UpTone Audio EtherREGEN (Objective Discussion Only)

[manueljenkin]

1 minute ago, plissken said:

 

Are you talking about USB packets or IP?

Got carried away. Was talking about usb packets. Not ethernet.

 

Transmission error still holds. But if you can configure the protocol well enough you can do error correction I suppose. Usb audio protocol doesn't do it.

[manueljenkin]

When it comes to digital audio, we are almost never bothered about the overall speed/bandwidth in packet chunks. We are more worried about the timing and integrity.

 

A high speed car with terrible low speed (and possibly terrible suspension) perfornance will suck when driving through a speed breaker.

[manueljenkin]

29 minutes ago, mfsoa said:

Exactly which measurements have been shown to correlate to the sound quality of ethernet switches? Surely you have this information as you are looking to have specific numerical values inserted so you can determine what the product sounds like.

 

Surely it would help Uptone if you provide them that list, along with target values that you know to provide "bad" "acceptable" or "above average"  so that they know what measurements to be concerned with. 

 

I would also like this information for sneakers...watches...food...women... Is there ANY other freaking hobby in the world where looking at numbers on a page is seen as an adequate substitute for actually USING (listening) to the device under test? 

 

I'll give you numbers but first you have to listen to the unit in question. Now I give you the numbers 11 and 0.004. Has the sound of the unit changed? No? You mean having numbers made no difference to the sound of the unit?

 

Why do we need others to tell us our stereo sounds good?

 

 

 

 

Never knew women were considered a hobby in few countries! Otherwise I'm with your side. But this is objective fi, so let's deal it objectively.

 

People tend to act like they know everything about our hearing and every way to comprehend it. Which is false, even in the medical field their scope is very limited. Partly because how tightly our hearing is coupled to our brain. It's hard to decipher how the information is sent and processed by the brain and the field is an active area of research.

 

So how come they assort fr=everything, thd= everything. Or more so assign weights that fr is the most discerning attribute of sound. Who gave you the right to assign such weights when you don't really know what really denotes fidelity.

 

In any sort of validation, (like <cough> <cough >asr does) there is this concept called coverage. What scenarios does the simulations or vectors cover and what they don't cover. In our case, we don't even have a bounded clue of what needs to be measured in the first place, let alone the fact that there is a significant difference between analysing steady state parameters, dynamic parameters and linearity parameters all of which science does say is audible (pretty much how you are able to localise objects in space and differentiate voices and instruments in real life). Only the first type is somewhat reliably measured by asr, and even that is up to the scrutiny that his measuring gear filters don't mask too many things. Signal/aberration masking is a real thing.

What measures too good in one area might actually have been overcompensated and might have lost a lot of fidelity in another area, which ironically might be more audible. They can only say, within their limited measurements, they haven't been able to spot a difference. Doesn't mean there is no difference.

 

It's also funny that people don't care about reconstruction filter accuracy or phase when in reality both are audible not only due to human hearing sensitivity but also due to the way the anti alias, etc happens. But they care about 0.0002 %thd in bass when your ear canal in itself has a thd so high that you could possibly not even detect 5% thd in 20hz (5% is a super conservative estimate). Let alone the thd of the recording equipment. Long story short, just because someone hears better than what you measured doesn't mean they are deluded or are hearing placebo. You cant assign weights to aspects of fidelity yet, an aberration is an aberration and every individual aberration is its own character and possibly not be able to remedied in any other link in the chain. It could very well be real in the physical world, just not measured yet.

 

Coming back to alex, I'd love to see things mentioned here being changed to be less assertive in case they couldn't reliably measure it yet in any side of the link. "So why does this arrangement matter?" I can see their approach, but as it stands I'm not sure if they have a reliable way to showcase it yet on a repeatable measurement sheet. I'd be happy to lend alex a helping hand in measuring these devices in a short while. I'm already working on better headphone and source parameterization using custom tones, and results have been surprising so far. I'll share it when I can get it published as a verified paper. No I don't want a free unit, I don't like computer playback (gonna go the teraplayer way). I'll give you the tones and measurement device specs, you shall measure.

[manueljenkin]

One more thing to note with the measurements done today. The methods involve certain math/windows apart from the filters and samplers. These windows actually choose to ignore/discard certain aspects of the signal. All theories base on top of a condition/assumption which may not always be true. Nyquist theorem has its own boundary conditions to be fulfilled (perfect aa filters is one of them), autocorrelation needs its own boundary conditions to be fulfilled. Parametrizing something as linear time invariant and using lti analysis methods is inherently discarding a lot of information since barely any system is truly lti. It's even more so in case of headphones where every aspect of the link is non linear. The transducer-amp interaction is similar to a generator-motor interaction, and I don't think I've ever seen a simple model for that interaction in my course. The graph is complicated. Same goes for the air packet in between the transducer and the ear - you enter into fluid dynamics which is a concept in itself, turbulence, navier-stokes equations and what not.

