Pass Labs B1 preamp build

[blackraven]

Jack, I don't think that you have enough horse power with that computer especially with only 3gigs of ram. I would try one of the non SQ versions of BH and don't use stardust mode. Also, do you have a good usb cable? Cheap ones, especially longer than 6 feet can drop out the signal. I am not sure that you could even run HQ player with that computer. Both programs are cpu intensive and BH is also ram intensive.

I have 3 laptops. 2 have first and second gen I3's and BH runs fine with both that have 4 and 8 gigs of ram. My reference laptop is an I-7 with 16gb of ram. BH recommends an I-7 and 8gb ram or higher for best sound quality. I noticed a slight improvement in sound with the I-7 and 16gb, but both I3's sound great.

[Jack in Wilmington]

Jack, I don't think that you have enough horse power with that computer especially with only 3gigs of ram. I would try one of the non SQ versions of BH and don't use stardust mode. Also, do you have a good usb cable? Cheap ones, especially longer than 6 feet can drop out the signal. I am not sure that you could even run HQ player with that computer. Both programs are cpu intensive and BH is also ram intensive.

I have 3 laptops. 2 have first and second gen I3's and BH runs fine with both that have 4 and 8 gigs of ram. My reference laptop is an I-7 with 16gb of ram. BH recommends an I-7 and 8gb ram or higher for best sound quality. I noticed a slight improvement in sound with the I-7 and 16gb, but both I3's sound great.

That very well might be the problem. I bought the laptop just to use as a music server as it has all my HDTracks downloads on it. I use JR21 normally with no problem. I might try my other laptop as it's much more powerful and still has some music files on it.

It's a HP Pavilion DV7, with an Intel Core i7 -2670QM processor and has 8 GB of ram.

My USB cable is a Wireworld Starlight 7

[blackraven]

That very well might be the problem. I bought the laptop just to use as a music server as it has all my HDTracks downloads on it. I use JR21 normally with no problem. I might try my other laptop as it's much more powerful and still has some music files on it.

It's a HP Pavilion DV7, with an Intel Core i7 -2670QM processor and has 8 GB of ram.

My USB cable is a Wireworld Starlight 7

That computer will have no problems at all as my I-3's run BH without problems. Let me know if you still have problems and we can talk. I use the WW Starlight 7 as well but I would love to have the Platinum. The Starlight sounds veiled in comparison, however my Regen narrows the gap between the 2 cables and makes all cables sound similar.

By the way. B1 is smoothing out. I can say without a doubt that it sounds better than the Pass X1 preamp that I had. It is more musical and has better bass. The X1 sounded sterile. That is saying a lot since the X1 sold for $6K and I built the Pass B1 for $300.

[Jack in Wilmington]

That computer will have no problems at all as my I-3's run BH without problems. Let me know if you still have problems and we can talk. I use the WW Starlight 7 as well but I would love to have the Platinum. The Starlight sounds veiled in comparison, however my Regen narrows the gap between the 2 cables and makes all cables sound similar.

By the way. B1 is smoothing out. I can say without a doubt that it sounds better than the Pass X1 preamp that I had. It is more musical and has better bass. The X1 sounded sterile. That is saying a lot since the X1 sold for $6K and I built the Pass B1 for $300.

Ran BH on my other laptop and no problem. It's a little awkward and redundant, but I'm sure some of that will fade as I become more familiar with the format.

[blackraven]

Bug Head is great when you want to listen to a whole album but you can load different songs. You can also load several albums or play lists if you click on the different colored bars. It's sound quality is outstanding.

What is your opinion on the sound?

[Jack in Wilmington]

Bug Head is great when you want to listen to a whole album but you can load different songs. You can also load several albums or play lists if you click on the different colored bars. It's sound quality is outstanding.

What is your opinion on the sound?

I do like the sound very much. This is the first time I can really appreciate my 192/24 downloads. I might have to download some of my files that I have on the Dell to my HP. I could probably dump them onto a flashdrive, but I don't want to lose the sound quality.

[Feanor]

Bug Head is great when you want to listen to a whole album but you can load different songs. You can also load several albums or play lists if you click on the different colored bars. It's sound quality is outstanding.

What is your opinion on the sound?

I think Bug Head and/or HQ Player deserve their own thread.

Personally I can't run BH on my music computer because if just doesn't have the horsepower. HQP it might be able to manage but I haven't reconciled myself to paying the US$200 it costs.

At the same time I have no doubt that the things these programs do, i.e. oversampling and filtering are critical to the resulting sound. My Schiit Bifrost Multibit upgrade seems to demonstrate this: the Multibit upgrade provides oversampling and one particular filtering approach, i.e. so-called "closed form" filtering. The results are significantly, even dramatically, different and better than the good performance of the previous Uber upgrade to the Bifrost I was using.

As I understand the HQP provides a 'closed form filtering' option amongst others. According to some reports, BH employs math-intensive oversampling, perhaps even "quadratic spline" interpolation while oversampling of say, 44.1kHz to 188.4 or 352.8; this would certainly explain its computer resource demand. "Quadratic spline" interpolation come remarkably close to recreating the actual missing higher resolution data but requires complicated math ... https://youtu.be/j_jBK7zJ1vU

[Jack in Wilmington]

I think Bug Head and/or HQ Player deserve their own thread.

Personally I can't run BH on my music computer because if just doesn't have the horsepower. HQP it might be able to manage but I haven't reconciled myself to paying the US$200 it costs.

At the same time I have no doubt that the things these programs do, i.e. oversampling and filtering are critical to the resulting sound. My Schiit Bifrost Multibit upgrade seems to demonstrate this: the Multibit upgrade provides oversampling and one particular filtering approach, i.e. so-called "closed form" filtering. The results are significantly, even dramatically, different and better than the good performance of the previous Uber upgrade to the Bifrost I was using.

As I understand the HQP provides a 'closed form filtering' option amongst others. According to some reports, BH employs math-intensive oversampling, perhaps even "quadratic spline" interpolation while oversampling of say, 44.1kHz to 188.4 or 352.8; this would certainly explain its computer resource demand. "Quadratic spline" interpolation come remarkably close to recreating the actual missing higher resolution data but requires complicated math ... https://youtu.be/j_jBK7zJ1vU

You're right. I'll get one started shortly. Sorry