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UpTone Audio EtherREGEN (Objective Discussion Only)


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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, manueljenkin said:

@Superdad I'd personally be interested in any direct probing/measurements, not necessarily at the output of the dac. Measuring noise at usb output, measuring clock jitter at usb output, or at the i2s pins, or at any other place.

 

A good example is these shunyata research demos. They measure things at the power outlet.

 

 

From there on its a cake walk to extrapolate the inferences coz transistor power consumption curves are super wild and quite anything could affect them. They are also super sensitive and RF noise can pollute their behavior easily.

 

Few more quantifiable demos.

 

Again, I donot have the budget to own even the entry level shunyata but I'd be inclined to believe them 100% considering their stuff is also used in medical applications.

 

Before people assume I defend these products coz I own them, I donot. The only "snake-oil" products I have are supra usb cable and uptone uspcb (both of which match the USB cabling spec, so hardly snake oil on that front, and subjectively sound very nice). I don't have the budget for any of the higher end stuff. But that doesn't mean I'll fool myself to thinking what I have is all there is to audio. I for one, have worked at physical design engineering, and have had electronics as a course in my undergrad, and everything points to anything being able to change things significantly on the transistor linear/non-linear behavior. Audibility of most things is neither proven nor disproven.

 

Shunyata video is a good example of marketing claims that should be questioned and tested before you "believe them 100%".

 

By the way, that's the reason I got one of these:

image.png.90dc9d9ee4099bb7b83e4dab82a73ca6.png

 

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22 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

What are your findings? And explain the test procedure. Explain the precision/sensitivity measuring gear (would be nice to know who else uses it).

 

I said I trust them coz they are used in medical side. Not because they claim anything.

 

This is off topic for this thread. The goal was to test the effect of line noise on the output of various DACs. In the process I also tested power strips, power-line filters, a UPS unit, as well as a PS Audio power regenerating plant. Also tested with various power cords. 

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1 minute ago, manueljenkin said:

Yes. What are your findings, in the measurement parameters as described in the video posted by shunyata. They claimed it to remove noise in the power supply, did it do that or not?. Measuring output of dacs can come in later coz we haven't measured everything that constitutes sound, and are dealing with a high level of abstraction.

 

There's no later. I did this testing a few years ago, trying to replicate another Shunyata video related to power cord and noise on the line. How's this related to EtherRegen?

 

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4 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Well I agree in this case, for example, the $$ I spent on the Topping D7s based on measurements, I found to be a big waste because I don't like the sound. On the other hand the Pro-ject S2D was a great purchase. Do you have a measurement that predicts my preference?

 

All I've been discussing so far is a difference, not a preference. There's no demonstrated measured difference in the ER case, so how could there be a preference?

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3 minutes ago, Iving said:

This is just bait guys - and you know it. I'm not a subjectivist, and don't have an axe to grind, but I'd be willing to sit a blind a test. @plisskenI've told you this via PM. Problem is I'm in the UK and you the US. If you want to overcome that, you'd have to pay all out-of-pocket expenses! I mean I wouldn't pay since I don't care that much - I already know what I think. There are other problems. You may be able to embarrass me - who knows - I shouldn't mind - I'm not an Uptone apologist - just an eR user happy I've got one - so it's really not worth your bother. If you wanted a properly conducted listening test upon which a good argument might rest, you'd need far more subjects than just me. Plus the whole thing would have to be designed in such a way that you could eliminate the possibility of a false negative. I wouldn't be deterred even if cast into poor performance in my own listening environment. My room, system and my music etc. Contextual variables are more-than-plausibly relevant. Honestly I don't know how much context and familiarity would matter since I don't know how likely it is I would pass a test consistently either at home or in the lab. I feel I might pass since I value the eR in my system. But this is the right kind of conversation. Measurements. Design. Procedure. Stats. Reproducibility. Correct, logical interpretation. I read somewhere recently here at AS an objectivist stance that a listening test wouldn't satisfy - which is quite bizarre - and I can't recall details for which apologies - I just mean we'll never get to the bottom of this since you can't satisfy all the people all the time. It's very unlikely that anybody will ever produce empirical data demonstrating *beyond all reasonable doubt* that the eR is scientifically justified (e.g. lab based listening tests under standard conditions with non-self-selecting Ss and p nicely below 0.05 etc) or scientifically unjustified - since that would involve either an unassailable technical argument (search me I'm not your man) or eliminating all false negative explanations. You are only ever going to end up with a balance of probabilities. People will be convinced by what they want to be convinced by. We are all like that. It's just funnier to watch in people who won't admit it, or who who cleave to Scientism as a religion. Objective-Fi is about proper harnessing of measurements. Empirical rigour. Rational argument. Really we shouldn't carry on with prejudice from either side. We should get data or move on. If you think Uptone should produce data - that's a point of view. But it's not a scientific one. It's a political or ethical one. I have nothing to say about that. I don't care. I'm happy to make up my own mind. I don't need a nanny.

