I have only had a brief listening test with my speaker setup which consists of a Unison Research class A tube amp and a pair of Sonus Faber floorstanders. Enough to underline the impression I got from my two very different headphone rigs. Quite digital sounding and not so much analog.
(Sadly I’m not using my speaker rig so much, as I get complaints from the rest of the family).
Headphones are IMO great for testing hifi. With headphones important parameters and great sources for trouble with speakers are eliminated from the equation. Delicate issues such as room acoustics and speaker placement. Of course at the expense of for instance, bass oomph. But as long as I’m used to the sound of my headphones, they will suffice.
And with my budget I can afford top notch headfi gear. It would cost me 10-15 times as much to get the equivalent speaker gear. My Senns are arguably regarded as one of the best cans ever produced.
Note also, that Søren himself on a couple of occasions has mentioned HD650 as his testing gear. I wish more people would do the same. Can be quite revealing and terrifying at times
I have the same problem with speakers and family.... So all my listenings test have been with my HD650. And it can be pretty revealing, during some of my test I was kinda pretty worried as I heard distortion. Until I released that it was only present on electric guitars, I just haven't heard it that clearly before....
But I just got some real office space, so I now can set up my 30 years old Fane "studio monitor" style speakers, with dam1021's being used as active crossovers. Plan to also to build new speakers and new power amplifiers, see posts elsewhere....
An advantage of building and selling audio gear is that a lot of equipment now become a business expense
Please have look at: https://www.ayre.com/pdf/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf
This paper shares some common opinion (single pass filtering against cascading) with this: http://www.msbtech.com/support/dac4selectManual.pdf
They don't seem to agree on "brickwall-ness" though. Ayre and John Westlake seem to prefer non-brickwall filters: pink fish media - View Single Post - M-DAC Filters - Which Do You Prefer & Why?
Here are the frequency response charts for John Westlake's M-Dac filters (look at Optimal Transient XD, John's favourite): New Audiolab DAC - Page 42
I own M-Dac but didn't test the differences between filters in detail. Difference is too negligible to worry about with my equipment.
Cheers.
Almar if you need some parts, traffos, pulse transformers, etc, I linked here what some members described in some posts : http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...oekris-s-dac-implementations.html#post4184471
I don't ask for batteries as it needs always a voltage regulator but more about a passive PS with a traffo and for example a simple resistor Pi in front of the embeded PS of the dam1021!
Would like to know also if a good DC shunt PS reg with a very low impedance at the output change something in the SQ side !
If someone have done some experiments...
Would like to know also if a good DC shunt PS reg with a very low impedance at the output change something in the SQ side !
If someone have done some experiments...
Last edited:
Sebastian,
Perhaps this is in part due to the opamp output stages on the DAM1021? Your appear to have a predilection for valves and transformers, and the Monica Discrete uses output transformers and the Totaldac uses discrete class-a buffers. You might find that an output trafo adds enough of what you like?
cheers
Paul
May not be totally relevant in the context of upsampling up to 384Khz but still interesting: Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect | Journal of Neurophysiology
Check fig 3 out, where
baseline = ambient noise
LCS = music with LPF at around 22kHz
HCS = music with HPF at around 22kHz extending over 100kHz
FRS = Full range spectrum
May be high sample rate/vinyl people were right...
OK I'm stopping posting about filters now because it started feeling like a monologue
My next post will be about AC vs DC power supplies That would be a single speed DSD DAC with a 250-million step, high pecission, volume control that can be changed at mu-second level.
You see how flexible the DAM is
Not sure if double speed is possible or not with the FPGA.
And hopefully Soekris can give some idea
We can even play with multi -bit dsd
decoding as in 9018dac.
Having the digital filter portion programable totally opens up possibilities.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yeah, provided you have the analog equipment capable of reproducing those frequencies...
That might very well be the case. Which is why I ended my "conclusion" post by suggesting different output stages. It's defintely on my list too.
I'm expecting the Quanghao/Andrea Ciuffoli DAC-END with Lundahls soon. Hopefully I will be able to try them on the dam1021.
On purpose I haven't bought a chassis yet, in order to keep the project open...
Last edited:
I don't have any idea what analog equipment is capable of or not to be honest. The more I learn about digital, the more I worry about inadequate implementation. Sometimes I think why I don't shove a single ended tube amp up in front of spotify and get on with rest of my life. And when I'm in that financial league, put a Totaldac in between
I don't have any idea what analog equipment is capable of or not to be honest. The more I learn about digital, the more I worry about inadequate implementation. Sometimes I think why I don't shove a single ended tube amp up in front of spotify and get on with rest of my life. And when I'm in that financial league, put a Totaldac in between
From soekris.dk
Frequency Range +0.1dB -1.0dB 20hz - 20Khz
The filters are programmable, so anything you want it to be, limited only by input sample rates....