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Post by garbulky on Apr 29, 2016 10:22:50 GMT -5
Intertestingly they only mentioned the importance of digital playback devices one time. Right now most of the products out there are delta sigma. They are approximators. The filters use create pre and post ringing before the signal. According to Schiit's Mike Moffat there's some phase issues in the commonly used playback filters too (I'm not sure what). I listened to a DAC which allowed switching filters - like ones which are more time optimised, ones which moved the pre-ringing to the post ringing etc. And there were (slight) differences audible. Now these playback devices are very accurate...but here's the thing, in my opinion the differences are audible. I think it's that hte human ear is very sensitive to small types of distortions while it is able to ignore large distortions in other things. (Second vs third order distortion etc). Also people neglect in the digital versus vinyl debate to even talk about the quality of the DACs used. In the majority of popular use people use DACs that are just not too good. In fact they probably don't know what hte heck a dac is. For instance for me (and I care about sound) most of my life I didn't use very good dacs. I used old creative sound cards. And each of them was audibly different. My friends used their ipods and iphones. Let's be realy they are not reference quality dacs. When you play it with cheap junk the quality of digital goes right out of the window. The same goes for the rest of the equipment and speakers. Most people with vinyl either use a) all in one cheap boxers meant for hipsters or b) their parents or grandparents old Marantz and stuff ....which actually in my opinion are pretty decent. I am guessing the older stuff holds up quite well. But well it's hit and miss there too.... Now vinyl have their flaws too. Namely using a curve to correct things. This by definition first distrots the sound then adjusts it via analog eq to get it to sound "right". But the key thing I think is that vinyl has no pre and post ringing stuff. There's also doesn't have to be a digital conversion first if it's not needed. I remember listening to novisnick 's vinyl. And even though there was some technical issue at hte time, I couldn't deny that the vinyl sounded fantastic. It's the same Dave Brubeck Take Five that I have listened to. But on vinyl the sound was huge. The sound felt whole rather than stitched together well. The piano felt real. Also there was no noise that I could hear in the quiet parts. Nick grinned at me and said something like "I keep looking for snap, crackle, and pop because I heard it must be terrible." And I had to acknowledge there was none of that in his well kept vinyl. I need to go back and visit and hear his rega again.   |
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 29, 2016 10:26:12 GMT -5
Actually there is an interesting story behind that. Did you know that Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" album was titled as a veiled reference to the use of a blue marker on the edge? The album title was a wink to those in the know back in those days that if they took the blue marker and colored the edge of the LP, it would unlock a higher level of fidelity than would otherwise be available. This helped to separate the mass of wannabes who thought they were cool jazz fans and showed up at clubs and bought the records just to impress, from the true jazz aficionados.  Several years later, Joni Mitchell also did this to separate the "deep" wannabes from those who really knew what the heck she was singing about. First of all, it only works on the 200 gram pressing and you've lost your membership for disclosing secret information from the Cool Jazz Guys Club!! Gezzzz! Oh yeah? Well I don't wanna be in your Cool Jazz Guy's Club or your Secret Monoblock Society. I'd rather be in the Cool Two-Channel Tube Club!  |
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Post by novisnick on Apr 29, 2016 11:04:55 GMT -5
monkumonku, How do I join?   |
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 29, 2016 11:10:27 GMT -5
So is that Mc that Boom foolishly let out of his house now officially yours? I see it is in your gear list. |
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Post by novisnick on Apr 29, 2016 11:13:03 GMT -5
monkumonku, How do I join? So is that Mc that Boom foolishly let out of his house now officially yours? I see it is in your gear list. Lets just say that Im working on a permanent istall! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,In My Cave!!! |