 

You say you are not a subjectivist, so aren't you curious at all? 

 

Since you are in possession of an ER and I assume can get a simple ethernet switch to compare it to, what prevents you from conducting a test where you don't have the knowledge of which of the two switches is in the circuit? Run the test 10-15 times, have a loved one switch them for you at random, without telling you. Or work with @plissken who, I presume, can help you build a more automated switching system between the two. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Iving said:

You think I'm going to twist her arm to do a single S listening test to satisfy you? No way brother lol. I might ask her anyway. See if she'll sign up here to join the fun. I'll let you know - but only if she says yes.

 

Blind tests are more fun than cooking dinner... subjectively speaking :) 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

or ask ASR to validate their components with just static tones. 

What's up with these so called objectivists dismissing anything of scientific concern or knowledge transfer.

 

Speaking of which. I know that you had mentioned that static tones are a problem before. Can you elaborate what the issue is, and how your test signal (I believe you mentioned you developed one) solves it. I'm genuinely curious, as I've been working on some test signals recently.

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19 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

I'd like to take more time, get it reviewed and published as a paper. I'll keep mum on details till then. Issue is simple, we assume everything to be LTI, which they are not, even the sampling process has aberrations and compensations for the same. So simple tests like autocorrelation from sine sweep can't parametrize them fully. A lot of things are still under study just like human perception.

 

I didn't say static tones are a "problem" when probed properly. I just said they are not a complete analysis of the device in hand. And you can't conclude anything without having a complete analysis/parametrization.

 

Ok, since we can't talk about your test signal, maybe we can critique mine.  Multitone signal, auto-generated with up to many thousands of tones, low-crest optimized. Analysis below removes the test signal and leaves all distortion, shown in white. This includes HD, IMD, jitter, and all the noise.

 

The number on the right is an RMS value of total distortion plus noise. Example below is real, captured through a relatively inexpensive Apogee interface DAC/ADC loopback. Is this static? What doesn't this capture? What issues do you see?

 

(by the way, frequency response and phase are both easy to derive from the result, but I've yet to do it)

image.thumb.png.6cdc6c3e44e968224168bad2a7fc649e.png

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8 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

I need a bit more detail on the sampling rate etc. To check on the sampling artefacts and filtering artefacts will need an analysis of the ADC in use.

 

But this is more of a static/averaged signal. Transient analysis will be one from an inertial frame of reference. The path from inertia to steady state denotes the transient curves. The type of filter/sampler design to measure transients and steady state phenomenon need not be same. Every design will have a bound within which they perform optimal.

 

This is a tool for quickly assessing DACs and ADCs in a loop-back configuration. Sample rate, etc. are all up to the device and are selectable. The capture I posted was at 96kHz.

 

No, the signal is not static. And not averaged. One FFT-size worth of samples is collected and processed. And, of course, the frequency domain and the time domain are interchangeably representing the same exact data. Here's that multi-tone signal, zoomed-in in the time domain:

 

image.thumb.png.9928fbaab5e3426d8be1f080b8a7ae8a.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

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