaknesses.

The relevance to this thread is just to report that in my particular experience, I had alread come so close to optimising the headphone, AND amp, AND dac AND synergy, that fixing the source was actually transformational! I can highly recommend taking this step once you get this far down the audio rabbit hole and can attest to the importance of a clean source. Have not yet gone so far as using WFPlay or Hysolid. https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...omputer-audio-players.134/page-18#post-299143

<offtopic>
I would love to share my HD800 mods with you. Let me know if you'd like me to PM you. People seem fed up with HD800 mods, as they are risky, time-consuming, and often questionable. But I am convinced that I have one or two ideas you might be easily able to test and appreciate.
</offtopic>

 

I agree - this is why this thread exists and it's an important resource for all of us. Admittedly I am still a novice in USB noise and all that, so I have a lot to study and catch up on this topic. Thanks to the guidance of some of the members here though, I've been able to start to understand why this is important and why it makes a difference.
If you haven't already, try a pi2aes or a Holo Red, or something like that - network streamers let you move away altogether from USB. I've tried a little bit already, dipping my toes into pi2aes and Aurender, but I just can't seem to get away from foobar+terabytes of flac music on my NAS/HDD for now. It's also because Schiit's USB is very nice, though!

Sure, PM me!

 

I believe foobar is not bit perfect since recently. Maybe try Winyl or musicbee with the settings described.
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...omputer-audio-players.134/page-18#post-299143

Personally, I did notice the differences between foobar, winyl, and musicbee as described in the review. I can't go back to foobar now. But also, I don't know how to use a NAS with any of those players.

 

I am using a $18 USB card into BF2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DFLXVJL?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1. It's probably not bad, but I won't mind upgrading, but Matrix Audio Element is beyond my budget. Bifrost also has SPDIF, I wonder if PCI -> SPDIF coax cards can be an option to avoid expensive items.

 

I used to use a similar card from StarTech on my older computer. It sounded better than the built in usb ports. My new setup uses the built in ones and it sounds as good as the StarTech pci card.
As for PCI to spdif, I suppose one factor may be how good the clock is on the PCI card vs the clock in your dac. A very good async dac, clock, and usb can sound better than some of the spdif implementations.

On another note, for me, out of the half dozen usb to spdif bridges I demoed and owned I would not buy any of them at this point in time. Yes the really expensive ones like the top Mutec model sound really good but for me were not worth the cost. I would much rather spend a few grand on better speakers.

 

I actually have a big update to share!

I no longer use the Matrix Element H because I have achieved better sound directly from the USB on the motherboard! How is this possible, you ask? Because it turns out that USB cards are just trying to do decrapification like any other digital-to-digital device. The root of the problem is the behaviour of the motherboard and cpu system in the first place. Default BIOS settings have been optimized for *throughput* rather than clock stability. The most obvious example is the Spread_Spectrum setting in the BIOS. THIS DELIBERATELY ADDS JITTER TO DISTRIBUTE THE NOISE SPECTRUM. All overclockers recommend disabling this, and it turns out that it helps audio quality to disable it too. By disabling many unwanted settings like this, and following many gaming PC optimization guides, I have found huge improvements for free. I have not yet tried fixed clock configuration but expect that would help greatly too.

I will write up a quick guide on PC optimization for sound quality, but may not do this for a few months yet.

 

Secondly, and supplementally to the above, there are OS-level changes that also help. Assigning process affinity to certain cores prevents interruption to the music player process and associated processes. Setting their priority to real-time also helps mitigate this.

 

@Royaume great news! I'll be waiting with impatience for your instructions! From my side, I also have something to add. So, 3 steps USB decrapification and nervosa cure:
1. Do the OS tweaks by @Royaume when they are available
2. To test if a linear power supply will help, initially just grab my $18 card from the #1928, then connect a regular USB power bank into its power slot. I definitely hear some improvements! Obviously, you cannot run power bank all the time, it will discharge in a day or two, however, this is more than enough to test it.
3. If it works, either use a linear 5V power supply if you want, or just decrapify the 5V PC plug, instructions below:

Follow the instructions for 12v to 5v step down: https://www.eleccircuit.com/12v-to-5v-converter-step-down-3a-regulator/
This circuit is already using the combination of large (> 100 uF) capacitor for low frequencies and a small (0.1 uF) capacitor for high frequencies. But in addition to that, before the circuit, add a serial inductor >50 uH that will mute audio range oscillations as well.

I am about to order those parts from Mouser, will report how it works in a couple of weeks.

Update: Nope, I need to correct myself. Apparently this card doesn't use the external PSU by itself, it's only passing it through the USB to the DAC. If the DAC doesn't need the USB power there is no change.