Bits is bits?

[marce]

The figures I quoted after the rise times is the absolute minimum bandwidth your scope will need to observe the signal properly... Rise time determines whether a signal is high speed and how much care is needed in its routing from point a to b, the faster the rise time the more problematic the signal will be, so always use the slowest rise time that gives a reliable data transmission, shown on the eye diagram... 

[jabbr]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Does the discrepancy mean I will need glasses for my eye diagram?

 

It means that in the real world, not everything is black & white. Not everything is true or false, 1 or 0. 

 

In any case the eye-pattern looks like it will accept a rise time as long as 1 ns, and who knows what compliance testing is done on every USB 2 interface or cable. In the real world that is. One would hope that a $10,000 DAC would be more compliant than a $30 DAC but who knows. Same for streamers etc.

[jabbr]

Somewhat related. In one of the textbooks @marce lists (I forget which offhand) there is an illustration showing how a CPU which is moved from one process size to smaller (thus fitting more dies on a wafer) as well as increasing clock frequency, results in significantly higher EMI — the faster rise times while enabling higher clocking, also result in higher EMI, all else being equal. 

 

No doubt not every design gets redone when a smaller transistor size gets used, you know like 10 years after it was initially done. 

 

So shit happens.

[asdf1000]

22 hours ago, jabbr said:

The Pro-next S2D is an outstanding and affordable bus powered DAC that I have found sensitive to power supply in certain situations. My personal experience. 

 

Can you please share details on what certain situations you found the S2D sensitive to power supply?

 

[Jud]

3 hours ago, marce said:

I think this should be an interesting intro to SI...

https://www.keysight.com/upload/cmc_upload/All/GTL84.pdf

 

 

Monotonic rising and falling edges are critical....

 

 

So do you always reach a correct design in 4 hours or less (slide 10)?   

[marce]

Just now, Jud said:

 

So do you always reach a correct design in 4 hours or less (slide 10)?   

Ha ha, a month (160 hrs.) is common, microwave 5 weeks to 2 months, bloody DDR memory takes hours with right software, look at the squiggles on motherboard pictures, they all look the same these days... You set your skew group and as long as you have room for the lengthening the software will do it for you, when they want 0.25mm or less skew per every line you do it manually and it takes your life...

[fas42]

17 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

Yes, but that isn't what you have been posting about.

 

In fact, as far as I can tell, you have zero experience with the subject of the article as you don't even own a DAC except the one in your CD player.

 

Irrespective of what boxes and bits of cables are involved, the principles remain the same - digital information is retrieved from some storage area, and transferred somehow to the DAC and analogue circuitry. The more torturous the path of the digital, the greater the likelihood that some type of interference effect can manifest, because of poor implementation of how that digital is passed along, with respect to such influencing the analogue elements.

 

The CD player is the smart approach because the transfer path is as simple as possible - what goes wrong, often, is that not enough care is taken within the CDP to make sure that the different areas of the electrical functioning are completely isolated; it's so easy for the designer to say, "Hey! One power supply is good enough here - why make it more costly by adding unnecessary bits ... ". Hence the frequent thrashing around - is CD better or is music server, etc, better?

 

There's never, ever a magic way for making good sound happen - it always, always, always implementation - two identical approaches will produce huge variation in SQ; two completely different ways of creating a digital reproduction chain will sound completely identical - it will always be about the care taken.

 

No, I have never actually played directly with a standalone DAC. But if I did the first thing I would do is "rip out" the USB path - it's obviously so flaky, as a weak link in the chain, that I would completely bypass it - right, that's one miserable problem got rid of, for good.

[kumakuma]

31 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The CD player is the smart approach because the transfer path is as simple as possible - what goes wrong, often, is that not enough care is taken within the CDP to make sure that the different areas of the electrical functioning are completely isolated; it's so easy for the designer to say, "Hey! One power supply is good enough here - why make it more costly by adding unnecessary bits ... ". Hence the frequent thrashing around - is CD better or is music server, etc, better?

 

 

The fact that pretty well everyone here has gotten rid of their CD player shows how little you truly know about the subjects discussed on this forum.

[Ralf11]

uh oh!  I still have 2 of them...

 

My CD player is a smart approach because it allows me to play SACDs, DVDs, BlueRay and old CDs I can buy locally and listen before I decide whether to rip to my HDD.  Besides they aren't worth anything.

 

The claim regarding shorter signal paths or simplicity is exactly the sort of red herring consumed on sites devoted to vinyl, and a good reason to not have more of that sort of intellectual chaff cluttering up the internet.

[sandyk]

13 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

uh oh!  I still have 2 of them...

 

My CD player is a smart approach because it allows me to play SACDs, DVDs, BlueRay and old CDs I can buy locally and listen before I decide whether to rip to my HDD.  Besides they aren't worth anything.

 

The claim regarding shorter signal paths or simplicity is exactly the sort of red herring consumed on sites devoted to vinyl, and a good reason to not have more of that sort of intellectual chaff cluttering up the internet.

 Many members have similar media players, as there are very few standalone quality CD players made these days, and most of the better examples of CD players have long since worn out or become troublesome due to old age.

 

The best way to stop intellectual chaff and disruptive posts from cluttering up the internet is to have forums where the OP of a new thread automatically becomes the moderator of the thread.

 You would love that, NOT !!!

[Ralf11]

I own a very high quality standalone CD player - I'm keeping it.

 

If you are unable to discuss things in a rational manner, you should start talking only to yourself.  Or maybe you and Frank can setup your own private comm. channel.

