Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Loss from Ethernet Cable?
Sounds to me like there's a few possibilities here: 1) Maybe the SB3 isn't delivering exactly the same bits that were on the disc. Could be that the file format isn't lossless, or there's a volume control somewhere in the system that's introducing rouding errors. Try, as a test, ripping a CD to WAV and comparing the two back to back. 2) Maybe the CD player isn't delivering exactly the same bits that were on the disc. Maybe it's upsampling, applying a digital filter or both - either way, even though conventional audiophile 'wisdom' is that any change to the data is bad, it's possible that the CD player is performing some processing that you actually like. If you have the equipment, try capturing the SPDIF signal from the CD player to a WAV file and playing that back through the SB3. 3) Maybe there's some degradation resulting from the SPDIF connection between SB3 and DAC. The ECD1 (is that your DAC?) spec sheet mentions nothing about jitter reduction or immunity, so it's a possibility that the dreaded, overused 'j' word is actually an issue in your system. The Transporter may, in that case, offer an improvement. IMHO reducing jitter at the transport is an inelegant solution, though if you're stuck with a DAC that's sensitive to it you may have no choice. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41268 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Oscilloscope question for Sean or anyone
For $13k I'll build you my completely jitter-proof AK4396-based DAC, then you won't have to worry about it :) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40680 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Stabilizing the SB3
sgoldfin;240911 Wrote: I am connecting the SB3 to the PSAudio Digital Link III. I found a HUGE improvement by placing the SB on sorbothane balls, and then placing HEAVY disks on top of the SB. This was especially the case when the SB was resting on another component that generateed vibration. Try it and see! Have you tried seeing what happens if you do that to the DAC instead? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40025 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB+ info please
I'm not sure anyone's ever suggested that all sources sound the same. What I will suggest, however, is that: All -digital- sources, provided they don't deliberately process the samples from the disc before delivering them to the SPDIF port, should sound the same when fed into a jitter-proof reclocking DAC. So, if you have such a DAC, there should be no audible benefit in using a Transporter over an SB3, or even over the cheapest working CD player you can find on Ebay - provided you're using it as a digital source only. Even then there's still the possibility that you'll get a ground loop or some other effect that can't really be attributed to the 'quality' of the component, which may nevertheless affect what you hear. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39815 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB+ info please
Zanash: what DAC are you using? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39815 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hi-Fi critric reveals their limited vision
I read on The Register the other week about how trials are beginning of selling music on USB sticks instead of CDs. In theory I think this could be great; freed from the constraints of the CD format we could have higher sample rate and bit depth, and no need to rip at all - the files, error-free and properly tagged, could just be dragged dropped straight onto a hard disc. Of course, it won't be like that in practise. It'll be compressed music, in a proprietary format, crippled by DRM, and sold at a higher price because of the 'convenience'. If I'm wrong, and USB sticks are sold with music on that actually is high quality and portable, I'll happily eat one. And upload the video to YouTube. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39438 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hi-Fi critric reveals their limited vision
bigfool1956;239253 Wrote: BTW @ Patrick: I really think you should have got Paul to use EAC for ripping his CDs, in my opinion the iTunes ripper, even with erro correction, sounds very poor by comparison. That's an interesting comment. Mind if I ask under what circumstances you've compared the two? Unless one ripper or the other is inserting a constant stream of incorrect samples into the file, it's not even possible for them to sound different. That's the beauty of digital; the file that ends up on your hard disc is either right or it's wrong. A bad rip is most likely to end up with a few isolated drop-outs; it would take a badly broken CD drive to somehow manage a continuous reduction in sound quality. To do that would require a very large number of read errors - something which just doesn't happen with a working drive, and which EAC would be unlikely to be able to correct just by retrying over and over again. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39438 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hi-Fi critric reveals their limited vision
bigfool1956;239310 Wrote: Ears, something I use a lot lol. The GUI is quite large, but they integrate well :)) Maybe I'll go back and try a bit comparison when I have the opportunity Please do - because it's quite a good controlled experiment. If the files are the same, the sound in your room when you play them is the same too. Any difference you perceive is exactly that: a difference in perception. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39438 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 Bolder Mods
If you look more closely, the streams may look like: and 00011000000011010111 -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39684 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 Bolder Mods
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't too clear. My point is that the bit streams I've posted could in fact represent exactly the same data as the ones you've posted - just sampling the SPDIF input at more frequent intervals to show that, with a poor quality driver, the bits aren't all exactly the same width, nor do they occur with perfect, unchanging regularity. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39684 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 Bolder Mods
Marantz CD63: [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/cd63.jpg] SB3: [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/sb3.jpg] Both deliver the same pattern of ones and zeroes - but I doubt anyone would suggest that the two signals were 'the same', nor that either signal is 'perfect'. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39684 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 Bolder Mods
servies;239038 Wrote: Yeah, but then tell me how I should represent a bitstream with pure text... Ok, I'm getting creative...: signal A: __|--|_|--|__|--|_|-|_|-- signal B: __|--|_|--|__|--|_|-|_|-- Sorry but I've never been very good in ascii art... So, where's the difference between the above signals? You just need to zoom in a bit more to see the difference: ___|---|___|---|___|---|___|---|___|--- vs |--|||--||__|-|||---|__|--- -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39684 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
Despite coming from an engineering background and being firmly of the opinion that it couldn't possibly matter, my opinion on the audible impact of clock jitter was changed forever when I sold my early, expensive DVD player and replaced it with a cheap recorder. I figured that 'bits is bits', and that as long as both managed to deliver a correct SPDIF output, both would sound identical through the same external DAC. (The one in my Yamaha DSP-A1, in this case). I was wrong. It took me a couple of weeks to fully realise it, but my music sounded flat and two-dimensional. The soundstage had become fuzzy and indistinct. On a couple of occasions it was so annoying that I had to just switch it off. Yet, in a quick back-to-back test, I very much doubt I'd be able to tell the difference. I ended up having to buy a new player, and sure enough, that cleared up the problem immediately. On the technical side: typical accuracy for a quartz crystal is around +/- 50 parts per million, with higher precision available at exponentially increasing cost. So, if the source and DAC were mismatched by that amount, the DAC would have to interpolate or drop 2.2 samples per second. Audible? Probably not. Good for marketing? Unlikely. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
I'd be interested to know if you can quantify the random and data-dependent jitter that's inherent in a TOSLINK connection. The receiver I'm using, for example, specifies a pulse width distortion of up to +/- 20ns, and a random jitter that's typically 1ns but with a max of another 20ns. At 44.1kHz, the line rate on the SPDIF interface is about 5.6 MHz - the pulse width is 177ns. So, whilst the receiver isn't so bad it's going to hamper reliable data recovery (provided the transmitted signal isn't total rubbish, of course), recovering a low-jitter clock from it could be a real challenge. If you can put a figure on how much of that jitter or skew is inherent, and how much of it is down to the cheapness of the receiver, I'd love to know. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Lost in Transmission
Hello and welcome :) The link between SlimServer and your SB is digital, and uses TCP/IP ensure that any dropped or corrupt packets are retransmitted. So the answer to your question is no, nothing gets lost in transmission. That's the beauty of digital. If your PC's CPU is too busy or your network connection drops out, then packets might get lost - but in this case playback will stop completely, so you'll be in no doubt that it's happened. Sit back and enjoy the music :) (edit: looks like Pat types a little faster than I do!) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39763 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
ar-t;238344 Wrote: It is inferior, and it is not a myth. You are grossly uninformed. Galvanic isolation can be achieved by using transformers, althoough doing so requires some skill on the part of the designer. Of all the optical methods, TOSLINK is the worst. Single-mode fibre could be used effectively, but alas, the way it is commonly implemented is all wrong. (In case anyone actually cares, I helped to engineer the world's first single-mode long-haul fibre system. I may just have an idea what I am talking about. Not that the ignorant will care; they rarely are open-mended enough.) Pat I think you're over-analysing the behaviour of the TOSLINK connection, and making comparisons that don't really apply. Of course if you're considering long-distance high speed communications, then pulse spreading due to optical line width and multiple propagation paths along the fibre are significant. But over a few feet, running at 5.6 MHz? (As an aside - try looking up a data sheet for the type of high speed comparator used as a line receiver for coax. I bet you'll find a skew, which translates into data-dependent jitter, which is orders of magnitude greater than any spreading due to optical effects in the cable). What I do find surprising is that anybody designs a DAC that uses the SPDIF input as a timing reference rather that merely a source of bits. I've spent some of my spare time this year designing a DAC - based around the AK4396 as it happens - which makes no attempt to directly recover a clock from the SPDIF input. Incoming edges are used merely to identify where bits start and finish so they can be sampled correctly, nothing more. So, it's an inherent property of the design that input jitter makes no difference at all. Doing this is not expensive, and I don't regard the use of a crystal and an FPGA as fancy. I do, however, regard the topology as correct - and, fortunately for those of us with a working design with commercial potential, unusual. One day, all DACs will be made this way. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
Actually you'd be amazed just how hard it is to hear when a sample is dropped or duplicated - not that the final design ever actually does that, of course. I hope you'll forgive me for not disclosing all the inner workings of the design right now - it does seem to be a peculiar characteristic of hi-fi companies that they seem unusually willing to discuss their trade secrets in public. I guess there's a trade-off between maintaining a competitive advantage, and gaining credibility with an inquisitive customer base. As of this moment in time, though, my DAC is not available for sale - so I have no particular need to earn that credibility just yet by explaining the precise ins and outs. Hope you understand. I will say that the crystal I use is actually a VCXO, with a specified rms output jitter of 2.72 picoseconds, and that it's connected directly to the master clock input pin of the AK4396. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
Thanks Phil :) I have a prototype and it works very well indeed. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Transporter Mods
Personally I think it best that a thread which suggests disconnecting the safety earth from equipment in the quest for better sound stays deleted. Darwinian evolution and lawyers don't mix :( -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36826 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any plans on incorporating the AK4397 ?
