Blue or red pill?

[manisandher]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

You're basically saying that if you don't know something, then nobody can. How is that not elitist?

 

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

Oh, now that. Who TF wrote the software ?

How twisted are you ?

 

Guys, just drop it... please.

 

Mani.

[PeterSt]

32 minutes ago, Spacehound said:

Today he went a step further, insinuating that I wouldn't ever be able to understand how "it" works.

 

Yes "it". You put the quotes there. What are you talking about there ?

There is nothing such as "it" nor did I imply any it or whatever you call vague because you don't believe in any of this in the first place.

"This" what ? right, all of "it".

 

Are we getting somewhere now ?

If I explicitly tell (you) that no ADC is going to show any of this because two subsequent captures of analogue will be different no matter how hard you try to have them the same, you plainly don't believe me. Do I have that right ?

It is there where you start to call me vague. Where I am keen on telling everybody that they are wrong has to be between your ears.

 

Quote

Peter loves telling everybody they are wrong

 

 

[Spacehound]

12 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Yes "it". You put the quotes there. What are you talking about there ?

There is nothing such as "it" nor did I imply any it or whatever you call vague because you don't believe in any of this in the first place.

"This" what ? right, all of "it".

 

Are we getting somewhere now ?

If I explicitly tell (you) that no ADC is going to show any of this because two subsequent captures of analogue will be different no matter how hard you try to have them the same, you plainly don't believe me. Do I have that right ?

It is there where you start to call me vague. Where I am keen on telling everybody that they are wrong has to be between your ears.

 

 

 

I never said "Today he went a step further etc." it was mansr. Something about the heading is screwed up. I stopped trying to quote someone about 30 minutes ago on this thread for that reason.

[manisandher]

2 minutes ago, Spacehound said:

I never said that. something is screwed up.

 

Yep, the quote is clearly from mansr.

 

Mani.

[mansr]

21 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Yes "it". You put the quotes there. What are you talking about there ?

There is nothing such as "it" nor did I imply any it or whatever you call vague because you don't believe in any of this in the first place.

"This" what ? right, all of "it".

 

Are we getting somewhere now ?

If I explicitly tell (you) that no ADC is going to show any of this because two subsequent captures of analogue will be different no matter how hard you try to have them the same, you plainly don't believe me. Do I have that right ?

It is there where you start to call me vague. Where I am keen on telling everybody that they are wrong has to be between your ears.

Has anyone ever asked you to calm down?

[beerandmusic]

2 hours ago, adamdea said:

How will we know when we have?

The problem is that in order to make an assessment you need to have some concept of a threshold below which things don;t matter.

 

In regards to this subject, we will know when engineering has properly dealt with noise, when there is a consensus that swapping out the digital source no longer causes a difference in SQ.

 

Perhaps a bigger question is, when will marketing allow that to happen.

 

It will take the correct recipe of precision clocks, isolation, and power.  Once that formula is acknowledged, it could probably be duplicated for pennies, and then all that would matter is the conversion and output that would be marketable...probably not that far into the future....but think, it has been less than 2 years that DAC engineers even started seriously toying with isolation, ultra low noise clocks, and power (think schiit gen5, femto clocks, improved lps, etc..).  Many dacs still do not incorporate these things.

 

[STC]

@mansr  and @manisandher, When can we expect the results?

[manisandher]

1 minute ago, STC said:

@mansr  and @manisandher, When can we expect the results?

 

Not for a few weeks, at the earliest.

 

Mani.

[PeterSt]

14 minutes ago, mansr said:

Has anyone ever asked you to calm down?

 

No. But someone asked you to behave.

Someone also asked us to drop it.

[beerandmusic]

2 hours ago, Spacehound said:

 I agree entirely on your 'USB stick' or whatever comment. You can do it  on several network players but rarely on a DAC.

 

When DSD started gaining popularity (over 5 years ago), i started playing dsd files from usb from sony bluray players and it sounded great, even by today's standards.

NT503, ND8006 and many AVRs support it as well. 

[manisandher]

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

Someone also asked us to drop it.

 

Thanks Peter.

 

Mani.

[mansr]

15 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

No.

That explains a lot.

