SOtM Launches sMB-Q370 Motherboard

The situation is remarkably simple ... any sort of electrical activity in the vicinity can generate electrical noise; that noise can make its way with the greatest of ease to where it becomes a nuisance; and most audio components are not engineered well enough to reject the impact of that noise, to below the level where its effect is audible - the more 'transparent' the replay chain, the worse the problem most likely will be.

14 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The situation is remarkably simple ... any sort of electrical activity in the vicinity can generate electrical noise; that noise can make its way with the greatest of ease to where it becomes a nuisance; and most audio components are not engineered well enough to reject the impact of that noise, to below the level where its effect is audible - the more 'transparent' the replay chain, the worse the problem most likely will be.

and the scientists will say this is hogwash. "That is all just guessing. Show me how this noise affects the circuits? Show me how this "can" happen", show me your proof that most audio components are not engineered to reject noise, and show how this is "most likely" with transparent components, whatever that means."

Don't attack me... I'm just playing devil's advocate because as I said, the debate is ongoing, endless, and I'm pretty sure... pointless.

2 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

and the scientists will say this is hogwash. "That is all just guessing. Show me how this noise affects the circuits? Show me how this "can" happen", show me your proof that most audio components are not engineered to reject noise, and show how this is "most likely" with transparent components, whatever that means."

 

Don't attack me... I'm just playing devil's advocate because as I said, the debate is ongoing, endless, and I'm pretty sure... pointless.

 

 

The people who inhabit, say, the ASR forum want life to be simple - they don't want to think further than what easy, convenient measuring will show. So their solution is to vigorously attack people who are not happy with what the industry delivers.

Compare this to, say, the motoring industry - whose products are evaluated by car magazines, etc. To paraphrase the above, if  representatives of the industry responded, "This is all guessing. Show me how bad road surfaces affects the ride and handling of vehicles. Show me how this "can" happen", show me your proof that most cars aren't engineered to completely isolate the occupants from the vagaries of the road, and show me how this is "most likely" with high performance supercars, whatever that means." when they read some negativity about the behaviour of some products ... how would that go down?

Yes, the objectivists want to live in a bubble; if they babble the same shortsighted sentences over and over again, they hope that this will make the bad stuff go away ... unfortunately, it doesn't ...

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Show me how bad road surfaces affects the ride and handling of vehicles.

your analogy is flawed. It is very easy to show how road surfaces affect car handling. I have yet to see where anybody has shown that electrical noise generated in a server is affecting sound quality. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, maybe I missed it, but as far as I know nobody has proven that to be the case,  so if I am correct it is far from being the "remarkably simple" situation you described above. 

So even though it may be logical to assume that this noise would,   if you can't prove it we end up with the same endless,  pointless debate I've been reading since the advent of digital audio. 

1 hour ago, bbosler said:

 

your analogy is flawed. It is very easy to show how road surfaces affect car handling. I have yet to see where anybody has shown that electrical noise generated in a server is affecting sound quality. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, maybe I missed it, but as far as I know nobody has proven that to be the case,  so if I am correct it is far from being the "remarkably simple" situation you described above. 

Does one engineer show another, differences in car handling by a series of test with nothing more than numbers to show for it; or does he carefully listen to what a test driver has to report, after taking it for a test run?

You do this, a step at a time ... you inflict severe electrical noise pollution on a playback chain, to the point where it is obviously affected; and make recordings outputs of the setup, with and without the degradation - if it is easily audible, then it must leave signatures in the waveform. Note what the patterns in the difference are; and then decrease the level of interference while monitoring whether the pattern in the losses remains, hopefully at lower levels - you're trying to detect where and how the audio is affected, when there is noise in the environment. A server being the cause of the noise, is as interesting and relevant as whether, say, a refrigerator is the culprit ...

Of course, this is a waste of time and effort - your real concern is to tame the interaction; if someone can hear a problem, then there is a problem - wouldn't it be lovely to go see a doctor, and him to tell you it's all in your imagination; and that cures you, every time, .

