However, I am. So is Scott. You need to read more and maybe get a little experience before trying to make a particularly bad analogy.
Right, I think it's the stupidest thing. Considering I've toasted the P48 on one channel, if the Tascam is a good substitute I'll make a gift of the Fostex to SY.
Not a comment - a few questions. Would you want to program the SD card used external to the device or have the whole thing accessible via USB as an audio 'thumb drive' ? If the latter then is USB high speed important to you? What sample rates would you wish to see? Also would .wav support be sufficient or would you prefer FLAC?
I don't really care, uncompressed .wav is OK I'm fine with simplicity. A micro or FPGA that streams the data directly to the DAC is a good start. Sophistication could come later. This puts the design challenge on the analog front, a super clock and DAC, why have to learn how to write bullet proof ASIO drivers (or pay someone else)?
look at the ibasso DX100 but with some analogue stage and clock mods, look at it as a starting point, should sound pretty decent straight away, but we can do better in the analogue department, for sure you can
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
"but I would still like to understand how offering well documented, well measured, and arguably transparent, audio designs is a problem for those spending their money on audio gear? "
It's not, relax.
No, it's not. But the community doesn't consist only of customers. Those developers providing RMAA test data on their designs at least had their hearts in the right place, even if perhaps they were ill-advised in how they employed what equipment they had.
Without naming names, some of these guys encouraged a lot of people to take up DIY electronics and put a lot of effort into supporting their customers with debug. They weren't making fortunes.
Sure, some had a tendency to act like the sun shone out of their own ...orifices, but this is hardly surprising if you imagine for a moment what their inboxes probably looked like.
If the results could have been obtained by spending a few bucks on an audio consultant, what then was the rationale behind buying a Prism dScope?
There are a couple of reasonably priced high-performing soundcards out there, the ETI Juli@, the Emu 1212M (if their specs are to be believed), and a few software suites, some even free such as ARTA. What would be nice would be some detailed instructions on how to use them to get results approaching that of the industrial test sets, although probably never with the same convenience, with some comparative measurements to provide some confidence, and perhaps even some suggestions regarding ways of calibrating them.
Instead, what we're getting at the moment is 'you ain't never going to get there boy, unless you've got the big bucks to spend like me', which is the same old audiophile game transferred from playback gear to test gear.
I think the standards being set probably exceed what is necessary for transparency, but this is the unfortunate inclination on the part of those whose equipment already performs superlatively. Any first world citizen now has access to a standard of reproduction unavailable to anyone regardless of wealth just a few decades ago. Obviously we can all anticipate that at some point in the future no amplifier in general use need be anything but transparent. Not everybody looks forward to such a situation but there have always been opponents to egalitarianism.
@scott wurcer
So what are we talking here? Write some wavs to an SD card under Windows or Linux, play them back?
The problem is managing the disk structure (FAT) and selecting tracks. Some kind of UI is required. To strip data from memory and send it to a DAC using an FPGA is a snip, making a useable, useful device is a task. Then there's selectable sample rates and somebody's going to moan about the UI getting jitter on the playback clock.
I can build it tho', but I haven't got a Prism dScope.
Indeed. For just a few bucks a pop, get the consultant to lug his own dScope up to your lab for the requisite measurements each time.
I got that distinct impression too. To me it sounds rather like 'now I'm at the top of the objective skyscraper, I'm pulling up the ladder for the rest of you'. Of course this still leaves wide open the subjectivist route.
Start small and begin with no UI, just track forward button.
Scott hasn't said whether measurements or sound quality are the main objective.
I agree with that. And I put a lot of time into an article about RMAA that includes what to watch out for and how to get the most out of it. I even provided suggestions on how to limp along with an inexpensive DMM that's not accurate across the audio band (as many are not) to help out those on a tight budget. I've also got a new crop of pro audio interfaces I've been promising everyone I'm going to review someday soon.
I'm all for people doing more testing and I don't really care how they do it just so long as it's reasonably accurate and repeatable. But the wrong testing, in many cases, is worse than no testing. AMB is a good example. He published some very erroneous and misleading results for his headphone amps that are literally impossible. I think most would agree hopelessly optimistic measurements are worse than no measurements. And it's all too easy for even a self proclaimed audio designer like Ti Kan to get it wrong.
It's a nice idea, and I've tried to do some of that (see above), but there are some problems with going much further. For one thing there are numerous posts of people who have damaged either their sound hardware or the device under test trying to use soundcards. It's really easy to do--especially testing power amps or anything with a virtual ground (like the AMB Mini3), bridged outputs, etc. I don't want to be responsible for writing tutorials that lead people down the road to destroying expensive hardware.
