USB audio cracked... finally!

[PeterSt]

59 minutes ago, rickca said:

I'm saying I think the notifications are late.

 

I did that.

So what I wanted to work, worked.

Secret.

[PeterSt]

Dear people,

 

I'm afraid that today has to be the last day of "high service" so to speak, were it about working at full speed and full time on USB Cables.

 

I envision that all orders from now are queued and dealt with one day per week with the hope for you that the backlog does not grow and grow.

 

I explicitly like to thank you all for your trust and in the end the orders.

Regards,

Peter

[PeterSt]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

I've looked with quite some bemusement at people who want "impressive bass", and add staggering numbers of monster drivers to get this - the result, to me, is a blubbering mess, which is miles from anything that one hears live ...

 

Maybe come look over here then ? 

 

For starters, subwoofers are out of order. They only distort (and not the least at it). So my speakers (of my own design - see sig) produce no audible distortion at 89dBSPL and 19Hz. 100Hz - 19Hz is +/- 0.5dB (and not any useless +/-3dB number - do you know how much audible even 1dB is in that regions ?).

I am pretty sure that no speaker exists that can do this, as no speaker is tuned like this. So we made this like it was a DAC (by THD numbers). And "no distortion" means that when you play this 89dBSPL at 19Hz, you hear totally nothing. And not because nothing moves so be careful that your hair remains in position.

 

Notice the 1/12 oct and thus hardly any smoothing in this plot.

 

The 19Hz is because this (or 20Hz) really happens with "ambient roll". Happens in a church, but also happens in a larger room and when the kickdrum is used. Always. Sadly many CDs are 30Hz highpassed because they origin from LP where this was necessary (or the needle would jump out). Also, all is matched so a kickdrum will be rendered as a real kickdrum, which is about feeling it in the stomache. Do this with 6dB or so less and it doesn't work any more, or do this with distortion which starts at ~25 Hz and it also doesn't work any more (you won't be hearing a real kickdrum).

 

While the speaker is tuned to show undistored 19Hz at 89dBSPL, it does the same at 27Hz but then 120dBSPL. Thus, when no frequencies are present below 27Hz, again nothing audibly distorts but now at 120dBSPL. Try it in your room and see what happens with Stanley Clarke et al. 

 

The speaker also exhibits 118dB efficiency which could be a world record. And might you look into the link in my sig, the amplifiers are built in there (4 per speaker).

 

So today I am selling speakers.

Anything else ?

haha

 

 

[PeterSt]

Small addition to my previous post :

 

The 67.74 you see in the left margin says nothing. It is just a (dB) number relative to the setting of the plot. But if you shift the vertical line (tagged 19 (Hz)) to the left, you can envision the horizontal line going down. Now, the line is at the average of the +/- 0.5dB and thus if you drop it 3dB will be at a point of +/- 3dB. So the 67.74 will be 64.74 and the horizontal line will show just under 17Hz.

So the speaker does undistored 17Hz when rated "+/- 3dB" which would be the normal rating as how every manufacturer does it. But as I said, this is useless and when it would really work like that at these levels and you'd sweep very slowly then the differences you will hear will be crazy. It's 6dB in total !!

 

All in other words ... I try ...

[PeterSt]

6 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

Yet, somehow, I am not surprised......

 

OK, apologies. That is now how I want to come across. The message could be, though, that once you start to have a very good reference of a few elements, you can build up from there. "Good" for me is always "neutral" and I guess it is supposed to work like that or otherwise not everybody may like the product. So it shouldn't be subjective to what I hear and like myself, as long as I am able to judge for neutrality.

 

So say that you were able to "build" that top notch system and which indeed is the most neutral, how difficult would you think it is to create a good USB cable from there ?

With some creativity and knowledge this is not difficult at all. Not any more.

 

I think I must say that all starts with the D/A converter. And that was made to be 100% neutral (in the long run this means that completely nothing is allowed to sound the same or show a flavor). So once you have that (and which btw is all based on measurement), it is not difficult any more to change amps and hear right away how it sounds hence what's wrong with it. The start of this is, logically, very very difficult; at first you have this massive chicken-egg problem.

 

Thanks,

Peter

[PeterSt]

Just now, fas42 said:

good tactic! I use conventional speakers, but make the electronics driving them behave themselves;

 

Indeed.

 

Just now, fas42 said:

and don't worry about the lowest frequencies - I find the ear/brain fills in the gaps sufficiently in that region when the spectrum higher up is decent enough.

 

That is a different story. Point is : you don't know what you are missing. OK, so all is fine. Haha.