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Post by yves on Apr 29, 2016 12:45:09 GMT -5
Intertestingly they only mentioned the importance of digital playback devices one time. Right now most of the products out there are delta sigma. They are approximators. The filters use create pre and post ringing before the signal. According to Schiit's Mike Moffat there's some phase issues in the commonly used playback filters too (I'm not sure what). I listened to a DAC which allowed switching filters - like ones which are more time optimised, ones which moved the pre-ringing to the post ringing etc. And there were (slight) differences audible. Now these playback devices are very accurate...but here's the thing, in my opinion the differences are audible. I think it's that hte human ear is very sensitive to small types of distortions while it is able to ignore large distortions in other things. (Second vs third order distortion etc). Also people neglect in the digital versus vinyl debate to even talk about the quality of the DACs used. In the majority of popular use people use DACs that are just not too good. In fact they probably don't know what hte heck a dac is. For instance for me (and I care about sound) most of my life I didn't use very good dacs. I used old creative sound cards. And each of them was audibly different. My friends used their ipods and iphones. Let's be realy they are not reference quality dacs. When you play it with cheap junk the quality of digital goes right out of the window. The same goes for the rest of the equipment and speakers. Most people with vinyl either use a) all in one cheap boxers meant for hipsters or b) their parents or grandparents old Marantz and stuff ....which actually in my opinion are pretty decent. I am guessing the older stuff holds up quite well. But well it's hit and miss there too.... Now vinyl have their flaws too. Namely using a curve to correct things. This by definition first distrots the sound then adjusts it via analog eq to get it to sound "right". But the key thing I think is that vinyl has no pre and post ringing stuff. There's also doesn't have to be a digital conversion first if it's not needed. I remember listening to novisnick 's vinyl. And even though there was some technical issue at hte time, I couldn't deny that the vinyl sounded fantastic. It's the same Dave Brubeck Take Five that I have listened to. But on vinyl the sound was huge. The sound felt whole rather than stitched together well. The piano felt real. Also there was no noise that I could hear in the quiet parts. Nick grinned at me and said something like "I keep looking for snap, crackle, and pop because I heard it must be terrible." And I had to acknowledge there was none of that in his well kept vinyl. I need to go back and visit and hear his rega again. Your remark regarding Delta Sigma DAC is fundamentally flawed because the anti-imaging digital filters used in R2-R DAC are "approximators" also. |
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Post by garbulky on Apr 29, 2016 14:00:51 GMT -5
yves : Now I didn't actually mention R2-R DACs  Hehe. But yeah I was thinking about them. I am not well versed in the approximator stuff. Do you have anything to share about the anti-imaging digital filters. I read the wikipedia reconsturction filter article but it was a bit over my head - well all of it was. I was taking the approximators from Mike Moffat's comments. I believe his Yggy dac is a multibit dac possibly R2-r but also has a different kind of filter. I think you are familiar with the basic details of it. Now interestingly even that DAC still has ringing and post ringing.... Anyway my point is that we can't separate the medium from the playback device. And right now all the playback devices - both digital with its filters, upsampling algorithms, DS approximation, and Vinyl with its stylus jumping out if bass is too high etc and RIAA etc have fundamental flaws to them - even if the medium itself is pretty solid, and buy medium I guess I'm more looking at digital. Though vinyl has the pro of being able to go from analog to analog.
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Post by mfeust on Apr 29, 2016 14:59:15 GMT -5
A few things I take from this article. All this talk of pops, ticks and clicks. Please clean your vinyl. Still after 32 years of the CD The industry still can't get everything this medium is capable of. WTF. I prefer to listen to vinyl. But I have never said it sounds better than a CD. If the CD is so much more capable of better sound then a LP please start doing it.
