Hi-Res - Does it matter? Blind Test by Mark Waldrep

[Rexp]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

I signed up, but have not received the files.  Is it just me? 😕

Maybe you'll get them in a day or two, if not send Mark an email. Look forward to your impessions. 

[audiobomber]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

I signed up, but have not received the files.  Is it just me? 😕

I signed up twice, via two different pages, almost two weeks ago. No files so far. I'll try once more. 

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

Pleasing colouration perhaps ?

Agreed. I once had a B&O (Bang & Olufsen) stereo ribbon mike. Two figure-of-eight mike units were stacked, one atop the other and the top one could turn, right to left with regard to the bottom one. The mike was gorgeous satin chrome and it came in a beautiful, padded rosewood case with gold lettering. Aside from the fact that at the time, I couldn’t find a mike preamp that was quiet enough to give a decent S/N, and that the top end only went to about 13,500 Hz, recordings made with it sounded marvelous in spite of the noise! I finally sold it due to my inability to find a suitable mike amp (one of life’s little regrets). The mike was designed to be used with a B&O stereo tape deck which contained a pair of proprietary transformers to boost the minuscule ribbon output to a level where it could be electronically amplified without the amp needing 70 to 80 dB of gain! The transformers were not available separately! Today, of course, there are cheap op amps that could do the job easily (Like the TI LME47910, for instance with it’s 2 nV/root-Hertz of self noise). But in the 1980s when I owned the B&O stereo mike, a transformer was de riguer.

[Rt66indierock]

14 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Would you care to share what evidence you have to support your contention that "chip manufacturers never could give a good reason why they included DSD"? I strongly suspect that you are presenting your opinion as fact.

 

Allan I asked about DSD when I was researching MQA. I have regular contact with people in the top ten semiconductor companies in the United States. And less regular contact with others. My mentor (and client) worked for two of them. ESS was very helpful about MQA and other formats.

[Jud]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

Many DAC chips likely support DSD because there's sufficient demand for the feature that the relatively small effort needed is worthwhile. These days, they probably simply paste in their existing DSD handling block with minimal tweaking for each new chip.

 

I was under the impression chips with sigma-delta modulation, which may produce DSD or other formats, originally took over from chips without because the chips with SDM enabled the total package, including hardware, to be less expensive.

[Rt66indierock]

12 hours ago, Jud said:

 

I know that's what you were talking about. But I asked a different question. How many of Spotify's genres (and which) would be unhealthy and failing by your definition?

 

Going back to my original vaporware post you would have to say jazz, classical reggae, new age, world and children's aren't doing too well. If you aren't up there with stage and screen at just under 3% of the US Market in 2018 can you say things are OK?

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, Jud said:

I was under the impression chips with sigma-delta modulation, which may produce DSD or other formats, originally took over from chips without because the chips with SDM enabled the total package, including hardware, to be less expensive.

I was talking about DAC chips accepting DSD input (in addition to PCM), not internal implementation details. There is still a relationship between the two, though. A PCM DAC using a sigma-delta architecture can be adapted to accept DSD simply by feeding the bitstream directly into the D/A stage, bypassing the oversampling and sigma-delta stages. If a small effort can increase sales by even a modest amount, it may be worthwhile. Contrast this with something much more difficult to implement, say HDCD. Nobody is including this because the world market of perhaps 10 such chips would never pay for the investment.

[Jud]

37 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Going back to my original vaporware post you would have to say jazz, classical reggae, new age, world and children's aren't doing too well. If you aren't up there with stage and screen at just under 3% of the US Market in 2018 can you say things are OK?

 

What's the percentage for stage and screen if you eliminate the Frozen soundtrack? 😉 (Not asking seriously.)

[Jud]

39 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Going back to my original vaporware post you would have to say jazz, classical reggae, new age, world and children's aren't doing too well. If you aren't up there with stage and screen at just under 3% of the US Market in 2018 can you say things are OK?

 

I think classical will probably be OK for the time being. It hums along without anyone expecting breakout hits.

I wonder about the jazz demographic.

 

I meet a surprising number of people into New Age type music (this is northern New Mexico), but I’m hearing far less Michael Hedges type greatness and way too much “easy listening.” For me personally not much of it is worthwhile, but perhaps there is enough of a niche market to keep it going.