[manueljenkin]

2 minutes ago, OldBigEars said:

 

Stick with what you know, Seraph.  There's no need to try new things, just because many other people enjoy them.   They are probably stupid, anyway, right? Carry on the way you are.  Save all that money.  And have fun in your fact-based, bullshit free world - if that's what you want.

His/her opinion is NOT FACT based. It is abstraction based!.

[manueljenkin]

15 hours ago, Seraph said:

Why on earth would I pay for something that has no proven affect on sound quality whatsoever?

And that, is the whole point of my argument.

There have been so many things that were unexplained for a while before the gears evolved measure and prove them. Tonnes of theories. It was believed the sun revolved around the earth for centuries. And some people still believe that way, just like you people do in audio.

 

The finding typically comes first, explanation next and proof later! If you want to miss out on an experience, it's your wish. I've factually disproven the credibility of assessment techniques at asr and innerfidelity (read older Post). I'm yet to see even a dc offset measurement, crosstalk measurement from asr all of which can kick both the transducer and your perception for a spin.

[manueljenkin]

2 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

His/her opinion is NOT FACT based. It is abstraction based!.

I got your message. I just didn't want to give that loophole. Else they'd bring in a dictionary or something and would start in objectivist terms.

[manueljenkin]

17 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

Well neither you nor anyone else has proven that it doesn't. What's more, you bandy about prejudicial assertions without having owned or heard the thing. Why do you do that? It's because you have an agenda. But satisfaction of your agenda relies on demonstration that the device both does not and *cannot* affect SQ. Against the grain of the manufacturer's argument, even if you will not accept that the eR plausibly affects SQ, it is extremely unlikely by any scientifically rigorous standards of logic or proof that you or anybody else will demonstrate that SQ effects are impossible. Yours is a vain political pursuit. If you are bent on the matter, why not do what is suggested and buy a unit. Do your measurements. And let's see how your arguments that the device *cannot* affect SQ stack up. That is - if anybody will read them. I know I won't. I should be brought to tears of boredom. Of course it's a waste of your $640 - whether satisfying your ego or developing a logical case. Why not spend your time and money on something you can enjoy without bitterness?

 

I have an eR. I'm loving it because it makes my music better. Please don't take away my fun Mr. Seraph.

 

edit: I see that my earnest remarks regarding science and logic in relation to this matter in this thread were tidied away along with other material. That's a shame. I wouldn't have posted above out of this context had I realised.

Now if someone wants to prove er cannot change the perceivable sound, first they need to define a bound on what is perceivable. Then device a method and gear to go about it. So in that pursuit, they should be able to study neuroscience, material science, transducer-amplifier interactions, digital and analog electronics (including effects at quantum level) all at Doctorate/research level. In the process they could possibly decipher how tinnitus is generated in the brain, teach computers to precisely locate, and discern objects, sounds and dialogues and heck even take care of the job of mastering and remastering. Can we really expect those guys to do that? They just have their own place to happily push their agendas and showcase their ego. Let them have their share of fun.

 

Note: I don't own the er and I won't coz I am not interested in computer playback anymore. But I have the uspcb from the same manufacturer and I'm happy with it.

[manueljenkin]

29 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

So much for an objective forum. You gents don't understand the meaning of the word. Opinions, unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories are not it, sorry.

 

I don't know about others, but almost every reply made by me has been objective. Showing something is missing in the analysis is also "objective". Coverage metric is an objective term. We don't know precisely how we perceive sonics is a fact.

 

Right now where I stand objectively is, it is neither proven nor disproven that it can make a difference. Subjectively, what I think is none of your business.

[manueljenkin]

8 minutes ago, Seraph said:

My opinion being the device does nothing whatsoever for sound quality based on test results done.

 

This is probably true, at least in the case of UpTone Audio products.

 

So you have an issue with products Amir does not review? Not with his equipment or methodology?

 

"My opinion being the device does nothing whatsoever for sound quality based on test results done." - how cool of you to keep ignoring facts that the tests done don't conclusively parametrize every audible trait and aberration. Seriously pal, medical and science researchers really need your advice to stop research on everyrhing audio related ! Everything audible has been measured as per your statements. Factually wrong.

[manueljenkin]

@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.

[manueljenkin]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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:

 

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.

[manueljenkin]

14 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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. 

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.

[manueljenkin]

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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?

 

Let's return back to where we started. I asked @Superdadfor a measurement similar to what shunyata did, showing differences anywhere in the link they think they are improving. You told me shunyata is unreliable and that you had made measurements, and that I shouldn't believe them. I'm asking you where's your measurements debunking the measurements made by shunyata!.

