True. It would also have helped if it had been presented as a real, open discussion rather than as a "just wait for what I will reveal in the next instalment" pseudo-blog.
And having fun isn't deeply significant?
Right - and that is the whole point of digital. As we all know, you might, as you put it, have "vast arrays of voltages bouncing around, and glitching merrily", but as long as the design is sound, it won't affect the end result at all. A 1 will be a 1, and a 0 will be a 0. You won't have "almost 1" or "not quite 0". As you read this text on the web, some letters are not randomly transposed or changed.
It's where the digital world meets the analog (basically DACs and ADCs) where it gets tricky.
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I am not sure it is an "angle". It is just something that any competent designer of DACs and ADC's is very familiar with. You always make design tradeoffs about what you handle in the digital domain, and what in the analog domain.
What abraxalito is saying, and I echo that, is that the behaviour of the digital side can very easily adversely affect the analogue side unless every precaution is taken. If designers of DAC's, etc, were so competent, and I assume here you mean complete assemblies rather than IC's, then why has digital sound had such a terrible time being accepted by keen listeners of music recordings?
Frank
I don't think anyone disagrees with that, as long as "every precaution" doesn't involve voodoo and magic unicorns.
For the same reason class D amps, semiconductor amps (as opposed to valves), amps in general (as opposed to mechanical record players), LP (as opposed to 78 rpm vinyl), stereo (as opposed to mono) and round discs (as opposed to cylinders) had a terrible time being accepted by "keen listeners", perhaps?
I think one of the problems the OP was facing was that he didn't have much idea about digital circuitry and the problems created by sharp edges, such as ground bounce and jitter. 'marce' tried to help (he is an expert in these things) but was rebuffed. Simply slowing the edges is not sufficient, because in digital audio the exact timing of the edge can matter.
Digital is just analogue, true, but that does not mean that experience in one guarantees success with the other. RF experience may be better.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because it lacks certain distortions loved by some analogue fans.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because aspects of it are designed by analogue designers who don't take proper account of the sharp edges coming out of a DAC chip.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because it is designed by people who actually don't understand sampling, quantisation, dither etc.
Digital is just analogue, true, but that does not mean that experience in one guarantees success with the other. RF experience may be better.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because it lacks certain distortions loved by some analogue fans.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because aspects of it are designed by analogue designers who don't take proper account of the sharp edges coming out of a DAC chip.
I suspect that some digital sound has a terrible time being accepted because it is designed by people who actually don't understand sampling, quantisation, dither etc.
wood, must not forget wood, it offsets that digital glare if wood is even nearby.
because we all know that those analogue electrons resonate sympathetically with the nearby materials, though somehow avoid being affected by the FR4/fiberglass.... why is that?
yep, because people already own stuff, it takes quite a lot of cajoling to get people to accept something that means they have to start collecting, tuning whatever you want to call it.. all over again and they will make up all sorts of reasons why it should be avoided
nevermind te fact that apart from a small percentage of diehard listeners and not because of conspiracy, digital dominates the marketplace. some of the last to come kicking and screaming insist that the reason they have come, or what is stopping them from coming; is because they are waiting for their 'digital' to sound more 'analogue' whatever that means...
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What they mean is 'musical' -- everyone knows what this is when they listen to a live, acoustic instrument, like a Spanish guitar. From personal experience, over the years, most CD systems were pretty awful at doing this and this has got nothing to do with the recording, and everything to do with how the systems were implemented ...
Frank
And an example of what apparently does do it right, at a ridiculous price, is the Audio Note Fifth Element setup. This uses all the "wrong" ways of course, but is deeply impressing the "cognescenti". Reading between the lines of what people are hearing when they listen to it, this unit has managed to finally turf out all the nasty distortion artifacts that put people off when listening to normal digital, without the need for an extra round of tweaking ...
Frank
it doesnt sound like it.... just relaying audiophile review impressions. chances are going by its design that its simply adding quite a bit of its own distortions which may be preferred, as well as the expectation bias from such a massive pricetag. i'll take my dac any day for my taste. if someone gave me one, i'd sell it and add a few upgrades to the rest of my system
As qusp surmised, no, but that's not the point. I have heard DACs performing correctly when sufficient effort is put into negating the SQ issues, and am interpreting the language of the people who have listened to the AN device in that context. What is positive about the Fifth Element is that it evokes those reactions without needing that extra effort put into tweaking the setup -- that's a significant step forward.
Yes, it most certainly will add some distortions, but much more importantly, by fluke or sufficient persistence, it appears to have reduced the crucial "digital" distortions to inaudible levels.
Frank
Yes, it most certainly will add some distortions, but much more importantly, by fluke or sufficient persistence, it appears to have reduced the crucial "digital" distortions to inaudible levels.
Frank
cool no worries, what gets me is when these distortions are ignored, claiming only higher 'transparency'. theres no accounting for taste and it cannot be argued with; people like what they like.
the very word musicality to me, while not an negative word, evokes a certain pleasant somewhat forward/meaty presentation, slightly thicker in harmonics than neutral.
the very word musicality to me, while not an negative word, evokes a certain pleasant somewhat forward/meaty presentation, slightly thicker in harmonics than neutral.
Unfortunately "musicality" is a bit of a weasel word, but it gives the flavour of what the user is intending to convey: that the sound strongly invokes in the listener the same sort of subjective reaction he has when listening to live music. Which, after all, is what this whole exercise is supposed to be about - how many times have I seen that throwaway phrase in forums, "just enjoy the music". Well, if for a while you can forget that a faking mechanism is making the music materialise, then that phrase has some real "meat" to it, and the equipment that's making it happen should get a tick ...
Frank
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Hello Frank,
Can you give me some details including the brands of the DACs you have heard with your own ears that with "fluke or persistence" sound good.
Well, at the hifi show I just went to, a Lampizator unit performed well, BUT only when fed from a music server: using an Oppo unit as a CD transport crippled the sound. The Swiss CH Precision D1 CD player, $40,000, did a very nice job running into Technical Brain monoblocks. And, all the setups by the National Audio Group had qualities that I was after, I haven't got the material at hand to pinpoint the units used at the moment.
Note, my take is very different from how other people reacted to what was on offer. Equipment which others wrote glowing reports of left me cold - like the Kyron: very hifi sort of sound, if you know what I mean ...
Cheers,
Frank
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