Hypex Ncore

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you mean to suggest, Julf, that you cannot remember the sound of your mother's (or sister's, daughters', brother's, etc) voice on the telephone (not exactly high res sound there either) unless you just talked to them 10 seconds ago?

Of course I can. As you probably know all too well, telephone is 8 bits at a sample rate of 8 kHz, and uses a tiny crappy mic and a not-much-larger speaker driven by a digital amp with 10% distortion. The fact that I still recognize their voices so well is great proof of the ability of my brain to only extract and remember the essential (for a human) parts of the sound, while blocking out any shortcomings in the reproduction.

Great for recognizing voices, less great for acting as an absolute reference.

In any case, it would not be too hard to do a mono test to AB and even X if one really needed to.

Still in the spirit of fun - did you watch the Penn & Teller video I linked to?

Here it is again:

Penn & Teller: ********! - The truth about bottled water

If you don't have the 8 minutes to watch it, it shows how, when people were served regular tap water, but in fancy bottles and with fancy descriptions and price tags, they described in rather poetic ways how much clearer, brighter, deeper, more resolving, whatever the "fancy" water tasted compared to tap water. And the most expensive water usually tasted the best.

Considering how strong a factor perceptual bias is, how would you guard against it without a double-blind ABX test?

OK, even this thread seems to have turned into one of those endless and circular "objective" vs "subjective" debates - should we just get back to discussing hypex amps?
 
You mean there is a connection to synchronize the oscillator of the SMPS with the one of the amp ?

Synchronous rectification in an SMPSU means that the output rectifier diodes are replaced by MOSFETs. The gates of the MOSFETs are driven by signals from the SMPSU controller chip so that the correct MOSFET gets turned on when forward conduction is required to perform the rectifying action.
The main advantage is a lower forward voltage drop than a diode would have. Sync rectification helps efficiency a lot if the output voltage of the supply is low.
 
Synchronous rectification in an SMPSU means that the output rectifier diodes are replaced by MOSFETs. The gates of the MOSFETs are driven by signals from the SMPSU controller chip so that the correct MOSFET gets turned on when forward conduction is required to perform the rectifying action.
The main advantage is a lower forward voltage drop than a diode would have. Sync rectification helps efficiency a lot if the output voltage of the supply is low.

Indeed, but in this case the even more important benefit is that the ripple from the PSU is symmetrical - so if the amp has good common mode PSRR, the ripple gets cancelled out.

So in this case we have a design where the properties of the SMPS and the amp support each other.
 
you mean to suggest, Julf, that you cannot remember the sound of your mother's (or sister's, daughters', brother's, etc) voice on the telephone (not exactly high res sound there either) unless you just talked to them 10 seconds ago?
straw man argument. voice recognition is a different matter. you recognize a person's voice based on specific "features" (this is exactly what they're called in voice recognition algorithms jargon). those features are not only based on tone but also on other things like intonation etc which to an extent have a limited amount of variability in each person. and (unlike many things in audio) those features are measurable and quantifiable, otherwise voice recognition would not work. so the idea is that your brain uses all the data available. with audio, intonation (or whatever its correspondence in music) for instance does not vary, the "sense of rhythm" that many reviewers talk about is not related to that, as there aren't significant variations in say frequency of a DAC's clock, compared to speed variations found in human speech.
take part of those features away (alter them in software for instance) and suddenly the voice of your sister becomes unrecognizable. it has many times happened to me that close friends called from another phone than the one they normally use and I wasn't able to recognize them. I could almost swear that someone is pulling jokes on me. I'm sure it happened to you too.

also, just as there are visual illusions, there are auditory illusions too. one of them, related to speech perception (I can't remember the name right now) goes basically like this: sound "1" is played, you look at a face pronouncing sound "2" and you hear sound "3". occurrence varies from language to language and from person to person. and I think everyone knows how much perception changes when one listens with eyes closed.

see, it's not that simple. you can be easily tricked. I remember a Nordost demo (available on video somewhere) where they were telling the audience what improvements they were going to hear with their cables before music even started. I'm not sure refraining from doing so makes a demo like that a "blind test", if that's what they wanted to avoid.


The idea that sonic memory is so short is flawed.
why? because someone with perceived authority (who sometimes happens to try to sell something) said so? or because someone actually proved it?

see, we're bound to run in circles. subjectivist says "auditory memory is flawed", subjectivist says "DBT is the way to go" etc. it goes on forever.


Also, listening is a skill which can be made better through practice. I would entirely discount any studies made on the "population at large", the same way I would not suggest that the average driver could step into an F1 car and be expected to equal Lewis Hamilton's lap times.
this time I agree and IMO this is why ABX/DBT gets a bad rep. every time I read a study which says that subjects were chosen from among students, I hit ALT+F4. unfortunately many do so because it's obviously the cheapest way.
but it doesn't have to be like that. it's automatically implied that DBT is done with untrained listeners, that inadequate or unfamiliar music is used, that too short song samples are used etc.
but it can be done with trained listeners, with familiar music of their choice, switching can be done whenever the listeners choose so, prior sighted evaluation of tested equipment allowed (and advised). it can also be done in many sessions to avoid fatigue etc. the problem is that it is expensive to do and unless there's something to gain from it it's unlikely that anyone will set up a test of the kind just for the heck of it. H/K do it but they're designing products that are supposed to bring profit.

but, at the same time it should be noted that audiophiles many times report extraordinary (or replace with whatever audiophile review jargon word) improvements. extraordinary somehow implies that those differences should remain obvious even with less than ideal conditions.