Mark
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Post by yves on Apr 29, 2016 21:24:42 GMT -5
yves : Now I didn't actually mention R2-R DACs Hehe. But yeah I was thinking about them. I am not well versed in the approximator stuff. Do you have anything to share about the anti-imaging digital filters. I read the wikipedia reconsturction filter article but it was a bit over my head - well all of it was. I was taking the approximators from Mike Moffat's comments. I believe his Yggy dac is a multibit dac possibly R2-r but also has a different kind of filter. I think you are familiar with the basic details of it. Now interestingly even that DAC still has ringing and post ringing.... Anyway my point is that we can't separate the medium from the playback device. And right now all the playback devices - both digital with its filters, upsampling algorithms, DS approximation, and Vinyl with its stylus jumping out if bass is too high etc and RIAA etc have fundamental flaws to them - even if the medium itself is pretty solid, and buy medium I guess I'm more looking at digital. Though vinyl has the pro of being able to go from analog to analog. starting at the bottom of p. 44 explains in plain English how most DACs create a "staircase" waveform by using a technique called Zero-Order Hold (ZOH). The reconstruction filter effectively "smooths" it by using a frequency response curve that is the inverse (reciprocal) of the sinc function that was used to create this staircase. I.e., the filter reconstructs the smoothness of the analog waveform. Hence the name "reconstruction filter". At the same time also, the anti-imaging filter bandlimits the signal to below the Nyquist frequency because else there will be introduced unwanted imaging artifacts, hence the name "anti-imaging filter". Both filters can be merged into a single filter so in practice, the names "reconstruction" and "anti-imaging" are both referring to the same thing. The ideal frequency response curve of the filter is shown in "Fig. e" (p. 47). But in real-world applications, such an ideal filter can never exist. Instead, real-world filters must be built to be approximately the same as the ideal one. What comes out of the filter can therefore only be an approximation of what we would consider perfect. Either the filter starts rolling off the high frequencies somewhat below 20 kHz, or it allows some imaging artifacts to show up, also somewhat below 20 kHz. Or both. And then there's the pre- and post-ringing to consider. Often, a slow roll-off digital (FIR) filter is used in conjunction with a sharp cut-off (fast roll-off) analog (IIR) filter. Also, modern digital filters usually consist of multiple digital filters that are interlinked in a complex manner. The bottom line is it will never be fully accurate so the audible effects (if any) can be investigated by psychoacousticians, as well as are up for personal debate because no person alive knows everything there is to know about how the human hearing system works. That said, AES Convention Paper 9174 presents hard evidence to support that modern filters typically used in 44.1 kHz sampling are inadequate; in the pragmatic sense it means 44.1 kHz sampling is, after 30 years of Redbook CD, still inadequate. Clair Patterson on lead poisoning. Al Gore on global warming. Call me a skeptic, but history always repeats itself. The destructive force of Redbook CD advocates has been no exception to this. |
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Post by yves on Apr 30, 2016 5:06:20 GMT -5
Here's another (old, but still interesting) document that tries to illustrate some of the potential effects of using different filter parameters. www.mlssa.com/pdf/Upsampling-theory-rev-2.pdfMy derived hypothesis is that, although www.meridian-audio.com/meridian-uploads/ara/coding2.pdf (also old, but also still interesting) at the bottom of p. 8 suggests, "any supersonic (i.e. >20kHz) content conveyed by 96kHz sampling is not detectable either in the context of the original signal or on its own", the high amount of supersonic noise that results from Delta Sigma's inherent noise shaping is actually not as bad as it may seem because some of this noise slips through the filter such that it shows up in the form of imaging artifacts somewhat below 20 kHz, where, if upsampling is used in conjunction with paralleled DAC, it can have the net effect of noise shaped dithering (as explained in the document that I linked in my previous paragraph). Sabre DACs are all using heavy upsampling. On top of this, the Sabre DAC that I own is using 8 paralleled DAC channels per analog output channel. Maybe this helps to explain why, to my own ears, Yggy sounds less musically involving. The Meridian document, in the 2nd paragraph at the top of p. 10, states that the brain normally adapts to noise to ignore it. The same thing happens to dither, as well as the groove noise of vinyl if we listen long enough for our brain to start adapting. The real important question here is which part of the noise the brain finally decides to ignore, which part it doesn't, and what are the side effects to this with regards to our ability to resolve sounds against a noise background / with regards to our brain's natural tendency to build a map over time of the objects that are creating sounds / with regards to listener fatigue / with regards to whatever it is that some certain electronics engineers usually insist on being dismissive about, regardless of what critical listeners are saying. P.S. - Yet another interesting read about the effect of noise: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960104002087 |
