The Black Hole......

Hi Richard, I feel the need to answer anyhew...I am using a pretty high-end DAC (Auralic Vega) running from USB, and the secret to performance and stability is most definitely the audio system driver. Although the vanilla ASIO driver worked OK, I have been very happy with the JPLAY driver feeding the Vega, it has been stable and the Vega verifies the bitrate it is receiving without glitching. This F2k update issue is the first time in four years I have had to mess with any software or settings. The only flaw I can find in my setup is perhaps on DSD files: I get a single click at the very start and sometimes at the very end. I think it is file handling by F2k...

Cheers!
Howie

Good thing you or another told me... I cant spend the time sorting thru all the possibilities. So, thank you for making it easier to get something to work properly or well. .


🙂 😎


-Richard
 
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Hi Demian.... that is WAY more than I want to deal with. I just wont use a computer then. This is nuts for HD audio.

With the last big chain store for audio in America stop selling CD, I see no further reason to even support legacy stuff. like 16/44

By the way, it was your product I bought which got me to try HD down loads. Going from 16/44 to HD/24/176+ files... no in-between listening comparisons ... Was an ear opener and I stopped with CD then. So, its all your fault 🙂

That was, what-- 10 years ago? I had better ears then, too. This getting old thing takes a lot of fun out of a lot of activities. But, I can do a brain dump of sorts now if it is useful to others coming up in audio.


Thanks, Richard

You and the others here are why we created the Auraliti player. It was designed so you did not need to pay much attention for the file types. Unfortunately it was the wrong business model. We should have built $10K players instead of ones uner $1K. As it was we got little respect for them.
 
Good thing you or another told me... I cant spend the time sorting thru all the possibilities. So, thank you for making it easier to get something to work properly or well. .
Hello Mr Marsh.
I use an old laptop with external USB Hard Drive storage and USB Dac using Foobar with ASIO driver.
With correct plugins Foobar plays pretty much any file at the original file format/sampling rate and seamlessly bypasses Windows SRC issues with Foobar and ASIO applet reporting currently playing file sample rate.
You ought to be able to get this kind of setup running pretty easily on pretty much any old cheap PC or cheap laptop and ASIO capable Dac, and in my experience this setup sounds perfectly good.
Using a laptop can also provide local network connectivity and control, also access to streaming radio/music services.
How were you using your Benchmark 2 Dac ?.


Max.
 
Alan, you're talking about the real time playback here, right?

When using properly coded software based SRC I get the same result every time, including conversion from DSD to PCM. The produced files null out completely when compared.

Yes, real time

But not DSD, my recollection is that there is a modulator fed by a random signal involved in the construction of the resultant audio, not deterministic. (my memory is hazy on the subject)

Cheers
Alan
 
SRC has come a long way over the years, see SRC Comparisons for test results of a wide variety of src's over the years. Atrocious to technically beautiful.


Finally had a look a that link. Sadly doesn't cover the ASRC chipsets currently in use, or the standard linux resampler. But does show Foo_DSP to be good. Of course my use case is going 44.1 to 96k which is the other way around. My use case is odd as I use minidsp at 24/96 to gain a few more bits for digital volume control. I could use the minidsp inbuilt SRC or resample before delivery. Currently get the server to that, but intrigued to know what the amateur can do to test the efficacy of this approach...
 
Has anyone here heard a decisive advantage of any bitrate DSD over say 96/24 PCM? I am tipping my hand phrasing this way, but would like to hear from others.
Howie
AFAIK DSD was originally developed by Sony as a way to store content in their archives, independent of change in future technology.

Then came the idea to bring this "almost analogue" Direct Stream to the market, but there are two reasons why this never happened.
1) To perform the necessary Edit and mix DSD while recording, 1 bit recordings have to be converted into PCM and reconverted back into DSD (this results of course inevitably in some conversion losses).
2) Progress in technology made higher multibit sampling rates no longer an issue, outperforming the 1 bit 2.8Mhz DSD concept.

This all caused the DSD to become a mere marketing issue and real Direct Stream is nowhere in existente at all.
Apart from an added surround sound feature, there is no advantage in DSD or SACD, but you get a lot HF noise to cope with.
This article goes into somewhat more detail.

https://www.grimmaudio.com/site/assets/files/1088/dsd_myth.pdf

Hans
 
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AFAIK DSD was originally developed by Sony as a way to store content in their archives, independent of change in future technology....
...This all caused the DSD to become a mere marketing issue and real Direct Stream is nowhere in existente at all.
Apart from an added surround sound feature, there is no advantage in DSD or SACD, but you get a lot HF noise to cope with.
This article goes into somewhat more detail.

https://www.grimmaudio.com/site/assets/files/1088/dsd_myth.pdf

Hans

Thanks for the link, it was a good refresher!

Cheers!
Howie
 
"Some have suggested that this HF noise may change the behaviour of capacitors, cables and electrical contacts. We have not done any research into this ourselves, but it should be relatively simple to set up a listening test featuring a third file: the original 192/24 file but with added HF DSD noise taken from a silent DSD recording. If the ultrasonic noise is responsible, this file should sound ‘better’ than the original 192/24 without the added noise."

🙂

//
 
"Some have suggested that this HF noise may change the behaviour of capacitors, cables and electrical contacts. We have not done any research into this ourselves, but it should be relatively simple to set up a listening test featuring a third file: the original 192/24 file but with added HF DSD noise taken from a silent DSD recording. If the ultrasonic noise is responsible, this file should sound ‘better’ than the original 192/24 without the added noise."

🙂

//
Who knows, very easy to test.
😀 😀

Hans
 
Is there more than one master clock in the system? If more than one clock domain then you would need something, typically ASRC, to bridge between them. Of course, some people use a big FIFO instead.


I do not know how it clocks it into the shark. My interest is what could be done without needing an AP/digiscope/RS or similar. As there is an SPDIF out from the box and I can record that I wonder if there is 'something' that can be measured.
 
You miss the point. The reason they are used in DSPs often is to only have to use one set of coefficients.
Yes I believe that's the game plan with the miniDSP stuff. I suppose it also allows a bit more flexibility with master/slave clock arrangements, and can theoretically provide input jitter reduction (and hopefully the downstream hardware doesn't just make more of its own).
 
Yes I believe that's the game plan with the miniDSP stuff. I suppose it also allows a bit more flexibility with master/slave clock arrangements, and can theoretically provide input jitter reduction (and hopefully the downstream hardware doesn't just make more of its own).

Yeah, it has a lot of benefits. I should clarify that Mark wasn’t wrong either, but I see that as the primary motivation in a lot of commercial applications.
 
No I was more asking if there would be a measureable difference between SRC from 44.1/16 to 96/24 in the music server and letting the SRC in miniDSP do it. Internally miniDSP works at 48kHz or 96kHz depending on the plugin.



The challenge for me is what to measure if I am comparing bits in with bits out.