Munich High End Show 2017

[Miska]

I will be hanging around there...

 

[Miska]

Good idea!

[Miska]

19 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Is this some form of NAA or RAAT where both ends of the protocol are licensed?

 

Sort of, but completely different kind of protocol from NAA. Mostly because it is designed for different kind of use case and requirements.

 

Biggest difference is clocking. NAA is never trying to distribute clock over network, clock is exclusively at DAC side. There is no clock on the network at all with NAA. This creates restriction that you can output only to single DAC because there can never be more than one master clock. While Ravenna is targeted to work in multi-endpoint scenario with multiple DACs and ADCs and the clock is distributed on the network and everybody else is slaved to that clock.

 

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, edbk said:

Yes, the funniest thing is the show rules are you're allowed to generate a maximum sound level of 75dB in these porta cabins giving you a ~10dB dynamic range lol, i dont think there are many there following those rules to the letter :-)

 

At least in those atrium rooms many neighboring rooms were severely disturbing and spoiling other room's experience. Like I think Dali (the speaker manufacturer) was having some action movie stuff at realistic sound pressure levels with subwoofers and explosions with floor shaking in the neighboring room. Now try to listen to some small scale jazz in that kind of environment...

 

(not far away Marantz/Denon was also having some loud multichannel action movie shit going on)

[Miska]

One of the interesting things I heard on Friday was EAR/Yoshino room, where they played new LP lacquer from cutter. Best sound from "vinyl" I've ever heard (I think the material was aluminum disc covered with half millimeter of lacquer - used at the beginning of lengthy process to make the stampers for vinyl).

 

[Miska]

38 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Today I had an opportunity to sit down with Peter McGrath from Wilson Audio. He has been a recording engineer for 40 years. He had several of his tracks encoded as MQA versions and gave me a proper A/B using an MQA enabled dCS DAC.

 

What format was the non-MQA track?

 

So far to me, for example the original 2L DXD tracks sound much better than the MQA versions. Same goes for the various albums I've purchased from highresaudio.com in both MQA and original hires.

 

[Miska]

I went to the dCS room couple of times, but it sounded boring every time... Not fan of those speakers, somehow the soundstage is missing. Or then they just don't work in that kind of room.

[Miska]

Something that left a trace in my mind apart from the Estelon and Sound Galleries systems (I'm probably biased regarding those anyway ), were three systems:

- Gato Audio

- Martin Logan speakers (as usual)

- Focal Utopia Evo III Maestro Special Edition (with Naim electronics)

 

Audiovector and Piega offered again nice ribbon driver sound I like. Too bad I didn't find Magnepans playing anywhere, just on static display.

 

[Miska]

13 hours ago, MarkS said:

 

What speakers were used in the dCS room?

 

IIRC, Wilson something...

[Miska]

My Volvo has pretty Ok sound. Uses Dirac for the optimization...

[Miska]

8 hours ago, bibo01 said:

ZMan is PCI. It would need a backplane, like a PC motherboard, with Ethernet input.

What I would like to understand is what this board actually does. I do not see a clock on it. I2S output has to be built on the backplane?

 

PCI, not PCIe? I would guess it acts like a "sound card". AES67 endpoint doesn't need traditional oscillator, because clock is distributed on the network using PTP protocol and then regenerated using DPLL. For "grandmaster" clock you would probably want to use one. Since the grandmaster broadcasts the clock message periodically, the AES67 protocol interface itself doesn't need to have the clock on board, but nowadays number of ethernet adapters support timestamped PTP.

 

PCI bus itself has 33.333... MHz clock.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Maldur said:

Some biasing is not problem. I ask about Estelon's - what trace in Your mind they left? How that "bridge" sounds? Someone mentioned that sound was not so bright, only serious HiFi, not HighEnd...

 

Did you listen to the other speaker pair (YB) too with the electronics outside? They were playing both in turns. It will get even better for the LYNX too, this was preview. Do you want brighter sound (would that make it more high-end)? As always, some recordings are also darker and others are brighter, for classical, DG's releases are typically brighter than some others. Depends on mics and recording distance, etc.

 

I've heard this HQPlayer + electronics (Direct DSD amplifier) on other occasion too, and it sounds good to me.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, m5sime said:

I would love to see this in the hands of the chinese integrators offering a Ravenna/AES67 AOIP to AES/I2S/SPDIF interface adapter and of course also native AOIP DACs..

 

Protocol galore, Ravenna, RAAT, NAA, AirPlay, etc... Each serving a bit different purpose.

 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, bibo01 said:

It's true...it seems interesting. Anybody looked at it?

@Miska

 

Based on that picture it seems like a real thing, I assume having some of it's own digital filters and modulators built-in. I'm a bit curious if it allows DSD1024 and bit-perfect pass-through to the D/A section..

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, monteverdi said:

I thought that many of the listening booth were quite  o.k. often better than the hotel rooms I am finding at US shows. But he main floor exhibits with out a separate booth were absolutely unlistenable. This applies to many demos using headphones. Even if at lot of open designs are sounding better it is an idiotic choice under these conditions. The epitomy of this was the Sonoma Headphone demo, a new electrostatic design and the completely clueless rep was just talking to another visitor next to my ear. Thus I have no idea if that is a headphone to investigate, just a waste of time!

 

Stax was clever enough to have a separate listening room in the hall! I listened to the SR-009 there.