John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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#21,461
Evenharmonics said:
If you look at upper right corner of the forum page, it shows "Search" and an arrow symbol, when you left click that arrow symbol, it gives you an option to "Advanced Search". If not, you should contact the forum tech staff or your internet provider and find out what's wrong.
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Figured it out, thanks for the help though.

Just curious as to what you expected me to search for.....

‘What does evenharmonics know’ ? 😉
 
#21,462
tapestryofsound said:
Ah yes, I remember Merrill Audio. I see you still sell cables. Very very expensive cables.
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Power cable shows the following under features.
“
  • Excellent solid, milled spade connectors
  • Very transparent and natural sounding interconnect cable
  • Engineered venting on the top and airflow system avoiding heat buildup inside the chassis"
:scratch2:

mountainman bob said:
Figured it out, thanks for the help though.

Just curious as to what you expected me to search for.....

‘What does evenharmonics know’ ? 😉
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Try "merrill isn't his last name".
 
#21,465
mmerrill99 said:
It's more complex than amplifier design but is also intimately connected to the end product of what is produced by our playback systems - a recreation of a soundstream that is believably real

I'm not sure that's all that can be done considering your next couple of paragraphs



I'm not arguing with you but you have made a claim that many would jump on if you weren't who you are - namely, " It sounds organic and smooth in a way my ultra low distortion designs do not"

I hardly need to remind you what the stock reply to this claim is & how the narrative usually progresses from there?
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Shite is organic.
 
#21,471
I missed out on the CD era for hifi, only used it in the car over the years.
Went from vinyl to a long hiatus, then started building DACs from kits here a few years ago.

USB inputs are ok, am now enjoying an SD card player (Kit) that feeds 12s into a kit DAC.

A coworker who has bought several CD players over the years has said that none of them sounded right compared to vinyl.
 
#21,474
scott wurcer said:
Is it OK if I think the same file streamed sounds no different than played off of my hard drive?
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I dunno......is it?:scratch1:

I’ve never come at it from computer/usb.....I’m told with the right setup it works just as well.

chris719 said:
Now you've opened a can of worms 🙂.

With Tidal it could be MQA encoded garbage or adulterated in some other way.
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I haven’t tried the mqa.....I don’t have the right dac to decode it.

It’s straight up flac files....I’m impressed with it
 
#21,475
Bonsai said:
Its euphonic Merrill - it does sound good. As do the ultra low distortion ones. So where does that leave us?
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Every machine is an affect/effect processor of sorts, pure and simple that's just how it is. The standard measurements of THD/IMD distortions and noise etc are just one set of rules, there are other sets of rules. Hi Andrew, (and everybody) did you get to listening to these flies...Test Dept - Two Flames. I just streaming test played these two files directly from this Dropbox link and I confirm that the files sound distinctly different on my system, the amplitude graph is cool too. The 02 - GC file is the loopback recorded file and has by definition worse specs than the original file, it is a 'mastering' the likes of which you have not heard before AND it sounds preferable to myself and others on whatever system I play it back on, go figure. I am interested to know what you find, YMMV of course.

I encourage everybody to spend a little time comparing the sounds of the files, 4:00 and on is interesting and will test systems. There are lots of points of interest/difference worthy of discussion that may be missed until pointed out as in the 3D photograph example. This can be a listening skills and sounds learning experience for all as has been the 3D picture for some members who 'now get it' when yesterday they did not. I will take track suggestions, this loopback processing is not difficult for me to do.

Dan.
 
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#21,478
john curl said:
I once again tried digital with my big system. CD (marginal) 24-96K pretty good. I don't know how most people can stand CD playback.
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It's getting much better John. Even Sabre dacs with the right setup and used with HQplayer (as Terry Demol bugged me for ages to try) can sound quite good. It takes a well implemented dac and a high powered i7 computer, but it is doable. Right now, many consider T&A DAC8 DSD running upsampled DSD from HQplayer as the best sounding dac money can buy, period. As AK4499 evaluation boards start to appear, we should start finding out how it compares with what can be done now.
 
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