Popular Post thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 5, 2019 11 minutes ago, Jud said: What I don't understand so much is why the people who enjoy listening and the people who are interested in measurements feel such a need to argue. For what it's worth, my view is that the argument arises because Uptone are using an appeal to technical authority to market the device, and both theory and (now) measurement suggest the technical argument is likely without merit. People who have an engineering background and/or technical knowledge in the relevant domain quite reasonably get upset when "their" language and specific terminology is mis-used or mis-represented to sell a product. I think that's what's putting the "heat" into the argument. Since Uptone are using this technical marketing strategy, and say they have engineered the device to solve a specific problem, they should be able to present independently-repeatable measurements showing an objective "before and after" effect on the DAC output - that's to say, a demonstration both of the problem and the solution to it. The argument could be brought onto a more rational level if Uptone were to provide the promised measurements. The fact that these have not been forthcoming fans the flames because it (arguably) demonstrates that the engineering is not complete. plissken and Thuaveta 2 Link to comment
thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 4 minutes ago, opus101 said: the ER is designed to connect to a DAC but not designed to connect to a DAC solely connected to an AP, rather a DAC going on to an amp or pre-amp then amp. System details do matter and Amir's system wasn't representative of a typical use case. If the DAC output is different depending on whether or not it's connected to an amp or pre-amp, isn't that a fault of the DAC and orthogonal to whether or not the ER does anything - or have I missed something? Link to comment
thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 4 minutes ago, luisma said: So yes, since he is not playing music the devices tested and the testing itself is not completely exact Is it just me that finds an amusing irony in this criticism of the test method? At least the test was done and the method and results were published... Link to comment
thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 5 minutes ago, Blackmorec said: Again I’m no expert in these matters but if I were looking to see if a device removed noise, i would inject a known quantity of noise into the device and look what comes out. Indeed. What kind of noise would you propose to inject into the switch, and how would you generate it? Link to comment
thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 5 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said: The same goes for this testing. I'm sure there are many holes that laymen don't see, but I don't believe those who are out to get UpTone would ever mention them. Fair enough. I'm a layman so I don't see them. But shouldn't there also be experts not "out to get UpTone" who would point them out? Link to comment
Popular Post thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 5, 2019 11 minutes ago, Blackmorec said: Let me simplify the points I was making. Regarding Amir’s tests, he has no idea what’s going into the switches, no idea what’s coming out and no idea what the DAC is adding. All he knows is that what’s coming out of the DAC, where ever it came from, is the same, regardless of what’s connected upstream. If Amir tried to publish these results in a peer reviewed journal he wouldn’t make it past the initial editorial review. The paper would simply be rejected for lack of experimental rigour. What I understood from Amir's description of the test is that he used Roon on a PC to generate a tone which is streamed to a DAC via the switch under test. Bearing that in mind, I am still not clear what you mean by "what's going into the switches, ... what's coming out" - what specifically do you think is not known that is important to the end result? Putting my point more simply: isn't the etherREGEN supposed to make a noticeable (audible) difference, compared to a generic Ethernet switch, in a typical audio streaming configuration? And isn't that what the test method tests for? I'm not claiming that the test has scientific rigour, but it is surely better than nothing. Ralf11 and plissken 1 1 Link to comment
Popular Post thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 5, 2019 20 minutes ago, Blackmorec said: Sometimes ‘nothing’ is far better than ‘something’ when that ‘something’ is completed flawed. Firstly, the results published were based on no signal and a test tone. Neither of these 2 conditions are likely to actually create any noise in the signal chain. So a relatively clean signal enters both the TPLink and EtherRegen, challenging neither. A test tone is surely a valid signal (not "no signal") and the usual choice for measuring noise and distortion. In what way is this more "clean" and less "challenging" than any other signal, given that we're talking about packetised digital data going into and out of the switches? What noise would be created by using a different, presumably more complex signal? 20 minutes ago, Blackmorec said: Frankly the chances of a `TPLInk and an EtherRegen measuring exactly the same must be vanishingly small, given the vastly different technologies, whereas if you were measuring the DAC’s noise, the results would be identical. Go figure. It's a big stretch to say that the TP-Link and etherREGEN are "vastly different technologies". They are after all both Ethernet switches, which are constrained to provide the same functional behaviour in conformance with the same technical standards. The components of both will be off-the-shelf devices no doubt used in many other applications. The similarities are much stronger than the differences, in my view at least. Yes, indeed, all that shows up in the test is the noise of the DAC because that's all there is. Of course your interpretation of the null result is not the only one: another is that there is no "mess" to be cleaned up upstream of the switches that has any effect on the DAC output, and so both switches do an equally good job of (not) cleaning it up. mansr and plissken 2 Link to comment
thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 @Jud - fair points, well made. Jud 1 Link to comment
Popular Post thumb5 Posted December 5, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 5, 2019 @The Computer Audiophile As I read it, the main test was performed with a Matrix streaming DAC using the Ethernet input, so the ER was connected directly to the DAC. The Modi 2 result was an additional data point later in the report. mansr and plissken 2 Link to comment
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