Sadly it's not a direct swap, it comes in a different physical package and requires a different supply voltage on the digital side. It might be possible to make it fit using a little adapter PCB of some kind, but the danger is that doing so would negate the effect of the careful layout on Transporter's main board. I know for a fact that even just a few mm of extra PCB trace in the wrong place can have a severe impact on sound quality, so I'd be surprised to see a genuinely worthwhile improvement by going down this route. Transporter mk II, on the other hand - no reason NOT to change. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36823 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
ezkcdude;214087 Wrote: SO, WRITING WITH A PENCIL AND PRINTING WITH A LASER PRINTER ARE SIMILAR BECAUSE THEY BOTH INVOLVE PUTTING WORDS ON PAPER? I agree that digital consists of 1's and 0's, but actually writing and reading those 1's and 0's is the devil in the details, so to speak. What?? If you're referring to the recording process, then yes, absolutely, both achieve the same result provided they're done accurately enough that the words can be read back again without error. And the reverse is true as well - whether you read a handwritten article or a printed one, the information is exactly, identically the same. Does this web page, for example, look different whether you downloaded it via wired Ethernet or over wi-fi? Can you tell by looking at this post whether I'm using a wired or a wireless connection right now? The transport medium is completely different in both cases, so what's the effect on the data? pfarrell;214074 Wrote: It depends. An audio CD player reads the music per the RedBook spec. A PC uses CD-EX to Extract the data. It is not the same. Yes, it is. Both are extracting the raw bit stream that's stamped into the disc, performing the same mathematical decoding process on it and ending up with the same PCM audio data. Way back in the 90s, many PC CD-rom drives could not do the extraction (which is essentially reading the digital data as you would read a hard disk sector). The normal RedBook way to read the music off a disk is very different. The error correction is different, etc. Most of this is due to the very limited capabilities of microcontrollers at the time when the RedBook spec was written. So the error correcting codes specified for CD-DA vs CD-ROM are different. So what? The biggest problem was actually the inability to do a random seek to a particular sector of an audio disc because there's no sophisticated index like there is on a CD-ROM - but that's like saying that a book whose pages aren't numbered is different from a book whose pages are. (Maybe the book with page numbering is also printed in a slightly different, clearer font too - but you get my point). I believe, that if the spec had been written just five years later, it would have been very different, using more of a digital approach from the start. Huh? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Should I replace my cables every 1000 hours
Lol :) I'm just waiting for someone to suggest that they degrade over time and need replacing - and that they can't just replace the whole chip because 'they don't make them like they used to'! -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36658 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
aberdeencomponents;213851 Wrote: Sean, ASK YOURSELF THAT QUESTION. YOU DESIGNED it. Right? Why was the TRANSPORTER PC BOARD DESIGNED TO HAVE THEM? BUT THE PARTS was OMITTED? Do you have the Foggiest IDEA WHY? I would very much like to see some data showing the benefits for omitting the parts for the two line filter's on the Transporter production run. I'm sure that, if you were to ask Sean very nicely (and by now, I dare say it would have to be VERY nicely), he'd oblige you with copies of the radiated and conducted emissions plots that prove CE and FCC compliance - and, therefore, by definition, the proof that additional filters are unnecessary. Is your 'noise sniffer' actually a calibrated LISN and spectrum analyser? Have you ever even been to an EMC lab - let alone had to design a product from scratch and then get it to pass? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
truckfighters;213892 Wrote: power line correct phase: Orientation of mains plug: The correct polarization of mains is important for reasons of audio clarity and stability. for the folks who never heard of that, I found this nice article: http://www.audaud.com/audaud/JUL01/EQUIP/equip3JUL01.html NO!! The article suggests disconnecting the protective earth connection from your equipment to make measurements or to improve sound quality. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS FOR ANY REASON. IF YOUR EQUIPMENT HAS AN EARTH CONNECTION IT'S BECAUSE IT'S REQUIRED FOR SAFE OPERATION. TOUCH THE UNEARTHED BOX, AND THE FIRST YOU'LL KNOW OF A FAULT SOMEWHERE IN YOUR SYSTEM COULD BE A FATAL ELECTRIC SHOCK. (After all, you wouldn't go round replacing all your fuses with nails to 'improve the power supply', would you? You would? Darwinian evolution in action. Go right ahead). But, suppose for a moment that you were actually dumb enough to make the measurement anyway, or that your equipment is designed such that the earth connection isn't needed. What are you actually measuring? With the case disconnected, either by double-insulation from the mains or because some idiot has removed the earth connection, it's essentially floating. Maybe it's connected to the analogue ground which is shared with the rest of your system, but not necessarily. It may also pick up a voltage by capacitive and/or electromagnetic coupling from the power supply, but in this case the impedance will be extremely high, and only a rather expensive meter will pick it up. So, what you're measuring is the potential between this undefined point, and earth at some other point. Meaningless - but audiophiles like to find something they can measure and then come up with a rule for what it should be. It's not impossible for reversing the live neutral to make a difference to the sound, though. In the UK at least (and presumably elsewhere), the neutral wire is kept around earth potential while the live oscillates either side of it. So, if inside your equipment there's a live wire nearer some sensitive audio signal than the neutral, there will be a greater degree of interference introduced. Swapping live neutral effectively moves the noise source further away, which can indeed help. You can't tell whether this is the case by making meaningless measurements of the voltage on the outside of the box, though. And the idea of trying to 'match' these voltages across components is just... well, rubbish too. So, if you have reversible mains plugs, by all means swap them around and pick whichever way you like the sound of. Just don't electrocute yourself by doing something silly, OK? ;-) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
AKM released the AK4397 DAC a couple of weeks ago - it's software compatible with the AK4396, but not, sadly, pin compatible as it comes in a 44 pin package. But, if someone wanted to be creative with their Transporter, it could be quite an interesting upgrade - just watch that the kludge (sorry, adapter) used to mount it doesn't negate any benefit the new chip may have. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
Some of my FLAC files have pinholes in them :( -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
One unfortunate difference: the AK4397 isn't able to accept a 3.3v digital supply, only 5.0v, though it does accept 3.3v logic input levels. So, any modification would have to provide a 5.0v supply, ideally separate from the analogue 5.0v, and would also have to disconnect the digital outputs (which I doubt are needed anyway). That's unless, of course, Transporter uses 5.0v to power the AK4396 digital side - anyone know? (Sean? Is there a reason to prefer one voltage over the other?) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
Ah - there's an international variation there. Here in the UK, as I'm sure you know, we have 3 pin plugs that have a fuse built into them on the live (hot) side, so it's quite hard to electrocute yourself. The only occasion on which it's normally possible to swap live neutral is on equipment that has a non-earthed 'figure 8' plug, as a lot of hi-fi kit does, and in those cases it's quite safe to plug it in either way round as the kit has to be double insulated anyway. That's the case I was thinking of, sorry for any confusion. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Any good mods for Transporter out there? Validated?
