Hypex Ncore

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Which people? If you mean pro-industry convertor manufacturers then they're not so fluffy about it.

You CAN process the material to produce a good result.. but the only way to process the audio properly to compensate for the anti-alias filter used is to know exactly the characteristics of the filter used in the A/D process. As you can imagine, every manufacturer will use different filtering techniques and slopes and will be unique. So you'd need to know precisely what filter it was to compensate for it..

.. and that is exactly what MQA aims to do. The algo on the encoding side tries to work out the specific A/D convertor used (how they do this is proprietary Meridian tech), look up the characteristics in a large compiled database and then use compensating DSP as part of the MQA encoding process.

And exactly what you just proposed.. but definately not easy.

It is certainly true to say that oversampling was a technique devised in order to push the cut-off higher for the anti-alias filters in A/D conversion. They had to do that because the convertors themselves could not run at high enough native sample rates to allow them to do it otherwise. Now that we DO have that tech, we can simply use those higher sample rates from the outset and get away with non-nyquist filter slopes without it effecting the audio band and eliminate ringing from the filter too.

High sample rate use is nothing to do with playing higher frequencies or any of the usual crap consumers go on about. It's about anti-alias filter ringing and impulse response of the filtered input signal.

At the consumer side of things and D/A conversion - what is the point in changing format to something like 44.1/16 when the tech is there to play it straight as the masterfile? It's a completely unnecessary step. Let everyone get 352.8 capable dacs and just give them the masterfile. And again, the low pass filter for the D/A can be a non-nyquist reconstruction filter, be much more shallow and therefore introduce much less ringing whilst still not effecting the proper reconstruction in the audio band.

Anyway I'm guessing that's off topic for this thread ;)

Indeed a bit off-topic, but I do have to point out that the above sounds a bit like the marketing material for MQA - lots of vague claims and very little independent evidence. I guess MQA is great for people who believe 192/16 is better than 48/24 - that is the trade-off MQA gives you, trading word length/number of bits for high frequency information. It really boils down to your beliefs about the audibility of frequencies above 20 kHz.

Do you believe ringing at frequencies above 20 kHz is audible?

As to the "completely unnecessary step", I have to disagree. There are good reasons not to store, transmit and process totally useless bits.
 
Haha very well. I've been reading, re-embracing, old School topics to brush up on Circuits lately. I never got good grades then because I wasn't interested ...! :)

I have to admit that I found it pretty boring at the time too :), but I have come to appreciate the solid theoretical background a decent university-level education offers - one ignores hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge at one's own peril.

To return to one of my favorite rants, it is kind of funny how a lot of self-educated "misunderstood geniuses" go on to reinvent square wheels and perpetual motion machines because they rely on "intuition" and "plain sense" instead of the mathematical, theoretical and intellectual tools a solid science education provides.
 

TNT

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It can get interesting when the knowledgable mavericks experiment. The "guessers" seldom, if ever, get anywhere. The problem I think it is when "guessers" don't advertise their "theories" as plain chance-taking that it gets problematic. I think we all have the right to follow a hunch (I take it once in a while and fail often), but when we do, we should declare them as such and not truths.

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It can get interesting when the knowledgable mavericks experiment. The "guessers" seldom, if ever, get anywhere. The problem I think it is when "guessers" don't advertise their "theories" as plain chance-taking that it gets problematic. I think we all have the right to follow a hunch (I take it once in a while and fail often), but when we do, we should declare them as such and not truths.

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Well talking about changing stuff...

I have swapped my nc500 with my friend's 250W with the TAG McLaren F1 speakers yesterday. We will keep each other's for a few days/week before swapping back...

So far, the initial observed differences in sound are negligible ...nCore in both our systems seems to be a little bit brighter compared to the TAG McLaren 250MR monoblocks! A bit more grain with nCore.

I still don't love them; SGK compared my nc500 to his KRELL 200W Class A few weeks ago; he seemed to think it was a good amp... :)
 
Well talking about changing stuff...

I have swapped my nc500 with my friend's 250W with the TAG McLaren F1 speakers yesterday. We will keep each other's for a few days/week before swapping back...

So far, the initial observed differences in sound are negligible ...nCore in both our systems seems to be a little bit brighter compared to the TAG McLaren 250MR monoblocks! A bit more grain with nCore.

I still don't love them; SGK compared my nc500 to his KRELL 200W Class A few weeks ago; he seemed to think it was a good amp... :)

I don't understand the enthusiasm towards Tag McLaren. Are those popular in some parts of the universe?

But anyways, maybe you have found the answer you are looking for. Maybe nCore is not for you, maybe you are a Tag McLaren man. But please don't become one of those anti-nCore people who flood the forums with hate towards them everytime someone tells they likes nCores.

At least you heard a difference, which was a good thing (psst, you weren't supposed to ;). Julf, was he?).
 
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