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  #61  
Old 05-27-2018, 05:44 PM
substance substance is offline
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did anyone try the usb output of the mb100 and successfully get 24/192 output? for me it's always "unknown dac" and won't allow to select anything above 96khz.
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  #62  
Old 01-20-2019, 10:15 AM
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I ended up buying a used autonomic mms-2a and a mms-5a to compare to mb100. Mb100 is definitely based on mms-5a with some minor but important differences.

Minor stuff:
-Mms-5a has an intel board vs. asrock on mb100.
-Mms-5a has a case fan (blower style) connected to the case fan output on the intel motherboard. Mb100’s asrock motherhood also has this case fan controller but Mcintosh didn’t include the fan. Note that mms-5a case is significantly smaller than mb100’s.
-mms-5a has both the OS and media on the same 1tb hdd. Mb100 has a separate 32gb kingston ssd for the OS. They have the same OS however Mcintosh one is slightly modified as in Mcintosh OSD and having the media on a separate drive. I believe the OS is windows 7 based.

Big difference that will influence sound.
-mms-5a uses the 7.1 analog outputs of the intel motherboard. These 7.1 are configured into 4 pairs of stereo for 4 zones. Coax output is again from the motherland’s coaxsial tap. This means mms-5a uses the inferior dsp/dac on the low end intel motherland. No power noise isolation or other modifications.

-mb100 has a second daughterboard which has the dac and analog audio section as well as a usb audio to coax converter. It gets its signal from one of the usb headers on the asrock motherboard. Usb power cables are cut on this header so it’s only passing data. The daughter board has an isolation transformer on this signal path to further isolate the signal from the noisy motherboard.

The only flaw is the switch mode power supply provided and the 19.5V power is broken down to 12v, 5v and 3.3v on the motherboard before passed to the daughter board.

Also, the new mb50 seems to use the same layout as mb100. Uses a mini itx with a passively cooled cpu. Still runs the same OS, not the new linux based autonomic OS.
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  #63  
Old 02-20-2019, 02:22 PM
jcmc27281 jcmc27281 is offline
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Hello, has anyone replaced the 1TB drive for a 2TB solid state drive? I’m thinking of doing it just wondering if anyone had successfully done it. Thank you
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  #64  
Old 02-20-2019, 07:35 PM
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  #65  
Old 01-04-2020, 11:54 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jcmc27281 View Post
Hello, has anyone replaced the 1TB drive for a 2TB solid state drive? I’m thinking of doing it just wondering if anyone had successfully done it. Thank you
I replaced it with a 1TB SSD. Works very well. The actual performance increase came from replacing the 30GB Kingston SSD drive with a 128GB Samsung Pro SSD. I have seen one MB100 for sale a couple years ago. It had a 8TB mechanical drive and the seller claimed it worked well. I think 2TB SSD should work fine. Just make sure to clone it because this secondary drive has some script in it.
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  #66  
Old 04-17-2020, 12:29 PM
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I made further enhancements to my MB100. I think it is now as good as any streamer.

Previous modifications
- replaced 2gb ram with 2x 8gb low latency ram
- replaced 30gb ssd with 128gb samsung 860 pro
- replaced 1tb hdd with 1tb samsung 860 pro
- replaced intel i3 processor with intel i7 processor.
- replaced stock intel cpu cooler with noctua l9i chromax black (liquid metal thermal compound)

New modifications
- covered all internal surfaces with 5mm sound deadening material.
- Installed electrical noise filters made by sotm for the fan and two sata power sockets
- replaced the power supply with Keces P8 single output.
- replaced the stock Keces P8 DC cable with Audioquest NRG-1.5 DC cable (custom made by Ghent Audio)
- replaced stock ac cable for Keces p8 with Audioquest nrg-z3.
- added sotm snh-10g audiophile switch with upgraded clock and sps-500 dedicated power supply

Now you can hear the fan only if you rest your ear on the unit. Intel i7 didn’t improve the system speed as it was already fast enough with the ssd upgrades.

Last edited by substance; 04-28-2020 at 05:29 PM.
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  #67  
Old 10-20-2020, 06:24 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by substance View Post
I made further enhancements to my MB100. I think it is now as good as any streamer.

Now you can hear the fan only if you rest your ear on the unit. Intel i7 didn’t improve the system speed as it was already fast enough with the ssd upgrades.
Hello,

You have done some amazing work on your MB100!

I am the owner of a MB100/MMS-5A like system called Nuvo MPS4.

The MPS4 is probably somewhere in between the MMS-5A and MB100 in initial quality. It has a USB DAC, but unheard of (Attero Matchbox). Furthermore it is powered by the same unit as the mobo.
The mobo is and old Celeron, runs Win7/32bits (as the MCS) but is fanless.
The HDD has been replaced by a SSD.

My SW is fresher than this article (5.35), but I wonder if some of the issues described in this review (a follow-up article) have been addressed by your HW changes..
https://www.stereophile.com/content/...-server-follow

With your knowledge, what would you say would bring the unit to a new level? How would you prioritize?