aberdeencomponents;214053 Wrote: Neutral to the dot mark (Start of the winding) of the transformer, Hot the end of the winding. On the output side of the transformer if going to Diode make the start of the winding (dot mark) the Ground. You still here??? Please, do explain what bad thing happens if you connect the primary the other way around. Make specific reference to the 'figure-8' plugs fitted to a lot of hi-fi and other consumer equipment. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36626 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
There never really was, though. Reading a CD isn't much different to reading a hard disc - both are digital, ie. yes or no, right or wrong. Why should playing a .WAV file directly off a CD-ROM via SlimServer be any different to playing a regular CD in a CD player? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
I don't think it's that Sean has a negative attitude to criticism - quite the opposite, in fact. I think it's just that, given a detailed technical knowledge of how the equipment works, he can't see any reason whatsoever for the behaviour you're claiming. Nor can I. (And thank you Sean, it's nice to see actual science used in a hi-fi discussion for once!) I'm sure we can all agree that the sound that exists in your room depends on the electrical signal that comes out of the back of your Squeezebox - yes? So, for that sound to change, the electrical signal that comes out of your Squeezebox must also change. Agreed? Here's the difficulty. Sean has explained that 'switching the Squeezebox off' doesn't really do anything but change what's displayed on the screen. The hardware that drives the SPDIF output continues to do so, it just drives out zeros rather than music. There's no subtle internal change that occurs. In fact, given that you're using an external DAC, there really are very few variables that the SB could possibly affect even if it were designed to do so. - it could transmit a different pattern of ones and zeros. This would be a bug, and a dead easy one to spot simply by recording the SPDIF output digitally and comparing before/after. - the electrical characteristics of the driver could change, giving more or less noise, jitter, overshoot or other recognised degradation of a digital signal. These are defined by the choice of driver, PCB layout and clock source - hardware parameters that are set when the SB is manufactured. Fiddling with the remote won't change those. I don't think anyone's saying that you don't hear a difference - only that it's virtually impossible for the Squeezebox to actually be behaving differently when it sounds 'good' vs 'not so good' to your ears. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
Skunk;213517 Wrote: I remember reading somewhere that skipping back to track one, rather than simply hitting play, improved the sound of some CD players. It was the first thing that came to mind when I read the thread, but I couldn't find any google references. Never did get around to trying that one out. I've read lots of unlikely things about how to make equipment sound better. Some of the more entertaining ones are at http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/Free_Techniques/Free_Techniques.html :) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Bit Rates and Sample Rates
No, it's not. CDs are 16 bit - there's no more information there. You could create 24 bit files from CD if you wanted, but the bottom 8 bits would all be zeros. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36326 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Design miss in SB3 digital output? or Slimserver problem ?
omega;211937 Wrote: Later today i will try to Downgrade the SB3 to see if there is a problem in firmware / Slimserver. Oh, Lord, here we go again :) Didn't Sean already post the definitive reply to this one? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Sb4 ?
cliveb;211367 Wrote: As for Apple: recently Steve Jobs has become a cuddly teddy-bear because he's come out against DRM. But he didn't do it for philanthropic reasons - it is a hard-nosed business decision. Under the good-guy exterior, he's still a megalomaniac. You can hardly blame him for wanting what's best for his business. I, for example, will never buy into any music format embuggered by DRM for as long as there's an alternative, and that's bad news for anyone trying to sell downloadable music and the devices to play it on. I do wonder whether the impact that DRM has on the electronics industry has ever been properly assessed, and compared against the alleged benefit that it has to the music and movie industries. For example, - how much RD effort is used in implementing decryption algorithms, and in hiding the keys to avoid having them revoked? - how much additional hardware is required in each and every player? What impact does this have on cost and battery life? - what do licences for things like AACS cost the industry? - what about start-ups who maybe can't afford such licences? Or who would like to offer new and innovative features that would benefit the consumer but which wouldn't comply with licensing restrictions? (For example: want a Blu-ray player that'll stream wirelessly to the Linux box in the study? Forget it! But the reason has nothing to do with technology...) - how about lost sales of equipment, made less desirable to consumers because of, say, the inability to record, when such a feature would otherwise be trivial? The sad thing is, S/PDIF is probably the last interface that we'll see that's straightforward for manufacturers to use, without having to pay silly money for specs and licences that come with overbearing restrictions on what can be done with them. Look at the hi-fi industry: loads of small companies making products that offer superb performance across a whole range of price points. Now look at home cinema and see how few there are in comparison. In the HDMI / HDCP era it's only going to get worse, and the reason has nothing to do with technology :( -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35881 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Stereophile review
Patrick Dixon;210578 Wrote: There is a proportion of the industry that appears to be selling snake-oil, and a proportion that are selling things that genuinely do make a difference, but are wrapped up in pseudo-scientific bullshit. To some extent customers are getting what they deserve, because customers do seem to prefer to buy equipment with fancy spec-sheets and 'dark-art' circuitry, blind. In general, too much honesty doesn't pay. There is no good way to buy high-end audio equipment from the internet. There just isn't any substitute for experience and for listening, and if you don't want to spend the time and do the graft, you just have to go with someone you trust and take your chances. But, be aware, that those who shout loudest are not always right, identical equipment does sound different in different setups, and different people do like different things. I think we should frame this quote and have it as a sticky at the top of every page on this forum. BTW it's actually quite easy to spot much of the bullsh*t. When people write it, they have a habit of using what I call bullsh*t marks - punctuation which resembles the apostrophe, but when used in a description of a piece of audio equipment, means that either the author is clueless, or knows perfectly well that what they're writing is total rubbish. Try it: pick a manufacturer of any controversial piece of equipment - cable burn-in devices, CD demagnetisers, miracle jitter squishers or whatever - and read the scientific explanations they offer of how their product works. Watch for the bullsh*t marks and report back your favourite examples :) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=26306 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Transporter Specs Clarification
Actually the AK4396 DAC contains an 8x interpolating filter anyway, so 96kHz data is upsampled to 768kHz before being fed to the delta-sigma modulator. The fact that it's being done within the DAC chip rather than by a separate component in the Transporter really doesn't make any difference. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36228 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
325xi;186718 Wrote: Andy, I would be thrilled to know your findings. It's especially interesting because nearly all posters on the previous 10 pages declined the very possibility of Toslink connection to be more jittery then coax. Right, as promised! I've just finally got round to spending a few minutes with a digital source (my Marantz CD63, for what it's worth), an optical cable and a Toslink receiver of the type commonly used in offboard DACs, A/V amps and the like. For starters: here's the CD63's coaxial output: [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/cd63.jpg] The jitter is horrible - about 11ns, and strongly data dependent. In my professional opinion, its output driver is total rubbish, maybe even faulty. Nevertheless it does work when plugged into a DAC, so I presume it's not necessarily all that unusual. By contrast, the output from the inexpensive Toslink receiver is much cleaner - a nice square 3.3v CMOS signal with clean edges. Jitter is around 2ns, which still isn't very impressive, but in this case it is much better than the coax output. Other coax sources I've looked at are much cleaner. With my inexpensive 100MHz 'scope I can't actually see any jitter on the SB3's coax output at all, which is exactly how it should be. The CD63 does seem particularly bad. What is interesting is that wiggling the optical plug, or pulling it out slightly, does make jitter considerably worse - more so than I was expecting, and easily adding a couple of ns. So it would appear that, if you're bothered by the existence of jitter at this point in the system, you should worry about the quality of your optical cable and its connectors. If anyone's really bothered, I'll repeat the test with the SB3. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Miracle DAC
I'm designing one... -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36024 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
I'll agree that most off-the-shelf equipment is designed to put the clock in the wrong place, and that modifying it can be difficult. Not necessarily impossible, but certainly non-trivial and possibly not worth the effort. If you're designing equipment to do it that way round in the first place, though, it's perfectly straightforward. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
Just make sure you put the crystal at the DAC end of the I2S link, not at the source :) For what it's worth, I asked a while ago for a quote on the AK2396 as used in the Transporter. They're just £1.50 - about $3.00 - and that's in small quantities. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
NO! It's at the DAC - and ONLY at the DAC - that the jitter actually matters. That's where you want the nice, stable, low jitter oscillator. Send the clock along a cable, or even a long PCB trace, and it starts to degrade. So, if you put the oscillator at the source and then connect it via a cable to the DAC, the DAC gets a degraded clock. That's when you start having to worry about PLLs and other de-jitter circuits, which gives you much the same sort of problem as SPDIF (though admittedly without the data-dependency to worry about). If you're going to use I2S but you put the clock at the transport end, you've really not achieved all the jitter reduction you could have done. Physically locate the crystal at the DAC end of the link, and the DAC gets the cleanest clock available anywhere in the system. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Sb4 ?