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Post by bluemeanies on Apr 30, 2016 7:56:44 GMT -5
First of all, it only works on the 200 gram pressing and you've lost your membership for disclosing secret information from the Cool Jazz Guys Club!! Gezzzz! Oh yeah? Well I don't wanna be in your Cool Jazz Guy's Club or your Secret Monoblock Society. I'd rather be in the Cool Two-Channel Tube Club! :D FYI...Don Cheadle just finished wrapping a movie about Miles Davis. He protrays MD as well as directed the movie and produced it. He said it was a very drawing shoot. |
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Post by garbulky on Apr 30, 2016 8:07:03 GMT -5
yves not having heard either one, I couldn't say which is better. Until I do I am leaning towards multibit yggy! It's my dream DAC. But it could well turn out to be not as good as I hoped. For me, I have heard several saber saber dacs. Some - like the oppo - are quite good. The Oppo was even better when a preamp is used. Others were okay to so so. As you've mentioned the implementation matters. The reason I am leaning towards the yggy is I have been looking for something different. Everybody tends to use the same ds technology and I am thinking we've been doing this for ages guys. Heck I sue it with my DC-1. But let's see something different. Some real innovation. Not taking some off the shelf chip etc. Ya know something that looks put together right but also something I can afford! Finally things are changing. Schiit's offerings are intriguing. But I am only interested in the Yggy offering. Also... FPGA DACs are coming out that are affordable. Now that looks interesting! But in the end, I think what matters is how does it sound. You listened to the Yggy and left less than impressed. I can respect that. It seems you pay a lot of attention to listening too. I do the same thing. And at the end of the day no matter what the specs or anything anyone says if it sounds better to one personally then it is the better gear. In your case it would be the eastern electric. It has beenn rated quite well with reviewers too. Me I hope the Yggy will knock my socks off but it's also possible it may not. I am leaning heavily towards it doing so though! Too bad it won't be for a long time. I have to get my order for the audio gd HE-1 in first. As I have yet to find a transparent preamp. Almost every one I've listened to has negatively colored or obscured the sound - even the mighty XSP-1.  Id on't want the preamp to be the limter for the yggy. So I will save for the preamp first.
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Post by yves on Apr 30, 2016 12:11:11 GMT -5
yves not having heard either one, I couldn't say which is better. Until I do I am leaning towards multibit yggy! It's my dream DAC. But it could well turn out to be not as good as I hoped. For me, I have heard several saber saber dacs. Some - like the oppo - are quite good. The Oppo was even better when a preamp is used. Others were okay to so so. As you've mentioned the implementation matters. The reason I am leaning towards the yggy is I have been looking for something different. Everybody tends to use the same ds technology and I am thinking we've been doing this for ages guys. Heck I sue it with my DC-1. But let's see something different. Some real innovation. Not taking some off the shelf chip etc. Ya know something that looks put together right but also something I can afford! Finally things are changing. Schiit's offerings are intriguing. But I am only interested in the Yggy offering. Also... FPGA DACs are coming out that are affordable. Now that looks interesting! But in the end, I think what matters is how does it sound. You listened to the Yggy and left less than impressed. I can respect that. It seems you pay a lot of attention to listening too. I do the same thing. And at the end of the day no matter what the specs or anything anyone says if it sounds better to one personally then it is the better gear. In your case it would be the eastern electric. It has beenn rated quite well with reviewers too. Me I hope the Yggy will knock my socks off but it's also possible it may not. I am leaning heavily towards it doing so though! Too bad it won't be for a long time. I have to get my order for the audio gd HE-1 in first. As I have yet to find a transparent preamp. Almost every one I've listened to has negatively colored or obscured the sound - even the mighty XSP-1. Id on't want the preamp to be the limter for the yggy. So I will save for the preamp first. The Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC Supreme *is* different, as well as *does* use some real innovation. It doesn't take many engineering skills to be able to see this, but I digress... the reason why "everybody tends to use Delta Sigma" is exactly because it is the most innovative in fact, so you are just contradicting yourself here. But you are right about what matters is the sound, and, to me, personally, the Oppo 105 for stereo music listening