ANOTHER Example of Why I HATE DSD and Why Customers Who Bought Sony's Boloney Are So Annoying

[asdf1000]

30 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Let's see ... I am currently using my $1700 Dell Xeon W workstation to run @John Dyson's feralA da-avx decoding, and can do this while running HQPlayer with EC modulators at DSD128, similarly can use this machine with RTX 2080 Ti card for CUDA processing as well as games ...  and it doesn't need a new DAC nor headphones amp when I upgrade ...

 

Now if I were getting a new DAC that Holo May looks very tasty ...

 

 

I'm running DSD256 ASDM7EC with my i9-9900K, so you're trying to preach to the converted 😉

 

But have you seen Hugo TT2's APx555 measurements and headphones output power?

[jabbr]

4 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

...But have you seen Hugo TT2's APx555 measurements and headphones output power?

 

No I'm weird and use a modified FirstWatt J2 as a headphone amp 🙃

[asdf1000]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hugo-tt-2-by-chord-electronics-the-official-thread.879425/post-14236842

 

I skip all the words of the opening slides.

 

The 'Output drive' slide is most interesting to me and then the APx555 measurements.

 

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

A better comparison (cost and non-portable) is probably i9-9900K build + RME ADI-2 DAC against Chord Hugo TT2 ....

 

Computer you anyway have for other purposes, so you can count that out. I don't have Hugo TT2 to measure, but I doubt it is much better in terms of modulator performance.

 

2 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

And for headphones setup you'd need to add a HPA4 to probably match TT2's headphone output performance (especially power).

 

No, you don't need anything like HPA4 to match TT2's headphone output performance. Schiit Magni 2 is probably enough. No need to have much power for headphones either.

 

If you could actually use headphone output of the ADI-2 it would be also technically good.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

The 'Output drive' slide is most interesting to me and then the APx555 measurements.

 

Yet another set of measurements that get cut to 20 kHz so it doesn't tell anything about the reconstruction accuracy.

 

[EdmontonCanuck]

12 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I hate logarithms. They are so non-linear!

 

 

A logarithm is just a downed tree with dance moves 😊 

 

[Ryan Berry]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

It doesn't, instead it leaves you more money to focus on the actual conversion and analog sections and doing things you know. And better allows you to omit cheap COTS DAC chips and go for discrete designs of your own. I much more see that use of COTS DAC chips impedes you from doing many things.

 

In some ways we agree.  Many of the processes you're talking about is not done in the DAC chip in our units.  Allowing the DAC to handle everything is easy to do, and I'm sure it's really tempting for some to slap a chip on a board, feed it power, clock, and signal and call it a day, but we've found that it doesn't sound particularly good.  In other ways we're probably not going to see eye to eye (or perhaps ear to ear) here.  I think one of the tricky things is that it can be difficult to understand what is actually happening inside of a unit without knowing the designer's implementation.  We're fortunate enough to be able to turn off various functions of the DACs we use, disable or enable filtering, listen to various external programs handling the upsampling, etc. before we make decisions.  Ultimately, we picked what sounded the best to us that also gives listeners the most consistent results after very exhaustive testing.  Happily, we can do all that we're doing AND focus on the items you mentioned, so it's a win-win.

I'll agree on one part with R-2R DACs...they're damned expensive to do well.  Charley roughed together an idea that cost well over $1000 in parts alone just to put together.  It's not whether or not it was doable at that point, but a question what would people actually gain in the process vs. what would be gained elsewhere in the design.  Like I said, we don't completely disagree on several points, just feel there are better gains in different approaches.

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yet another set of measurements that get cut to 20 kHz so it doesn't tell anything about the reconstruction accuracy.

 

 

What should it go to? I can try to ask him 😀

[Miska]

8 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

What should it go to? I can try to ask him 😀

 

I'm using 90 kHz and 5 MHz bands usually. If necessary also 200 MHz, but it is rarely necessary.

 

1 kHz tone at 5 MHz 1M point FFT with peak-hold

0 - 22.05 kHz linear sweep at 5 MHz 1M point FFT with peak-hold (sweep should be couple of minutes long and let repeat couple of times so that the peak hold fills up properly)

 

[CG]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I'm using 90 kHz and 5 MHz bands usually. If necessary also 200 MHz, but it is rarely necessary.

 

1 kHz tone at 5 MHz 1M point FFT with peak-hold

0 - 22.05 kHz linear sweep at 5 MHz 1M point FFT with peak-hold (sweep should be couple of minutes long and let repeat couple of times so that the peak hold fills up properly)

 

 

This ^^ is the most sensible thing I've read this week.  👏

 

Wouldn't there also be some value in shorter sweep times but lots and lots of repeats to capture possible random events?  There may be none, but you never know until you look...

[Miska]

8 hours ago, CG said:

Wouldn't there also be some value in shorter sweep times but lots and lots of repeats to capture possible random events?

 

Yes, and another aspect is that in order for the sweep frequencies (and related harmonics) to properly hit the FFT window and get recorded by the peak hold, you need either slow sweep, or many repeats (preferably both). So that there are no gaps...