The problem with the Squeezebox and the mass market is the price. £199 for a music player is just plain unaffordable for many, and looks awfully expensive alongside, say, an Ipod video at £150. I can buy a PDA with wi-fi that's good for a lot more than music for less. As anyone in the industry will tell you, it's all down to volume. There's no real reason why, built in high enough quantities, a product like the Squeezebox couldn't be sold for half, maybe even a quarter of its current price. That's the challenge - not giving it more gadgets and gizmos for nerds and audiophiles. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35881 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Sb4 ?
You might well be right - though I'd also bear in mind that a lot of commodity PC equipment is sold by clueless retailers who will never be able to demo any equipment properly or give out anything but the most basic advice. That means that it's difficult for a potential purchaser to judge whether or not a device is user-friendly before forking out the cash - but the price is something they can see and make a judgment about straight away. Remember, Logitech sells mice, keyboards and webcams. They're masters of pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap. IMHO they actually do it very well, my Logitech mice are great. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35881 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
The topology is dead simple, really - in an ideal world you'd connect the clock directly to the DAC board, as close to the pin of the D/A converter chip itself as you can. The I2S SCK signal should be an output from the DAC board. Of course, I assume that you wouldn't be undertaking to design your own equipment unless you have a fair degree of electronics expertise - so I'll leave it up to you to worry about how to ensure that the clock signal is driven between the two boards in the correct direction. In practise there's also a problem that the I2S data rate isn't the same as the clock speed that the SB requires (about 12MHz IIRC). This does mean that there has to be a clock divider or PLL somewhere in the system, and that may mean putting the super-clock on the SB board after all. In this case, using I2S is still a theoretical improvement over SPDIF, but it's not giving you the ideal minimum-jitter performance you could have if the SB were able to directly accept the I2S clock. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Jitter vs. Drift
opaqueice;206946 Wrote: Although they are without doubt much more severe than the distortions caused by jitter... I doubt! Having a crystal that's slightly too fast or too slow doesn't really introduce distortion - there's no additional harmonics generated, it's just that the entire frequency spectrum is shifted imperceptibly up or down. And yes, I do mean imperceptibly. Jitter - however it may be blown out of all proportion - does add additional harmonics and, in my personal experience, does affect soundstaging. It took me a long time to pick up on it, though, so I'd be surprised if it were picked up in an A/B comparison. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35866 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Jitter vs. Drift
Presumably the reason for turning off the FIFO is because the Meridian system is designed to sync with a video source, so delay in the audio is unacceptable. In a system designed purely to reproduce music, that delay isn't a problem. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35866 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
The .1 is a bass channel, but it's not quite the same thing as a subwoofer channel. It's band limited but also has a 6dB gain difference from the main channels, so it can carry higher levels without saturating. The AV amp, however, doesn't just route this channel straight to the sub - instead it may mix in low frequencies from the main channels and/or route some frequencies from the .1 channel back into the main mix. For this it does need the A/D converter. For what it's worth, the DSP-A1 does have pre-out/power-in jumpers, maybe I should try these - though that would mean using the SB3's digital attenuation which means it's not really a fair comparison. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
Mark Lanctot;204983 Wrote: Note, as Anne mentions, that this is not only due to DAC differences but also how receivers handle analog signals (often very poorly), see http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?AVReceivers Quite right - so I checked. The A1 does apparently have a true analogue path from input to amplifier stage, bypassing any A/D and DSP sections. See http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_5_3/yamahadspa1processor.html -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Roll off?
That makes a lot of sense - if you've ever seen a real time frequency analysis of an MP3, it's very clear that the highs are abruptly chopped off unless the amplitude at a given frequency is very high. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35686 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] How good is the DAC in the Squeezebox 3?
Try it for a while and see! I have a Yamaha receiver (DSP-A1) and the difference between its DAC and the Squeezebox is huge. Switch to the SB3's analogue outputs and it's as though the band members all leave the stage and stand in a line just behind the speakers - the soundstage just collapses and becomes completely flat. Switch back to the A1's DAC and they're back in the room. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35642 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
Maybe there's actually a fault in the amp - the case is meant to be earthed, and somewhere inside there's a piece of circuitry that relies on this connection being present - but in your case that connection is missing. That could explain the hum, and the fact that joining the SB ground to earth fixes it, and also the fact that joining the SB ground to the amp chassis doesn't. Next step: try connecting the chassis of the amp to earth and see if the hum goes away then too. (I presume, of course, that you're connecting to a bare metal point on the chassis - right?) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
More to the point: why should it matter if you have a floating ground? Earthing the chassis helps (though is not essential to) pass EMC and safety tests, but there need be no other connection between signal ground and Earth. Thinking about it: most of my components don't have an earth connection at all - they use 2 pin mains cables and plugs. Certainly I could easily put together a source component, amp speakers and have no earth. Needless to say, they work fine. No hum. (Well, apart from my subwoofer - but that IS earthed, so I think the hum is from a ground loop). It still sounds to me, though, as though the Naim amp is relying on signal ground and chassis ground being the same thing at some point, but for some reason, they're not. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Different servers sound different
Lol :D I think you've just given me a business idea... ;) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35382 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What Hi-Fi - audiophiles or audiofools?
IMHO the best quality widely compatible format you can get is WAV... ...provided I'm not the one paying for the disc space! :) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35350 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] buying a dac in london - shop please...