1 hour ago, bbosler said:

 

So even though it may be logical to assume that this noise would,   if you can't prove it we end up with the same endless,  pointless debate I've been reading since the advent of digital audio. 

 

 

Ain't no proof ever good enough, for those who are grimly determined to disbelieve ...

12 hours ago, fas42 said:

if it is easily audible, then it must leave signatures in the waveform.

So you are saying if you hear it (if it is easily audible) you must be able to show it with a measurement (must leave signatures in the waveform)

Can you not see how futile this discussion is ? (if you want to call it that)  That is the Audio Science Review position. If I can't  measure it you can't hear it. The other side says you obviously aren't measuring everything there is to measure because I hear it.

I look forward to somebody actually buying one of these boards and reporting back that they hear an improvement... then the ASR crowd can jump in say they are obviously delusional because what they hear can't possibly be explained with measurements. 

Feel free to state it another way, use another analogy, or propose another thought experiment, but you are wasting your time.

The debate is endless and futile..........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile..........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile..........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile.........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile.......................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile.........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile.........................................................................................

The debate is endless and futile..........................................................................................

goodbye

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

So you are saying if you hear it (if it is easily audible) you must be able to show it with a measurement (must leave signatures in the waveform)

Yes. Which is not the same thing as saying that the normal measurements will show it.

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

Can you not see how futile this discussion is ? (if you want to call it that)  That is the Audio Science Review position. If I can't  measure it you can't hear it. The other side says you obviously aren't measuring everything there is to measure because I hear it.

Only the extreme say, "Unless I can measure it, easily, then it doesn't exist!" ... there's a spectrum of attitudes at ASR - people there do say that less than ideally engineered components will allow flaws in the SQ; which sometimes may be difficult to measure. What that forum does react to, is blubbering, flowery nonsense about how fabulous some product or tweak is - when the reality is far, far more mundane ... moderation, in everything, gets one closer to what is actually there.

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

Feel free to state it another way, use another analogy, or propose another thought experiment, but you are wasting your time.

 

The world will get there in the end ... thinking in the video field is more open; it's accepted there that the eye can be fooled, but that you have to aim at very, very accurate visual representation of things before the mind will accept the illusion - glitches in what is presented to the eyesight are easily picked, especially by someone who is familiar with the technologies, etc. One may ask, why is it so difficult for the "scientific crowd" to accept that the same could be true for the ear ... there is a lot of ego involved, unfortunately, so it will take longer ...

here we go again,
I know everything and you know nothing,,,,,,,,,,,,,

bla bla bla bla

On 1/8/2022 at 3:53 AM, fas42 said:

Does one engineer show another, differences in car handling by a series of test with nothing more than numbers to show for it; or does he carefully listen to what a test driver has to report, after taking it for a test run?

Actually, it is much more the former than the latter. When car designers start to look at a new suspension system or chassis design this will initially be done using sophisticated simulation software, following this bespoke suspension test rigs will be used. So lots of engineers looking at nothing but numbers, and not a driver to be found.

The first time a real human driver gets to test anything, this will initially be with a "development mule" then with prototype vehicles. These cars will be loaded with sensors and telemetry. The engineers will listen to the reports from test drivers, but this will all be corelated to hard measured data. So again, lots of engineers looking at numbers.

I think this approach also translates to the world of audio. If people can hear differences, progress in design is much easier to make if this can be correlated to measured data.

In fairness, it think this is more or less what you were saying in the rest of your post.

24 minutes ago, Confused said:

Actually, it is much more the former than the latter. When car designers start to look at a new suspension system or chassis design this will initially be done using sophisticated simulation software, following this bespoke suspension test rigs will be used. So lots of engineers looking at nothing but numbers, and not a driver to be found.

We're well and truly off the beaten track now ... I was relating how objectivists may say, "Show me how this noise affects the circuits?" to a fictitious demand, in the car world, of "Show me how bad road surfaces affects the ride and handling of vehicles?" - the latter is considered trivially obvious; and audiophiles who has done simple experimenting with a decent rig can also demonstrate, to themselves, the connection of the former. The "Why is it so?" is nothing more than the fact that nothing is fully impervious to unwanted stimuli - what one is after is acceptable performance.