It's also a time issue. It would be like writing a textbook to walk someone through how to do detailed audio measurements using makeshift "instruments" and you would still get a thousand questions. They say journalists typically write 100 - 300 words an hour. Most of my articles are 2,500 - 12,000 words each. And I've written more than a dozen on educational topics alone. That's hundreds of hours I've already donated to the cause. I encourage others to join in. And when I find such resources I share them on my blog.
That's your opinion. I get daily compliments on my blog from people who learned a lot. Lots of the articles have nothing to do with the dScope. But yeah, it's an objective blog and measurements are a central focus. And good measurements are best performed with the proper instruments. That's just engineering 101.
It frankly sucks to spend hundreds of hours writing educational articles and get comments like yours thrown at me or even the topic of this thread. It's amazing how polarized the responses are--you would think I was writing about religion, politics or climate change. When I wrote the measurements article for InnerFidelity, which was really bare bones just-the-facts and had zero commentary by me, I got mostly positive reactions but still several went out of their way to attack me and the article. Why?
It's not like my critics usually point out what they believe are objective flaws in my articles. Instead they're typically either personal attacks or very subjective reactions like yours above. I've been accused of having a hidden agenda, being a criminal, being fired from an audio company, threatening lawsuits, and more. And none of those are even remotely true. My agenda has always been to help educate people about the objective side of audio.
It's a no-win situation. I get criticized for setting the bar too low by some and too high by others.
One camp argues that even tiny differences can be audible and that's what supposedly accounts for why a $1500 DAC sound better than a $150 DAC. They want a "floor" around -100 dB before you can convince them something is transparent. That's also Ethan Winer's rule of thumb.
The other camp, like you're implying, suggest I'm unfairly ruling out too much gear with criteria that's too strict. They want their tube amp with -55 dB worth of distortion to qualify as high fidelity.
I believe the reality is somewhere in middle. And, among the various AES papers, and even tests I've done myself, somewhere around -80 dB seems reasonable. And that's mostly what I've argued for since I started the blog.
The bottom line is I'm a consulting engineer who happens to be in a position to accurately test some audio gear, verify RMAA results, help explain why output impedance matters, etc. A lot of people clearly appreciate what I'm doing. But another group clearly doesn't. And they seem to come up with a variety of ways to try to discredit or marginalize me.
I think some of it is related to all the past drama at Head-Fi. Those who spend a lot of time there and are in close with some of the "crowd" tend to have a very different impression of my work than those who don't.
Peter Aczel, Doug Self, Julian Hirsch, and others supporting objective audio criteria have had similar critics. It just seems to be the nature of subject matter.
Measurements in audio do have a number of characteristics similar to religion. One has to believe in them for a start.
I don't know but can guess - the same reasons you felt defensive when posting your replies to me. Its just how many humans are - they perceive personal attacks when none are present. If you're really curious to know the answer, you'll find it within yourself. Or try reading up on Freud's theory of projection.
RocketScientist: I would first congratulate you for the work you've put in on your blog, but I am more impressed with your patience in this thread! Reading through many of these posts has been laughable, I'm surprised you're still responding at this point. Amazing at how far people will go out of there way to make personal, baseless attacks on an individual who has offered much to the DIYaudio community. I mean, come on, you bought a dScope to flaunt it in front of the rest of us? Really? Figured I would throw in a positive note to you, I certainly appreciate what you are doing, hope this doesn't side track you too much.
Chris
Chris
Thanks. I bothered to respond here because the original premise of this thread is a sort of "straw man" I see as potentially harmful. It's trying to make the case raising the bar for audio price/performance, and having increased competition, is somehow a bad thing. And I don't believe that's true.
I can see how I'm "ruining" the fantasy for some, and how I'm making life more difficult for those trying to make money with fraudulent claims. But, ultimately, I'm just trying to help people spend their money more wisely. That should be the focus.
Instead of trying to shoot me down, it would be nice if my critics would offer something constructive themselves. If someone believes you can run more audio tests with a soundcard, for example, they should publish an article on how to do so. If they believe two pieces of gear that meet my requirements for transparency can really sound different, they should arrange their own credible blind test demonstrating their claim and publish the results (or least offer some credible reference). But, instead, they typically just stand back and throw vague rocks at me.
It is of course nonsensical that anyone else should pay attention to your criteria for transparency when you've omitted to justify them yourself in rigorous audibility testing.
Yes, a good or very good DAC streaming from memory is what I want. The UI could be as simple as "there are X songs loaded, push button to go to next cut". I have a WD media server, and an all digital media source selector/player from Taiwan both ~$100 - $200. The THD and spurs on the audio out are no better than a $9.99 key-fob MP3 player and both clip on a full scale digital sine wave (from a SONY test CD).
The problems are easily seen long before you need this.
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