 

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

Would be impressive to "hear" that lack of distortion at 19Hz - extremely hard to do at the lowest no

 

FYI : This is the most easy thing to do, if you're only under the frequency you can still hear. Thus say that we can't hear 20Hz, then the tone at 20Hz or lower, should remain inaudible at the desired SPL. When it is not, then it is distortion, with the 2nd harmonic as the first. And thus you will hear 40Hz (and possible also 60).

 

If this is understood a little, AND we understand how far far better we hear - for example - 44Hz compared to 22Hz (I now assume we all can hear 22Hz), then anywhere where 22Hz is playing, we'd hear a loud 44Hz instead - we nicely created our own synthesizer.

 

Listening to this requires re-learning the listening. This is because we are all used to listen to the distortion and we all learned to listen to our famous tunes as how they are. So if ZZ Top uses a synth and that synth plays in that distorting region, you perceive a frequency which was not played. But how do you know ...

Letting the "ambient roll" alone, normal instruments play to about 32Hz. Synths though go anywhere the artist wants and this can be e.g. 27 Hz. Well, most speakers reach that but all distort there. So 27Hz is played and you hear 54 (and louder than the intended 27). But you won't know, because you can't know what was played (unless you are the artist). In the worst case you run into a 32' organ pipe recording, and perceive a nice 32Hz (because your speaker still makes sound at 16Hz which the 32' produces) and you hear a nicely low 16' of 32Hz. Maybe with some warbling tones and the thing does not sound straight. You will think all is normal ...

 

It is really another world.

[PeterSt]

Just now, Paul R said:

Everything is distorted to one degree or another

 

Is sure is. Sometimes it is a miracle that music is actually allowed to play. But this is also why there is so so much to improve.

 

Thank you Paul.

[PeterSt]

[PeterSt]

3 hours ago, Johnseye said:

I am however having an issue.  My PC can not see my DAC with the Lush cable in line directly between the two.  Other USB cables have no issue.  When I use the sMS-200 between it and the DAC I have no issue.  Any ideas what the problem is and how I can resolve it?

 

John, I am here now. Sorry for being late, but it was sleeping time over here. 

 

I don't think there are any tweaks I can think of, if the Lush is to be working directly between PC and DAC. I suppose in your (so far first) situation the spec of the cable is, well, out of spec. 

I don't know anything about that driver you are using (and need to use) but possibly it is transferring a too high "packet rate" in idle mode (connection but not playing) which is unexpected. But just guessing because I need to say something, right ?

 

Options I see from here :

1. You keep the cable because you like it for the better anyway with that other device in the chain;

2. I give you a full refund right away because the product does not work as advertised;

 

Ad 2.

With that I could ask you to send it to a next address close to you and Phasure pays for the shipping cost of that.

Also notice that each cable is tested for 5 minutes on errors - yours too.

 

Oh, I now see you also sent an email. We'll proceed from there. With apologies.

Peter

 

 

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, Doak said:

Word that comes to mind is DENSE

 

Hi Doak - Yes, "dense" would be a most good description. I myself used different words for the same (and I forgot the words). Maybe I wrote it in the context of coherence (but at the micro level) and otherwise it would be the same as the individual transients which "connect" better. Anyway, it creates these firm / straight / taut string sounds, for example.

But please express it and all as you like. For now I only try to recognize whether it works out the same everywhere.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

[PeterSt]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

I use the term "intense" - the impact of the music is such that it grabs you by the throat and doesn't let you go

 

Of course that does exist too. But I am pretty sure Doak is not talking about that. He is now using "technical" terms which are not related to perception.

I almost always talk in technical terms as well, as all is about elements which builds up fine sound. So I work on thos elements. I can't work on "intensity", so to speak. But I also can't work on foot tapping. This is, as it seems, where all comes together and starts to play music. It is the opposite of all technical elements working perfectly, and robots play (it is about the easiest to accomplish and the hardest to avoid ).

[PeterSt]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Except, I assert that "all technical elements working perfectly" and "all comes together and starts to play music"

 

Hmm ... in my book that does not need to be true at all, unless you know the technical element which could be called some kind of glue, that makes the lot play music. So let's keep in mind, I can control most of the aspects we perceive from "sound through loudspeakers" as such, most of them by software alone. But there is no way that I have a dial for musicality.

 

Windows 8 could be the best example of this because it took me close to a full year to let that sound acceptable. In the end I managed, and what remained of it was most of the time too many robots playing your music. But, acceptable and at the time "we" didn't know better anyway and the sound was better than from Windows 7.