[manisandher]

4 minutes ago, mansr said:

That explains a lot.

 

Enough. Let's get this thread back on track.

 

Mani.

[semente]

21 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Then take an SSD !

LOL

 

Just kidding.

Although hardly anybody will understand this (but some sure do), this *does* make a difference. So much so that a lot of coding went into my software to eliminate these differences and at least the theoretical audible differences springing from that. This is all part of the "and you can't eliminate those caches/proxies". Again :

 

 

So the challenge is that we create an environment where we can guarantee that once playback commences, all is 100% the same for that file (including disk sectors etc.) compared to any previous time. This really happens in XXHighEnd.

But differences are still there because of previous activities and the OS recovering from that.

Let's try to see that in lean mode there's still 680,000 task switches per second going on. These are for a reason : several tasks fight for the processor (core) continuopusly. And once finished (think FLAC conversion), some stupid garbage collect function (different in each OS version) comes up "at will". This too is controlled in the software.

Note that in "not so lean mode" (but still in Minimized OS (think AO like)) this is over 60 million task switches.

And in a normal operating OS I never even looked.

 

So ALL matters, and once you eliminated most, it will be more easy to hear the remaining. Same as noise which seems to be random; eliminate about all and you're left with discrete tones (which could be more audible, despite the ultra low level).

 

Peter, did you ever try feeding your DAC from a DVD/Blu-ray drive?

If so, how did it compare with NAS or local storage?

[beerandmusic]

[beerandmusic]

3 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Peter, did you ever try feeding your DAC from a DVD/Blu-ray drive?

If so, how did it compare with NAS or local storage?

 

does it have an optical port?  if so, probably pretty good?!

I have often perceived a nice clean sound from optical.

 

[semente]

20 hours ago, manisandher said:

Mans has stated that he's keen to capture the digital output of the audio PC, so we'll do that. We can also capture the analogue output from the DAC, if that might be useful.

 

I'm going to look into the possibility of capturing the output of the audio PC in real time. I'm going to try a BNC splitter at the audio PC and feed one spdif cable to the DAC, another to the ADC, and then set the ADC to auto record. My main concern is that this doesn't affect the signal reaching the amps. If I'm happy it doesn't, we'll do things this way.

 

But I definitely don't want to capture the analogue output of the DAC in real-time. For this, we'll simply replay the files exactly as we did when listening to them.

 

We can also think about capturing the sound from the speakers in real time with a microphone->ADC.

 

All this assumes that either Mans hears a difference, or if not, that I can prove I hear a difference through an A/B/X. If neither of these is the case, taking a digital, analogue or microphone capture is moot.

 

Mani.

 

Which measurements does @mansr intend to perform?

I very much doubt that frequency response will show any differences.

[semente]

19 hours ago, manisandher said:

 

Oh, there is no question that my preference would be to have Mans come over here and just take a listen to a variety of factors that seem to affect the sound, whilst keeping things totally bit-identical. I really don't care one iota if nobody else believes what we report back. (I'd then be able to use my preferred DAC too.)

 

But this whole exercise is for Mans, and I'd like to be respectful of how he'd like to do things.

 

What I'll probably do is begin with my usual setup and DAC. If Mans then wants to grab some digital outputs, we can switch to the spdif DAC and do what I described earlier.

 

Mani.

 

Can I suggest that after @mansr has performed his listening test you point to aspects of sound or instrument or vocals that you think better express the differences you're able to identify, to see if he agrees?

[beerandmusic]

For the record, another reviewer of their zenith innuos preferred local storage to enet.  I don't doubt for a second that the SQ between enet and local storage will sound different.

 

[adamdea]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

 

In regards to this subject, we will know when engineering has properly dealt with noise, when there is a consensus that swapping out the digital source no longer causes a difference in SQ.

 

Perhaps a bigger question is, when will marketing allow that to happen.

 

It will take the correct recipe of precision clocks, isolation, and power.  Once that formula is acknowledged, it could probably be duplicated for pennies, and then all that would matter is the conversion and output that would be marketable...probably not that far into the future....but think, it has been less than 2 years that DAC engineers even started seriously toying with isolation, ultra low noise clocks, and power (think schiit gen5, femto clocks, improved lps, etc..).  Many dacs still do not incorporate these things.