It sounds to me as though your problem is that you want something for nothing - and you insist on making life even more difficult for yourself by worrying about the technical implementation rather than trusting your own ears. You worry about jitter, but not about power supply noise and PSRR, or DAC non-linearity, or crossover distortion, or the nature of any digital filtering, or any of the other factors that affect sound quality. It's a bit like trying to buy a fast car and insisting (only) that it's cheap and the engine is turbocharged. IMHO a £700 source (say, the Benchmark) is perfectly appropriate for a £500 amp and £1000 speakers - I presume you're familiar with the phrase garbage in, garbage out. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35357 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] what is jitter
, they're not perfect. The more that's fed in, the more comes out. So, jitter on the S/PDIF link can lead to jitter at the DAC input, which in turn can affect the sound. That's why all S/PDIF links are not equal :) The ideal is to have the master clock located in the DAC, not the source. Then you can have a high quality, stable oscillator right by the DAC chip itself, where it matters. But S/PDIF doesn't allow for this, because there's no way for the DAC to control the rate at which data is transferred. Bidirectional links like Ethernet, USB and Firewire get around this problem. (I have a USB connected headphone amp at work with its own built-in DAC. It sounds wonderful!). Optical vs coax? Both can give rise to unwanted jitter. With an optical cable, the signal from the phototransistor in the receiver (which is what matters) is fairly small and its rise/fall time isn't instantaneous - so there's uncertainty as to exactly when the transitions between 1 and 0 have occurred. On the other hand, coax can have sharper edges which are easier to time between. But it can also pick up RF noise, which adds uncertainty back in, and there are a whole host of transmission line effects which I won't go into now. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] what is jitter
Note how in the Wikipedia article, the word 'jitter' is placed within bullsh*t marks - punctuation which, when applied to any word or phrase being used to describe an audio phenomenon, means that the author is either clueless, or knows perfectly well that the words they're using are inaccurate. You'll see a lot of them on audio forums and the technical stuff on manufacturers' web sites. Calling block addressing errors jitter was unfortunate - it leads to unnecessary confusion. Certainly it's not the same thing as jitter in the electronic engineering sense. I think you're confused about the different clocks in DAC and source. They always run at the same speed because they have to, otherwise you'd hear pops and clicks as the buffer in the DAC overruns or underruns. The device normally used to synchronise them is the PLL. Jitter is NOT to do with different clocks running at different speeds. It's irregularity in the one, single clock that drives the DAC. Imagine, for example, that you've bought a cheap wristwatch. It might gain a few seconds a day, but that's not jitter. Jitter is the fact that the seconds hand is stiff and jerky, and doesn't tick at precisely even one-second intervals. It is certainly possible for a DAC to buffer up enough data to cope with the difference in clock speeds over the length of a CD. It only requires about 1/2 a second's worth of buffer. The MSB DAC III does this - http://www.msbtech.com/products/dac3.php - for about $6,000. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
It sounds to me like the ground connection between your amp and Squeezebox might be broken. Try a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable between your amp and the headphone socket on the Squeezebox. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] what is jitter
At risk of stating the bleeding obvious myself: pick a DAC you can afford and which you like the sound of, don't waste time and energy worrying about how it works or what factors might be affecting its performance. That's for the design engineer to worry about, not the customer. A fixation on jitter is, frankly, a bit odd, and certainly not a productive way to choose hi-fi components. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] what is jitter
willyhoops;201812 Wrote: I am not sure if SB3 jitter is below 20ns rms... but if i try this... 20ns = 0.0002 seconds then 1 / 0.0002 = 50,000,000 then andyC's statement Standard tolerance on a quartz crystal is +/-50 parts per million ... [and] you can't hear the difference sounds spot on. I still think you're unclear as to what jitter is. You've certainly misinterpreted the figures in my example above. A clock can have zero jitter and yet still have an inaccurate frequency. In my example, a crystal that's 50ppm too fast would result in a sample rate of 44.102205kHz. But, provided that each and every one of those samples was clocked into the DAC at precise intervals of 1/(44.102205k) seconds, there would be no jitter at all. Jitter is NOT the same thing as a frequency error. Try this: imagine a turntable playing a record. The motor is accurate and smooth, so the stylus tracks the groove at exactly the correct speed all the time. That's accurate frequency and no jitter. Now suppose the motor speeds up fractionally, so that instead of spinning at (say) 45rpm, it now spins smoothly at 45.00225 rpm. That's a frequency error of 50 parts per million, but still no jitter. You can't hear the difference. Now replace the nice, smooth belt drive with a rattly gearbox. The average speed remains the same, but there's torsional vibration as each tooth engages and disengages. So now, as the record turns, sometimes the relative speed between stylus and groove is slightly faster, and sometimes it's slightly slower. That's more like the effect of jitter. MSB confuse the issue slightly by stating that they use a crystal accurate to 2.5ppm. That's all well and good, but the absolute frequency accuracy really doesn't matter - they'll just have found that applications that require low jitter also tend to require an accurate frequency as well, so that's what crystal manufacturers make. Audio, however, is NOT one of those applications. They just mention the frequency spec because it looks good in marketing literature to people who don't really understand the issue. Knowing that their own clock is accurate also minimises the size of buffer they need - they only have to cope with 52.5ppm of mismatch, and not, say, 100ppm. SB3's jitter is way, way less than 20ns. Here's a plot of its digital output: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/sb3.jpg You can see that the transition points between 1 and 0 are very well defined in time - I actually struggled to see any jitter at all with my 'scope, and I suspect that what I did see was instability in the scope itself. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] what is jitter
I think that by ideal they mean perfectly regular - not necessarily perfectly accurate in frequency. I very much doubt that the human ear can perceive a shift in pitch as small as 100ppm (0.01%) - and even if you could, there's no reason why it should actually affect your enjoyment of the music. (Think of an orchestra tuning up - does it really matter exactly the pitch or tempo they play at, provided they're in tune and in time?) Your calculation doesn't really mean anything, I'm afraid. 1/20ns is 50MHz, but so what? The fact that there's a 50 there somewhere is just coincidence. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
Sorry, I assumed your amp had RCA jacks for inputs as most do. I'm not familiar with Naim kit - but, maybe there's a clue here nonetheless. Do you know how your 5-pin plugs are wired? The fact that you get music at all means that the signal pins must be wired correctly - but that leaves three pins, and the screen, any or all of which could be used as ground. The fact that touching the jack on the back of the amp makes a difference at all suggests that there's a broken connection, or maybe an incorrectly wired cable, somewhere. The manual for your amp should include a diagram showing how the DIN sockets are wired; can you check with a multimeter that your cable is correct? Or remove the covers from the plugs to trace the wiring? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
'nc' means 'no connection' - the pin isn't used for anything. '-ve' means 'negative', and it's this pin that the outer part of the RCA jacks on your Squeezebox should be connected to. The other two pins are for the signal, and should be joined to the centre pins of the two RCA jacks. If you have a multimeter, or feel like taking the plugs apart, you should be able to check fairly easily that this is how the cable is wired. My money would be on the '-ve' pin not being joined to the outer ring of the RCA jacks. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Hum?
Sure - all you need is a mate with a soldering iron. Failing that, try a phone call to Naim or your friendly local hi-fi dealer and ask them where to get a correctly wired cable from. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33414 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
such a thing is very possible despite all the knuckle headed denials. Please: if you want to carry on a discussion, stop throwing insults at us and actually address some of the points that have been made. Just because many of us disagree with you doesn't mean we're thick. willyhoops;200923 Wrote: There is a famous and obvious solution to this... Microsoft pays a % of the sale price on every Zune to the record companies to compensate for piracy. Apple was asked to do the same but refused. Indeed it's a tall order for manufactureres to do it voluntarily and quite an effort to enforce across the world via taxation. Too right they refused. If there's any money changing hands here, it should be FROM the record companies TO the manufacturers of such devices, to compensate them for the very real, measurable expense they incur building DRM technology into each and every player, regardless of whether the end user actually wants, needs or uses it. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 interference due to titanium dental implant?
