Which DACs 'make no attempt at jitter rejection'?
Can I remind you that you did state the benchmark was audibly transparent
"In order so as not to run out of memory or incoming data, transport clock jitter occuring at less than 1 Hz is allowed to come through, but transport clocks and cable jitter have very little jitter activity below 1 Hz, and it is too low frequency to affect the sound of music, therefore it does not create any problems. If it did cause problems, they could just lower it to 0.1 Hz or whatever, but 1 Hz is low enough."
I told you that synchronous clocking on ESS DACs, bypassing their 'wonder-SRC' works & sounds better - not playing around with cables.
As I said Stereophile don't mention or focus in on close-in jitter in their measurements & this is where differences show. if you look at Steve's jitter measurements on Audiocircle you will see that there are more sensitive & informative ways to measure jitter than the inappropriate Jtest signal & analogue output FFT
It's almost impossible to get the balance between the various factors - clock drift between source & DAC - gapless playback - user wait time for track (size of gapless playback section) - upload speed. Hence PLLs are used to intermittently synchronise between the transport & DAC clock thus avoiding this dilemma - more memory (what is enough?) means longer load time before playback starts (what is acceptable delay?)
I would be extremely surprised if any human being, with any sound reproduction system known to mankind, would be able to distinguish under blind conditions the Benchmark Dac2 or Dac3 from other pro dacs of similar performance (such as Weiss, RME, Lynx, etc), when listening to music.
Until anybody presents me with firm evidence to the contrary, I will assume that dacs such as these are transparent to the human ear. Not sure whether it will be transparent to dogs and bats.
Very true, except for the unmeasurable part. I measure a LOT of devices and I always measure jitter.
The problem is that most designers don't implement something optimum, so the internal jitter of the DAC is actually higher than what I can provide externally.
Distortion is never good. I also provide internal DAC interfaces, both USB and Ethernet that have their own very low jitter Master Clocks. But I also have external devices that when used with a good S/PDIF cable have just as low jitter, namely 20 psec standard +/- deviation from the nominal period. Hearing any difference between the internal interfaces and my external S/PDIF interfaces (Ethernet converter, USB converter or S/PDIF reclocker) is very difficult. There is almost no jitter added as a result of S/PDIF conversion to I2S, at least in my DAC.
Providing a way to get an even lower jitter source to the D/A by avoiding reclocking of S/PDIF in the DAC allows for future improvements in SQ. I also have I2S direct to the D/A in my DAC.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Would not surprise me at all. I hear these DACs at shows every year. They all have different sonic signatures.
I can provide my own system as an ABX because it is so resolving if anyone in Portland wanted to drive down to conduct such a test in my Media Room and provide some of these DACs. I will provide my own DAC as a candidate. The results of this test must be posted on all of the forums, Audiogon, Audiocircle, Asylum, What's Best and here. This is how confident I am.
My system uses SET amps driven from Final Drive transformer buffers fed direct by the DAC. If the DAC volume control is not great, I can use a cryo-treated silver Music First transformer linestage.
All DACs will be fed by the same S/PDIF cable (mine) and S/PDIF source, probably my Synchro-Mesh reclocker driven by any number of sources, or we can use my Ethernet renderer, the Interchange. All have 20psec or less jitter.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
My player loads the entire song into memory before sending it to the DAC, i find the delay perfectly acceptable.
dave
Vapor Audio Nimbus - top of line version.
I also have 4 foot ribbons with bass boxes, totally modded.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Awesome! Great initiative. I would have loved to participate, were it not for the fact that I'm living on another continent. Such an undertaking is not easy, though, as informal blind testing very easily can lead to false negatives. Jakob2 has given great input here in the thread concerning how such tests should be done in a proper way.
Nimbus White:
Vapor Audio Nimbus White Speaker Review
I have a newer version with a better midrange IMO.
Vapor Audio Nimbus White Speaker Review
I have a newer version with a better midrange IMO.
I have no doubts whatsoever that the differences will be obvious, not subtle.
I can easily hear the difference between .wav files and FLAC, AIFF, ALAC and even uncompressed FLAC.
Steve N.
Yes, into computer memory - that's not DAC buffer memory which was what was being spoken of
There still has to be a transfer from computer to DAC buffer via SPDIF, USB, ethernet?
Song, yes, no prob
Gapless playback of multiple tracks??
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I would rather travel to see you. Our democracy is eroding here and foreigners are not wanted by 30% of the population. A sad situation that hopefully will change in 2018 or certainly in 2020.
My system is probably one of the best candidates for this kind of ABX. Everything is top-notch and even my amps, which I purchased as prototypes are highly modified by me. Also rolled the tubes many times to optimize. Its outstanding now. I never hear anything at shows like this.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Yea, the dying comms protocol, firewire too
So what is acceptable time before playback starts & work out the data size that needs to be transferred (remember gapless playback of multi tracks) Vs slowest transfer channel speed & you'll arrive at the delay time - then see if a user is willing to accept the restrictions necessary in this scenario?
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I don't wanna offend any Americans here, but yeah, I too have concerns about the direction the leading country in the free world is heading in at the moment...
Had never heard about these speakers before, but they look fairly awesome. Would love to come by and hear your system if ever I'm in the area.
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8 ohms is in the specs, so that's the 15" woofer. 93dB efficient. They get really loud and amazing bass.
I have had TAD reference speakers, $50K YG Acoustics and others in my exhibit room at shows. I like the Vapor Nimbus better. I believe it is flatter and more accurate. Only the best crossover parts, Duelund caps, Jensen air-core inductors etc..
Steve N.
Empirical Audio