 

Reggae I’m afraid has seen its peak. Too bad, because I like it.

 

World (of which I think reggae is a part) will probably do all right. Lots of exciting artists getting popular in faraway places (Europe more than here).

 

 

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Allan I asked about DSD when I was researching MQA. I have regular contact with people in the top ten semiconductor companies in the United States. And less regular contact with others. My mentor (and client) worked for two of them. ESS was very helpful about MQA and other formats.

 

Are you seriously asking us to believe that you asked chip manufacturers whey they included DSD and they couldn't give you a reason? And if you insist that was the case, then surely you spoke to the wrong people at those companies.

[sandyk]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Today, of course, there are cheap op amps that could do the job easily (Like the TI LME47910, for instance with it’s 2 nV/root-Hertz of self noise). But in the 1980s when I owned the B&O stereo mike, a transformer was de riguer.

 Hi George

 I presume that you meant the LME49710 ?

The HA (metal can) version is even better, and I use a couple of them in my DIY DAC

 

Kind Regards

Alex

[gmgraves]

26 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Hi George

 I presume that you meant the LME49710 ?

The HA (metal can) version is even better, and I use a couple of them in my DIY DAC

 

Kind Regards

Alex

Yes, I did mean the LME49710. Typos happen. And I agree about the HA variant. It seems to be even quieter than the DIP version (!!??). I suspect that the metal moves heat away from the chip better than does the encapsulating plastic of the DIP.

[esldude]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Agreed. I once had a B&O (Bang & Olufsen) stereo ribbon mike. Two figure-of-eight mike units were stacked, one atop the other and the top one could turn, right to left with regard to the bottom one. The mike was gorgeous satin chrome and it came in a beautiful, padded rosewood case with gold lettering. Aside from the fact that at the time, I couldn’t find a mike preamp that was quiet enough to give a decent S/N, and that the top end only went to about 13,500 Hz, recordings made with it sounded marvelous in spite of the noise! I finally sold it due to my inability to find a suitable mike amp (one of life’s little regrets). The mike was designed to be used with a B&O stereo tape deck which contained a pair of proprietary transformers to boost the minuscule ribbon output to a level where it could be electronically amplified without the amp needing 70 to 80 dB of gain! The transformers were not available separately! Today, of course, there are cheap op amps that could do the job easily (Like the TI LME47910, for instance with it’s 2 nV/root-Hertz of self noise). But in the 1980s when I owned the B&O stereo mike, a transformer was de riguer.

Ever think that maybe ribbons with a slower transient response are providing a beneficial limiting upon the rate of change in a digitally sampled system?

[sandyk]

39 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Yes, I did mean the LME49710. Typos happen. And I agree about the HA variant. It seems to be even quieter than the DIP version (!!??). I suspect that the metal moves heat away from the chip better than does the encapsulating plastic of the DIP.

 Hi George

 I have suggested the same previously. In fact, with the HA version it felt warm enough that I even fitted a push on heatsink to mine with the LME49720HA and decided to do the same here with the single version.

 Kind Regards

Alex

[Rt66indierock]

3 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Are you seriously asking us to believe that you asked chip manufacturers whey they included DSD and they couldn't give you a reason? And if you insist that was the case, then surely you spoke to the wrong people at those companies.

 

I don't consider it is a check the box feature to be reason. But this happens a lot look the stickers on a receiver.

[jabbr]

21 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

When I wrote MQA is Vaporware many in the DSD world asked if I felt DSD was vaporware? I told them the only thing preventing from being vaporware is that it is in DAC chips but chip manufactures never could give a good reason why they included DSD.

 

He he this is silly. The reason that "DSD" or more properly "SDM" is in DAC chips is that it is the underlying technology behind modern ADC and DACs. I own one true R2R DAC (PCM) but unfortunately the PCM1704 chip and the Analog Devices equivalents represented the epitome of laser trimmed R2R DAC technology and are largely no longer made.

 

From a technological perspective (cost/performance) SDM has taken over the industry. To think otherwise is just wrong.

 

If the "chip manufacturers" couldn't answer this simple question for you then you were talking to a marketing person with no real clue as to how ADCs nor DACs work.

 

Now DSD is single bit SDM and many chips are multibit  SDM, so you could ask an engineer at ESS if its easy for them to convert from single-bit SDM into their internal multibit format ... does the DSC1 FIR stage count as a conversion to 32 bit  SDM? Perhaps ESS multibit SDM is similar thermometer code?. In any case it is really easy to understand how DSD DAC works:

 

We are hardly dependent on DAC chips and there are many outstanding custom and discrete implementations available now. Nor are we dependent on source DSD as there is outstanding software to convert PCM to DSD.

 

You might think that SACD is dead (and CD is dying) but the underlying technology is present in 99% of the DACs in existence. SDM is solidly entrenched from a technical perspective.

[gmgraves]

43 minutes ago, esldude said:

Ever think that maybe ribbons with a slower transient response are providing a beneficial limiting upon the rate of change in a digitally sampled system?

With the lightness of the ribbon, I would say that its transient response would be faster than say, a condenser mike. Especially older ones with etched metal diaphragms. I’m sure that the limited high-frequency response of most ribbons  have some affect on transient response, but low inertia due to low mass, would allow it to start and stop very quickly.

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Going back to my original vaporware post you would have to say jazz, classical reggae, new age, world and children's aren't doing too well. If you aren't up there with stage and screen at just under 3% of the US Market in 2018 can you say things are OK?

I really don’t understand your use of the term “vaporware”. In the computer world, vaporware is a product that developers/manufacturers keep promising to bring to market, but never do. If I’m not wrong, you are using the term to mean a product that doesn’t perform to it’s makers’ promises. Is that right?

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I really don’t understand your use of the term “vaporware”. In the computer world, vaporware is a product that developers/manufacturers keep promising to bring to market, but never do. If I’m not wrong, you are using the term to mean a product that doesn’t perform to it’s makers’ promises. Is that right?

Until Tidal started streaming MQA, vapourware was an appropriate term. A handful of demo tracks does not a product make.

[Miska]

13 hours ago, mansr said:

These days, they probably simply paste in their existing DSD handling block with minimal tweaking for each new chip.

 

Looking how couple of recent AKM chip generations behave, that is not the case...

 

For me, the more interesting part are all the different discrete designs though.

 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

I really don’t understand your use of the term “vaporware”. In the computer world, vaporware is a product that developers/manufacturers keep promising to bring to market, but never do. If I’m not wrong, you are using the term to mean a product that doesn’t perform to it’s makers’ promises. Is that right?

 

I'm using it in its original use in software. The reference is to Xenix. This was discussed in the Vaporware thread.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Until Tidal started streaming MQA, vapourware was an appropriate term. A handful of demo tracks does not a product make.

 

Nor does a few thousand tracks make a product.

[gmgraves]

8 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Nor does a few thousand tracks make a product.

No, but it’s not like it DOESN’T Exist, though. I have Tidal, and I look for the “M” after new titles when they are released every Thursday. What bothers me about MQA, is that while Tidal’s software tells you that you are playing an MQA title, what I don’t see any indication of what is the actual bit depth and sampling rate of the selection to which you are listening. Same is true with the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt the dragonfly logo glows purple when a MQA file is encountered, but again, is it 16 or 24 bit? 48 KHz? 88.2 KHz,? 96 KHz? There is nothing to tell you to what you are actually listening!

[danadam]

13 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

but again, is it 16 or 24 bit? 48 KHz? 88.2 KHz,? 96 KHz? There is nothing to tell you to what you are actually listening!

That looks like an answer to the question from the topic 😉

[Rt66indierock]

15 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

No, but it’s not like it DOESN’T Exist, though. I have Tidal, and I look for the “M” after new titles when they are released every Thursday. What bothers me about MQA, is that while Tidal’s software tells you that you are playing an MQA title, what I don’t see any indication of what is the actual bit depth and sampling rate of the selection to which you are listening. Same is true with the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt the dragonfly logo glows purple when a MQA file is encountered, but again, is it 16 or 24 bit? 48 KHz? 88.2 KHz,? 96 KHz? There is nothing to tell you to what you are actually listening!

 

When Xenix was declared vaporware its market share actually went up a little. So it existed but was like selling smoke.

 

Part of the beauty of MQA is amount of 16/44.1 files processed.