Interesting, though in what scenario would someone want 2 USB inputs on a DAC?
My okto research dac has 2 usb inputs…one can be connected from an internally housed RPi streaming option ropieee or Volumio or rooextend and the other an external PC/Mac I guess
yes, like … in my case i use a mac mini and a pi-based streamer
Thats a good point.
I can see it working on a desk setup for PC audio and a streamer.
Hi Bob,
At least welcome to the community from me.
You have proven that good sound does not have to cost “a ton”.
Good audio luck in 2025
Hans
Till Christmas 2025!
Not really a ‘HiFi’ Christmas present but just before the holiday period, I bought an Akasa Plato TN case for my NUC11TNHi7 Roon Server. Note: I run DietPi - not ROCK/RoonOs - so, for those worried about non-supported server builds, this is not an issue.
It arrived early this morning and an hour or so later my Roon Server was up and running in it’s new housing (stock image from Akasa web site):
It appears that, as might be expected, when lightly loaded, this case keeps the CPU exceedingly cool - just 2-4 Celcius above ambient rising to about 25 Celcius above ambient when the CPU is working flat out (30 minute dietpi stress test - CPU only). The original case maintained about 10-15 celcius above ambient under light loads rising to 45 degrees above ambiant when the CPU was heavily loaded.
I have to say that, with one exception, it looks much better than the original case - to the extent that, rather than hiding in behind my HiFi cabinet, it can now sit in plain sight. And of course, it is guaranteed to be totally silent to boot.
The one thing that I don’t really like is the pair of LED’s on the front. The power led is extremely bright blue standing out like a sore thumb and I also found the orange disk activity LED to be somewhat annoying. Both issues solved with a minute amount of blu-tak - masking the disk activity LED completely and reducing the brightness of the power LED to a nice, barely visibly glow - I shall be looking for a more permenant solution in due course.
As an aside, in the old NUC case, whilst, in general, I have kept all of the airflow vents pretty clean such that the fan did not turn on in normal use, it was interesting to note just how much dust had accumulated inside the fan assembly where the air enters the internal heatsink/heat exchanger where it is completely out of sight. No examination short of complete dissassembly would reveal the presence of this dust. If I had started doing some serious DSP (or anything else that demanded a lot of CPU), such that a forced airflow was required, it is doubtful whether it would have been very effective
Great looking case! Once I abandon the Synology I’ll copy your setup shamelessly
I think I am going to experiment with some black paint! For a Roon Server, in the listening area, the blinking disk activity light is a distraction that I don’t want. Completely blacking it out will be quite satisfactory.
For the Power, LED, I may experiment with diluted paint being used to apply a very thin coat over the LED such that it’s brightness is much reduced. I’ll have to play around on some glass first to see how well it will work.
OMG - that 1st sentence made me worry until I grasped it’s not about the case to be painted. Raw aluminium is just spot on beautiful.
But I fully agree that annoying LEDs have to be dealt with
I installed mine in a fanless case; removed drive cage (metal) and WiFi antena…just needed to add a heat sink to the processor.
You can buy BLACK OUT film very cheaply…one or two layers gets you there.
My memory with this case is you can adjust one of the lights in the bios - I think the drive light, but not the other.
I don’t want visible tape, and I don’t want a complete blackout on the power led.
The problem is that the led’s shine through two little holes no more than 1mm in diameter so tape will not do it.
Thank’s. I’ll look into that. But it is the power led that is causing the most issues. There are any number of black products that I could use to completely mask the disk activity light. The power led is more of a problem because I just want to dim it.
You might be able to unplug the cable. I had a faulty model where the power light didn’t work - although I found that annoying too!
You could always solder a series resistor into one LED leg, no?
I didn’t look when assembling it but I think the switch and the two LED’s are all inside a module which is connected by a ribbon cable and not designed to be opened up - so soldering a resister would be awkward and would involve a degree of hacking of the case - which I don’t want to do.
Anyway, following up on the suggestion by @GregD that the LED settings can be adjusted in the BIOS, after quite some searching around (the settings are well hidden), I stumbled upon a solution which I find acceptable. The functionality can be configured for each LED and, it so happens that if you set them both to ‘power’ then the orange led takes precedence over the blue one and the blue one turns off. Thus I now have a somewhat less startling orange LED for power and no disk activity LED. This, I can live with although it is still a little bright for my taste.
Not for me I’m afraid. I hate such light displays on any equipment thats primary purpose is not to illuminate a room. Ethernet switches are hidden away out of sight or, at the very least, oriented so that the link status LEDs are not visible under normal circumstances. Even my desktop computer, which is a very powerful machine with powerful graphics tucked away in a study, is completely devoid of any RGB gimmickry
Nice. Other than price, any differences in use with Microsoft Surface knob?