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NUC-X - Evolutionary engineering - extreme flexibility - custom tailored -
How can some small little $8k box perform better then a $100k 100lb server ?! Because in digital audio delivery, everyone missed several key things
NUC-X A resolute change in approach ________________
The CPU/RAM/SSD/Ethernet/USB chips REALLY MATTER Other manufacturers just use stock motherboards and do not address noise/jitter on these chips and signals This fundamental engineering approach changes the game
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Size matters. Bigger is fundamentally wrong The size of your board dictates how long PC board traces are that connect all the chips. Longer traces means they act as antennas and radiate noise and pick up noise. This noise leads to jitter on interconnections that tie everything together chip wise. The shorter the traces the better. Short power supply traces to the chips mean better regulation and lower noise to the chips. Many well known music servers use full size motherboards used in Data centers. This is fundamentally wrong. Its KEY to have a small footprint. A huge case that weighs 100lbs is all about case envy not performance. ________________
Match the power of the board & CPU to the power for audio use Audio streaming on a modern CPU uses 7 watts max. Average 3W. Many audio servers are designed around 100% CPU usage of 20 cores which can reach 200-300W. This design is 100 TIMES more power then needed for audio use and results in vastly higher noise and radiated energy from regulators and poor performance of regulators at the audio streaming 3 watt levels. The NUC-X and linear are tailored to audio power requirements to vastly lower noise for audio applications ________________
Way better linear power The NUC-X uses a R-Core transformer design. This provides much higher isolation then a toroid transformer. The linear provides balanced DC output which has galvanic isolation. The linear uses 2 wire sensing which vastly improves regulation and also cancels out noise and does this sensing inside the NUC X. The power supply is outside the NUC case for isolation. No other digital music delivery system on the market has this ________________
Esoteric parts used for digital audio The NUC-X makes extensive use of high end large value Multi Layer Ceramic Caps. Most audio servers on the market use "audio caps" which is ludicrous as these are meant for audio frequencies and digital devices work in megahertz not kilohetrz. The power cable is impedance matched and uses esoteric components. Clock chips are lab grade. The NUC-X has it where it counts ________________
RAM performance MATTERS Everything during audio streaming/serving goes thru the RAM continously. The program controlling the serving/streaming goes thru RAM. RAM performance is key to low jitter in a streamer/server. Not only are mods done to dejitter RAM performance, but RAM cards were picked based on audio jitter and analog buss performance. All other audio servers do not address this at all. The NUC-X has 32GB of RAM for use by some audio programs that copy music to RAM for high performance playback like Daphile ________________
The OS SSD drive MATTERS The OS / audio program constantly reads/writes to disc. How long this takes the CPU to do this matters because it halts sending data to USB/Ethernet when it writes, so, the NUC-X uses the fastest SSD on the market so the CPU can focus on streaming rather then waiting on read/writes to the disc. Analog signal aspects also matter on the digital bus to the SSD drive. ________________
2.5 G Ethernet The faster the ethernet connection the lower the jitter and the less time it takes to get music files into/out of the NUC-X. Most servers in audio are 1Gbps and have a difficult time sustaining that speed without excessive jitter. The NUC-X has a 2.5Gbps overhead so streaming a DSD file is no sweat and less jitter. This also allows data transfers twice as fast as a 1Gbps port. ________________
Ports and port performance The NUC-X has 3 x 10Gbps USB 3.2, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, 1 x USB 2, 2 x HDMI 2.1B and 2 DisplayPorts The USB ports are highly modded and performance tuned and sound great for connection to USB DACs and are perfect for external SSD sticks and drives for music. Each USB port can have its power pin turned off in BIOS for lowered noise on devices that support it The HDMI ports are recognized by roon and other music streamers and can deliver high quality multichannel music ________________ Extreme flexibility The NUC-X can run almost any OS or music server program Roon ROCK, Daphile, Windows 10/11, Unbuntu, Linux Mint and a huge range of music server OS/Programs
We have a separate service to install OS/software and do custom setup With custom setup the unit arrives ready to plug in and use with little, or no, setup needed ________________
Processing speed The NUC-X uses a Intel i7-1360P which is a 12 core 5Ghz 16 thread CPU, 32GB of fast RAM and the fastest SSD for OS This results in a very fast GUI and near instantaneous music selection. The high processing speed also leads to less jitter. When importing music, roon processing can hit 3000 songs per minute. (roon 4 core max)