Yes, I'm sure current car design techniques get pretty fancy - but this evolved from very much hands on trial and error; which got the industry a long way down the road ...

24 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

I think this approach also translates to the world of audio. If people can hear differences, progress in design is much easier to make if this can be correlated to measured data.

 

In fairness, it think this is more or less what you were saying in the rest of your post.

I sure that someone will think up a test using, say, an Audio Precision analyser which will make what's going on obvious. But no-one yet has been motivated enough to do this - so, in the meantime, we wait ...

Car analogies regarding hifi-discussion are sometimes opinion-ed as used cliches but I think there is some common ground on this although some points might be vice versa. Here is a fictional story where roles can be mixed when thought as hifi talk on forums. Don't take this too literally 😉

Say, you have a 'well-engineered' german car which by a layman could be considered as comfortable. It gets driven by a pro/race driver or an enthusiast. The driver might think this well-engineered car is too comfortable because you lose imminent feedback of the road and the grip tires are having so the driver in a way won't feel the road as well he/she has get used to.

So I would think it's a good thing there are options on the market if you are interested in tuning something to your preference.

OK, let's change some shocks, springs, thicker anti-roll bars and so on... The enthusiast probably would think, hey, now we're driving. The handling really starts to resemble how it should feel when you're driving faster. Lets say this car setup is now adequate for the enthusiast/pro group and let the layman drive it. He/she might begin to complain the steering wheel vibrates more, cabin is more noisy, bumps on the road kicks through harder to your hands and overall feeling of the car is kinda stiff and during winter might even feel little more unsafe to drive.

Layman then reports his/her findings to enthusiast who gets enraged because layman does not see or understand the engineering behind the upgraded parts and why the car would be better upgraded. Then layman is confused whats the fuss about the parts and upgrades since it was originally good and of course well-engineered. "Show me how it's better. Show them measurements! I won't accept your opinion." he might even say. Enthusiast gets confused: "Measurements? I just enjoy driving and the emotion it gives to me. I don't have any measurements to back it up and I don't know how take them by myself even if I had the gear."

Layman: "Hey! I enjoy driving too but what's this crap talk about emotions? I trust more of the results on profoundly engineered car's shocks performance on road bounce simulator than your feelings of driving."

Enthusiast: "Fool"

Layman: "No, You."

Funnier twist to this story would be if this story's layman would not get to drive the modified car and still being persistent on his/hers opinion based on enthusiast's report on upgraded car. Which might be more relatable to often heated online discussions. I somehow feel most of this story's laymen would not change their opinion even if measurements on differences would be shown by some other entity than the one layman would prefer.

In the end we probably have two good and different car setups and endless arguing the matter of tastes, on the internet. 

Of course this story relating to hifi would not make sense at all (if it ever did!) if digital transportation of music would be so simple it could be defined just by interpretation of 0 or 1. Well of course I can be talking from my butt since I am a dropout telecom engineer due to not being a "math head" but I just personally think it's more complex topic. 

I liked reading Mutec 10MHz Reference clock-thread on this forum. Lots of interesting insight about timing-part of digital signal posted by John Swenson there. 

this is a similarly pointless debate as all others about 'blind listening''versus 'show me the measurements' etc, but I'll humor one fact....the VAST majority of cars that had their suspension 'designed on the Nürburgring' supposedly to create fast lap times are being found far too lumpy during reviews by well respected car journalists and professional drivers.

20 minutes ago, MarcelNL said:

this is a similarly pointless debate as all others about 'blind listening''versus 'show me the measurements' etc, but I'll humor one fact....the VAST majority of cars that had their suspension 'designed on the Nürburgring' supposedly to create fast lap times are being found far too lumpy during reviews by well respected car journalists and professional drivers.

Just like training AI facial recognition, which was shown to be trained with only certain types of faces., namely Caucasian faces (not trying to be racist, just explaining a fact here). This is why, many people of colour have issues with facial recognition. Same thing.

