XXHighEnd

Ultimate Audio Playback => Your thoughts about the Sound Quality => Topic started by: PeterSt on October 17, 2012, 06:05:01 pm



Title: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: PeterSt on October 17, 2012, 06:05:01 pm
Not so important, but I was just informed about it. Checked it myself and ... indeed : RMAF 2012's best room (or otherwise mentioned amongst the best numerous times) was using XXHighEnd. Not that you will find *that* information, but trust me, I know.

Same happened in 2010 (I never checked 2011).

A fun part is that this room was not using the Phasure NOS1 DAC. "We" would have liked to, but arrangements for it came too late. In the mean time "we" listened both to the DAC which would be used there and compared it with the NOS1, and well, what shall I say ? hands-down et cetera ?

So next year chances are 99.99% "we" will beat the sh*t out of everything there. I'm looking forward to that, just for my own fun.

Regards,
Peter


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: manisandher on October 22, 2012, 03:58:12 pm
So, you're just going to leave it at this? Come on. Which room are you talking about? Which DAC did they use with XX?

It's actually my birthday today (46 and counting...) and I thought I'd have sort of a semi day off. Was doing some searching and came across a thread in Whatsbestforum that mentioned the NOS1 almost in passing. But what caught my attention were a few posts on page 5 of the thread:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?7832-Can-someone-recommend-a-DAC-for-my-system/page5

Here, a poster claims the following:

"I can't see any good technical reason for running multibit DACs at 768kHz sample rate. I can see one important reason not to - glitches always increase as DAC chips are run faster. The PCM1704 datasheet demonstrates with hard numbers that the chip's performance degrades at higher rates - its performance is poorer than the previous generation (PCM63) which ran at half the speed (384k). TI/BB has managed to disguise this fact rather nicely by swapping over from dB to % measurements in their tables but its only necessary to do a bit of math to reveal the truth

What's even more interesting is that the PCM63 was characterized at -60dBFS level, the PCM1704 datasheet omits this measurement entirely. The enquiring mind wishes to know what they're hiding."


So I'm wondering: is there any validity to this guy's claim?

Mani.


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: nik.d on October 22, 2012, 04:53:18 pm
RMAF 2010

(http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab79/giokka/RMAF2010_Kawero_XXHE.jpg)


EDIT:
FIY, "The Team": Kaiser Kawero, GTE Trinity, Dueland Coherent Audio, Stein Music, Fono Acustica...


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: juanpmar on October 22, 2012, 07:07:01 pm
Congratulations Peter!! and Happy birthday Mani!!! :NY01:

Juan


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: JohanZ on October 22, 2012, 07:18:05 pm
Quote
Congratulations Peter!! and Happy birthday Mani!!!
Concratulations Peter!


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: CoenP on October 23, 2012, 10:00:09 pm

So I'm wondering: is there any validity to this guy's claim?

Mani.

Congrats on the birthday!

My 2cts on this topic...

Maybe, maybe not. But so what?

It is way to much focussed on one performance parameter and drawing conclusions from there. You can debate or speculate about the specs of any part of a dac and stop the discussion from there.
There is of course much much more to a good dac than specsheets and speculations about one aspect of its electrical performance. The general preference for the higher rate with xx and the nos1 indicates that this presumed disadvantage is at least outweighed by other factors.
Still we have little clue how all electrical behaviour translates into what we perceive as excellent sound, at least Peter is on to some of this stuff.

So I really doubt the relevance of such a statement in the context of xx and nos1. I suspect Peter would not have introduced 16x into xx and the nos1 if the above has shown to be relevant to measurements or in sq (in a detrimental way).

Anyway I don't think perfomance is degraded (au contraire) when running the chips at 16x. I have not heard a better digital sound than xx with the nos1 in this mode.
That is provided that you have set your own optimal settings.

Fwiw I know of no other commercial 1704 implementation that runs its dsp lower than 16x....

Regards, Coen


Title: Re: For your interest, fun and good feeling (RMAF 2012)
Post by: PeterSt on October 24, 2012, 01:48:00 pm
Quote
Here, a poster claims the following:

LOL. Well the poster(s) in there don't know much about anything. So, a 1704 is replaced by a 1795 and the 1704 can do 96KHz only.
Sure, you are all fooled by me !
haha

It will be true that "glitching" becomes more of a factor at the higher rates than the lower, but that doesn't imply that it becomes under spec or something. And otherwise ? otherwise glitching will imply addtional (thermal) noise. And I don't see that happening at the higher rates. And *if* that were so I'd never had it set up like this.
Eh, obviously ? :)

Peter