Regardless of who has the superior algorithm, heavy lifting tasks can be performed much more efficiently and with much higher precision on chips and FPGAs. This is a well known fact....

[Miska]

What would you use for components in the embedded PC? It would need to have enough CPU power to handle your best algorithms.

 

Latest Core i7 and Xeon E5v3 have enough capacity for it.

 

You wouldn't implement your NAA into the system?

 

No, I don't think it would make sense for a single box system.

 

How would you handle the volume control?

 

HQPlayer already has digital volume control, that's good for the purpose.

[jabbr]

For anything to be faster than fortran is pretty remarkable. (I had heard of this kind of chip or whatever it was, btw.) The only modern-day equivalent I can think of is GPU.

 

FORTRAN is still alive and has strengths particularly in the HPC/parallel computing environment (see OpenMP.org » OpenMP Compilers ).

 

Surely we aren't concerned about I/O speed on the modern general purpose computer e.g. 10g -> 100g NIC.

 

The processing power is astonishing: The Revolutionary Technique That Quietly Changed Machine Vision Forever | MIT Technology Review

 

Parallelization of an algorithm is its own art form but libraries are available which handle parallelization of a given set of algos.

[YashN]

Now for something completely different..........................follow the money.

 

What is the best most efficient system for mining bitcoin? Dedicated GPU's running dedicated purpose written software. So my answer would be for optimum real-time, most efficient, most powerful filtering use a dedicated GPU.

 

or FPGAs or ASICs

[YashN]

Mining bitcoin (brute forcing the SHA-256 algorithm) went from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASIC...

 

Yep

[YashN]

I was behind the times on bitcoin mining.

 

Yep to that too, but good thinking on 'follow the money' though.

[YashN]

FPGA is just like trying to build your ultimate race car out of Lego-bricks. It looks a bit like a real thing, but it won't perform like one...

 

hahaha, very interesting point of view, Miska!

[Blizzard]

Latest Core i7 and Xeon E5v3 have enough capacity for it.

 

 

 

No, I don't think it would make sense for a single box system.

 

 

 

HQPlayer already has digital volume control, that's good for the purpose.

 

Can the DSC-1 drive a power amp direct?

 

Do you need 2 to build a fully balanced system?

 

Do you think it's safe to just use only a computer based volume control direct to a power amp?

 

Without the NAA in the mix, this system would definitely be compromised. The reason you developed to NAA was for performance improvements. It separates the computer doing the heavy lifting from the computer interfacing to the DAC.

 

Let's say cost was no object at all. How would you build a system that would take your technology to the highest level possible?

[YashN]

I suppose in the end that the complete implementation is what really matters when it comes to the end result.

 

It's always about implementation and then system integration in computer audiophile land. Assumptions from other fields often do not hold.

[YashN]

General purpose computer: CAN give a lot of computational horsepower, but has some drawbacks, for me the biggest is getting the data in and out of the thing. You are limited to the IO subsystems existing on the computer. If you are trying to get very high speed multibit info in and or out, you are not going to get it in the ultimate form you want, so you have to do things like USB interface with converter to the format you want, or PCIe interface cards which need drivers etc. It certainly can be done, but it takes time and money to do well.

 

Quite an annoying fact. In old days some people managed to get better sound for games by outputting the 1-bit bitstream on PC. I wonder how much of this is possible nowadays.

 

An interesting hybrid is an FPGA with an ARM processor, the ARM core can do the complex decision making and let the FPGA do DSP and interface.

 

The Zybo Zynq 7000 looks great as one with Xilinx FPGA and dual-core ARM Cortex A9 technology.

[YashN]

IMO the only real reason to put a computer into the playback chain this day and age, is to take advantage of the great remote interfaces such as Jremote.

 

Not just that, there are many advantages (streaming and network sharing come to mind but there are a lot more) as well as:

 

In the case of HQplayer, to get the best from it you need to use not only a computer, but a renderer on the other end of a network. The purpose of this is to isolate the computer that's performing the heavy CPU intensive algorithms from the computer connected to the DAC.

[YashN]

You can't get any where near the flexibility of UI for your library as you can with just about any modern playback software; and unless you have a very small collection, you have to switch cards to listen to all of your music. One of the main reasons I switched to CA was ending the need to load an LP or disc.

 

There was still a problem with gapless FLAC a while back, have they TOTALLY solved it?

 

Great points, I also like not having to fish for a CD anymore nowadays.

[YashN]

Latest Core i7 and Xeon E5v3 have enough capacity for it.

 

No, I don't think it would make sense for a single box system.

 

 

A few thoughts, the first one being a recurring thought for me:

 

1. How about designing the first audiophile computer PCB/motherboard with the bare necessities and taking good care of EMC?

 

2. How about the inclusion of John's Regen technology in the single box system?

 

3. Optical Ethernet<->Fiber rather than USB?

[Superdad]

A few thoughts, the first one being a recurring thought for me:

 

1. How about designing the first audiophile computer PCB/motherboard with the bare necessities and taking good care of EMC?

 

2. How about the inclusion of John's Regen technology in the single box system?

 

3. Optical Ethernet<->Fiber rather than USB?

 

YashN:

Something VERY close to that is coming in the next few months, but I am not allowed to say anything about it. Will become the ultimate NAA.

[YashN]

FORTRAN is still alive and has strengths particularly in the HPC/parallel computing environment (see OpenMP.org » OpenMP Compilers ).

 

I believe a lot of Bloomberg is in FORTRAN.

