Hey All,
After a long journey, more constisting of being in doubt than actively doing something, I present to you : Clairixa USB.
What a daft name that now is. But you know, I wanted to let the name represent her audio properties : clarity. And it is a she, representing the opposite of being rough as in rough-digital.
Of course this is not what I planned for the sound (how could it). Instead I searched and searched and searched - and found nothing. And as a last resort made one with the best specs myself. No audio hoopla, but 90 Ohm and 480Mbit/s capable (USB High Speed).
The sound ?There we go again; another round of listening to all those "test tracks".
Watch out : I am reporting this only after 4 hours or so of listening. So as usual, my judgement can change in the upcoming days.
At the first sounds of it, I knew it : what a firm rock-steady controlled sound. Ok, what I mean is that you can sense that the external influence is not there, and now the electrical behavior is on its own, so to speak. So not a rock-steady sound but sound which is producing itself without being influenced by frequencies. Hard to further explain, but quite similar to how the Blaxius Interlink "controls" things.
Not that one album or track sounds OK but another does not because coincidentally it plays in the "wrong" frequencies. All stable. All as "good". No, can't explain it really, but maybe people can get some sense from my description anyway.
Apart from being quite sure that another leap of improvement happens in the low frequencies, Clairixa excels in the highs and in a fashion that as a very first comes to me as "clear" but not really that. First I observed way more detail, and at listening some more I was sure that a more raw mid-detail was now nicely rounded. So say that quite square music can happen in the mid, then this masks the "snappyness" of the highs. Meanwhile a "sharp" mid can sound quite nasty, as in too much of digital. Say the difference between an analogue synthesizer and a digital one, might that tell you something; the anlogue synth is just not "able" to create that sharp (square) wave which therefore produces the so nicely full bodied sound. A digital synth implies much more problems with that (can make sound as square as it likes), but we can emphasize that by means of having the mid "too fast" or something. Anyway, it is not really about the mid being now less "sharp" but about that being lowered somewhat so the highs get better profound. And those too, all are less "sharp" and that expressing in a far better colour (of say cymbals).
What I also noticed of the cymbals is that they sound better metal. This in itself is hard to describe and the only thing I can really do is again refer to the Silverstone USB card which was (is) good at that. "Create holes" where holes are to be, which in my view is nothing more or less than a better on its own expressing frequency; less smear.
In all of the 4 hours there was exactly nothing that I did not like. What sure occurred to me was that a. I played louder and b. it was not disturbing anywhere, plus c. we had quite long conversations (think 5-10 minutes) in the midst of that level I played for, which otherwise for sure had me turned down the level in order to concentrate on the other person's sayings. That all was not necessary and it occurs almost explicitly (me knowing what the dBFS was set to, which was 4.5 dB louder than the many weeks prior to this).
In the very end, after these 4 hours only, it occurs to me that I actually have difficulties with describing how it sounds, and all I could do was decribing it relatively to how it was before. This, while otherwise I could say something like a more stiff bass, better size of cymbals, beautiful voice and that kind of thing. Nothing of this now, which looks quite similar to me as a so neutral NOS1(a) and that you are not able to describe its sound.
And this is now back to the beginning of this long post : you can feel that the music is not influencing itself. It exhibits in more air between the instruments and how a voice is more that voice instead of a mixture with an instrument. A stable sound which I describe as rock-steady.
Cost ?At this moment I can't tell whether "I did it again", but it looks like it. Now suppose I myself still think all is fine after 4 more days, so my standard required 5 days is behind me - then this is in order :
At this moment I tried with 1m80 (5.5ft) to resemble the standard USB cable for the NOS1(a) we all use. Do notice : nothing should be related to the NOS1(a) here, except possibly the USB-B connection. So we generally talk about an A-B cable, but it just as well can be about A-A for those who want that.
If I claim that the 1m80 works for the better over the stock cable, then this tells nothing about shorter or longer lengths, although officially this should not matter (regarding the specs). Still no guarantee anywhere.
With the above in mind, any length can be obtained but when above 7 meters (21ft) we need to try whether it works, were it about the NOS1a. I mean, from the normal NOS1 it is known that it works with 7 meters, but comprised of a normal USB cable plus extension cable. So logically without extension it may go well beyond the 7 meters.
There is nothing shiny as such with the Clairixa and especially not gold plated connectors. This is because no gold plated as such is present in PCs nor the NOS1(a) (other DACs I can't tell) and having two different materials to connect (nickle + gold) is not a good thing in my view.
After calculating everything for overhead (not my own) such as shipping costs to us, and anticipating 20 sales at least - including a little profit the commercial price will be 200 euros for 1 meter (~3 ft). For any additional meter 30 euros have to be added and let's say that we can order per the 10cm.