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WiFi and Blutooth removed and disabled On standard NUC-X configurations WiFi and Blutooth are removed, disabled and antennas removed Wifi and Blutooth RF are major contributors to noise on the board and also to other audio devices in the system. The NUC-X works best hooked up via ethernet to a Switch X stack. A NUC-X can be ordered with WiFi and Blutooth, but this is not recommended Wifi is a major source of RF noise pollution and causes serious issues for audio gear and the NUC-X addresses this
Hardware
NUC board In depth analytical work was done with state of the art instrumentation including the best analog test equipment and digital measurement platforms on a variety of electrical aspects of the NUC-X. The jitter and noise on the datalines to the CPU, RAM, SSD, Ethernet, USB, HDMI and DP was studied in depth and vastly improved. This was accomplished by carefully matching the chip current spectra and various things like trace lengths with the exact value and type of caps needed to supply the circuit section with extremely low impedance power at the chip power pins at the frequencies needed. This also isolates each circuit element from each other and stops noise cross contaminating circuits. This then creates much cleaner waveforms on the data buses and signals like USB and vastly lowers jitter on bus and modulation signals for ethernet and USB ________________
Linear supply The NUC-X is powered by a R-core based linear power supply that provides balanced DC output with precision regulation and noise cancellation using remote sensing inside the NUC-X. This provides a level of regulation and low noise better then any other linear on the market. The linear power output is matched to the NUC-X for use as a music streamer for lowest noise in real use for applications like roon / Daphile The next gen R-Core transformer provides better noise isolation then a traditional toroid transformer Unlike any other linear on the market the NUC-X linear is designed to handle noise cancellation and does so over a wide bandwidth. This provides a magnitude lower level of noise and better regulation then any other device on the market ________________
Power cable The NUC-X has a attached power cable that is impedance matched and utilizes multiple strands of high purity sliver and high purity copper with a teflon insulation. These are combined into a large gauge Litz arrangement. These are then cut to a exact standing wave length to match the desired frequency and impedance needed to do the best noise cancellation at the CPU ________________ Voltage regulation The voltage regulators are upgraded, very carefully tuned and impedance matched to the chip current spectra The NUC-X has Triple stage voltage regulation. The 1st stage is in the linear the 2 additional stages are inside the unit. This further improves accuracy at the chip and provides very stable long term and short term regulation along with further isolation from any kind of voltage variations and noise. ________________ Custom made test equipment for development The Switch X / Wifi X, ATVX and NUC-X were all developed using custom made engineering test equipment ________________ Clocks The clock chips are lab grade and low phase noise. Phase noise is more important to audio then the exact frequency. The hyper low noise power supplies make for lowered phase noise. A clock chip located on the board and close to the chip is super important to keep phase noise low. Use of a external clock always results in phase noise issues VS a on board clock ________________ Case Huge 100lb solid copper chassis designs are for marketing and to placate case envy. The NUC-X uses a steel faraday encompassing internal shell. This is vastly better at low freq RF/EM shielding then 100lbs of copper / aluminum. The plastic outer case isolates the internal shield from external contact providing galvanic isolation unlike other server designs which have metal exposed cases ________________ Grounding Grounding Can be accomplished via a screw terminal on the back. While not recommended as the galvanic isolation afforded by the balanced output R-Core linear is normally best ________________ ASUS The base NUC board is manufactured by ASUS, the largest maker of CPU boards. ASUS also does the BIOS. These NUC devcies are sold to buisnesses worldwide in huge qualtities. Most audio servers are made in tiny quantities and many are sourced from no name mfgrs in China ________________ Other refinements The Switch X has a ASUS NUC13ANHi7 at its core which is the exact model recommended for roon by roon The NUC-X can have up to 3 physical hard drives allowing dual audio server programs to boot as needed Internal drive capacity is limited only by the max SATA SSD size which is at least 16TB The NUC-X comes with 32GB of Corsair Vengeance high performance RAM and a Samsung 990Pro SSD for the OS Contact info@dejitterit.com |
