USB and Other Digital Cables Round Up as of 2/5/2016
* Indicates an update since the previous posting.
When it’s time to buy USB or other digital cables, what’s the first thing to do? Well, you’re likely to turn to the audiophile mags and Internet sources for reviews and opinions. Info is out there but scattered about, so here is a round up that doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive to assist you. This is what I wished I had when I was in the market for cables to assist in narrowing dow
All,
Where did this 'absolute sound' thing come from ?
First off, I did not invent this stuff. My original understanding of the absolute sound comes from Harry Pearson and early issues of his magazine 'The Absolute Sound' As best as I can tell, he invented the concept, and the methodology of applying it to equipment and recording reviews.
The Absolute Sound was, and is:
the name of a magazine
an audacious claim;
the name of the reference sound source for grading audio equipment
I think I am need of a bit of a break from here.
I enjoy a good heated discussion as much as anyone, but being repeatedly stalked in "cyber-space," having my photograph ripped off my employer's website and posted here without my permission, and being accused (falsely) of making "racist" comments against Australians (with not one shred of evidence ever offered), makes me realize my non-anonymous presence here could potentially harm my job, my personal and professional reputation, and may invi
Hello,
This blog post will be a work in progress as time and motivation allow but in this first go round I wanted to start off by talking about the bandwidth requirements (As Observed) from a networking perspective while streaming several different flavors of music files found in your average Audiophiles music library.
To date, I have not yet seen anyone post this sort of information on the web showing the actual "flow" patterns and behavior of the various streamed files under test. Unde
Based on request here, I made some more square wave scope measurements using a high resolution scope for comparison with earlier measurements of DSC1.
Here are 7 kHz square wave results for the DSC1.
DSD128:
DSD256:
DSD512:
Here are 7 kHz square wave results for the iFi iDSD Micro.
PCM 352.8k:
PCM 705.6k:
There are (at least) three ways one can use an Apple TV to play music:
(1) Airplay streaming from a computer, iPod, iPhone, etc. This works in pretty much the same way as airplay to an Airport Express, or some airplay-enabled speakers like the Zeppelin Air. The streaming is done close to real-time, with a player application (like iTunes, or the player software on an iPhone) controlling it. (Recent versions of OS X with the right hardware can do this from the operating system level, both
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Before you Start ...
Take a look at the well-hidden Computer Audiophile Academy: Basics
Large Music Libraries vs Streaming Services
A lot of us “Computer Audiophiles” have amassed huge libraries of music, either from our legacy CD library or from online vendors, such as HDTracks or some mixture of the two. So much music that it’s sobering to think we may not ever get a chance to listen to it all.
This reminds me of one of my favourite writers, Colin Wilson who wrote a book about his own favourite books, called ‘The Books in My Life’’. He’d amassed a large collection of 20,000
I have been a problem hearing some song cutting when only I play songs with sample rate above 96k (96k is ok).
I'm using A+ 2.0.4 with M2tech Young DAC 384k , MacBook Pro 13inch Early 2011, 8GB, SSD drive, external Thunderbolt drive, and USB Hi-Speed Bus exclusive to feed DAC, and settings is:
Hog Mode, Interger mode, no upsampling , 32bit
I realize when a limit A+ to 24bit for playing above 96k the problem dissapier but I supposed the Interger Mode too, because INT flag turn off.
Here are my standard set of measurements, this time with iFi iDSD Micro.
First sweep 0 - 22.05 kHz. Source is 44.1 kHz 32-bit PCM file.
Filter "Bitperfect" (NOS):
Filter "Standard":
Filter "Minimum(phase)":
Upsampled to 768/24 PCM in HQPlayer:
Upsampled to DSD256 in HQPlayer:
Upsampled to DSD512 in HQPlayer:
Puddletag was developed for Linux, but it is easily ported to OS X. I made a fink package that enables you to install it automatically. If you have fink installed, simply issue the command
fink selfupdate
fink -y install puddletag
or, if you want to do this quickly with precompiled debian packages,
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install puddletag
and Bob's your uncle.
If you don't have fink installed, you can get a copy of mine, which w
As requested by Superdad, here are sweep results for a 0 - 768 kHz sweep (source is 1536/32 PCM).
DSD128:
DSD256:
DSD512:
Note that corner frequency of the analog filter formed by the conversion stage moves up as the sampling rate is increased, while the Sallen-Key filter has static corner frequency.
Rise and stability of 7 kHz square wave at DSD256:
