Mains conditioner for SMPSs?

[semente]

I've got two extension leads/strip coming out of the wall socket, one for 3 SMPSs (laptop + router + NAS), the other for LSPU (Network Audio Adapter) + DAC + integrated amplifier.

Would it be worth spending on a mains conditioner lead/strip for the SMPSs?

Thanks.

[semente]

8 hours ago, mansr said:

Unplug the SMPS strip and see if you can hear any difference in noise from the speakers with the volume turned up to 11. If not, a power conditioner will be of no benefit.

 

That's easy enough for me to give it a try. I could even record the output with a mic.

[semente]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

If one fears that a device might be harming the sound quality, is it not a valid test to unplug said device and check if the sound improves?

 

In my case that would be difficult (if I unplug the router and the NAS my file playing system will no longer be the same) but not impossible because I do have a 10m long ethernet cable. I could place the router and the NAS elsewhere in the house.

[semente]

11 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Define noise.  Noise that you can hear or noise that interferes with processing of high frequency data streams that impacts resolution. 

Get back to my mosquito net analogy. With the fine mosquito net in place, you can’t actually see it but you also can’t see that its raining. Take the net away and the picture doesn’t change buy you can resolve finer detail, like raindrops

 

That sounds like a good analogy for a high vs. a low sampling rate.

[semente]

Does everyone agree that every commercial equipment is built to a price point, its performance in preactice is limited by the knowledge/ experience/expertise of the designers, and can be improved?

 

I like car analogies.

 

What about measurements, are we measuring everything that makes a difference? Wasn't that what people believed in before the Matti Otala/IMD?

[semente]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Everything is built with some budget in mind, be it that of a plumber, a lawyer, or the DoD.

 

So you agree.

 

3 hours ago, semente said:

its performance in preactice is limited by the knowledge/ experience/expertise of the designers,

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Also physical reality.

 

Physical reality remains a constant but not our ability to measure/diagnose. Medicine diagnose equipment is a good example (i.e. MRI).

 

3 hours ago, semente said:

and can be improved

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Depends on the nature of the device, which aspect you'd like to improve, and how much you're willing to spend. For some items, even a modest investment gets you close to what is physically possible (cables come to mind).

 

So you agree that commercial hi-fi electronic equipment and speakers can be improved.

I agree with you about the cables by the way.

 

 

A friend of mine has modified/improved several different phono preamps, CD players, DACs and amplifiers (grounding, power supply, simpler or sometimes slightly different/improved circuit, higher spec electronic components, etc.).

In some cases the improvements were significant, others quite mild.

[semente]

52 minutes ago, mansr said:

Not in the way you think.

 

Have you been reading my mind behind my back?

 

53 minutes ago, mansr said:

I said it depends on what you want to improve. Take the Voyager probes, for example. They are still working after spending 40 years in space with no maintenance. Would any hi-fi equipment (commercially available or not) fare as well? Unlikely. A few hundred million dollars (the cost of the Voyager programme) might buy you that improvement. On the flip side, if reducing cost by, say, 90% only requires giving up a marginal amount of performance, that too could be considered an improvement. Saying that "everything can be improved" is meaningless without some context.

 

What's your point regarding The Voyager?

 

I agree about the vagueness but how particular should that context be?

DACs in general or a particular model like the Topping D10?

How much is marginal?

[semente]

15 minutes ago, marce said:

We are talking electronics not the human body, the analogy does not transfer, we design and build the MRI scanners... MRI scanners are not diagnostic equipment, they take pretty pictures that doctors examine and produce a diagnostic based on their experience. And like MRI scanners, domestic audio can be tested and measured to do its designated job.

 

 

Medical doctors and scientists use tools to diagnose. Those tools, such as the MRI scanner have evolved. More evolved or powerful tools enable them to delve deeper into the physics and the chemistry of the human body.

 

Perhaps analogue scopes were good enough in their day but have now been surpassed by more evolved or powerful tools?

 

What about the point that I was trying to make by mentioning Otala and IMD? Or Kantor's simulated load circuit?

Isn't it possible to use existing equipment and knowledge creatively to create new measurements, like one that would provide more insight to how packet noise or other may affect digital trasmission of the data stream from the processing software to the DAC?

If I got the IMD story correct, people were complaining about audible problems and some engineers were shouting "you're hallucinating".

 

I'm just a layman asking questions.

 

 

 

P.S.: There was a time when doctors dipped their little finger into the patient's urine to taste it. Not too different from a trained listener assessing playback performance.

[semente]

16 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

No!

The skill of a good engineer is building to a price point.

What do you have against design engineers, with such an insulating statement?

 

Nothing.

Same with taxi drivers. Yet no one will contest that some are better drivers than others, some know their way around beeter than others, some are more cordial than others, et cetera.

[semente]

@The Computer Audiophile could you please move this question to the General Forum?

 

It's scope of te discussion has widened immensely and I think that the answer is no longer a simple matter of Yes or No...

[semente]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

And still it all just works. What does that say about hi-fi?

 

This works too:

 

 

[semente]

2 hours ago, marce said:

Do you think Boeing believe in cable magic?

 

Obviously not or their planes wouldn't have fallen from the sky...

[semente]

 

[semente]

1 minute ago, marce said:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/116637511-the-importance-of-star-quad-microphone-cable

A bit more to it than

 just a video, you need to examine what is going on, signal levels etc. This is a low level analogue signal with a cable you must admit is a bit longer than your average household run... You might have seen some of the fancy stuff around like CERN, LIGO even Daresbury, all have the same issues with low level signals... You wouldn't run a cable near a phone charger (a bad one at that) the video is to show the effect the cable geometry has, so exaggerated noise is a good example of what can happen, in the real world you would not run a cable near to any such sources of interference.

 

Star quad microphone cable is designed for the very low levels of signals microphone produce, hence the signal has to have a lot of gain applied to get a usable signal... Its all about levels and effect...

 

I agree. Star quad mic cable is better fit for purpose (low-level signal transmission). One could argue that it work well with the signals coming from a low-gain MC cartridge if the phono preamp as not in the vicinity and the interference environment wasn't friendly.

 

So my questions are what mechanisms could be affecting data stream transmission and how can we deal with them?

[semente]

3 hours ago, marce said:

Here is the longer answer I was composing earlier...

Digital data stream, all the usual suspects, covered many times as the data tends to get there bit perfect we have a bit of an issue as to what mechanism can cause the perceived change of sound...

Anyway the long reply that was being created...

 

 

I have a few more questions if you don't mind which are related to the topic. I'm not obsessed about this, just curious.

 

You've mentioned that "digital cables, all the digital interfaces used in audio are well specified, getting signals down a digital interface is a well-studied area".

Is there a difference in the way a computer sends data to another computer by say Ethernet (could it be data verification?) and the way a computer sends a data stream to a DAC?

 

Is it correct to differentiate between the two data transmission and data streaming?

 

Is there a way to determine/measure if the data stream reaching the D/A chip is exactly the same which was transmited by the processing software?

 

Are there way to test the possible impact of noise/interference being sent along with the digital signal (voltages?) in D/A performace?

[semente]

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Is the DAC also using Ethernet? Then the lower layers (Ethernet, IP, TCP/UDP) are exactly the same. Above this, protocols may vary. UPnP streaming usually uses HTTP requests to fetch the audio files just like a regular web browser would. There are also audio specific protocols such as RTP and Dante.

 

I was thinking about USB.

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

No. The network doesn't know or care about the purpose of data packets.

 

Again, I was thinking about a computer feeding a DAC using USB.

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Yes, monitor the I2S pins going into the DAC chip and compare the data with what was sent.

 

Can you somehow determine how clean and crisp the analogue DC voltage levels are and if they are affected by noise?

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Sure, inject known noise into the interface and measure the output of the DAC.

 

What would you measure and what would you expect to find if noise were to affect the D/A conversion?

I don't think that it would be possible to compare the input with the output, would it? Could you meaningfully compare conversion (analogue output) of a clean vs a dirty signal, not static test tones but live streaming music or at least something more complex and varied?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[semente]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

Which DC voltages?

I though that the digital signal consisted of changes in voltages when transmited through wire.

[semente]

Just now, mansr said:

Changing voltages are not DC.

My bad.

Can those voltage changes be affected by noise in a way that affects D/A conversion, that was my question?

[semente]

23 hours ago, mansr said:

If we're talking about the data inputs, too much noise will cause errors (bit flips). This would be immediately audible, so assume it's not happening. Noise on the clock input will increase jitter somewhat. In addition to these primary effects, it is possible that high-frequency noise can couple through to the D/A stage and somehow affect the output. The exact mechanism as well as the nature of the effect will depend on the architecture of the DAC. Most likely, we'd be looking at a slightly increased noise level.

 

What matters is that any audible change in the output is readily measurable, as is whatever caused it.

 

Is there a chance that ultrasonic rubbish could be affecting the amplifier's performance?

How often is the range from 20 to 1000 kHz measured at the output of the DAC?

And its effects (edit) at the output of the amplifier?

[semente]

On 11/21/2019 at 11:27 PM, mansr said:

If we're talking about the data inputs, too much noise will cause errors (bit flips). This would be immediately audible, so assume it's not happening. Noise on the clock input will increase jitter somewhat. In addition to these primary effects, it is possible that high-frequency noise can couple through to the D/A stage and somehow affect the output. The exact mechanism as well as the nature of the effect will depend on the architecture of the DAC. Most likely, we'd be looking at a slightly increased noise level.

 

What matters is that any audible change in the output is readily measurable, as is whatever caused it.

 

Would this cause a "bit flip"? (red channel at 1 msec, both channels at 4.65 msec)

 

Prism Sound Callia, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at –90.31dBFS, 16-bit TosLink data (left channel blue, right red).
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/prism-sound-callia-da-headphone-amplifier-measurements

 

 

 

A cleaner-looking plot for comparison:

 

[semente]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

That's a noisy rendering of a low-level 1 kHz tone. It has nothing to do with digital data transmission.

 

What does digital transmission over wire render like in a graph?

I've never seen it but would be interested.

[semente]

Found it here.

 

Legend: A received digital signal may be impaired by noise and distortions without necessarily affecting the digits.

 

With a bit rate of 5,644,800 bits per second per channel for DSD128 (I hope I didn't get this wrong) what's the chance of noise interference flipping a few bits over USB (I'm assuming perhaps wrongly that USB doesn't check for the accuracy of the transmission)?

What would a flipped bit sound like?

 

Would the extra effort required to process a noisy signal affect D/A conversion?

Would the extra effort required to process a noisy signal affect the analogue ouput noise-floor or something else?

Can this be measured by say checking the amount of energy required for processing (f that makes sense at all)?

 

Again, I'm merely a curious layman (a nice word for ignorant), be gentle.