sounded bad enough to my ears that I couldn't hesitate but to label it as "Mid-Fi". By comparison, the Oppo 95 fared a small bit better, but as soon as I compared it to the very oldest Eastern Electric Minimax DAC (i.e., not even the MiniMax DAC Plus, nor even the MiniMax DAC Supreme), it [Oppo] was obliterated. No trace of it was left. That's real innovation raining down on ya in spades vs. buying an Oppo just because everybody else has bought one. Same as buying CDs because everybody else is buying them. Let me please repeat that. Even though I respect others opinions (and dreams........), and even though this is just a hobby of course, the sound difference is so clear that I am completely wasting my time trying to express just how clear it is. On topic, if you want real innovation, then listen to vinyl. CDs are too old fashioned anyway, and, soundwise, the innovation in them never was real.  |
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Post by yves on Apr 30, 2016 12:22:00 GMT -5
Listen, mate, *life* has surface noise. |
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Post by garbulky on Apr 30, 2016 12:53:28 GMT -5
yves not having heard either one, I couldn't say which is better. Until I do I am leaning towards multibit yggy! It's my dream DAC. But it could well turn out to be not as good as I hoped. For me, I have heard several saber saber dacs. Some - like the oppo - are quite good. The Oppo was even better when a preamp is used. Others were okay to so so. As you've mentioned the implementation matters. The reason I am leaning towards the yggy is I have been looking for something different. Everybody tends to use the same ds technology and I am thinking we've been doing this for ages guys. Heck I sue it with my DC-1. But let's see something different. Some real innovation. Not taking some off the shelf chip etc. Ya know something that looks put together right but also something I can afford! Finally things are changing. Schiit's offerings are intriguing. But I am only interested in the Yggy offering. Also... FPGA DACs are coming out that are affordable. Now that looks interesting! But in the end, I think what matters is how does it sound. You listened to the Yggy and left less than impressed. I can respect that. It seems you pay a lot of attention to listening too. I do the same thing. And at the end of the day no matter what the specs or anything anyone says if it sounds better to one personally then it is the better gear. In your case it would be the eastern electric. It has beenn rated quite well with reviewers too. Me I hope the Yggy will knock my socks off but it's also possible it may not. I am leaning heavily towards it doing so though! Too bad it won't be for a long time. I have to get my order for the audio gd HE-1 in first. As I have yet to find a transparent preamp. Almost every one I've listened to has negatively colored or obscured the sound - even the mighty XSP-1. Id on't want the preamp to be the limter for the yggy. So I will save for the preamp first. The Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC Supreme *is* different, as well as *does* use some real innovation. It doesn't take many engineering skills to be able to see this, but I digress... the reason why "everybody tends to use Delta Sigma" is exactly because it is the most innovative in fact, so you are just contradicting yourself here. But you are right about what matters is the sound, and, to me, personally, the Oppo 105 for stereo music listening sounded bad enough to my ears that I couldn't hesitate but to label it as "Mid-Fi". By comparison, the Oppo 95 fared a small bit better, but as soon as I compared it to the very oldest Eastern Electric Minimax DAC (i.e., not even the MiniMax DAC Plus, nor even the MiniMax DAC Supreme), it [Oppo] was obliterated. No trace of it was left. That's real innovation raining down on ya in spades vs. buying an Oppo just because everybody else has bought one. Same as buying CDs because everybody else is buying them. Let me please repeat that. Even though I respect others opinions (and dreams........), and even though this is just a hobby of course, the sound difference is so clear that I am completely wasting my time trying to express just how clear it is. On topic, if you want real innovation, then listen to vinyl. CDs are too old fashioned anyway, and, soundwise, the innovation in them never was real. I imagine it's remarkable! I wouldn't personally pick an Oppo 105. As imo it is a lot of money and its solution is really a multifunction unit. I'm looking for a dedicated DAC. As for delta sigma: I gotta disagree. It used to be innovative. Now everybody uses it. I think my problem comes that I still haven't heard realistic sound from DACs. Don't get me wrong I've heard sound that was startlingly good but I just couldn't pinpoint it and say that's the way it was supposed to be. Even the ones that are supposed to be ultra transparent at inaudibility ...well they are audibly not right to me. Whether it's via headphones or speakers. There's something missing. I'm hoping that people will realize that Atmos shouldn't be relegeated to home theater but to serious music reproduction - the same as two channel. Instead of using it as a way to stick mono signal anywhere. We can now technically do a fully 3d signal of a music performance with the heights included. Maybe that may help with the realism. For instance choir works. Listening to music in a large cathedral with high ceilings versus a room with short ceilings. The choir on risers. Or if it is a tall singer versus a short singer. Etc the height dimension can be very useful imo. |
