I want to squeeze out everything from my battery powered Asus 1005PE netbook. I have found that reducing power consumption gives better sound, far better than dCS stacks which I used before, and for 1/100th of the price.
I replaced the internal drive with a 120 GB SSD, but maybe it's too big so I will replace with something smaller. I'm using Puppy Linux 5.04 for eeepc and I always turn the display off when listening to music. With the built in Powertop program it shows 3.3 watts in idle and 4.3 watts with music playing through USB output. In hibernation it takes 0.4 watts, and this is what the RAM uses?
I have disabled everything in BIOS and underclocked the CPU maximum, I have found that the limit is in the CPU and I can't do anything. I bought Asus 1015PEM which has Dual Core CPU and it doubled the power consumption which lead to worse sound. Single core CPU is a must for music playback, I believe the same would be with the RAM.
I'm wondering which RAM gives the best sound. A while back I experimented with my desktop computer and got better sound with RAM that had metal heatsinks, even though the GB was twice as much, I believe this to be from EMI shielding.
There is another problem. When having the music tracks stored on the SSD I get worse sound than when having them stored on the RAM (personal storage file), and this is limited to the RAM size. I tried removing the SSD and booting up the system with a USB memory stick, but I got an aluminum sound signature from the USB output, I heard noise circulating to the USB stick which changed the sound signature of my system negatively. I unplugged the USB stick and the aluminum sound signature was gone. But I couldn't start the Powertop program to underclock my CPU, and I got error messages when Linux couldn't save to the personal storage file on the USB stick anymore.
The best combo would be to have the SSD the same size as the RAM. The SSD contains the personal storage file which copies into RAM on boot-up. I'm worried that there aren't any low voltage SSD of 1GB size. Is it ok to use old technology SSD or are they high wattage compared to my new Intel 120 GB SSD which I purchased a couple months ago?
Yoa! Coconut! You're 28 and no one ever told you digital is perfect?!
While I ascribe to the source first method of upgrading, you seem to be pretty far into the tall, tall weeds with your computer based solutions. No doubt shutting down certain functions of the processor will make some improvements in performance when dealing with music material. But you seem to be missing the forest for the trees. Without any background provided I would have to think you might be ignoring the more obvious issues of connectivity and basic system set up. IMO an oxidized connector or improper cable routing to an amplifier or poor AC filtration to the equipment will make more significant differences in sound quality than would the wattage consumption of your files.
What's the rest of the system you're using and how is it set up?
I have used many AC filtration devices but I found that they only make the sound different, they don't improve the sound, overall the performance is worse because the higher wattage adds noise into the system. The same was true for the dCS stack, the high wattage increased noise which I couldn't remove in any way, I could only control the path of it by using 11 RGC-24 Ground Conditioners, using 10 RGC-24 on the DAC and 1 RGC-24 on the transport gave the smoothest sound, any other combination resulted in noisy sound. I don't use RGC-24 anymore because it veils the sound.
I don't use interconnects anymore because I get better sound from a male to male RCA adapter. The highest quality sound can be had for very cheap.
WAV sounds smoother and clearer than FLAC and this has been confirmed with a blind test. When using WAV and playing it from the SSD, it still sounds better than playing FLAC from the RAM. This is because FLAC has higher power consumption.
I have switched to low power electronics, and filtration that run on Tourmaline. This I have found to give the smoothest and clearest sound with the most microdetail possible.
This is my gear, most of them I have sold:
dCS Elgar Plus DAC dCS Verdi Encore SACD transport dCS Purcell upsampler Cary 303/300 CD player Benchmark DAC1 EMU0404 PCI EMU0404 USB Asus X50SL laptop Asrock Nettop ION 330 Asus 1005PE netbook
Adam A5 studio monitors Adam A7 studio monitors K1000 headphones AKG K501 headphones Etymotic ER4P earphones Sennheiser HD590 headphones
PS Audio GCC-100 (Underwoodhifi mods) Krell KAV-500i power amp T-Amp Graham Slee Solo amp Meier Audio Corda amp
PS Audio Premier Power Plant US PS Audio Premier Power Plant Schuko PS Audio P300 Power Plants (MWII and MWII+) PS Audio Quintet power center PS Audio High Current Ultimate Outlet PS Audio JuiceBar (for Harvesters) Acoustic Revive RTP-4 Ultimate US Acoustic Revive RTP-4 Ultimate Schuko PS Audio Noise Harvesters PS Audio JuiceBar (for Harvesters)
Alpha Core Goertz AG3 Divinity (headphone cable) Nordost Valhalla modded headphone cable Nordost Valhalla analog interconnect Nordost Valhalla digital AES/EBU interconnect Nordost Solar Wind speaker cable Nordost Valkyrja speaker cable Nordost Vishnu power cables Nordost Valhalla power cables (too many to count because I sliced and cut them so much) Adagio Audio Digital Reference Special Edition ERS AES/EBU PS Audio xStream Statement power cables ElectraGlide Ultra Khan II Statement R power cables ElectraGlide Epiphany first model power cables ElectraGlide Synapses2 power cables Virtual Dynamics Genesis 1.1 power cables Virtual Dynamics Genesis 1.1 XLR interconnects Virtual Dynamics Judge power cable
Solid-tech Rack of Silence 10 Solid-tech Feet of Silence 18 ClearAudio Magix levitation feet 11 Acoustic Revive RGC-24 Ground Conditioners 100+ Stillpoints ERS Paper
Well, yes, that explains quite a bit about your post but doesn't answer my question, "What's the rest of the system you're using and how is it set up?"
"I don't use interconnects anymore because I get better sound from a male to male RCA adapter. The highest quality sound can be had for very cheap."
Sorry, that makes no sense to me. You use a M2M adapter to go from what? The computer to your amplifier?
"I have switched to low power electronics, and filtration that run on Tourmaline."
Sounds more like you're braggin' than explainin'. What filtration runs on Tourmaline?
Is this all about "micro-detail"? What about the music itself?
Your sysytem is worth an actual $300,000? And you "invent" better tweaks? So, what do you do in your down time?
I used this: Netbook > USB cable > EMU0404 USB DAC > male to male RCA plug > T-Amp > 2cm wide rectangular silver cables > AKG K1000 earspeakers
Now I use HD590 headphones and just plug them into the EMU. It saves even more watts.
For 8 years since I became an audiophile, I have done nothing else than tweaked my audio system, I didn't want to quit until I was finished. I have built my own filtrations that run on Tourmaline and now I'm almost finished. I just need this little RAM tweak.
I found 1 GB SSD: http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/flash+speicher/Delock_SATA_Flash_Module_1 GB_vertical_54161.html It doesn't have the correct power connector, but I could just hardwire it into the motherboard instead. The netbook is badly mutilated already, pieces of plastic which holds the connectors in place flew off when I entered the inside of the chassis and disconnected cables. I did not know how to operate the levers so I used my tools.