What is the Argument for USB DACs and Streaming via USB?

[plissken]

Who cares what you believe ? I don't blame Alex C for not wishing to humour an upstart like Amir by wasting precious production time on him when he was having trouble keeping up with demand.

Could Amir have improved Uptone's sales if he came up with a positive report ? Most people except a few disciples like yourself wouldn't even know him from a bar of soap.

 

 

 

Most members already know that !

Perhaps Plissken should have waved his usual wad of cash around to make it worthwhile for Alex C to waste his time humouring the guy ?

 

Bottom line is Alex's name at WBF is mud. And that's saying something considering it's WBF.

[sandyk]

Bottom line is Alex's name at WBF is mud. And that's saying something considering it's WBF.

 

Many members have little, if any interest, in anything that goes down in WBF.

All that most C.A. members are interested in is the best way to obtain a higher order of performance from their PC or server, and many have achieved that using products designed by John Swenson such as the USB Regen, JS2 Linear PSU , and more recently his highly innovative Ultracap power supply that provides isolation of the powered device from A.C. mains related issues such as earth loops and SMPS A.C. leakage problems.

Are you going to name the 4 EEs that you mentioned that don't agree with John Swenson ?

Forget it though if their usernames mean 5/8 of SFA as yours does to members of C.A.

[YashN]

Amir is an E.E. Amir is also the Microsoft VP that birthed WASAPI and MS's current bit perfect audio stack. He's also written a book or two on Unix. So if you are attempting to hit him in the credentials you'll have to think again.

 

Here is the thread with the other EE's chiming in.

 

Knock yourself out.

 

Good Joke!

 

Amir was an Engineering Manager at Microsoft working on Windows Media Player (not what anyone would call an audiophile player).

 

Which means he's totally out of touch of the realities of EE today.

 

After all, Amir believes asynch USB does resend of data.

 

Not to mention his numerous blatant mistakes at attempting to measure things both at WBF and on his so called 'science' forum.

 

Are you an Engineer yourself?

 

You wouldn't know an Engineer from a car mechanic, would you? (not that there's anything wrong with car mechanics).

 

As for writing books, I could write books on Linux, Unix, Windows and macOS and audiophilia any day. Wrote one on mobile app development a few years back. What does that even mean?

 

Joke's on you, pal.

[YashN]

Many members have little, if any interest, in anything that goes down in WBF.

 

Different audience, but there are people over at WBF who defended Alex and John and others who have also still bought the products and are reporting on them.

 

Those who don't know how to make measurements conveniently ignore all the things pointed that were wrong on Amir's failed attempts at 'measurements', including but not limited to jkeny.

 

You have to ask yourself what kind of person would take Amir the Troll as reference...

[YashN]

On to the topic at hand:

 

I wouldn't say overhyped: it's just that potential SQ issues with it for audiophile purposes were not fully investigated. It's quite new,so that's normal.

 

This is no different from solving issues in power supplies because we've discovered some new techniques and so on.

 

USB has been used because of convenience and availability for sure.

 

Doesn't mean it was already perfect for SQ.

 

One thing you do get apart from availability is some of the very highest rates for DSD for instance.

 

It's a good question to ask though because one can also think of potential alternatives like Ravenna/Ethernet or the new DACs which will invariably begin to incorporate some of the technologies.

[sandyk]

Those who don't know how to make measurements conveniently ignore all the things pointed that were wrong on Amir's failed attempts at 'measurements', including but not limited to jkeny.

Hi Yash

I was aware of John's taking him to task.

John and myself have been on the same page for years, when he was a member of CA, and where we supported each other in a UK based forum against an E.E. from The Netherlands in the "Bits are Bits" camp.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

[YashN]

Hi Yash

I was aware of John's taking him to task.

John and myself have been on the same page for years, when he was a member of CA, and where we supported each other in a UK based forum against an E.E. from The Netherlands in the "Bits are Bits" camp.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

 

And he's very knowledgeable, articulate and rational too.

 

But you can't convince sycophantic trolls, can you?

[plissken]

Different audience, but there are people over at WBF who defended Alex and John and others who have also still bought the products and are reporting on them.

 

Those who don't know how to make measurements conveniently ignore all the things pointed that were wrong on Amir's failed attempts at 'measurements', including but not limited to jkeny.

 

You have to ask yourself what kind of person would take Amir the Troll as reference...

 

No one was able to refute Amir's measurements. As a matter of fact other EE's were able to reproduce them.

[plissken]

Are you going to name the 4 EEs that you mentioned that don't agree with John Swenson

 

It's all in the thread I posted. Knock yourself out.

[plissken]

Good Joke!

 

Amir was an Engineering Manager at Microsoft working on Windows Media Player (not what anyone would call an audiophile player).

 

Which means he's totally out of touch of the realities of EE today.

 

After all, Amir believes asynch USB does resend of data.

 

 

Amir was responsible for WASAPI. Not WMP. What realities of EE today is he out of touch with.

 

I doubt Amir thinks asynch USB resends data. Maybe that an up layer application will request data again if it has error handling coded in.