1 hour ago, Crwilli57 said:

Why do people feel the need to crap all over a thread on a new MOBO with the same endless arguments that have nothing to do with the original post?

nothing to do with the original post is debatable 😜

So tell us, what is the intent of the original post? What is a "proper " response? What would not be "crap?"

On the one hand you can argue that the thread should be limited to MOBO functions and implementations, but other than inputs for external clocks this one seems to be pretty much like all other MOBOs. 

On the other hand, this web site is about how things sound, or at least I think it is, so why is it crap to discuss how it may or may not affect the sound? And that's where all threads have the potential get "crapped" on. People talking about how it might affect the sound, people chiming in that it can't possibly affect the sound which can be easily shown with blind tests, people stating that it won't measure any different than any other MOBO so it is snake oil, people using analogies to try and prove a point when there is no adequate analogy.. etcetera. 

so here we are.... again

As firedog and others have stated, our hearing can be manipulated very easily. Expectation bias is a very real thing and very powerful. So, really the only way to judge, besides measurements, is a DBL blind test.

Where the DBL thing ... just ... doesn't ... work, is that many of the things that really matter are far, far too difficult to set up so that there can be smooth switching between states A and B - yes, if one wished to spend lots of money, and lots of time creating 'perfect' test situations, it would be possible - but no-one in the the hifi game is ever, ever going to do it ... .

Turns out that if you know what the standard of SQ can be like, if everything is "in alignment", then it becomes easy to assess the value of making changes - either you are now closer to that level, or you're not. Ditch everything that makes it worse, and if you've paid good money for something that has been of little benefit, then you might as well try and recover most of that expenditure, by selling it to someone who may get value.

Continuing the car theme, , many people evolve in audio by jumping from one manufacturer, and model of vehicle, to the next ... "I want to go fast at Nürburgring !! Right, I'll try BMW, hmm, no; Porche? Nah, didn't like the seats ... how about MB? Gee, doesn't make the right brmm, brmm noises ... ..." and so it goes on. Now, if someone is serious about getting a good experience at a circuit, they read up a bit, talk to a lot of people; work out the right value for money product to acquire - and only then does the "real work" begin. They consider every part of the vehicle, whether it's working for and against them; and consider myriads of potential upgrades and changes that may make it better - it's a journey, with the intention of extracting every last ounce of potential from what they have in front of them.

This is also a very effective approach with audio - one can achieve quite outstanding results, from something that is nominally not that special. The key is being able to evaluate whether you're making progress or not - this is what you have "to measure"; and at the moment one's ears are by far the best guide - the hard bit is that people get it wrong, often, when they get excited by some small variation - the car feels like it's going faster around one particular corner - but in the big picture they have in fact gone backwards ...

Still no answer from SOTM on what the two clock freqencies are that this motherboard takes... the manual also doesn't say anything...dissapointing.  This is not the greatest product launch....

More than likely another company is building the board for them, and they are just a reseller. This is a common practice. Look at the big producers of boards, like Foxconn (they make the MB's for Apple M1's), ASUS, etc.

37 minutes ago, botrytis said:

More than likely another company is building the board for them, 

https://www.onlogic.com/computers/components/motherboards/mitac/

I think pretty much a given that SoTM is not building mother boards

note Mitac logo on the picture that was posted earlier.

Mitac is a 4th tier producer of MB's, like Foxconn.

On 1/7/2022 at 5:24 PM, bbosler said:

BTW the joke is actually there are 10 types of people in this world - those who understand binary and those who don't

This made me lol....I know that one of course, and it's what I based my comment on....the "joke" in my case is just as stated! 

Regarding the debate between measurements and what people can hear, I agree with the above poster that the double-blind controlled trial is the only way to answer the question truthfully. It's how it's done in other fields where the results really matter. I think saying that it is difficult to do is a cop-out. It would be easy, for example, to have a hifi setup with 2 source components, one with a standard mobo and one with this one. You could then easily switch source and listen for any differences. You would need a certain number of listeners ("n") to make the results statistically significant. 

If someone would set up a website, start doing this sort of thing and publishing the results, I think it would be very popular indeed!