California Audio Show 2013

[PeterSt]

Hey all you out there in the US,

I think Phasure organized a few great seminars and panel discussions for the upcoming Show on August 9, 10, 11 (San Francisco, CA). If you are going there, these shouldn't be missed. Of course the seminar room is limited in size so be careful to not miss out once you intend to visit.


The Music on Mind session on Saturday 12:00 -1:00 pm

This one hour session will appear way too short to discover how our brain processes audio. We will reason out how the speed of brain processing needs to match the speed hence resolution of our audio systems to make somehing out of it all and what actually happens when it does not. Or what needs to happen to let it work.
I will attend the session as a real life case, used by Mr Vijendra Rao (MD) who is specialized in radiology and (functional) imaging of the brain. Hope Vijendra doesn't bring his PET scan.

Computer Audio Playback session on Sunday 10:30 - 11:30 am

This should be fun; Auraliti's Damien Martin and Ray Burnham, Sonic Studio's (Amarra) Jon Reichbach and me myself will try to sort out what actually makes good Computer Playback. It will be an open discussion where we all stay out of competitor's fights but learn from eachother instead. Each his own, one for all (does this fit ?, I just made it up).
Dan Rubin will be moderating, taking care each will have his share sufficiently.
And Matan (Arazi, Matan Server), it is your fault I show up in CA in the first place. So sad to hear you can't make it after all. But don't hesitate ...

RECORDING & MASTERING – The Making of a Great Hi-Rez Recording on Sunday 2:00 - 3:00 pm

Jack Kenny, Sean Martin, Jeffrey Norman, John Nowland, Jon Reichbach, Michael Romanowski and Paul Stubblebine will be having a group hug about this great subject. Who wouldn't want to miss this ? Question is why I didn't invite myself here. Well, we know ... :-)
Do notice that this not a digital session per se, where Paul Stubblebine otherwise wouldn't have been left in (nah, he would have bailed out in advance).


Then there's two more sessions which were not organized by Phasure, but which should be as great :

Ask the Editors on Saturday 10:30 - 11:30 am

Frank Berryman (Ultra), Neil Gader (TAS), Michael Mercer (PFO), Jack Roberts (DAGOGO), and Jason Serinus (Stereophile) will be working out how reviews should be objectively done and how to stay out of subtjectiveness for any reason. Piles of questions may be fired upon them, depending on the audience. So feel free and let your heart out !
Small problem, I personally made up this text myself. No idea what is going to happen really in this session. But might they not know themselves, now *you* do ...

DSD AUDIO – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow on Saturday 5:00 - 6:00 pm

This couldn't be left out of course. Marc Finer, Andreas Koch, Cookie Marenco, Patrick O’Connor, and Gus Skinas will undoubtedly be telling us about how DSD is going to be for the better for all of us. Well, they better be, me ordering the parts right now for our Phasure's DSD proto (should have been showcasing on CAS but we really couldn't make it).

See you there,
Peter

[AlainGr]

A Phasure DSD prototype ?

[manisandher]

Hey Peter, greetings from Rio! (Yeah I know, I travel too much...)

It's phenomenal that Phasure has managed to organise such great sessions for CAS2013. Wish I could be there, especially for the Sunday 10:30am session... (I'm actually working in the US towards the end of next week and am sorely tempted, but getting back home to the family takes precedence.)

I know people on CA have suggested that the sessions be video-taped and then put online. Could you get this organised? I think it'd be massively appreciated if you could.

Cheers, Mani.

[PeterSt]

It's phenomenal that Phasure has managed to organise such great sessions for CAS2013.

Thank you Mani. But someone who writes California as Californa is doubtful to begin with, right ? So I just edited the posts of you and Alain because it looked a tad too stupid to me.

Peter

[esimms86]

Well, tourists in California buy t-shirts that say "Cali," so that should aid with spelling.

Peter is, of course, "infamous," if you will, for dropping little teasers as an "oh by the way" for game changers on the drawing board. All that the rest of can do, then, is to wait patiently for the next project to be released.