 

UDP may be fire and forget but that doesn't mean the Application and Session layer pieces don't.

[YashN]

No one was able to refute Amir's measurements. As a matter of fact other EE's were able to reproduce them.

 

LOL at that!

[YashN]

Amir was responsible for WASAPI. Not WMP. What realities of EE today is he out of touch with.

 

All of them.

 

His hearing is also impaired.

 

What are your Engineering credentials?

[YashN]

I doubt Amir thinks asynch USB resends data. Maybe that an up layer application will request data again if it has error handling coded in.

 

UDP may be fire and forget but that doesn't mean the Application and Session layer pieces don't.

 

Hahahahaha!

[Jud]

We seem to've gotten rather far from anything useful to anyone wanting information about USB DACs.

[sandyk]

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

MacBook Pro, A+ -> 2 Mapleshade Clearlink USB Plus flanking Regen (powered by LPS-1) -> iFi micro-iDSD -> Spectral DMC-12 & DMA-150 -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

 

One only needs to look at the attached signature that lists many of the types of things needed to tease out way better than average audio from USB.

Basic USB Audio is mediocre at best , and highly sensitive to the slightest whiff of an earth loop !

[Jud]

One only needs to look at the attached signature that lists many of the types of things needed to tease out way better than average audio from USB.

Basic USB Audio is mediocre at best , and highly sensitive to the slightest whiff of an earth loop !

 

My experience has been that USB doesn't vary greatly from other interfaces in this respect. Care in setup, including clean power, avoiding ground loops, etc., is repaid in listening. Quality of implementation is always paramount if you want to get every possible bit of performance at whatever price point represents your part of the market. To me USB appears to have opened some opportunities for very high quality sound at relatively low prices.

[plissken]

LOL at that!

 

BE718 was the first EE to confirm Amir's findings.

[plissken]

Here is Karin:

 

"Ground should be close to zero, but we all know that in digital electronics the ground (plane) is noisy. If you put a resistance in the ground this noise gets every time a “hick-up”, which leads to additional ground noise. This “hick-up” is being passed on by the Regen to the ground of the Meridian DAC, which results in a degraded performance of the DAC-chip"

 

So now we have a degraded Meridian DAC.

[Jud]

Here is Karin:

 

"Ground should be close to zero, but we all know that in digital electronics the ground (plane) is noisy. If you put a resistance in the ground this noise gets every time a “hick-up”, which leads to additional ground noise. This “hick-up” is being passed on by the Regen to the ground of the Meridian DAC, which results in a degraded performance of the DAC-chip"

 

So now we have a degraded Meridian DAC.

 

Determined to stay OT I see.

 

So you no longer feel it's up to the DAC to take care of such things?

[plissken]

Determined to stay OT I see.

 

So you no longer feel it's up to the DAC to take care of such things?

 

What is "such things" Jud? Think about this before you answer. Re-read what Karin posted in full please.

https://goo.gl/eyCGcJ

[Jud]

What is "such things" Jud? Think about this before you answer.

 

Isolation from noise at the input.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Determined to stay OT I see.

 

So you no longer feel it's up to the DAC to take care of such things?

 

Agreed. However, in the event that the DAC does not completely "take care of it", a device sold as a "filter" or improvement via an inline box ostensibly addressed at the issue of reducing noise, what do we have if it measurably increases noise insted?

 

I am still seriously disappointed that the measurements glibly promised over and over by both John and Alex never materialized. What does this say about their alleged genius and integrity? IMHO, they goofed and revealed themselves for what they are big time. No more of their promises and products for me.

[plissken]

Isolation from noise at the input.

 

The Meridian USB was working fine however. They implemented the USB interface properly. They implemented their interface according to Intel's standard. The Regen buggered the standard by adding a resistor to ground.

 

I write software for the credit card industry. One of the things we do is pass a string with token id and not the actual card data. It's considered a best practice so you are PCI compliant. It would never occur to me to write additional handling to detect a mask of XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX because some other idiot at a processing gateway decided to use the card number in the clear as the token id value. That's not on me as the developer.

 

Why would Meridian, looking at Intel's implementation guide, and seeing how to implement rejection of ground noise think: Hey we need to do X, Y, or, Z because some idiot is going to introduce something that is totally out of spec?

 

Meridian did their job. It's not their job to secure their DAC from receiving 120VAC on the USB buss if we want to take your position and extrapolate it to, what I think we both agree, is a ridiculous conclusion.

[plissken]

Agreed. However, in the event that the DAC does not completely "take care of it", a device sold as a "filter" or improvement via an inline box ostensibly addressed at the issue of reducing noise, what do we have if it measurably increases noise insted?

 

I am still seriously disappointed that the measurements glibly promised over and over by both John and Alex never materialized. What does this say about their alleged genius and integrity? IMHO, they goofed and revealed themselves for what they are big time. No more of their promises and products for me.

 

 

Never mind that Alex compounded the above by posting at CA that he never agreed to a SBT with Amir. Saying here that "It's all news to me!"

[YashN]

BE718 was the first EE to confirm Amir's findings.

 

He's as lame and trollish as Amir.