Digital Signal Transmission

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

So you didn't read accurately what I wrote.

Or I didn't wrote accurately what I intended, in your language.

Read again how I described noise. Or don't. I actually don't care.

 

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Must be that language barrier, again.  

 

[pkane2001]

23 minutes ago, One and a half said:

Conversation is now a parallel. No further dialog necessary, bye.

 

Not very satisfying. If you come to an objective thread to have a discussion, it would be better to present your point of view without personal attacks and mischaracterizations. If I ask for objective evidence, it's because this is the only space on AS where this is even allowed, but also because I'm very interested to see such evidence presented. Attacking me serves no useful purpose, proves nothing, and wins no arguments.

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

First time I've seen doing major surgery called, diagnosis - you may care to note that I always aim to do the bare minimum to the guts of whatever I deal with, to 'fix' it - with current actives, I have not even opened them up yet - no idea what it looks like inside. So, being radical in that sense is not part of the recipe, 😀.

I think surgery often follows a radical diagnosis, such as excising a volume control, but I’m not a doctor ;)

[pkane2001]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

If one is very careful not to hear differences, when some experiment is made, to test whether some factor may relevant - because to do so threatens one's carefully built up set of ideas - then most things are probably radical. If one does not suffer this affliction, then that person can determine that indeed the volume control is a weakness - then, either grin and bear it; or, do something to improve matters ... which might be to remove that part from the circuit.

 

If one is very careful to look for objective evidence, one can avoid the influence of beliefs, ideas, charlatans, or misleading advertising copy.  This is why science was invented. It would really help if instead of claiming lots of things that you "believe you hear" you'd spend at least some of the time trying to prove it. Prove it to yourself, not to me. Claiming that you "hear it, therefore it must be so" style of discovery has gone out of favor at about Renaissance time, and for a good reason.  As illustrated in the transcript of my conversation with Dr. Frank, that approach can result in a permanent loss of major body parts ;)

 

 

 

[pkane2001]

14 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

Nothing wrong with fungus - I hate when people disparage fungi.

 

If you like Miso, soy sauce, blue cheese, and any alcohol thank your local fungi.....

 

Love mushrooms of all kinds!

 

Oh, and also Star Trek Discovery. You'll know why if you've watched it -- fungi run the universe.

 

[pkane2001]

34 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Seems you are equating the Ferengi with fungi. They are VERY different species!

 

No Sir! On Discovery, even the warp drive is replaced by a fungi spore drive. You're thinking mid-22nd century, while Discovery happens in 23rd, and ends in 32nd :)

 

[pkane2001]

33 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Now Paul, come on. You say that all these things can easily be measured. Now teach me how (but bring some money please, if required).

;-)

 

As you know, I really don't care what happens in the middle of a DAC or before it. These are irrelevant to me, as I don't listen to the 22MHz clock or to USB packets or to TCP/IP frames. I listen to analog output of a DAC. Regardless of the original source of distortions, be it jitter, noise, RFI, EMI, cheap fuse or power cord, etc., if I can't detect it at the output below, say 24KHz, I don't really care if it's there (and for me, personally, under 18KHz is plenty good enough.)

 

And yes, below 24KHz, I can measure pretty well without the need for $150K in equipment 😜

[pkane2001]

8 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

OK, now I've got the jitters.

 

 I hear EtherREGEN might help that. Did you try sitting on it? ;)

 

[pkane2001]

11 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Just be careful that your measurement gear's anti-alias filter doesn't fix up things that that DAC didn't do properly... ;)

 

If you run a NOS DAC at 44.1k sampling rate and put it through nice oversampled 20 kHz brickwall filter in analyzer, the resulting waveforms may look pretty decent. But it is not what is coming out of the DAC. :D

 

Let's say Focusrite Forte interface. Playing 0 - 22.05 kHz sweep with spectrum "peak hold" looks like this:

 

And 1 kHz tone looks like this in wide band:

 

I'd say that device puts out lot of correlated junk. If you run that to a class-D amp like Hypex you may have some funny side effects.

 

 

 

I usually set the ADC at 96KHz to avoid this type of collision of filters.

[pkane2001]

17 minutes ago, semente said:

Wouldn’t life be a lot easier if we weren’t able to measure a lot of stuff? And cheaper?

 

Why complicate when there’s a simplistic measure for DAC performance called SINAD which tells us all we need to know (that all DACs sound the same)? With pink panther ratings.

 

SINAD does work really well for saving $$$'s (and sanity, to some degree), even if it's not entirely accurate ;)

 

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

That is still not sufficient. I rather set ADC to 10 MHz... And then I still verify it with 200 MHz ADC (but with loss in dynamic range).