The Phasure DSD prototype is obviously past the initial design stage which means that Peter is already in the process of working out changes to XXHE to incorporate playback of DSD. That's a win win for DSD listeners everywhere(I can picture Jud salivating as I write this!).

Peter's announcement, of course, begs the question of whether currently existing NOS1's would be upgradeable to NOS1 DSD. I expect the answer is yes(there were, after all, such plans when the new and improved NOS1 was first announced a few years ago) but that is largely dependent on how Peter is able to work things out first for the prototype(s).

Esau

P.S.

I wonder which recordings Peter will be using for testing his NOS1 DSD and XXHE DSD prototypes...

[Jud]

Surprising, the lack of surprise from some members about the DSD announcement.  Interesting!   

[juanpmar]

Surprising, the lack of surprise from some members about the DSD announcement.  Interesting!  

Hi Jud-I posted a question a few days ago about SACD and you know how many responses I received?. Please take a look http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2658.msg27408#msg27408

Best regards,
Juan

PS. Of course nobody knew how to play it, nobody but one person and I guess he wanted to keep the secret until the CAS ;-)

[AlainGr]

Surprising, the lack of surprise from some members about the DSD announcement.  Interesting!   

I was surprised, but maybe there is conspiration around 

After a few posts by Peter on CA, I was not sure he would prepare something like this

Alain

[AlainGr]

Hi Jud-I posted a question a few days ago about SACD and you know how many responses I received?. Please take a look http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2658.msg27408#msg27408

Best regards,
Juan

PS. Of course nobody knew how to play it, nobody but one person and I guess he wanted to keep the secret until the CAS ;-)

Ha ! 

[PeterSt]

Hey,

We are only developing DSD to find the real merits of DSD myself, through a device which we developed ourselves so it is better to see how DSD behaves.

The ever planned upgrade to the NOS1 with some expansion board turned out into a "prestige" project, where all was done for lowest noise and lowest jitter. All. And I don't think anything like it exists.
For me it is only about those technical aspects and when that all worked out we will see further.

But let me be clear : I don't see DSD to be better. If it is, it should be because of this crazy design. Prosperous thinking.

Peter

[boleary]

Hey Peter, if your travels to California bring you to the east coast, there's plenty of room at the Inn in Philly. As I just ended vacation last week, there's no chance I can head west.

[manisandher]

Surprising, the lack of surprise from some members about the DSD announcement.  Interesting!   

For me it's a case of being content with PCM already. So I'm not that interested in DSD... for the time being.

But I can see some (potentially vast) value in pursuing DSD. And it all lies at the ADC stage, not so much the DAC stage. It's my contention that the only way to do PCM properly is to use 'pure multi-bit' ADCs, with no oversampling filters or delta-sigma modulators (and then use 'pure multi-bit DACs, such as the NOS1, for replay). And this is simply no longer possible with today's PCM ADCs (even the top-end Lavry uses an oversampling filter). In fact the only currently available 'pure multi-bit' ADC that I'm aware of is the Altmann ADC, but it's only 16/44.1 (not good for mixing, level-matching, etc) and only has an RCA spdif output AFAIK. And why is this the case? IMO, simply because of cost issues. Pure multi-bit ADCs are expensive to get right. It's much easier to get good measurements (not sure they're the 'right' measurements though) from multi-bit (nowadays 5-6 bits) delta-sigma ADCs. Whether we like it or not, this is probably the future of high-end ADCs. And this being the case, it may be better focus efforts on optimizing these for best SQ.

Just a word of warning: I'm very much an 'armchair engineer' when it comes to the theory of how digital systems work. However, I currently own and have played around with three different types of ADC: a 'pure multi-bit' (the Pacific Microsonics Model Two @24/192 rates), a 'pure DSD' (the Korg MR1000) and a 'multi-bit DSD' (the Tascam DV1000HD). My thinking really stems from what I've learned playing around with these.