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Post by yves on Apr 30, 2016 16:01:32 GMT -5
The Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC Supreme *is* different, as well as *does* use some real innovation. It doesn't take many engineering skills to be able to see this, but I digress... the reason why "everybody tends to use Delta Sigma" is exactly because it is the most innovative in fact, so you are just contradicting yourself here. But you are right about what matters is the sound, and, to me, personally, the Oppo 105 for stereo music listening sounded bad enough to my ears that I couldn't hesitate but to label it as "Mid-Fi". By comparison, the Oppo 95 fared a small bit better, but as soon as I compared it to the very oldest Eastern Electric Minimax DAC (i.e., not even the MiniMax DAC Plus, nor even the MiniMax DAC Supreme), it [Oppo] was obliterated. No trace of it was left. That's real innovation raining down on ya in spades vs. buying an Oppo just because everybody else has bought one. Same as buying CDs because everybody else is buying them. Let me please repeat that. Even though I respect others opinions (and dreams........), and even though this is just a hobby of course, the sound difference is so clear that I am completely wasting my time trying to express just how clear it is. On topic, if you want real innovation, then listen to vinyl. CDs are too old fashioned anyway, and, soundwise, the innovation in them never was real. I imagine it's remarkable! I wouldn't personally pick an Oppo 105. As imo it is a lot of money and its solution is really a multifunction unit. I'm looking for a dedicated DAC. As for delta sigma: I gotta disagree. It used to be innovative. Now everybody uses it. I think my problem comes that I still haven't heard realistic sound from DACs. Don't get me wrong I've heard sound that was startlingly good but I just couldn't pinpoint it and say that's the way it was supposed to be. Even the ones that are supposed to be ultra transparent at inaudibility ...well they are audibly not right to me. Whether it's via headphones or speakers. There's something missing. I'm hoping that people will realize that Atmos shouldn't be relegeated to home theater but to serious music reproduction - the same as two channel. Instead of using it as a way to stick mono signal anywhere. We can now technically do a fully 3d signal of a music performance with the heights included. Maybe that may help with the realism. For instance choir works. Listening to music in a large cathedral with high ceilings versus a room with short ceilings. The choir on risers. Or if it is a tall singer versus a short singer. Etc the height dimension can be very useful imo. Just because everybody uses it now, doesn't also mean it isn't more innovative than R2-R. In fact, the reason why R2-R was largely abandoned by the industry is exaclty because Delta Sigma *is* more innovative than R2-R, as the inherent noise shaping of Delta Sigma pushes quantization noise out of the audible band, which is obviously a good thing because it factually improves accuracy, and shouldn't be knocked with marketing spin revolving around hollow descriptions like "the guesswork of Delta Sigma" and "approximators", i.e., the complete opposite of what real innovation is all about. Harsh, maybe... but it is what it is. But like I said, I agree nevertheless that the sound is the final thing that matters. I haven't heard realistic sound from DACs either, but that's just because DACs don't emit sound waves. Speakers do. It is also no secret that speakers have very limited capability to mimic a live event. As for Atmos and music playback, I very much prefer Auro-3D for the added realistic feel so thanks, but no thanks for that, either. |
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Post by garbulky on Apr 30, 2016 17:23:28 GMT -5
yves : sure Auro-3d too. Anything making use of a height dimension is good in my book!
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Post by novisnick on May 3, 2016 22:18:02 GMT -5
Just a thought,,,,,,,,,don't all laugh at once, but Y'all know we hear analog and not digital! Right! Just making sure,,,,,,,,,,,,,,  |
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Post by goodfellas27 on May 4, 2016 15:04:49 GMT -5
Which ever album was master better wins, not the format
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Post by ludi on May 6, 2016 13:43:56 GMT -5
Slightly different perspective from the discussions before, but I found this video remarkable: it shows the difference between vinyl and CD in very a simple way.
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Hehe. But yeah I was thinking about them. I am not well versed in the approximator stuff. Do you have anything to share about the anti-imaging digital filters. I read the wikipedia reconsturction filter article but it was a bit over my head - well all of it was. 
Id on't want the preamp to be the limter for the yggy. So I will save for the preamp first. 