Lol :D Brilliant! Am I right in thinking that what you really mean, is: I'm bored now that we're part of a big company. I want to go off and do another start-up... ... and can I have a job? ;) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35150 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
Mark Lanctot;200587 Wrote: But there already is such a thing: a DSD decoding chip, necessary for SACD playback. That sure proved popular... Actually DSD isn't encryption, it's just a different way of using digital bits to encode an analogue waveform. The AK4396 DAC used in the Transporter can actually decode it. Given that SACD is backwards compatible with most CD players, the only reason I can think of as to why it didn't take off, is that customers simply didn't care enough about the higher quality, so didn't ask for it. If it costs more (even fractionally more) to produce, but customers don't really want it, then labels won't make them. Puts the whole 'throw away your equipment so you can have 96/24 quality' argument into perspective, doesn't it? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
opaqueice;200735 Wrote: there's been music around for a long while :-). True - but home recording playback equipment hasn't. Copying the score for a symphony doesn't remove the need for an orchestra to play it! -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
IMHO there's a much bigger problem with the idea of a tax on CDs or other media. One of my hobbies is photography, and I use blank CDs and DVDs to store digital photos - original material in which I hold the copyright. So, the idea of paying a tax to the music industry for the storage space I use is every bit as ludicrous and unjustified as suggesting I should pay a tax to the fast food industry, or the coal mining industry, or any other industry that has NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in my use of digital storage media for my own legitimate purposes. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
willyhoops;200406 Wrote: i am sorry not to have responded for a while. I decided to take the discussion to a more enlightened crowd. Am I right in assuming that by 'more enlightened', you actually mean 'pro-DRM'? (Never mind, don't bother answering that). Nevertheless, you are now at least asking some sensible questions - though the answers are most definitely up for debate: (1) Is DRM possible? Not with any current hardware. The implementation of a truly secure system would require consumers to throw away all their existing players, replacing them with new ones that support the new tamper-proof chip. Add anything even approaching $50/unit to the cost of anything other than an audiophile-grade player would be commercially ruinous - it would double the cost of an MP3 player, for example. In fact adding even $5 to the raw BOM cost of such a device would be completely unacceptable to manufacturers, just ask anyone who works in the electronics industry. (2) Would consumers buy it? Highly unlikely. The young people, who both buy and pirate the most music, simply won't hear any difference on their budget and portable systems, and the increased file size and DRM means both reduced storage capacity and battery life. The idea that they should consider replacing all their playback equipment, never mind their entire music collections, is truly laughable. The benefit of 96/24 encoding might be appreciated by the small proportion of the market that represents 'audiophiles' - though they too are unlikely to replace perfectly good, high quality equipment with something new, just to accommodate a DRM chip. They are also the people most likely to pay for their music in the first place, so DRM provides minimal benefit to the record companies. (3) Would the world be a better place with DRM? Better for whom? For the record companies, maybe. They find themselves in a position where they can truly charge whatever they like - in fact they're legally obliged to do so, if it maximises the benefit to their shareholders. Philanthropy is neither an historical virtue nor a future probability. For the consumer? A huge bill to replace perfectly good playback equipment, music becomes more expensive, reduced ability to play the music they've paid for where and when they choose... the ONLY potential benefit is a rather vague suggestion that there might be a greater variety of music out there to choose from. Though the case for labels promoting endless, over-hyped dross in a DRM-free world has been made, the case for NOT doing so in a DRM'd one has not. They could afford to, and I'd like it if they did is not a case. Bill Gates could afford to buy me a new laptop, and I'd like it if he did - but he's not going to. Why should he? (4) Would record companies invest in it? No, because it would be commercial suicide for all the reasons described above. (BTW who gives a stuff about tags, really? My music includes the artists' names and song titles, and that's plenty - I can find the album I want easily and play it. What display issue are you getting at?) (5) What about subscription services? Good idea. Pay some reasonable amount per month and download music in the format of your choice - say, FLAC or MP3 - quickly and safely from a secure server that's guaranteed to work, to be available, and not to be full of malware. I'd subscribe to that, and I'd keep subscribing provided that the flow of new, interesting music kept coming. It would be a whole lot easier than trawling P2P networks, the quality would be guaranteed, and that would make it worth the reasonable fee. Of course, it wouldn't be a 'per-album' fee, though. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
Tags are completely unimportant to me. When I buy a CD, the music goes straight onto my NAS, then the disc itself goes into the CD-changer in my car, and the box (including the sleeve notes, cover art and so on) goes on the shelf. I rarely, if ever, even look at them. Care to try and address any of my other points above please? Why exactly am I 'mad'? -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
Sure I'm bothered... it means I have to spend all of two minutes typing in the names of the tracks when I buy a new CD. This is totally unreasonable, of course. My time is precious. Clearly it would be better for me to simply throw away my Squeezebox, my USB DAC/headphone amp, CD players, PDA, laptop and car stereo, and replace them with new ones that can read the officially sanctioned record company tags that I can't even correct if they are wrong. Not that they'd EVER be wrong, of course, nor would they ever present information in a format that was inconsistent with my preferences (or the rest of my collection). Oh, no. They'd always be perfect, and undeniably worth the cost of all that new equipment. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
willyhoops;199224 Wrote: Well how about one company making a a Secure Cryptoprocessor / Decompression / DAC chip with tamper-resistant properties and only analogue outputs. You don't realise, do you, that such a chip would not be an audiophile device. Complex microprocessors require different fabrication techniques to high quality mixed-signal circuits, and interference from the digital circuitry is a problem too. The analogue stage would be inherently compromised, completely negating the benefit of the 24-bit original. In the same way why put the vendor though the hassle of running a web site maintaining the users backups How long do you think it would take to re-download all your music if the SIM card (or whatever) were damaged? My collection - quite a small one compared to many - runs to about 4000 songs, each around 40MB each in FLAC format, which is 160GBytes. On my internet connection that's about 2 weeks' solid downloading, and a definite violation of my ISP's fair use policy. A global portal which did all this and everyone uses brings the cost down and makes life nicer for the consumer. Rubbish. Show me ONE case where a monopoly has ever been good for the consumer. If your DRM actually works then you've just put the music industry in the position where they really can charge whatever they like - the WORST POSSIBLE outcome for the consumer. If it's broken- The system above is as secure as the chip on you creit card and is not going to be broken. If someone working at the company released some details then legal action must prevent web sites publishing details or files. Like this DIGG HD DVD thing - that must be stopped. Now I really don't know whether to laugh or cry. How do you think people find out that a system - like AACS, for example - has been cracked in the first place? That's right, they read about it on the Internet, by which time it's already too late. Cat out of bag, genie out of bottle... and of course, you fully appreciate that the Internet is global, so US law simply doesn't apply to most of its users. Analoge recording is OK becuase the quality is lower and the tags are missing. That's part of the idea. Some poor people will stick to old CDs and analogue recordings but everyone who can will upgrade. It's kind of nice becuase the kids can still play pirate mp3s but the grown ups with money can get the quality product. Then the DRM is serving no purpose at all. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
24 bit, art graphics included, DRM and wide compatibility with equipment... you've just described DVD-Audio, which failed. Nobody bought it. In any case, the market for such a format would be limited to those people: - who actually care about the higher resolution, which is a tiny number of audiophiles, AND - who don't care about the fact that it's encrypted, which I strongly suspect rules out most of those. Commercial suicide, in other words. Have any figures ever been released, which show a sudden and permanent drop in DVD sales following the release of DeCSS? It's an interesting controlled experiment; DVDs went from being difficult or impossible to copy, to being trivial to copy, almost overnight. Did the movie industry ever actually back up their whining about it with any actual figures? Has it, perhaps, occurred to you that all the formats which are commercially successful are also easy to copy - while SACD and DVD-Audio (which are not easy to copy) are the ones which have been failures? Don't get me wrong - I'd [ay good money for 24-bit, audiophile quality recordings - but only as long as they're of music that I'd have actually bought anyway, and provided they're in an open, non-proprietary, unencrypted format. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
Lol :) I was thinking much the same. Thing is, though, if a technology were created that allowed me to use digital information, freely, with any device I choose, with no restrictions on how or where I use it, yet which also somehow prevented other people from doing the same, I still wouldn't want it applied to my music. I'd want it applied to my credit card information. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] DRM lessons from the Squeezebox
Lessons about DRM we can learn about the Squeezebox: - if DRM were universal, small start-ups like Slim Devices would have a major obstacle to overcome in getting hold of the keys (hardware, software, licences... whatever) to play music at all. Therefore, it's highly unlikely we'd even HAVE a Squeezebox. - People like the ability to listen to music on multiple devices, distributed across a network, without having to fuss over where the CD (or the SIM card, or whatever) is. - Album art, lyrics and so on, may be nice to have, but are largely irrelevant. It's the music that counts. - Same goes for audio quality better than 44.1k/16 bit. Nice to have, but totally irrelevant to most people. I honestly struggle to see why anybody outside of the music industry would think DRM is a good thing. The ONLY thing it does is PREVENT music from being played. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What mods on SB3 REALLY make a difference in reducing jitter?