Hi Jud-I posted a question a few days ago about SACD and you know how many responses I received?.

Juan, sorry I missed this. Had I seen it, I would have responded that the only way I currently know of to play SACD ISO files through XX and the NOS1 is to extract to DFF (I use the 'SACD Extractor 'program) and then to convert to PCM using something like 'Audiogate'. I've done this and quite frankly have generally been underwhelmed with the results. I don't know where things have gone 'wrong' but most of my CD rips sound better...

Mani.

[juanpmar]

Surprising, the lack of surprise from some members about the DSD announcement.  Interesting!   

Hi Jud-I posted a question a few days ago about SACD and you know how many responses I received?.

Juan, sorry I missed this. Had I seen it, I would have responded that the only way I currently know of to play SACD ISO files through XX and the NOS1 is to extract to DFF (I use the 'SACD Extractor 'program) and then to convert to PCM using something like 'Audiogate'. I've done this and quite frankly have generally been underwhelmed with the results. I don't know where things have gone 'wrong' but most of my CD rips sound better...

Mani.

Hi Mani, thanks so much for your help.

This is the extract of a mail that a friend of mine send me trying to lend a hand in this matter:

"If I understood well, XXHighEnd is not able to play directly SACD ISO image, mainly because it is not able to stream DSD files, but only PCM; this is a pity because I think that DSD is really superior to PCM.
As you may know a SACD ISO image is the product of the extraction of the SACD layer of a SACD disc, using a Sony PS3 (only some models) and the program sacd_ripper; the ISO is not a real .iso file but can be burned to an empty DVD-5 and played as a normal SACD disc using some SACD player (only some models); if you burn the ISO this way, you will have a SACD (not hybrid) that should be the exact copy of the SACD layer of the original disc; the ISO contains the DSD data that can be extracted, using the program sacd_extract, to the more common DSD format .dsdiff or .dff.
A software player that is able to stream DSD usually handles those formats as well; JRiver does this and it handles also the ISO image.
If you have a DSD capable soundcard or external dac/receiver, with JRiver (and other players) you can stream the DSD directly, thus obtaining a better sound than the one you can obtain with the same setup but letting the player converting the DSD to PCM first.
More, if you don't have a DSD capable converter (and this is my current setup), you can configure your DSD capable player to convert to PCM on the fly at the higher frequency supported by your converter.
Before knowing of this feature of JRiver, I was converting the SACD ISO image to PCM (FLAC compressed) at a frequency of 88.2kHz; now I can stream the ISO image with JRiver converting it on the fly to PCM at 176.4 kHz (the higher frequency supported by my dac) and I can assure you that the result is really better ! Imagine if one have a dac supporting 352.8 kHz !!
Since I read, on the XXHighEnd forum, that they are committed to enhance the program in every way that can lead to a better Sound Quality, I strongly recommend you to ask them to support DSD streaming (at least of .dsdiff and/or .dff files).
In the meantime, I suggest you to keep the ISO in some place, and to convert them to PCM only for temporary listening; you can do this with the program foobar2000, together with the plug-in foo_input_sacd and the flac library"

Of course my friend never listened XXHE nor the NOS1 so his opinions have this deficiency. The dilemma if with XXHE the PCM files sound better or worse than DSD is open but I post it here just in case it could help in this issue.


Best regards,
Juan

[Jud]

Mani, I agree the fewer (and better) conversions, the better the sound should be.  (This is where DSP and multiple specialized boxen fall down, IMO.)  Would be nice if the ADC end had gravitated toward  PCM, but it didn't happen that way.  And I must say folks like Cookie Marenco and the Channel Classics people, even the makers of many SHM-SACDs seem to do a good careful job.  (Wonder what Peter would think of the DSD files off one of the Stones' SHM-SACDs?)

You've had a better view of the ADC side than many of us, though I'd bet the PM affected your views on format - with something that good, hard for anything else to compare.

[Mamba315]

I live only 3 hours from San Francisco but I work those days.  What a huge bummer!

Matt