PS: there was a thread discussing ABX/DBT on hydrogenaudio (yes, many will shudder with disgust at the name of that objectivist hive) where the issue of auditory memory has been brought up by people who actually studied psychoacoustics and if I recall correctly they go into more detail, I think it'd be easy to find

PS2: and instead of idle, endless speculation and reinventing the science, maybe we first understand what has already been studied: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoic_memory
many times you'll find that issues that seem novel are just things that are periodically resurrected since they were first studied, usually long time ago.
 
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Nicely pointed out Julf

Thanks - that is why I am just somewhat confounded as to why some people insist on wanting to use a linear supply - so far I have not seen any objective evidence or rational as to why a linear supply would be better than the purpose-designed SMPS600. I can only attribute it to some audiophile mythology about "linear good, switching bad".

Actually, no. That is unfair. I guess blaming it on audiophile mythology is too simplistic. This is diyaudio after all, and people are here because they want something more than what you can buy in any audio store - either something that is "custom" or something they at least to some extent created themselves.

So, what sounds better, "I got these really great ready-to-use modules and put them in a box", or "These amps are really revolutionary, but the guy who designed them, while brilliant, seems too obsessed with switchmode supplies (probably for commercial reasons), and we all know that that is not optimal, so *I* created this totally unique amp by combining these state-of-art modules with some really-state-of-art rectifiers and capacitors I soldered together"? We are all humans, after all.
 
yes, "small, joyless people" as Mr. Atkinson once called them :) which refuse to give in to the proven healing qualities of high-end audio shopping.

The most annoying thing about people in anoraks is that they are mostly right - if they weren't, you could just dismiss them as "sad bastards", as my British friends would say. OK, they might still be sad bastards, but at least they are annoying sad bastards.
 
So, as supposed, the two switching frequencies (smps & amp) are not synchronized at all, and i would certainly put a shield between them. And a shield between the two channels as well.

You are of course free to do that. Whatever makes you happy.

People from hypex have stated that the EMI of the modules is so low that, for example, shielded power supply cables are not needed.

Personally I would not put a shield between two units that are already connected to each other with a bunch of cables, but that's just me... :)
 
If you don't have the 8 minutes to watch it, it shows how, when people were served regular tap water, but in fancy bottles and with fancy descriptions and price tags, they described in rather poetic ways how much clearer, brighter, deeper, more resolving, whatever the "fancy" water tasted compared to tap water. And the most expensive water usually tasted the best.

Considering how strong a factor perceptual bias is, how would you guard against it without a double-blind ABX test?

OK, even this thread seems to have turned into one of those endless and circular "objective" vs "subjective" debates - should we just get back to discussing hypex amps?

Just one off-topic remark from me regarding the "water thing", this shows the people are not TASTING like they should taste. As Barrows has posted before, skills can be learned by practising. I am into wine tasting we do quite a lot of "blind" tasting and in some cases we try to trick our wine-friends by serving them wine which has been put in different bottles. The more eperienced tasters in our tasting group can't be fooled this way and are exactly telling what they are tasting and that it can never be the wine which belongs in the bottle.

In my opinion the same is valid when listening to (reproduced) music. If you have enough experience and listened to a lot of different setups and perhaps also have the skills for it (I don't know if this is needed, probably it helps), you can easily tell the difference between for example 2 interlinks (RCA) without seeing which one is actually fitted. Assuming there was the possibility to be able to listen to them before and "mark" the sound in your head. There needs to be a noticable difference of course, but almost every (RCA) interlink I have heard, sounds quite different.

But, as long as there are people who are saying there isn't any difference in sound between different cables or different resistors, you also will always have discussion about this listening and comparing subject too.
 
But, as long as there are people who are saying there isn't any difference in sound between different cables or different resistors, you also will always have discussion about this listening and comparing subject too.

And that is why double-blind ABX should be the middle ground everybody should be able to agree to. It allows you to demonstrate the audible differences, while helping to rule out perceptual bias and other psychoacoustic issues.
 
But, as long as there are people who are saying there isn't any difference in sound between different cables or different resistors, you also will always have discussion about this listening and comparing subject too.
Oh, please, not this old and boring sea snake "sound of metal" !!!!
Please refer to the impedance characteristics of elements (resistance, inductances & capacitance) and the way previous/next electronic stages behaves with them.
There is things we cannot explain in measurements, because we don't know yet what to measure, but one thing is for real: what you hear can't go against physic laws.
If you are able to hear any difference between two rca plugs (according they are not oxyded) refer to the electronic stage feeding-it and capacitive charges.
 
Loads of people can't tell the difference between a Syrah from Australia and one from France (or even a Syrah from France and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia...) ;)

But I don't want a discussion started about WHY cables and/or resistors do sound different. I don't care.

I just wanted to tell that you CAN practice the listening skills as you can practice the tasting skills, just my opinion that is.
 
Exactly...

Loads of people can't tell the difference between a Syrah from Australia and one from France (or even a Syrah from France and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia...) ;)

But I don't want a discussion started about WHY cables and/or resistors do sound different. I don't care.

I just wanted to tell that you CAN practice the listening skills as you can practice the tasting skills, just my opinion that is.

"loads of people" are never a good reference. Loads of people think that Taylor Swift is a good singer, for example. Clearly, loads of people are often entirely wrong.
Additionally, there really is no such thing as an "objective" audiophile, as the practice of listening to music for enjoyment is not objective at all. And, being objective does not make it impossible for one to also be "subjective": there are not objectivists and subjectivists, there is continuum, and everyone has both objectivist and subjectivist traits to varying degrees. I have always found it amusing how some seem to want to place people in diametrically opposed camps, which are just not part of the real world.
 
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