So... measurements aren't everything. That's not news - just look at the specs of any valve amp. The first rule of choosing hi-fi is to trust your own ears. How the product works, and what measurements can be made from it, may be of academic interest to potential buyers - but it's only the design engineer that really needs to know about them. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34749 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Potential benefits of converting to 24 bit
Jitter will be exactly the same. The SPDIF spec transmits 32 bits of data per sample anyway; up to 24 of these are available for the sample word (with the bottom bits explicitly set to zero if unused!), and the rest are overheads such as sync pulses, checksums and other stuff. Apart from possibly changing a flag bit or two in the general-purpose data area, there is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE between transmitting 16 bit samples, and 24 bit samples where the bottom bits are all zero. Since there is no difference at all in the bit stream, there will be no difference in downstream processing either. If a DAC is capable of oversampling / filtering to 24-bit accuracy, it'll be doing that anyway even with a 16 bit input, probably without even knowing the difference. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34892 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Potential benefits of converting to 24 bit
mswlogo;198595 Wrote: But didn't you just say 16 vs 24 wouldn't make any difference in the actual jitter of the 32bit word. Why would it matter which bits are being used in the test? So your saying each bit has it's own jitter measurement? Or if he toggled Bit 8 of the 24bit word he'd get the same measurement as bit 0 of 16bit? That makes no sense to me. I must admit, I don't know for sure why the test results are different - but I suspect it's much more to do with flaws in the test itself than the behaviour of the Transporter. For example, the AK4396 DAC is a 128x oversampling delta-sigma device, so there will always be data-dependent noise at frequencies outside the audio band. More than likely there is an analogue filter between the DAC and the output socket to attenuate this noise. Now suppose that, in order to allow excellent flatness up t0 22kHz, this filter has a cutoff around 100kHz. The test equipment is now trying to pick out jitter in the order of 100ps (which is the period of a clock running at 10GHz) in a signal which has been filtered to remove everything above 100kHz. Is that a sensible thing to try and do with any degree of accuracy? Or is the measurement likely to be influenced by the audio signal? I strongly suspect the latter. I'd bet that if the jitter measurement were made at the MCLK pin of the AK4396 - the correct place to measure it - that it would be completely independent of the data. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34892 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Potential benefits of converting to 24 bit
What I was getting at, is that your DAC, or your processor, or whatever else is connected over SPDIF, simply won't know whether it's getting 16 bit or 24 bit data. The SPDIF frame includes 24 bit positions for use with audio data, and a source that only has 16 bits available simply pads the missing bits with zeros. So, there cannot be any difference in how your processor handles the data. That's why you can't hear any difference. SPDIF (at least, the 2 channel uncompressed version we're using) isn't encrypted, BTW - just encoded to ensure plenty of edges for clock recovery. The AES/EBU spec is freely available and explains exactly how to decode it - you could do it with a storage scope and a pencil paper if you wanted. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34892 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What mods on SB3 REALLY make a difference in reducing jitter?
A cheap SMPS usually does put out a lot of noise, both on its output and on its input. CE (and, to a lesser extent, FCC) regulations place limits on: - the amount of energy radiated off the system as a whole between frequencies of 30MHz and 1GHz; - the amount of noise conducted back up the mains supply, between frequencies of 150kHz and 30MHz. So, it's perfectly possible for a PSU to be fully compliant to those standards, but to put out a lot of hash on the mains supply right through the audio band, and also to produce large amounts of noise on the DC output provided it doesn't radiate too much over 30MHz. The idea that it won't produce much noise because it's efficient is, I'm afraid, rubbish. The efficiency just means it won't get all that hot - nothing more. If it causes sound quality problems with the SB3, it'll be because of low impedance, high frequency switching noise on the DC output, which is hard to filter and therefore makes it through to the internal power rails. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34749 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What mods on SB3 REALLY make a difference in reducing jitter?
tyler_durden;197708 Wrote: A large amount of noise on the DC output would be easily visible on an oscilloscope. I'll hook my scope up and try to take a picture and post it. Race you :) As I stated before, a 6W power supply can't possibly put a large amount of noise anywhere. It barely puts out a large amount of DC power! Oh, please, do the maths. The total signal power on a line level output is, say, 2V rms across 1kOhm, which is 4 milliwatts. How much power do you think might be needed to cause audible interference on that? A microwatt? High frequency noise (if there was any) is easily filtered by small capacitors and ferrite beads, and even by the inductance of the power cable leading to the SB3. My own experience would tend to suggest otherwise - SMPS switching noise is too low impedance for small caps to help much, and too high in frequency for big ones. Lossy (ie. resistive) ferrite beads seem to work best provided the voltage drop across them isn't a problem. A higher Q inductor runs the risk of just ringing like a bell. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34749 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What mods on SB3 REALLY make a difference in reducing jitter?
Here's the output from the standard (UK spec Unifive USK300520) SB3 power supply. Measurement bandwidth is probably only around 20MHz or so, my scope probe is rubbish and desperately needs upgrading. Load resistance is about 11 Ohms, so we're drawing a little under half an amp. Noise typically gets worse with increasing load. [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/KF8L2618.JPG] So, we see a switching frequency of about 200kHz, and about 10mV p-p of noise. That's actually remarkably good for a cheap little 'wall wart', though it's some way from being an audiophile-grade level of performance, and might explain why some people claim an upgrade is worthwhile. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34749 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] What mods on SB3 REALLY make a difference in reducing jitter?
jhm731;197354 Wrote: FYI3- power supply noise is the biggest cause of jitter in digital circuits. WTF?! What gave you that idea? What about transmission line effects, crosstalk, ground bounce, PLL instability or data-dependency? I'll grant that PSU noise is a factor, but to state that it's the biggest cause of jitter, without qualification, is misleading bordering on irresponsible. In a break with the usual Internet tradition, I'm going to back that up with some actual measurements. Here are pictures of the SPDIF outputs from the SB3, and from a Marantz CD63 CD player: SB3: [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/sb3.jpg] CD63: [image: http://www.cawte.nildram.co.uk/Jitter/cd63.jpg] Hopefully if nothing else, that puts the quality of the SB3's SPDIF output into perspective! The actual edges are actually a bit sharper than shown - a limitation of my scope's bandwidth - but I actually struggled to measure any jitter on it at all. Compare and contrast that with the output from the CD63, which suffers dreadful data-dependent jitter - most likely caused by penny pinching on a capacitor in the digital output stage. THIS is a machine on which jitter-reducing mods might well have a clearly audible effect. (That's not to say that the SB3 wouldn't benefit too - but it should now be obvious as to why any improvements are going to be minimal compared to the gains which might be made by modding other source components). -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34749 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] My 2 mods for coax digi out...
It's always safe to apply formulae from transmission line theory to what is, undeniably, a transmission line. If it turns out to be a very short one, and therefore the effects of an impedance mismatch are very small, then that'll drop out of the equations. A 1 metre interconnect is NOT short, though. As per my previous post, something which even digital design engineers sometimes fail to properly grasp, is that it's not the data rate that matters, but the edge speed - dv/dt. The rise/fall time of the SB3's digital output is around 10ns, and the flight time of an edge along a 1m coax cable is about 4ns. Now consider exactly why an impedance mismatch might affect received jitter, bearing in mind that jitter is uncertainty about the timing of an edge at the receiver: Suppose a rising edge is driven by the SB3 into a poorly terminated transmission line. It propagates along the cable to the receiver, reflects off the impedance mismatch and heads back to the transmitter. After 4ns it reflects off the transmitter and starts heading back toward the receiver, so 8ns after the main edge has hit the receiver, a second, unwanted edge comes along and interferes with it. If you're lucky, the edge at the receiver has already crossed the 10 threshold, and the distorted wave shape is of no consequence. But, if your cable is the wrong length, this reflected signal eppears right when the receiver is trying to determine the timing of the 10 transition. Bad news. Note that this effect depends only on the cable length, the extent of the impedance mismatch, and the dv/dt of the edge, and NOT on the data rate. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34406 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] My 2 mods for coax digi out...
opaqueice;194637 Wrote: Sorry, I thought my statement was suffciently clear, but apparently not. The good approximation is that the voltage is the same everywhere along the wire *at a given time*. Obviously it changes with time, but it doesn't depend on position along the wire. This is one of those (rare) phenomena that can be easily quantified. The formula for the wavelength of a signal propagating along a linear conductor is v=fl, where v is the wave velocity, f is the frequency, and l is the wavelength. In a coaxial cable, v is about 80% the speed of light, or 240M m/s. The raw data rate (fundamental) on an S/PDIF cable for 44.1kHz sample rate is around 5.6 Mbit/s, which gives a wavelength of 43 metres. So, a 1 metre cable is short compared to the wavelength, but not totally insignificant. That's not the whole story, though, because it's not the data rate that matters, but the edge speed. Fast edges are desirable in this case because the faster the edge, the more accurately its position can be determined - and the lower the jitter. Data edges can easily contain harmonic components well over 100MHz, which have a wavelength comparable with the length of the cable. Transmission line effects aren't just significant - they completely describe the propagation of the signal. The Squeezebox does have a very clean digital output, with rise and fall times in the order of 10ns or so. Depending on the length and impedance of the cable, and how it is terminated, the receiver may see a nice, clean, monotonic edge, or it may see a waveform which is quite different. S-shaped edges which hover around the 10 threshold are surprisingly common, as are 'edges' which cross the threshold one way, then go back across it the other way, before finally crossing it again on the way up to the final voltage. All these cause problems recovering a low jitter clock. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34406 ___ audiophiles mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] My 2 mods for coax digi out...