[kumakuma]

5 minutes ago, sandyk said:

The best way to stop intellectual chaff and disruptive posts from cluttering up the internet is to have forums where the OP of a new thread automatically becomes the moderator of the thread.

 You would love that, NOT !!!

 

I suspect that you would love it even LESS !!!!

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

You would love that, NOT !!!

Sandy - Take a chill pill. If you can’t manage your anger you can’t post here. 

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Sandy - Take a chill pill. If you can’t manage your anger you can’t post here. 

If he can't manage his anger, he'll anger his manager.

[kumakuma]

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

If he can't manage his anger, he'll anger his manager.

 

Or be put out into the manger...

[fas42]

31 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

The claim regarding shorter signal paths or simplicity is exactly the sort of red herring consumed on sites devoted to vinyl, and a good reason to not have more of that sort of intellectual chaff cluttering up the internet.

 

Yes, much better to have thread after thread after thread, full of intellectual chaff, delving in at excruciating levels of detail on ... "How to get USB to sound good!! ... quick, many how combinations and permutations of gizmos and fixit devices can one assemble in this Bizarro world?? ... oh, the sheer joy of it all ...

 

Guess I will just have to be happy with my favourite red herring - simplicity.

 

 

[jabbr]

2 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

 

Can you please share details on what certain situations you found the S2D sensitive to power supply?

 

I spent a fair amount of time testing various streamers/NAA with and without the ISO Regen. I picked the Raspberry Pi 3 -,WiFi which is known not to have the greatest clock as a testbed to try and coax the greatest difference. Surprisingly to me my iFi iDSD Micro didn’t show a difference whereas the S2D has a noticeable  improvement — I don’t want to get into all the nitty gritty details of which PSUs I swapped in and out but that’s something. 

[asdf1000]

26 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I spent a fair amount of time testing various streamers/NAA with and without the ISO Regen. I picked the Raspberry Pi 3 -,WiFi which is known not to have the greatest clock as a testbed to try and coax the greatest difference. Surprisingly to me my iFi iDSD Micro didn’t show a difference whereas the S2D has a noticeable  improvement — I don’t want to get into all the nitty gritty details of which PSUs I swapped in and out but that’s something. 

 

The designer of the Pro-Ject S2D, John Westlake (on Pinkfish or Roon forum) has said using an external PSU (even the included SMPS) should perform a little better than USB powered.... So not surprising.

 

And maybe a difference becomes more noticeable at the highest sample rates supported by the USB input...

 

And the Pro-Ject DAC may be more resolving than the micro iDSD DACs...

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

uh oh!  I still have 2 of them...

 

My CD player is a smart approach because it allows me to play SACDs, DVDs, BlueRay and old CDs I can buy locally and listen before I decide whether to rip to my HDD.  Besides they aren't worth anything.

 

The claim regarding shorter signal paths or simplicity is exactly the sort of red herring consumed on sites devoted to vinyl, and a good reason to not have more of that sort of intellectual chaff cluttering up the internet.

 

Yeah I have a Blu-Ray player — no problem using CDs or disc, of course until you have small kids who trashed their expensive Disney movies in DVD ... pissed me off enough to start me ripping everything to NAS.

[kumakuma]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Guess I will just have to be happy with my favourite red herring - simplicity.

 

 

I have a library of over 25,000 DSD files. What's your "simple" solution for playing these?

[fas42]

Since a project on the list is to do a super simple music server setup - which will mean Raspberry Pi for most people, and means that I2S can be used - I've just looked very quickly and there are options for playing DSD, if not at the extreme levels of sample rates some people like.

 

I don't have issues with conversions between formats - if done as accurately as possible then the benefits of the playback chain working well will far exceed any positives from using a favoured format on whatever one is currently using.

[kumakuma]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Since a project on the list is to do a super simple music server setup - which will mean Raspberry Pi for most people, and means that I2S can be used - I've just looked very quickly and there are options for playing DSD, if not at the extreme levels of sample rates some people like.

 

I don't have issues with conversions between formats - if done as accurately as possible then the benefits of the playback chain working well will far exceed any positives from using a favoured format on whatever one is currently using.

 

Let us know how you make out once you actually get started.

[Ralf11]

3 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

I have a library of over 25,000 DSD files. What's your "simple" solution for playing these?

 

25,000 DSD players and a BIG rotary switch

[jabbr]

13 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

 

The designer of the Pro-Ject S2D, John Westlake (on Pinkfish or Roon forum) has said using an external PSU (even the included SMPS) should perform a little better than USB powered.... So not surprising.

 

And maybe a difference becomes more noticeable at the highest sample rates supported by the USB input...

 

I am using DSD512

 

I haven’t used an external PSU but upgrading the USB bus power wasn’t just a little better, it removed hum & clicks/crackles.

 

Quote

 

And the Pro-Ject DAC may be more resolving than the micro iDSD DACs...

 

The Pro-ject S2D is a great DAC at a great price point, that said the difference with iFi isn’t that the iFi isn’t resolving enough — I am not reporting a subtle difference — and it’s not all bus power, rather powered by RPi3 with stock wall wart RPi branded supply.

 

This setup was intended to stress the USB connection.

[marce]

18 hours ago, jabbr said:

Somewhat related. In one of the textbooks @marce lists (I forget which offhand) there is an illustration showing how a CPU which is moved from one process size to smaller (thus fitting more dies on a wafer) as well as increasing clock frequency, results in significantly higher EMI — the faster rise times while enabling higher clocking, also result in higher EMI, all else being equal. 

 

No doubt not every design gets redone when a smaller transistor size gets used, you know like 10 years after it was initially done. 

 

So shit happens.

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1335078#