1) other DAC. SPDIF or USB based?
2) external power supply.
3) faster mobo. (preferably fanless...)

Many thanks,
Bob

Last edited by Bobone; 10-20-2020 at 04:11 PM.
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  #68  
Old 10-25-2020, 07:16 PM
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Reference System: BURMESTER 911MK3 AMP(3), 088 PRE-AMP, 089 CD PLAYER, 100 PHONO PRE-AMP, 948 POWER CONDITIONER, ACCUPHASE DG-68 VOICING EQUALIZER, AVID ACUTUS REFERENCE SP TT, GRAHAM PHANTOM II SUPREME ARM, BENZ MICRO LP-S CART, GRANDIOSO P1X/D1X STACK, G1X RUBIDIUM MASTER CLOCK, N05 NETWORK PLAYER, SILENZIO MUSIC SERVER, HRS-SXR CUSTOM RACK w/ M3X SHELVES, SONUS FABER AIDA SPEAKERS, JL FATHOM F113v2 SUBS(2) SOUND ANCHOR STANDS(2) WW PLATINUM CABLES

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Accuphase/Canton System: ACCUPHASE E800 INTEGRATED, DP570 CD/SACD PLAYER, T1200 FM STEREO TUNER, DG-68 VOICING EQUALIZER, PS530 POWER SUPPLY, CANTON REF K3’s, CANTON REF K5’s, SILENZIO MUSIC SERVER, HRS MXR REFERENCE MAHOGHANY RACK w/ M3X2 SHELVES, WW GOLD CABLES
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  #69  
Old 10-26-2020, 02:23 AM
substance substance is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
Hello,

You have done some amazing work on your MB100!

I am the owner of a MB100/MMS-5A like system called Nuvo MPS4.

The MPS4 is probably somewhere in between the MMS-5A and MB100 in initial quality. It has a USB DAC, but unheard of (Attero Matchbox). Furthermore it is powered by the same unit as the mobo.
The mobo is and old Celeron, runs Win7/32bits (as the MCS) but is fanless.
The HDD has been replaced by a SSD.

My SW is fresher than this article (5.35), but I wonder if some of the issues described in this review (a follow-up article) have been addressed by your HW changes..
https://www.stereophile.com/content/...-server-follow

With your knowledge, what would you say would bring the unit to a new level? How would you prioritize?

1) other DAC. SPDIF or USB based?
2) external power supply.
3) faster mobo. (preferably fanless...)

Many thanks,
Bob
I am not familiar with the mps4. It took me several hours of studying the mb100 and all of its components before I can make modifications. I upgraded the master and ethernet clocks, by passed the internal dc to dc converters. I am now working on adding external clock to sync it with my usb regenerator and network switches. Most of this takes very fine soldering skills and most importantly knowing what you are tinkering with. Some easy mods are replacing the power supply, adding an external dac, and using an external usb hub/regenerator. I swapped my i3 cpu with an i7 but I can’t say it is much quicker. I think i3 was well adequate already. SSD made it boot faster for sure but didn’t have an effect on the audio quality.
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  #70  
Old 10-26-2020, 05:26 AM
Bobone Bobone is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by substance View Post
Some easy mods are replacing the power supply, adding an external dac, and using an external usb hub/regenerator.
Wow! So you are actually bypassing the clock. Impressive. (More on clocking further down.)

The MPS4 is conceptually identical to the MB100, but the HW was/is totally different. I have spent very much time working with the integration with multi-room systems (e.g. Nuvo Grand Concerto) and in particular a deep dive into the Autonomic MCS software & apps. If you ever have any questions, I would be happy to assist.

I gather from the quote above some order of priority?
The current 7.1 DAC is 12 yrs old (!).
Sorry for asking, but this is really not my turf and I would really appreciate some pointers:
- What mid-level DAC would you recommend? What entry-level DAC would you recommend?
I am contemplating both 2 channels and 7.1 (4pairs). (There are few quirks/limitations to the SW/license that may need to be addressed. Either to replace (preferable) or complement the current DAC)

A side observation that you may have insights to. Perhaps due to USB quality?
Background:
- MPS4 Vers 1 was built on: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/su...chProdSpec.pdf
- MPS4 Vers 2 was built on the very common: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/su...prodspec09.pdf

My observation and question:
- the original DAC is attached to a USB header on the V1
- on the V2 the same DAC is attached to some sort of small (passive?) adapter attached to a PCI Express Half-Mini Card slot.

Why would Nuvo do that? Does the PCIe slot provide better quality?

(As a "V3" upgrade I have done a very moderate test with a Mitac PD10BI running a Celeron J1900 on Bay Trail. (The very first 64-bit architecture...)
The test works fine. I need the unlikely four simultaneous audio flows to even get close to 50% CPU on Win7. I am running other SW on top, so I am likely to upgrade again.)
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