Will computer audio greatness "trickle down?"

[tranz]

A good example for me is Oppo. The company didn't exist 10 years ago, and currently, I would be hard pressed to buy anything but an Oppo (for around $1K) if I wanted a new SACD player (which also plays CD's, DVDs, blu-rays, streams the internet, and cooks pasta al dente). So the technology improvements at a lower price may well come from out of the blue and not from any company that is currently around.

 

Larry

 

Trickle up perhaps. I will take a Denon for a 1/4 of the price any day.

[4est]

Did you get it to work properly? I've noticed there are many with problems not directly associated with user ignorance. I'd love one, or something like it to use as part of a portable "boombox".

Great Question!

 

I just bought a Rocki for $49.95 that will "Spotify Connect" all my existing hifi gear (in the same way you might hook up a Sonos ZP90 zone player)

 

Is that what you men by "Trickle down"?

[4est]

I think this is where DSD may excel. As I understand it, the local clock has less sonic impact than with PCM. If one is to make a fine DAC , the clocking needs to be right, and clocking is expensive. Earlier (or somewhere else), Miska mentions that his DSC1 is the best DAC he has heard. The DSC 1 would cost around $300 to build, plus the case. Connect the dots as you wish....

I get grief from this in some audiophile corners, but I am expecting that kind of sound soon in the $500-$1000 range of DACs. Maybe less.

 

I just do not buy off on a high quallity DAC needing to cost in the same range as a small car anymore. In fact, I think the prices of most of the audiophile DACs in the astronomical price range are artificially inflated. Way overinflated actually. My benchmark for that is the $189 iFi Nano. That is one tough little standard to beat. That also raises my suspicions that a lot of the reviews that claim this or that $800 Dac, or this or that $1400 Dac sound better is possibly based more on price than acoustics.

 

This isn't to say they are not better, but the automatic assumption they are is probably unjustified.

 

I know, that is a very outlier opinion, almost worthy of being proclaimed undying truth on the gasbag forums...

[Paul R]

I think this is where DSD may excel. As I understand it, the local clock has less sonic impact than with PCM. If one is to make a fine DAC , the clocking needs to be right, and clocking is expensive. Earlier (or somewhere else), Miska mentions that his DSC1 is the best DAC he has heard. The DSC 1 would cost around $300 to build, plus the case. Connect the dots as you wish....

 

I had thought the DSC1 was more in the $550 price range, but I trust your pricing there far more than my own. Even better!

 

I know that jitter and other clock issues present differently mathematically, and certainly DSD sounds different to me. Thst leads me to hold an opinion very close to the one you expressed above. And logically, *if* that is true, then it holds a lot of implications about the pricing and design of most high priced DACs.

 

And *that* would imply that "trickle down" technology (or an equivalent) will basically start flooding the market. That appears to have already started with DSD capable DACs.

 

Or it may be a nostalgia trip, with people really grooving on the analog like sound DSD presents. I know with me, a lot of CD albums sound like vinyl albums did in the 70's, only a lot more detailed and without the surface noise, clicks, and pops. This from a technology that costs a small fraction of what top high end PCM DACs cost?

 

I honestly cannot decide which technology has trickled down in that case though. DSD is not a new technology, but perhaps it has been enabled by other trickle down tech, like large digital storage devices, high speed internet, and very fast proccessing devices* at mass market consumer prices?

 

-Paul

 

*This iPad has more digital processing and digital storage in it than existed in the entire world the year I was born. My MacBook Pro could process every problem that digital computing solved in WWII (save for code breaking) in less than 1 minute, not counting the time to print it all out. My friend who is a Crypto Analyst and Mathematician estimates all computer code breaking done in WWII would take less than 20 mins on the same machine. Those kinds of technological advances change the warp and woof of society and people's lives dramatically. Of course, home audio technology does not have quite the same world shaking potential, but....

[barrows]

Here is the place where this "trickle down" hope gets derailed: Consider a DAC. Now, on the digital side, the actual D to A conversion process itself, and any DSP (oversampling/filtering, noise shaping, etc) we can expect to see trickle down effects: perhaps, for example, advanced digital filtering such as that done by XXHighend, or other such things, might be incorporated into a mass produced chip. So we could see more advanced digital tech becoming more affordable, BUT: The things which really make the difference between a world class DAC, and a very good DAC, are the power supplies, the analog output stage, and the clocking. Really, really good power supplies cost $$$, and they are not going to become cheaper by any miracles, the same is true of the analog output stage: some folks even think something like the Lampizator is the best sounding DAC, nothing with tubes and a tube rectified power supply is ever going to be all that affordable, especially when you start considering NOS tubes. But even really good solid state output stages, using quality parts (resistors, transistors, capacitors, etc) cost actual money, and again, the best output stages require dual mono, dual rail power supplies with vanishing noise and impedance levels, all this analog circuit quality does not come cheap, and cannot be replaced through any technological means of which I am aware.

So ultimate audio quality in a DAC is always going to cost significant money.