 

Then Windows 10 came along and coincidentally I had that working right even before people knew it existed; I brought out a version of XXHighEnd for build 10074, which at the time was a more official beta (or even alpha) version. Right from there Windows 8 would not play music any more because a new standard was set for musicality. In comparison Windows 8 now sounded like robots all over.

All is relative and we get used to all very soon.

 

Also try to interpret the new universe, because all you guys (seem to) know about is some W2012 server because some AO made some install for that, while nobody ever talks about the sound of different OSes in the base, while they all sound to-tal-ly different. Browse through the Phasure forum and see how much is about that alone.

So today all is about the different Windows 10 builds and 14393.0 is now the best music playing OS. And for your fun : 10074 which some of us still use, is a very high degree of "Lush exhibit" BUT with a high flavor. So, today when we can use the OS without that flavor (it just disappeared in later versions), 10074 is now unbearable because of that flavor. And so we got used to something again, very fast (this is a matter of hours, often, before you already can't go back because of plain distortions you perceive then from the previous situation).

 

Where were we ? Music. ... And so now it suddenly appears that a stupid USB cable is that glue but still I could not make it explicitly for musicality. I know what I did of course and it was pure technical elements again (electrical ones this time) but that it would produce music, I could not tell in advance; not the slightest.

Possibly a new era began because with this in our hands we can go further. But actually it is all back to base because the so many years of work (mind you, of countless people) now should be re-done but with this cable. Of course it does not work like that (I too never changed an XXHighEnd setting since the Lush) but actually it should.

[PeterSt]

One more for better explanation what I mean to say :

 

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

If I don't get "toe tapping" then the sound is audibly flawed

 

So an LP can't do that ? Music cassette can't ?

Of course they can, despite the noise, way fewer dynamics and actually lousy sound in comparison to what could be. And now watch out :

 

What I work on (but this is largely with the customers) is these individual technical elements. Thus, increase the dynamics, but, and this is almost by guarantee, see the foot tapping frequency drop. The former is something I can work on, the latter not because it is the consequence. However, once the consequence becomes a kind of law, I could start working on all those elements of which I know the consequence, to slightly decrease them (or increase them) and see whether the FTF (haha) rises. But this is almost impossible as it so much depends upon light, mood, what you play etc. etc.. This is also how this can't be done with one person. It needs confirmation (or debunking).

 

Anyway, we thus can end up with elements which are NOT the best individually. Add some noise and we could show a higher FTF. Make things smear somewhat and see the FTF rise again.

And to know whether a USB cable "smears" as such, one must first have one which does not at all (Clairixa).

To know that "smear" as such helps for the FTF, once must first very coincidentally run into W10 10074 and observe what's actually happening (in your head).

And so on and so further ...

[PeterSt]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

so, play with every parameter until a reasonable optimum is achieved.

 

Sure.

I see you take it lightly. 

[PeterSt]

14 minutes ago, elcorso said:

I'm impressed? Of course, DENSE & ORGANIC. Who said orgasmic (but in tone with the music) ?

 

Cracked?   No,  rediscovered

 

Thank you Roch ! I am really happy it works out for you too.

 

16 minutes ago, elcorso said:

WiFi went crazy, the TV turned on by itself, etc., etc. I have RF

 

Does your RF meter also measure / detect the normal WiFi signal ? If not it doesn't tell much that you now don't see anything of it.

I hope you'll find the alien.

(I just tried to find the name of that movie with the monster disguised as a tree (was it with Sylvester Stallone ?) but I can't find it)

[PeterSt]

2 minutes ago, k-man said:

I think it's Predator. With Arnie 

 

Yep, that was it. And someone here indeed suggested him in between the lines.

Thank you !

 

So Roch, watch carefully for that animal.

[PeterSt]

Roch, digital amps are known to cause such things (Tripath and the like). They radiate very high frequency and in uncontrolled bands (reserved for other communication).

Neighbors ?

[PeterSt]

2 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

That means a cable that makes a Phasure DAC sound better may make a Chord DAC sound worse.

 

Ah you got it. We are all on a strategic plan (even worse than the 10 years M$ works with) to get Phasure DACs in everybody's homes. Of course we start with moving in cables filled with snake oil so everybody starts to complain. Then we solve the problem not by having the cables returned but by sending DACs behind them.

 

@Speed Racer, I will try to come up with a more serious reply later.

[PeterSt]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

I read some experience someone else has had, and the juxtaposition of that and what's occurred for me allows me to gain understanding - it's been a long, laborious journey, and I'm nowhere near finished, yet ...

 

Allow me to apply a small correction :

 

I read some experience someone else has had, and the juxtaposition of that and what's occurred for me allows me to gain understanding - it's been a long, laborious journey, and I'm nowhere near finished, yet ... 

