jabbr

1985 Whitney Houston ... I like the new da-avx, listening between --fbm=-- and --fbm=--C at tone=-12.67 hmmm ... maybe --fbm=--C has an edge but need to listen more ...

Consider that the price of HQPlayer + powerful computer is about the price of a pricey cable and the cost of HQPlayer should be really a bargain!

Here are a couple links which discuss the effects of temperature on both transistors and resistors: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Electronic/transtemp.html https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-12/temperature-coefficient-resistance/

Oh, well the bias, for one thing, is affected by temp, so that’s one thing you always want to adjust on an amp once the amp is warmed up ... almost all components are affected by temp to one degree of another in an electrically measurable way. But unless you’ve fried something, the curves remain the same over time.

“Everyone” doesn’t include me. I certainly hear and can measure “warm up”, but “burn in” not so much. That said I have no direct knowledge about what anyone else perceives. I do keep my equipment on, particularly in the winter, because warm-up and thermal stability is a real (and measurable) thing.

I'm also a fan (sic) of fractal designs. You can get a 240mm radiator up top on the Meshify but 360 requires putting it in front. Tradeoffs for size that may not matter.

Bingo. Marketing, unfortunately, often involves presenting information that while strictly true, is specifically designed to manipulate. BJC has succeeded because of the “no BS”

I suspect that, unfortunately, the AMD 3800X may not be quite up to running HQP ASDM7EC at DSD256: 1) the base clock is a bit low 2) no AVX512 7EC at DSD256 is taxing and maxes out the single core requirements...

I assume Arista ARCD 8212 — I had ripped my CD collection years ago and didn’t keep the version unfortunately. I am working on this because there are some outstanding female vocals with some very problematic areas

So ... really we should stick to electrical measures such as Ohms and it’s inverse Conductance. An immediate clue is that a % has no units so the numbers are themselves meaningless. Seems like copper is being used as a baseline 100%. The day ffetences are meaningless for all practical purposes. An advantage of silver over copper is that the oxides are relatively more conductive. But yeah mostly nonsense.

fc=maX t=-12.67 seems much better

Sure, just saying that there is a broad spectrum of implementations. The concept of SoC incorporating IO and processing has become ubiquitous e.g. https://www.mellanox.com/products/bluefield2-overview so that would be extraordinary overkill but literally NAA could run on the NIC -- no one would ever do that would they ... hmm ... exasound ... could do it if they wanted to, the advantage of using an FPGA is that the solution could be delivered in firmware ... but limitations all have to do with selected hardware e.g. 100m vs 1g vs 10gbe Once USB4 becomes more popular and when we see USB-C input DACs things may change again -- at least then we will be able to better separate the power from data if/when desired.

when I apply fc=---Qb t=-13.45 to "1985 Whitney Houston" it sounds too muted/the HF seems cut down too much

Arguably any DAC which accepts firmware is a "computer" and DAC in the same enclosure, or even on the same chip for that matter. Typically the USB interface and conversion to I2S/DSD involves some type of FSM/processing. It turns out that essentially all more than trivial FPGA implementions need some soft of processor called a "soft core". Building a SoC such as the Xilinx zynq places an FPGA and ARM cores in the same die ... the RF SoC even includes a few ADC/DAC modules intended to implement SDR (software defined radio) ... but with the FPGA, implementing the Ethernet interface becomes easy because you can load an Ethernet IP module (ie PHY) and the chip itself can interface directly to an SFP module. I have no idea how T+A specifally does this, and Intel also has its own similar chips but that is a straightforward and flexible approach. Merging also implements this approach, AFAIK, with their "ZMAN" board "Z" for "Zynq" Enabling NAA is as simple as loading a deb package onto the custom Linux.

It is a very reasonable design decision to select a solution from one company, where the components are designed to work together. What AC power cables does Bruno Putzney recommend for use with your equipment -- I would go with his recommendations for your system!