[manueljenkin]

9 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

All I said is that you shouldn't accept marketing claims on faith. I attempted to verify Shunyata's claim a few years ago, and found that I couldn't duplicate their findings. At some point, I'll re-run the tests with new equipment (and software) I have on hand. 

 

EtherRegen has been measured and found not to produce a measurable difference at the output of a DAC. There's still no evidence provided to contradict this in any objective way despite nine pages of this thread,

"The measurements done currently don't show a difference" and "there is no difference" is not the same thing. The cult was making correlations on that front and that was what I was against. I've put forward my argument on coverage and audibility analysis and you have read that already, not going to reiterate.

 

I stand at - it is neither proven nor disproven that er can make things better or even different. I think that's a fairly objective stance based on facts. The debunking is incomplete because of less coverage and the assertion by uptone is incomplete because of lack of measurements showing any delta in any parameter.

 

Regarding the power cords. There are independent tests online that also measure differences. I'd doubt your measuring gear if you couldn't trace the difference. Now you might ask me why should I trust those tests. I can bounce the same question to you. Why should I trust asr plots. Can't Amir just draw random squiggles in a tab and publish it as measurements. Atleast the videos are live, the charts we can't say!.

[manueljenkin]

23 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Unlike Shunyata, I measured at the output and not at the input. I don't really care if a $10k power cord lowers noise at the power input to my DAC if there is no difference at the output. 

 

Amir could do lots of crazy things, but I've confirmed a number of his measurements independently, and so have others. I have no reason to suspect that in some cases he uses a crayon. But sure, that's the point of published objective results: they are repeatable and testable. Show that he is wrong. Provide the evidence, then we can talk. 

We're going in circles aren't we. The measurements done now on the dac/amp side are not conclusive. It's not there is no difference at the output. The current measurements/used equipment don't show/resolve a difference. It's 100% clear shunyata cable does what it claims on the power line, as evident from independent measurements, tests, and also the fact that it is used in medical side makes sure the cable is also reliable.

 

So what you're trying to do is run tests equivalent validating acceleration of an engine and concluding that the brakes and suspensions are working fine. The guy getting the automobile will be in for a surprise. How scientific!!

[manueljenkin]

2 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Very much along the lines of what we will publish. Though as you know, it takes careful attention to environmental factors to properly measure very low level noise.  And the perturbations we are looking at do not need to be very large to have the effect on clock threshold jitter that we believe are the root cause of the sonic differences heard.

 

@JohnSwenson's expensive new PhaseStation is showing just how much environmental factors influence low level phase-noise measurement. DC cables, vibration, fields in the air, lighting, even body presence are causing wild wiggles at the levels he is testing. He is building cases and supplies to reduce those distractions. And we are not even talking about your favorite, 1/f noise. 

An electrical/electronics engineer myself, I'm really curious to know about the aberrations present. Any article/post here or on your webpage would be very helpful for me. My wish is to be a part of a team that does instrumentation for medical/science purposes, and knowledge across these domains would be of great interest. I really don't care about correlation to audio, I'm more interested in its utility for ANY realtime high precision application (which can include audio to some extent).

 

I also sent a mail to shunyata research asking guidance in Power supply design. I'm copy pasta-ing the post here, kindly guide me if any of those are relevant to er or is something you're familiar with.

 

" I have seen a few of your videos, and I am interested to know more about the dynamic power consumptuion properties of transistors (inrush etc). I am unsure of where to ask for guidance, everywhere I ask for guidance, a dozen vocal skeptics (with absolutely no industry background) come in and say there is no difference, when in reality I could even tweak my software buffer to make a difference in sound. I am well aware of clock skews, oscillator drifts due to unstable power supply, opamps behaving as antennas to rf noises and have also worked as a physical design engineer for a short while (majority was as validation engineer for RTL). I'd love to learn more in detail, not as much as company confidential stuff, but to some extent of depth. Kindly guide me.

Id also like to know if the power filters can bring in improvements to my led lighting brightness/flicker consistency when used in parallel to the wiring for the lights. At the current moment, I am unable to afford any of your systems, so I'm sorry if that was disappointing. But I would eventually buy one of yours products, when I get necessary funds.

On a side note, I'd also love to know guidance on battery parameters (designing my "transportable" amplifier.") Better description here : https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/351812-types-batteries-transient-steady-properties-aberrations-2.html#post6138552 "

[manueljenkin]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

 

Did you hear? CERN just bought out the remaining stock of Shunyata, for use with the Large Hadron Collider ...

 

No seriously, EMI labs etc, and many which measure signals WAAAAY more sensitive than cardiac do not use Shunyata ... their advert of use in the medical field looks like purely a publicity stunt to me. 

I don't understand your issue. I asked them for knowledge transfer in an area I have a vague clue and they probably have a better picture of what's going on. What's wrong in that? I specified what I want to know and how it works to an extent they can share.