[PeterSt]

9 hours ago, cmarin said:

Peter's new Lush USB cable has been in my system for only about ten hours. And while my system prior to the introduction of his cable was sounding the best I've ever heard in my room, the Lush cable has taken it to another level completely. 

 

It is simply the most realistic, natural reproduction of music I've ever heard in my room by a not insignificant measure. It's simply MUSIC!

 

Let me join the chorus and extend my hearty congratulations to Peter!! An amazing design achievement!

 

And allow me to add that while @cmarin may be known to own a Phasure NOS1a and it thus could be another of those "obvious" hoorays, he is not - and has not been using that for this Lushy experience; His NOS1a is on its way to here to become NOS1a/G3, so he must be using something else.

Now with this knowledge, let's have some deep interpretation on what I just said to Speed Racer in combination with each word from what I just quoted from cmarin, and then dare to draw some fine conclusion. Could be interesting.

?

[PeterSt]

26 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

Why don't you explain specifically what your cable is doing to affect the sound coming out of the analog side of the DAC?

 

Because something like IP exists.

Besides that, it seems that you already all summed it up perfectly (derived from what has been said in this thread, so the question seems strange to begin with, and if not derived from this thread then apparentlyyou are smart enough to come up with the answers yourself) ,,, but is seems that you just lack that last bit of drawing the right conclusions, or don't want to conclude or are in denial or ... I don't know. Anyway, might you be constructively thinking instead of destructively, we would have another kind of Speed Racer. This means I could talk to you. Now you don't allow me in.

Anyway I can say it again you summed it up nicely (and is not easy to do - just saying).

[PeterSt]

3 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

Odds are it makes it worse UNLESS specifically tuned for a particular hardware setup.

 

Just an example of being a bit too thick. It does NOT make it worse. You only like to believe that from your own reasoning + statistics (and admittedly you would be correct), but you can *see* that it does not make it worse.

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

 

Guess what, Larry, we have been talking about this "Lush" USB cable.

 

Here's the deal, with USB we are talking about digital data here. It's digital when it is transmitted and it is digital when it is received by the DAC. It's digital when the DAC moves the data out of the USB section via I2S to be processed further inside the DAC. 

 

As I have said before, just about any cable will get the data to the DAC without any bits being flipped. So, exactly what kind of effect can this "Lush" USB cable have? What does the cable deal with? We are talking four wires here. We have a differential signal for data (two wires), a +5vdc VCC wire, and a GND wire. That's it. Assuming the USB PHY on the DAC passes the right bits over I2S, how can the USB cable affect what comes out the analog section of the DAC?

 

Once again, we must assume the bits are making it into the DAC without being flipped. Assuming that, the only thing the "LUSH" USB cable can affect is how much in our out of spec the signals on the wire are compared to what they would have been with another cable. The cable can be in our out of spec in capacitance, impedance, attenuation, and shielding. Variations in these specs will make the USB PHY work differently. The USB PHY working differently will cause the USB PHY to put out different signals (noise) to the internal circuitry of the DAC (Unless, of course, the USB PHY is isolated from the rest of the DAC).

 

Can you setup a USB cable to cause these signals to make the DAC sound better or worse? Sure. Why not. However, not every DAC has the same USB circuitry. Even if they use the same USB chip, the rest of circuitry is likely to be different from DAC to DAC and most certainly from DAC manufacturer to DAC manufacturer. What does this mean? It means that to get a DAC to sound better with a "LUSH" cable, that cable is going to have to be custom made with that particular DAC in mind. That means a cable that makes a Phasure DAC sound better may make a Chord DAC sound worse.

 

So Peter selling one "Lush" cable to make absolutely no sense to me which is what I asked how his cable is able to affect sound coming from a DAC.  

 

Now let's see ...

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

As I have said before, just about any cable will get the data to the DAC without any bits being flipped.

 

There you are completely wrong. At least for high speed USB (480) you are. Far most of the USB2 certified (or advertised) cables do not. BUT one needs error reporting to see it, or be able to hear the small ticks and scratching up to larger plops now and then. Besides that, a 480 interface may not even be initialized.

On a side note, 2ch 24/192 does not need USB2 high speed. Anything above that formally does.

Do please notice that I am not claiming that the Lush is to have less errors or something like that. So my base is an error free connection to begin with. But apparently this is not your base at all because you didn't know about the errors.

 

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

We have a differential signal for data (two wires), a +5vdc VCC wire, and a GND wire. That's it.

 

That's it eh ?

