Is Someone Playing Fast & Loose With Measurements?

[DM]

Hi Guys - If you want to discuss business practices of LH or any company please start a new thread. I don't want this potentially volatile thread to turn into a bash LH thread.

 

I have to agree with Chris here, let's not turn this into LH bashing thread. They are a good company with very good internet marketing skill.

 

As I understand (please correct me if I am wrong), Larry Ho was quite a successful internet opportunist back in Taiwan during the dot-com era, he obtained 30m investment from Intel for an internet software company but later went bankrupt around 2000/2001, those were widely reported in the Taiwan media.

 

http://www.inside.com.tw/2013/11/18/larry-ho-geek-pulse-chineasy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inside-blog-taiwan+%28%E7%B6%B2%E8%B7%AF%E8%B6%A8%E5%8B%A2%E8%A1%8C%E9%8A%B7%E8%88%87%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%29

 

I actually joined their two campaigns due to the very good marketing they did and like others, I am still awaiting delivery.

 

On the other hand, I do think after following all the arguments here, Chris's ones are logical and reasonable to me. There is definitely a case for the LH guys to answer.

 

I have both the Dragonfly and iDSD (properly charged) in my own possession, I ran a 0dB signal through them and I got the following results from my Dicksmith multi-meter:

 

Dragonfly: 1.85V

iDSD： 1.66V

 

I don't have a big ass scope or audio analyser to do all those fancy FFT graphs, but with my DIY measurements, I can confirm and repeat what Audioquest and iFi published are correct and I can't reconcile my results with what LH Labs have published.

[DM]

Thank you for pointing me to this. It made my day. It created hilarity here not known since that bit on TV where Rob Ford admitted he was on Crack!

 

Sorry, magnum innominandum, I don’t understand half of the technical stuff you were trying to say about their measurements…

 

 

Want to know what you're looking at right there? It's the final measurements of Geek Pulse's digital input circuit. What's so special about it? Well...

Looking at the THD+N, it's measuring better than -141 dB. This is a very geeky measurement that usually isn't published during the development of a product, so there's not much to compare it to. But it means that the digital input circuit adds 0.000008% distortion to the input signal. Not bad at all!

 

The second thing you can see in this pic is the FFT Spectrum analysis of the digital input circuit. It shows the noise floor at about -185 dB. The Audio Precision APx525's noise floor is -190 dB, so we're very close to the limits of what we can measure. We're feeling very good about this circuit!

 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geek-pulse-a-digital-audio-awesomifier-for-your-desktop?c=activity

 

Are you saying they were measuring the digital to digital transmission lost inside the Geek Pulse?

 

If there is a case, it should have no error at all, so a 24bit signal should be -144dB.

 

This is just like measuring whether there is any error in the 10MB file that I have just copied to my USB thumb drive from my PC, and then say “Everyone look, the copying went perfect without error, not bad at all!"

 

What is the point of this completely meaningless test? A couple cheapest computer sound cards can achieve that …

 

Come on, LH Labs couldn’t be doing this, they must be measuring something else which I don’t quite understanding yet, they are surely more professional than this.

[DM]

Looking at the 3rd party(AudioC) iDSD measurements and comparing to LH Lab's (Geek) own measurements:

 

Google Oversæt

 

iFi nano iDSD

 

Output voltage

Geek Measurement: 1.48V

AudioC Measurement: 1.65V

iFi Specification: 1.65V

 

THD + N @ 0dBFS

Geek Measurement: 0.15%

AudioC Measurement: 0.024%

iFi Specification: 0.02%

 

the difference in distortion is nearly 10 times! i.e. LH Labs measurements showed a 10 fold increase in distortion.

 

Also with the FFT's, the AudioC measurements show non of the problems remarked by LH Labs.

 

Hence I think the Chinese chief designer and president Larry Ho from LH Labs (Larry, did you name your company after your initials?) was very unlucky. He first got a bad (or a really really old version of） Dragonfly, then he also got a bad iDSD too.

 

So 2 out of 3 of the DACs (Dragonfly and iDSD) that LH Labs(Geek) had, were all bad units. Audioquest and iFi should really look into their QC control and make sure Larry doesn't get bad samples in the future.

[DM]

I am finalising the review on the iDSD and Sony PHA-2, the Japanese Sony is a better looking unit, the iDSD is like a tank built by the German (the designer Thorsten is German), but this tank is not the beautiful Tiger tank, but a couple version earlier ... i.e. not as nice looking ...