 

No need to do that to detect the effects of jitter in digital transmission or the DAC clock -- these either are there and can be measured in the audible range, or they are irrelevant.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, semente said:

 

Which measurements do you use to detect jitter effects in the audible range?

 

Like the ones I posted earlier.

 

 

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, TomJ said:

 

OK - just pulled the trigger for these amazing new invention: Quantum Stickers.

Will stick them on all the parts of my switches, routers, servers, streamers and DAC and im done! 🤣

https://telos-audio.com.tw/sticker/

 

 

 

You're learning fast! ;)

 

[pkane2001]

Just now, Miska said:

IMO, SINAD alone is as useless figure as any other number taken out of context. I don't think it helps saving $$$.

 

It helps save $$$ if you ignore the fact that it's not useful :)

 

[pkane2001]

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Paul, Paul, Paul ... you're deep in the objectivist's whirlpool, I'm afraid ... all science has to be ultimately based on observation, of the world as it is. Anything else is just another ride of self-delusion, which may be very difficult to get off ...

 

I learnt something 3 decades ago which has been absolutely consistent, to this day. Which is, that audio playback can be immensely involving and satisfying - but that status of performance is very, very fragile; the slightest impairment, somewhere, can collapse the illusion. I can prove to myself at any time that my ideas are sound, by going and listening to a nominally high performance, well measuring setup - which is, subjectively, awful. It stinks of a distortion signature; it's flawed as a mechanism for listening to recordings.

 

The absence of those distortions is all that matters. As is the absence of pain, as a human. Much of the world operates on the basis that "this has worked as a means of solving an issue; therefore, we'll keep using it" ... if everything that didn't have the highest level of rigorous proof as being effective was ditched tomorrow, by decree - the world would be in a very, very, very bad place, very fast ...

 

There's observation and there's scientific observation, Frank. What you're describing is the kind that leads to self-delusion and amputated extremities. 

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Right, there's observation by "normal" people - and then there's observation by "scientific" people ... the latter is obviously of a far higher standard, I can tell ... 🤪.

 

Are you seriously doubting it? Give you an example:   

 

observation by "normal" people = Earth is flat (I can see this with my own eyes looking out the window)

observation by "scientific" people = Earth is a spheroid planet rotating around a star that's part of a galaxy that itself is part of a local galaxy group that's part of a universe containing billions of galaxies

 

Which one do you think is of a "higher" standard?

[pkane2001]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

How about this ... go to a restaurant, everyone has the same meal - then it is evaluated. You have a food critic, an owner of a restaurant chain, a master chef, and a winner of the physics Nobel Prize as the group of 4 eating - whose evaluation has the greatest weight?

 

Let's put it this way: I'd trust the scientist to determine if there's any poison in my meal much more than I would a master chef. 

[pkane2001]

Just now, fas42 said:

 

Right, and here's where the scientific approach does come in - if the majority agree that there is something not quite right about the food, which is not to do with how it was handled in the kitchen, but they can't put their finger on it - then the scientific methods climb on board, and sort things out.

 

So, there are two different types of evaluation coming into play - neither is superior; both serve a necessary function.

 

No. Whether or not the majority agrees, the scientist can determine if the food is poisoned. Reality is not based on a majority vote of "normal" people and certainly couldn't care less what they think of the food. It's either poisoned or it's not.

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Okay, losing you now ... 🙂. The important thing, with the meal, is whether it was of a high standard or not. That it was poisoned is an entirely different issue.

 

The reality that mattered at the time of the eating was the quality of the experience. The only people who might be obsessed about the poisoning issue would be those food testers that dictators, etc, carry around with them 😀.

What do you think distortion is? Poison! :)

[pkane2001]

2 hours ago, RickyV said:

What if the food wasn’t poisoned or not poisoned but it was slightly bitter. Would the scientists know what to do about it or wound the master chef know what to do?

 

The analogy is flawed. It's the fork we are discussing here, not the food. The food is the music, the art. The fork is the utensil that's used to consume food, just like audio equipment is used to consume music. Any individual that thinks that it's the fork that makes food taste better is certainly welcome to their opinion, but the fork doesn't make the meal. Does the chef know how to make a better fork to make his food taste better? Probably not.

[pkane2001]

You guys love to argue, but when it comes to providing any real evidence to support your arguments... crickets.

 

So, in bidding you adieu, always remember and never forget:  it’s not the fork that bends, it is only yourself ;)

 

[pkane2001]

10 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

 

It's a bit silly we can't post links to the site here but here it is and here is Amir's comment about it.

 

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/smsl-m400-balanced-usb-mqa-dac-review.13732/

 

 

So he's not just talking about it's SINAD of 121dB, so I'm not sure why people just seem to talk like this is the only measurement he shares.

 

 

https://www.audioscìencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/smsl-m400-balanced-usb-mqa-dac-review.13732/