Because for me it was clear that the front end architecture was not ideal, and I clearly explained the reasons from a technical point of view: poor isolation between the two time domains.
But I assume you don't know what I'm talking about.
The measurements have confirmed the assumption.
Now, I don't know anything about the Pass F1, except that Nelson Pass is not a charlatan like most of those who write on this thread without the minimal technical skill.
Then I invite who criticize the F1 to technical explain the reasons.
He can explain the reasons even without listening to it, not a problem.
But he should look at the circuit and explain where it is wrong.
The problem is that he doesn't have the technical knowledge to do it and then he shoot sentences only to write something.
You're absolutely right, it can't be done.
Nobody in the world is going to get their hands on a full orchestra, sit in the same position as the ab- or ms-microphones, position his speakers between the orchestra (and lives to tell about it), gets time to alter his settings and gets another go at it, all the while the orchestra is going to play that part you want to hear and wait untill you're finished playing back the recording while listening in total silence for more spatial and tonal clues.
It wouldn't even work if you did manage to do all that.
It does, however, illustrate that relying merely on measurements of playback equipment is still leaving out of the equation the one thing we have no control over whatsoever and is at least 50% of the deal.
I still like my chances with that added "subjectivity" better than without, wouldn't you say?
There is a subtle difference: the other members and I, we have clearly indicated the setup used and the tests performed.
While you are claiming without any detail about your test.
Why?
Merely because you haven't done any tests and maybe you don't have the minimum technical knowledge to understand how digital to analog conversion works.
Finally you are free to use whatever XO you want and live happy.
I have nothing to demonstrate and I don't have to convince anyone.
What we do we do for ourselves, but you have not yet understood this.
It looks like you don't remember, please read carefully
AK4499EQ - Best DAC ever
The Pass F1 has 3% THD at 8W power output (1kHz 8 ohm).
Now please look at the schematic and let us know what is wrong.
The thread to discuss these topic should be:
If it's purely an engineering challenge why bother designing yet another DAC?
Moderators note in the starting post:
Should be the right place also, to present publications that examine the degree of a difference wrt "the short aural memory time span".
If it's purely an engineering challenge why bother designing yet another DAC?
Moderators note in the starting post:
Should be the right place also, to present publications that examine the degree of a difference wrt "the short aural memory time span".
I was referring to that particular amp.
So, please explain why you can't listen to it at 8W.
And then please look at the schematic and let us know what is wrong and what is the way to upgrade it in order to listen to it at 8W.
I had two identical WaveIO cards, both with "standard" NDK SD oscillators.
Then I sent one back to Lucian; he replaced the SD's with SDA's.
I was then able to compare the SD to SDA sound. It was very clear to me that SDA sounded more relaxed, the instruments sounded more natural, the bass was deeper, details were easier to hear. The overall improvement was very nice - very pleasant to listen to. This was very obvious especially when I was NOT paying attention to the sound, i.e. when I was doing something else. The SDA's were less obtrusive to my work
No measurements though... just my (and few others who listened) opinion.
Then I sent the second card to Lucian for the same treatment.
I had two identical WaveIO cards, both with "standard" NDK SD oscillators.
Then I sent one back to Lucian; he replaced the SD's with SDA's.
I was then able to compare the SD to SDA sound. It was very clear to me that SDA sounded more relaxed, the instruments sounded more natural, the bass was deeper, details were easier to hear. The overall improvement was very nice - very pleasant to listen to. This was very obvious especially when I was NOT paying attention to the sound, i.e. when I was doing something else. The SDA's were less obtrusive to my work
No measurements though... just my (and few others who listened) opinion.
Then I sent the second card to Lucian for the same treatment.
Not a big surprise for me.
I have not measured the phase noise of the NDK clocks, but I can assume the SDA has better close in phase noise then the SD.
The noise floor should be almost identical for both oscillators since it's dominated by the noise of the CMOS gates.
While the close in noise is dominated by the quality of the crystal.
I think it's very funny that he freaked the Stereophile team such that they never repeated anything like this again. Bob was a great showman and entirely possible he just fooled them. But as you can see Golden ears still react badly to this story even a 1/4 century on. Audio Research pulled a similar one when they persuaded JGH to do a blind comparion which completely inverted the sighted test result.
Null testing has rather gone out of fashion. Maybe it would be fruitful to consider if that could be used with discussing these low phase noise clocks. My suspicion is that we are so far down in the weeds that the null is already as deep as it can be. But as ever happy to be proved wrong.
I don't know if "react badly" is a correct description, but the story itself is an interesting one. Afair in neither instance of these tests blind testing was involved (even not at audio critique at least when being convinced that two amplifiers choosen for the project were indeed sounding differently), nevertheless the Stereoplay crew didn't buy the identicality the first time Carver was confident having achieved it, but after some more rework they were convinced in the second attempt.
According to the Stereophile-article it wasn't just a resistor, but there was enough smoke around that we never can be sure. The Stereophile listeners (again according to the article) weren't aware that something similar happened some time before, quite to the contrary I'd say.
So, given the description for both events, it could be presented as very convincing evidence that the sighted listening concept worked surprisingly well.
Btw, whenever I point to this fact, the "not so golden ears" react quite badly.
Yes, it's important to understand their ears are far more fragile than their system.
While that of course might happen (in blind tests it happens with biased experimenters too), isn't it more a matter of biased interpretation of the Carver challenge/results?
You mentioned "blind" but there was no "blind testing" involved - although they (according to the article) had agreed to do one - as they already thought during the sighted listening, the amps were not distinguishable. Which is an interesting sub-story itself.
I think, JA did some follow-up when listening to the amplifiers later that were sold on the promise to have that modification built in, but wasn't convinced.
You mentioned "blind" but there was no "blind testing" involved - although they (according to the article) had agreed to do one - as they already thought during the sighted listening, the amps were not distinguishable. Which is an interesting sub-story itself.
I think, JA did some follow-up when listening to the amplifiers later that were sold on the promise to have that modification built in, but wasn't convinced.