So I see that you don't know at all what we are dealing with. Mind you, you challenge for such a response because of what you stipulate yourself : "all is as easy as can be and thus no differences can exist anywhere; Peter, this can only be snake oil and people can only hope for the better.".

Of course you may decide to change your stiputalive tone and I won't claim you don't know "at all", OK ?

 

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

The cable can be in our out of spec in capacitance, impedance, attenuation, and shielding. Variations in these specs will make the USB PHY work differently. The USB PHY working differently will cause the USB PHY to put out different signals (noise) to the internal circuitry of the DAC (Unless, of course, the USB PHY is isolated from the rest of the DAC).

 

See ? you are good enough to join the discussion. I am serious.

 

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

Can you setup a USB cable to cause these signals to make the DAC sound better or worse? Sure. Why not. However, not every DAC has the same USB circuitry. Even if they use the same USB chip, the rest of circuitry is likely to be different from DAC to DAC and most certainly from DAC manufacturer to DAC manufacturer.

 

All still very OK here.

 

4 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

It means that to get a DAC to sound better with a "LUSH" cable, that cable is going to have to be custom made with that particular DAC in mind. That means a cable that makes a Phasure DAC sound better may make a Chord DAC sound worse.

 

But here you lighted something which must be bad for clear thinking;

Why on earth would I be designing an USB Audio cable with a specific DAC in mind. I tell you, some bits have flipped in your brain or you decided to be evil. It just does not make sense you know.

It is your conclusion though because in the end you can't see how it works. And this in itself is your good right.

 

Possibly you missed one of my earlier claims :

That we, a countless number of people, all come to the same XXHighEnd dials settings, actually mostly independently of each other. HOW ?

Because there is far more behind the audio horizon than "we" understand. I said "we" because when I talked about this (in this thread) I also said that at first I could not have guessed it would work out like that. But it did, and now many years later I am utilizing that knowledge. I say it again, it is your good right that this is beyond your understanding (easy : nobody does and for me it is also only 50%). But it is not a good thing to let that devil in and shut yourself from heaven. I mean, when you are capable of the reasoning I quoted above, why not be more constructive and even try to contribute to progress in this area. And I said that too : This is all not a development of my own, but of all the customers and a bit of me who "applies".

Moral : Similar to how I can by now expect people to value some new XXHighEnd (internal) feature for SQ, I can also do this in the more hardware realm. Well, so it seems. 

 

Thank you.

 

[PeterSt]

21 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

So, are you going to tell me that all DAC USB implementations react positively to the "tuning" you are doing with your "Lush" cable? How about USB implementations that utilize some form of galvanic isolation? Whether it be using  the Silanna isolator chip or transformers?

 

Yea yea yea, you start to be funny.

The Phasure NOS1 has no galvanic isolation.

The Phasure NOS1a has galvanic isolation behind the USB interface, in i2s.

The Phasure NOS1a/G3 has galvanic isolation in i2s and in USB in front of the USB interface. It can be bypassed.

Each of above situations can add e.g. the Intona, which of course is also used outside NOS1/xyz applications and this includes the IS Regen of which I have seen at least one using that with the Lush and with of course the same results.

 

Of course.

 

Anything else ?

 

PS: Maybe I can remind you that you guys started using the Intona as a first USB Highspeed galvanic isolation means because of me, myself and I (not that I created it, but someone brought it to your attention and this was me (after a small failure at first because my serial number #00001 had some failure in it)).

The i2s galvanic isolation Phasure was also the first with.

The in-built USB galvanic isolation - same story.

SQ influence by means of software ? again the same story (including proof by measurements).

And what you also should know is that because of this actually stupidness of the latter, I started building D/A converters. Just to counter attack that stupidness. Well, up to today I failed on that. It is actually getting worse because SQ improves progressively and we hear a 1000x more than 10 years ago.

[PeterSt]

32 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

If you can use your cable to tune a DAC to perform better, it means you can use a cable to tune a DAC to perform worse.

 

Of course. And if you coincidentally read that eye-shattering page with the introduction of the Lush over at Phasure, you'll see that this really happened. Just to find "directions". So if someone wants, I can provide at least one other super interestingly sounding USB cable which is as differently sounding as the Lush compared to normal, but in the wrong direction. The good thing of my trials is that I can listen to such a cable with interest because it mainly shows all the frequencies and necessary dynamics, which is different to e.g. the Supra which won't stay in the chain for even a minute because it lacks all I like to have. But despite such a trial cable doesn't seem to lack much, it is just "bad sounding". Think like dead. So the exact opposite of the Lush. And this is no coincidence because electrically it *is* the exact opposite; or should be, because it is all theory (I say it again, read Marce's posts).