John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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I think they are both consistent. Here's what I know from experimentation, Sabre dacs have HD compensation for 2nd and 3rd harmonics. ESS claims THD of -120dB is possible, and I am able to show all harmonics below -120dBFS using 1kHz test tone.

How do you know the digital engine is simply acting like a simple low order non-linearity? If not no conclusions can be made about the audibility of x THD under all circumstances.

I believe that you are in good faith here but any real speakers are already orders of magnitude over these numbers and if it is simply an addition of like distortion hearing the difference is truly an extraordinary claim.
 
...if it is simply an addition of like distortion hearing the difference is truly an extraordinary claim.

Yes, if it were. But, apparently its not. Certainly doesn't sound like it is, perceptually speaking.

Lots of work to do to make a very strong case out of one isolated experiment.

One may recall that it took Martin Seligman 20-years of published research to overturn Skinner's Behaviorism. I don't have the time or the interest to do whatever it takes to overturn certain audio design engineer beliefs. Respectful disagreement is fine for now.
 
No, I don't think so.

I have claimed that hearing things down around -120dBFS is possible (most practically, if you don't ever come close to playback at 0dBFS).

Regarding things at lower levels such as -140dBFS or -150dBFS, I can only remember numbers like that coming up during speculation about what the human limit of audibility might be using playback systems as they are commonly configured, which is often to mostly operate at peak levels well below 0dBFS.
As for the audibility claims, the quotes on this post may help you to refresh your memory.
 
Seligman experimentally showed that 'learned helplessness' couldn't be properly accounted for by Behaviorism. His contemporaries kept insisting it could be fully explained by Behaviorism. Seligman eventually won the argument, but it took a lot of published experiments to rule out every claimed behavioral explanation.

Chomsky and Skinner disagreed about the extent to which language is innate or learned. Their disagreement was perhaps more famous because it largely took the form of spirited debate, rather than a series of dry scientific publications.

It was only later, coming out of the end of behaviorism, that psychology became much more of an overall experimental science, rather than fundamentally theoretical.

For practical purposes, behavioral approaches are sometimes still applied, although they tend to be much more effective with animals other than humans.
 
How many IMDs do you know? I know only one.

There is only one name for IMD, but like CP (cow pictures) the details are not all the same.

I would start with actually measuring the output of the DAC vs. register settings, not exactly rocket science.

Right now I am working on other things. As I said, my primary interest in the time I have available is not to change the thinking certain audio design engineers. Maybe someone else would like to do it. If so, I would be happy to help out as I can. I do have software code that could be used to make the adjustments.

What I can say for now is that small adjustments of the registers show FFT results consistent with changing only one harmonic component at a time.
 
If you are able to supply the board you did the tests on and code to test with...

The exact dac I used is too large to ship. I could provide a dac board with the same dac chip, a USB board to feed it I2S, and an Arduino with code to program it. The experimenter would need to provide +-15v, +5v, power supplies, and would probably need to fashion a 3-opamp output stage for which a schematic could be provided. I do have a reasonably low distortion discrete output stage I could send, but don't know if its distortion can go as low as a good OPA1612 output stage (I would suspect not). If someone were serious about doing it, it would probably take me a few days to collect everything together and draw up an interconnection diagram.

EDIT: Alternatively, I could order an Iancanada output stage board and then send it combined with a different dac board. Distortion should be low enough and it should simpler to work with than the other option described above.
 
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The exact dac I used is too large to ship. I could provide a dac board with the same dac chip, a USB board to feed it I2S, and an Arduino with code to program it. The experimenter would need to provide +-15v, +5v, power supplies, and would probably need to fashion a 3-opamp output stage for which a schematic could be provided. I do have a reasonably low distortion discrete output stage I could send, but don't know if its distortion can go as low as a good OPA1612 output stage (I would suspect not). If someone were serious about doing it, it would probably take me a few days to collect everything together and draw up an interconnection diagram.

EDIT: Alternatively, I could order an Iancanada output stage board and then send it combined with a different dac board. Distortion should be low enough and it should simpler to work with than the other option described above.
Just curious, is this a project or a future product?
 
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