There is always an isolating transformer on Ethernet ports. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34406 ___ audiophiles mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Anybody Hacked SB3 External Clock?
One of us is missing something here... you need to connect the screen of the coax cable to ground at BOTH ends. edit: I see you noticed that 2 minutes ago... ;) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32761 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Anybody Hacked SB3 External Clock?
Please tell me that's an anti-static towel you're working on... ;) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32761 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Today's upgrade
Machine Dynamica Wrote: Machina Dynamica produces the Clever Little Clock with the kind permission of PWB Electronics. Hm... there's a clue ;) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33562 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Q: What exactly is break or burn in time?
haunyack;188075 Wrote: Unfortunately, because insulation stores and releases energy, it is also a dielectric. In a cable application, all released energy is distortion. The misnomer break-in is often used... Actually some of this is real science. A cable is made up of two conductors separated by an insulator, and therefore has capacitance. Dielectric absorption is real, and so is capacitance change with applied voltage. I've seen caps that reduce in value by 50% with just 5v applied across them - the effect is not always small. So, I can believe that at frequencies where the effect of a few pF is significant, applying a DC bias might indeed change the characteristics of the cable. Whether it makes any difference at audio frequencies is highly debatable, though. But what really makes me laugh is the idea that the effect is somehow persistent. It's not; discharge a capacitor to remove the dc bias from it again and it's back to its original state almost immediately. All this would be a lot more plausible too if the dc bias were actually between the conductors that carry the signal. It isn't... -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33615 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Q: What exactly is break or burn in time?
GaryB;187975 Wrote: For another and perhaps better informed opinion, take a look at the following FAQ written by Jim Hagerman of Hagtech. He's a very good engineer and makes quality audio products and kits at reasonable prices. The FAQ is here: Have you actually read the FAQ? He quite openly admits to having absolutely no clue what 'break-in' might actually be doing to the cable, or what the effect (if any) is on its measurable parameters. Instead he writes a load of fluff like It is needed to format and clean up or wash the materials in the cable. This is not something that would be written by an expert. It's meaningless. Even if there were some change going on in the cable, who is to say it's always advantageous? I'm honestly quite surprised that nobody has yet suggested that a cable has a finite life after which it should be replaced. The components in your hi-fi - capacitors, especially - certainly do have a finite lifetime, during which they're steadily degrading. Sure, unplug a cable, stick it on some useless gadget for a few hours and put it back. You'll have cleaned some oxide or other crud from the contacts and given your ears a rest, so I'm not surprised it sounds slightly better. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33615 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Q: What exactly is break or burn in time?
Thing is, though, he's not just saying I can't justify the effects of cable 'burn-in' scientifically, but people claim to be able to hear a difference, so I believe there is a genuine effect on the properties of the cable and I have a product which I believe may stimulate and accelerate the process. Instead, there's total hogwash about 'formatting' and 'washing' materials. We are told that a signal of a level which is safe for the fine wire in a cartridge will somehow succeed in forming the materials after a chaotic manufacturing experience - even if that cable will then be used to carry mains power. Even if break-in is indeed a real, physical process which does change the electrical characteristics of the cable, Hagerman is doing himself and the industry no favours by promoting his product with such unscientific babble. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33615 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
325xi;186512 Wrote: To summarise the overwhelming response - Toslink works according to specification, which no inherent production flaws, so there's no reason to avoid it, or even better, use coax only when Toslink isn't available. I didn't miss anything, right? Toslink works by shining an LED along a length of cable, which is then received by a phototransistor at the other end. The signal from this phototransistor is likely to be smaller and have less clearly defined on/off edges than the signal received at the end of a coax cable. Therefore, it is not unlikely that jitter at the input to the clock recovery circuit will be worse, and that in turn may mean that jitter at the DAC chip (where it matters) is also worse. Now the next step. Few mentioned here that quality of optical connector can cause problems. Any advise of how to discern a good quality optical cable from something with cheap flaky connectors? Is it a matter of particular brands, or whatever else? I presume I can't evaluate quality just by looking at the cable or its price tag, right? The connector in an optical cable doesn't really make any difference - it's just a mechanical thing designed to hold the fibre in place so that the light coming out of the end shines onto the phototransistor. I seriously doubt there's any performance difference at all between connectors - it's not like in an electronic system where the connector is actually a part of the signal path. The transparency of the cable itself and the quality of the cut ends might be important. Keeping it as short as possible will help. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
The free one that came with my PlayStation 2 clicks very positively into place - I assumed that would represent about the cheapest component available. The ability of consumer electronics manufacturers to shave a penny or two off a product never ceases to amaze me. Let me revise my assertion: provided it actually holds the end of the fibre in place, the type of connector used on a Toslink cable should make absolutely no discernable difference to sound quality. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
325xi;186710 Wrote: Oops, here we go again! So, Andy, what's your conclusion here - Toslink is more prone to jitter related problems then coax? Forgive me for side-stepping the question, but I think it would be pointless to guess without making some quantitative measurements on the electrical output from a typical Toslink receiver module. That said, I have made a couple of observations which may be relevant: - if you look at the end of a Toslink cable, the light coming out of it is fairly omnidirectional; there is no particular angle at which it suddenly looks much brighter than others. Therefore, it's unlikely that a misalignment of a degree or so would make much difference. - an opto-isolator designed to pass data at a couple of Mbits typically has rather slow rising edges on its output, because of the passive pull-up used to bring the output to a logic '1' in the absence of light from the LED. This would inherently tend to increase jitter - and a Toslink connection is basically just an opto-isolator with a particularly wide separation between the two halves. I will be looking into this properly in the not-too-distant future, so I'll post my findings if anyone's really bothered. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
jeffmeh;186751 Wrote: Whichever is subject to more jitter, unless you have an extremely revealing system, very good speakers, a room with good acoustics, and some very keen ears, it is likely to be negligible. If you possess all of the above, I'm envious, lol. Funnily enough, that's exactly what I thought about a year ago, when I confidently ditched my (early, and rather expensive) DVD player in favour of a cheap DVD recorder. I figured that all digitally connected sources should sound the same, and therefore, that I could play CDs using the DAC in my A/V receiver and they'd sound just as good as before. My old DVD player used a coax connection, the new one used Toslink. It took me about a week to realise that something was wrong. Music was boring, the soundstage rather flat and instruments hard to pick out individually - I just wasn't enjoying it any more. Sadly by this point my old DVD player had vanished at the hands of Ebay. So, I bought another one - a newer model well reviewed for its audio quality - and plugged it in with a coax connection. It sounds great, normal service is resumed. This isn't a controlled experiment, of course, but it does prove (to me, at least) that all digital sources are not equal. The same DAC and amp combination really can sound different when fed with a different source. Ironically it's the cheap recorder that's most tolerant of discs in poor condition, so I don't believe for a minute that bit errors are creeping in to cloud the issue. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Optical connection - inferior by default?
You should read what I write when I'm sober :) -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33146 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Transporter Review in Hi-Fi News (UK)
I do understand that, for many people, their goal when choosing a system is to find one which reproduces sounds in a way that mimics the original as closely as possible. That's absolutely fine and I've no problem with that whatsoever. However, I prefer to assess equipment based on how much I enjoy listening to the sound it makes. The music I listen to is mostly synthesized and/or distorted anyway - there's no real point of reference to say that my system sounds 'right' or 'wrong'. So, when I'm looking to buy a piece of equipment, its ability to reproduce a sound in a way that's absolutely faithful to the original is not a criterion I'd use to judge it. I'm more interested in soundstage depth, bass extension, the ability to separate vocals clearly from a complex mix... but if the same system would make a brass instrument sound like the mating call of an elephant, I couldn't care less. But we can't credibly claim that one is better than the other only because we like it better in presenting our preffered type of music. I disagree, I think that's exactly the way to assess whether or not one piece of kit is better than another. I'd expect a good reviewer to try any system with a variety of music, to then be able to give opinions that will be meaningful to as many readers as possible. -- AndyC_772 AndyC_772's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10472 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33276 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