 

I don't think CERN will ask topping or smsl to design their components either, or ask ASR to validate their components with just static tones. Also CERN won't use consumerish components or even consumerish power supply/transmission lines. https://home.cern/science/engineering/powering-cern . I'd be happy to learn from them just the same way, just that they are not accessible to me currently. The shunyata and uptone guys reply to mails and, the latter have already replied to my mails. Whether I think something is valid or not I'll decide after consulting with professors and researchers (not online warriors).

 

I am already able to comprehend shunyata's pitch/demo I just wanted to know it in a deeper level. Maybe it relates to audio maybe it doesn't, I can't say without trying and I'm least bothered about audio when compared to my interest in other domains. Them having a medical division is just icing on top of the cake for me. Just an additional validation. Don't you see such things claimed by Apple, microsoft, Google etc. That their stuff is being used in mission critical jobs.

 

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

[manueljenkin]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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.

I'd like to take more time, get it reviewed and published as a paper. I'll keep mum on details till then. Trying to ask guidance in most online forums was going nowhere in my experience and I'm not interested in going through that loop again. I've got enough leads and a few of my tests have been a success. 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.

[manueljenkin]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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 noise.

 

The number on the right is an RMS value of total distortion plus noise. Example below is real, captured through an 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)

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.

[manueljenkin]

2 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Actually CERN makes its data publicly available so if you have the data analysis capabilities you can verify for yourself. Materials & methods are published so if you care to read ... a lot 

Thank you very much. You have given me some reading to do 💪.

[manueljenkin]

15 minutes ago, Seraph said:

Is this a April 1st joke?
This guy totally believes in audiophile USB and power cables. Though some of the stuff they make is actually pretty good.

What is your point? That usb cables and power cables "cannot" make a difference? In that case even your "measurement GOD" measured differences in USB cables, even with single tone measurements.

 

I have 3 usb cables all of them meet minimum USB spec and still sound very different. Changing music player software, all in ASIO also can sound wildly different. Difference between foobar and winyl in ASIO/wasapi has been measured, even in the single tone levels.

 

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/50P4hRJ

Mislabeled the title, it is 5khz square wave (though 1khz shows very similar results).

 

I have also been able to tweak the software, and cables to create clear and distinctly high buffer underruns and overruns, causing a complete blank harshness, or stutter, all of which will still be "bit perfect".

 

The sonic differences between music player software is higher than the difference between different tiers of dacs and headphones (much bigger than the difference between something like hd600 and hd650). I can gladly take blind tests on this front once the covid situation is solved. But should be done in my gear, my headphone, my sources and my music.

 

Godspeed, mr abstraction!

[manueljenkin]

8 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name of the tool?

[manueljenkin]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Currently Multi-tone Loopback Analyzer, but since I'm writing it, I'll probably come up with another name before I publish it

 

In that case I wouldn't be able to find out if it is static or dynamic till I can try to see what it really does.

 

But I'll say this, Fft by itself is going to window things (you need to specify window length, overlap and stuff and there is always a trade off in that) and is not the correct way to capture or visualize transients. Fft works best only for steady signals (and preferrably LTI, so we are back into the loop). Edges are something you would have serious difficulty interpreting using Fft.

https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/62002/is-a-fourier-transform-a-sound-way-to-analyse-a-transient-signal

 

When I say transient response, this is one example : 

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/burst-response-hd800-sr-207-hd650.3688/

 

it is not the end all be all, but a good starting point. Look at how the output begins and stabilizes and different headphones taking different time to settle. Again we are looking at all these through the mics transient response and ADC filter/non linearities, so to capture even more precision we'd need even more complex input and complicated analysers/mics. (Someone donate me a Neumann ku100 or b&k please 🤪)

 

And if you're still confused, you're probably not an ee student. I'd recommend you to start reading about ac transient and steady state analysis.

[manueljenkin]

13 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Do you understand what you posted regarding what the limitations of Fourier transform might or might not be with regard to transients?

 

I wouldn't look to stackexchange as authoritative but Fourier transforms including limitations are very well known and described.

 

I only said, transients are better analysed looking at envelopes, and if it is a LTI system, through Laplace transforms and such. fft is a visualization, and not the best one for analysing transients is what I meant. Different types of windowing functions, and window lengths show different visualizations, and give scope to tweak the best visualization for your signal to be checked. I'm unsure what you find odd in my statement. Regarding stackexchange, again i'm not sure your grudge there, but the link i posted was relevant. Also of importance is phase information, which will need complex fft (both phase and amplitude plots). You can get back original samples if you have both phase and amplitude information, not from plots of amplitude alone, discarding phase.

 

I was meaning spectral leakage, smearing etc, when analysing transient signal using fft/dft.

https://dspillustrations.com/pages/posts/misc/spectral-leakage-zero-padding-and-frequency-resolution.html