 

au contraire. Nothing has happended in the last 2 years . This has all been well known for ages and well experimented on both inth real world and in marketing. The only relative novelty is a particular form of aftermarket usb foo unnecessary box industry. Any fule has always known that what is required is the conversion clock being isolated from any changes in the way the data is transmitted and from rfi and mains noise. The marketing works the other way. As I say over a decade ago benchmark were easily able to demonstrate that interface jitter made no measurable effect of the dac's output. Long before that there had been other effective schemes to reducue jitter to negligible levels. And to sell you mains power upgrades. We already has toslink which created complete galvanic isolation. 

 

As for consensus -there can;t be any because there isn't really progress. We've already jumped the shark.

[beerandmusic]

8 minutes ago, adamdea said:

. We already has toslink which created complete galvanic isolation. 

 

agree to disagree...progress continues to be made.

 

above does nothing for dsd, and the higher the resolution, the more compensation is needed..you are living in the past.

[beerandmusic]

17 minutes ago, adamdea said:

As for consensus -there can;t be any because there isn't really progress.

 

Do you really believe that the usb toys, ground isolation, higher resolution recording, quieter power supplies, or that the schiit gen5 does nothing?

[PeterSt]

1 hour ago, semente said:

Peter, did you ever try feeding your DAC from a DVD/Blu-ray drive?

 

If you mean a DVD Drive in the PC and put a CD in there and play from that ?

No. But this is a bit moot when ever back the Computer Audio started out to avoid the CD drive and all.

 

Quote

If so, how did it compare with NAS or local storage?

 

Maybe this is not 100% clear, but I am not the one who claims a difference between NAS and such and Local. For me there is Local only because all is treated / dealt with like that. All was explicitly made to do so (see my today's first posts). NAS is inexistent, no matter the music is downloaded (!) from there.

 

1. Download (copy) music to Local memory;

2. Play from local memory.

 

What I am stating from the start of this thread, is that nothing is capable of preventing this behavior. So how could I ever think of perceiving a difference. A difference between what ?

 

But Mani solved the problem :

 

Quote

One thing that I'd like to demonstrate to Mans is streaming vs. local (which was actually the stimulus for the invitation). We'd use Roon/HQPlayer for this.

 

No XXHighEnd, so all is easy and clear now and the guys can have a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

[Spacehound]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

 

Do you really believe that the usb toys, ground isolation, higher resolution recording, quieter power supplies, or that the schiit gen5 does nothing?

Not to any part before where the tiny DAC chip (most use a chip)  converts its binary input to its analogue  voltage output. There might be some noise on that, but it won't be because the input data has become 'inaccurate'  as it won't or 'furry round the edges', it's ok with that.

 

It's what 'digital' is for  - it works 'perfectly'   in an  increasingly  noisy environment, then it just stops. 

 

Thus my view on this test is there won't be any difference. If there is there will be lots to talk about, and it  won't be about their methods.

[adamdea]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

 

Do you really believe that the usb toys, ground isolation, higher resolution recording, quieter power supplies, or that the schiit gen5 does nothing?

That's some movement from "agree to disagree"

Basically not much. Most of them aren't new and in any event you can't solve a problem which doesn't really exist. smart dacs had ground isolation long ago and interface jitter is largely irrelevant. 16/44 is almost certainty quite enough, and if (which is very unlkikely) it isn't then 24./88 and 24/96 which have been around ages certainly are. Most recordings are not mixed at any higher resolution than that, whatever daft sized container they are sold at.

Quieter power supplies? Than what? 

If you swallow the coolaid then you find yourself deep in a wood from which it is difficult to cut your way out. Start again from what are the limitations on properly engineered products from 15-20 years ago. For the main part the only engineering problem being addressed is "what new product can I buy". audio is basically mature technology. There are some remaining interesting areas left around trying to move beyond the limitation of stereo, speakers and dealing with the effect of the room.. But reproducing two channels of a voltage variyign with time to arbitrary accuracy bearig in kind the limits of human hearing and the background noise in ordinary life? 320 kbps aac is generous. I buy 16/44 flac to be on the safe side.