 

Recently I read someone saying that for some algebraic computation, JavaScript does astonishingly well.

 

The processing power is astonishing: The Revolutionary Technique That Quietly Changed Machine Vision Forever | MIT Technology Review

 

Parallelization of an algorithm is its own art form but libraries are available which handle parallelization of a given set of algos.

 

Yep, I use some in my Machine Learning code. NVIDIA has cool libraries for their GPUs (including for ML and Deep Learning).

[YashN]

Without the NAA in the mix, this system would definitely be compromised. The reason you developed to NAA was for performance improvements. It separates the computer doing the heavy lifting from the computer interfacing to the DAC.

 

The NAA allows a much smaller electronic circuit to be near the DAC, and simultaneously allows the bigger computing system to be far from the DAC (this has noise/EMI/RFI implications), allowing for better overall SQ.

 

In other words, it's not just about computing performance.

[Blizzard]

YashN:

Something VERY close to that is coming in the next few months, but I am not allowed to say anything about it. Will become the ultimate NAA.

 

If it's the same thing I'm thinking of yes it will be the ultimate NAA. On par with the Mirus SD card implementation in the sound department, yet allows a Jremote like user interface.

[Blizzard]

The NAA allows a much smaller electronic circuit to be near the DAC, and simultaneously allows the bigger computing system to be far from the DAC (this has noise/EMI/RFI implications), allowing for better overall SQ.

 

In other words, it's not just about computing performance.

 

Yes I understand the concept.

[YashN]

YashN:

Something VERY close to that is coming in the next few months, but I am not allowed to say anything about it. Will become the ultimate NAA.

 

Awesome. Kudos to you both for continuing to push the envelope time and time again.

 

The joys you will bring to this world are immense!

[YashN]

Yes I understand the concept.

 

Cool, I believe you, it's just in two different posts it seems you focused on computing and not the concomitant phenomena that have indirect or direct effects on SQ concerning the client-server mode with HQ Player/Computer/NAA.

 

Miska is years ahead of everyone else in this respect (I am talking of this particular audiophile software and client-server system setup). Some JPlay people also do computer-to-computer, but Miska's system has a lot more and he has designed this thoroughly and with great vision.

[YashN]

YashN:

Something VERY close to that is coming in the next few months, but I am not allowed to say anything about it. Will become the ultimate NAA.

 

Superbad Alex, let me know if I can help in any way if needed.

 

Thumbs up!

[YashN]

heavy lifting tasks can be preformed with much higher efficiency and precision if programmed into chips or FPGA's, than if preformed on computer CPU's. This includes things like sophisticated algorithms, DSP etc.

 

It would be worth it for your source to define what he means by 'higher efficiency and precision' here.

 

Why? Because it is likely the semantics he latched upon is the traditional understanding of what makes a good algorithm, i.e. processing speed.

 

This to me is an outdated notion of what a good algorithm is when it comes to Audiophile applications.

 

For a better idea of what a good algorithm is, read the complete DRAM bit-flipping thread (I seem to have mentioned this quite a lot these past few days, it contains a lot of fantastic info), and especially some of the papers I linked to.

 

I think very few of us know what it is about: PeterSt does, as does John Swenson (it might be in his Audiostream Q & A and also over at AA in one of his posts there), probably sbgk and Miska as well.

[Blizzard]

Cool, I believe you, it's just in two different posts it seems you focused on computing and not the concomitant phenomena that have indirect or direct effects on SQ concerning the client-server mode with HQ Player/Computer/NAA.

 

Miska is years ahead of everyone else in this respect (I am talking of this particular audiophile software and client-server system setup). Some JPlay people also do computer-to-computer, but Miska's system has a lot more and he has designed this thoroughly and with great vision.

 

The purpose of this thread is to determine the best place DAC filters/DSP algorithms should take place. FPGA's or CPU's. Miska's approach is using high powered CPU's.

 

The only way to settle this dispute is to build the ultimate version of each implementation. So far I have a extremely well implemented version of the FPGA approach. Now what I need is the ultimate version of a CPU based approach. Once I have both I can compare head to head.

 

In order to do this I'm willing to build whatever Miska feels would be his version of the ultimate system.

[Blizzard]

It would be worth it for your source to define what he means by 'higher efficiency and precision' here.

 

Why? Because it is likely the semantics he latched upon is the traditional understanding of what makes a good algorithm, i.e. processing speed.

 

This to me is an outdated notion of what a good algorithm is when it comes to Audiophile applications.

 

For a better idea of what a good algorithm is, read the complete DRAM bit-flipping thread (I seem to have mentioned this quite a lot these past few days, it contains a lot of fantastic info), and especially some of the papers I linked to.

 

I think very few of us know what it is about: PeterSt does, as does John Swenson (it might be in his Audiostream Q & A and also over at AA in one of his posts there), probably sbgk and Miska as well.

 

What I meant by efficiency was the FPGA doesn't have to waste any resources running non audio related tasks like operating systems etc. it can be 100% purpose built for audio.

[Miska]

What I meant by efficiency was the FPGA doesn't have to waste any resources running non audio related tasks like operating systems etc. it can be 100% purpose built for audio.

 

You can actually do exactly the same with normal CPUs. Or alternatively you can lock operating system into one of the CPU cores and reserve all the rest purely for running audio tasks.

 

But what is the assumed and demonstrable advantage of this difference?

[Hiro]

I think that the main advantage of using computers for things like oversampling filters is the growing power of computer processors. IBM has just announced that they are working on new 7nm chips. I bet that we are going to see them first used in computers than DACs!