Because this price includes everything like a (small) box and the packing and administration (including shipping administration), we can roughly say that shipping by UPS (2 days max for most of the world) will cost no more than 35-45 euros.
I don't expect you to queue up for this, but I have to emphasize that I spread the overhead costs over 20 cables. So with less orders of them, the sales price has to rise, obviously. When more than 20 are ordered in due time, this does *not* mean that the price will drop, just because of the overhead of shipping costs of the parts (think ~100 euros per shipment). Of course, when right away I can register 50 orders then things look different, but now I feel that the extra profit because of that could be deserved.
Lastly, maybe you noticed that at this moment we can produce 10 (because we have stock for that), so first come, first serve.
Still no real obligations yet, because I will always wait until my 5 days have passed.
Phew ... that's it.
For some fun you might want to read the below as well, but never mind really.
Peter
Background of developmentStart laughing in advance ...
Maybe this was a once in a life time experience and it is only that I was not obsessed with this for "hurry up !", and that because I estimated the chance for it to work out zero anyway, but ... envision :
So I found a company of which I estimated that they could make the cable assembly for me on spec. What spec ? well, the 90 Ohm thing at its best, whatever might come from it. No audio talk because the company in question produces quite different things and then ... I had to laugh myself;
So was on the phone, sent some confirmation emails, waited a week and there came the response. Technical rawings in details of everything, and whether I would like to check and confirm. Of course at first I didn't understand half of the numbers and arrows and "talk" the company is used to, and all I saw was the precise dimensions of cable and connectors and tags and more tags and ... of course nothing really what it was about. Still I had to confirm everything and had the idea if I missed something the connectors wouldn't even fit in their quite common sockets. On the other hand that couldn't be, so I guess I confirmed things in the hope that all would be OK anyway.
Of course I didn't speed up things by changing a few properties, so the drawing had to go back to the drawing board actually only to remove some tags (think labels) because in my view that would influence the impedance.
Yeah, envision me behind the screen and an OMG what am I doing.
Notice that I have been working at e.g. like Dutch Oil Company (NAM - Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij) where my main activity has been the development of a system that is all about specs, and how "contractors" used that system to make clear their quotations about the most senstive stuff like blow out valves and safety and what not, and that things really have to work well or otherwise a disaster like that in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 will be due.
Such a company I dealt with and I actually knew ...
What I did was not only ordering for a cable assembly, but also for 20 meters of the cable and 10 pairs of connectors. Why ? well, I envisioned that if the assembly worked out to satisfaction I'd have some spare material to practice making it ourselves, and the reference would be that one assembly. So our own produce had to be the same at least (audibly).
When things were under way I already thought that I had made a mistake because I should have ordered two assemblies so one could be cut to see how it had been done. But alas, I didn't.
OK, sit tight;
4 or 5 weeks after the first contacts, the box arrived. Nothing special except for a maybe more extensive packing note than I am used to.
As how I am, I leave such box be until the moment of truth, which would be the day's listening session. So, box being on the table for 4 hours or so, and only at the end of the working day unwrap it and give the assembly a go.
So I did.
Excitement didn't last long. No USB connection could be made, no matter what I tried.
?
I started to be afraid that I nicely put out some specs, but forgot those related to the bandwidth. And actually nothing much was put out about that, because I wouldn't even know how to do that. I mean, don't come up with a "480 Mbit/s" for such thing. I just reckoned that the other specs would imply that automatically (like gauge and the 90 Ohm). Hmm ... sh*t.
My next hope was that maybe we ourselves could improve on the connections (in the connectors) and since we had those spare parts, let's see tomorrow. Meanwhile though I got the smart idea (ahum) of just testing it with a USB disk. Ok ...
I have no real clue about what's all in the house for such disks and known working connections, so I just asked "can you try this cable with something of which you know that it works and how it works (responds and such)" ?
That could be done. A laptop was switched on, the cable put in such disk and when the other end went into the laptop and I just had entered the password, all went black.
My conclusion was almost formed and said "hey, saw that ?". Answer : "can't be related because I didn't switch on the disk yet". Yeah,
So I deciced to pull the cable, let the laptop reboot and apply the same sequence. Same thing happened.
Then let in the cable and boot the laptop ... it wouldn't.
This made me happy, because instead of a not sufficient bandwidth now something had to be wrong.
Earlier on I already checked whether all pins could find a connection on the other end, and this was so. But I didn't sort out which had to connect to which. So we did that now.
And all was connected wrongly. 1 to 4, 2 to 3.
And I must laugh again, looking at those drawings in retrospection (in my mind only). Maybe in there it was drawn that 1 connects to 4 etc., but I didn't even look back and also recall nothing about *that*. What a stupid thing.
And another blow out valve didn't open ...
We didn't cut open the assembly, and just made a new one to our best ideas. Worked right out of our own box.
