Sidetrack, but with a product like the USBridge from Allo, could you connect an external disk directly to it, or is it just a network streamer?
Cool gadget! I'll keep that in the back of my mind for other things and systems. For my application though, I'll use another DAC, so I'd need a digital out before the DAC-chip. Now back to the topic at hand! I'll start another thread when I'm getting closer to building out my digital side.
The 'law of diminishing returns' can apply to just about any consumer product, be they cars, speakers, wine or shoes. You can spend more than X amount and sometimes get a 'better quality' product or you might spend more and get a 'lesser quality' one.
These things are almost impossible to quantify: is a Rolls Royce 10 times better than a Toyota Camry, or just six and a half times, or only twice? The Camry will be more reliable, cheaper to run and probably last longer! Is Penfolds Grange Hermitage at A$800 a bottle 10 times better than an $80 bottle single vineyard Barossa Shiraz?
I prefer to think in terms of value for money: my 'Slapshot' MTM speakers cost about three times as much as the Tritrix MTMs from the same designer (Curt Campbell). However, we really like both of them and are very happy with the value. The Slapshots sound more refined, look cooler, play louder and have a more detailed sound than the Tritrix but the latter are less revealing of recording faults.
Are the Slapshots 'three times better' than Tritrix, or twice? Impossible to answer.
Provided you go with a proved, well received DIY project I really think you will get far better value for money compared to a commercial speaker. What matters is that you're happy.
Geoff
These things are almost impossible to quantify: is a Rolls Royce 10 times better than a Toyota Camry, or just six and a half times, or only twice? The Camry will be more reliable, cheaper to run and probably last longer! Is Penfolds Grange Hermitage at A$800 a bottle 10 times better than an $80 bottle single vineyard Barossa Shiraz?
I prefer to think in terms of value for money: my 'Slapshot' MTM speakers cost about three times as much as the Tritrix MTMs from the same designer (Curt Campbell). However, we really like both of them and are very happy with the value. The Slapshots sound more refined, look cooler, play louder and have a more detailed sound than the Tritrix but the latter are less revealing of recording faults.
Are the Slapshots 'three times better' than Tritrix, or twice? Impossible to answer.
Provided you go with a proved, well received DIY project I really think you will get far better value for money compared to a commercial speaker. What matters is that you're happy.
Geoff
Thanks for all the responses folks!
The Open Source Monkey Box project is exactly the type of thing I have been looking for. Though that price was a bit surprising!
I haven't looked around too much for this yet, but do you have a link to those tests? I'd be interested in the dichotomy between objective and subjective tests!
I hope I haven't inadvertently picked a side in the DAC wars! What sort of functionality are you looking to gain from the HiFiBerry?
That's sort of what I figured. It's hard to 'outcompete' the cheapest options on a price/capability front, but it's hard to drop $2g's on something that I'm unfamiliar with. I figured there's got to be a sweet spot in there somewhere!
What do you mean by configuration vs. design? Is configuration the overall choices, like 'one woofer, one midrange, one tweeter'? Design is 'This tweeter and that midrange in a 40L box'?
I agree with what you're saying about diminishing returns. I fully intend to track down a good reliable 'mid-tier' DIY project, as I think that might be a sweet spot that'll make me happy.
I just want to say, I'm a fan of this forum so far. Folks are quite friendly and helpful!
The Open Source Monkey Box project is exactly the type of thing I have been looking for. Though that price was a bit surprising!
I haven't looked around too much for this yet, but do you have a link to those tests? I'd be interested in the dichotomy between objective and subjective tests!
I hope I haven't inadvertently picked a side in the DAC wars! What sort of functionality are you looking to gain from the HiFiBerry?
That's sort of what I figured. It's hard to 'outcompete' the cheapest options on a price/capability front, but it's hard to drop $2g's on something that I'm unfamiliar with. I figured there's got to be a sweet spot in there somewhere!
What do you mean by configuration vs. design? Is configuration the overall choices, like 'one woofer, one midrange, one tweeter'? Design is 'This tweeter and that midrange in a 40L box'?
I agree with what you're saying about diminishing returns. I fully intend to track down a good reliable 'mid-tier' DIY project, as I think that might be a sweet spot that'll make me happy.
I just want to say, I'm a fan of this forum so far. Folks are quite friendly and helpful!
My bedroom system is a tube amp and tube tuner, I’m building a little buffer/switch/streamer out of a pi zero and a pass B1 buffer. The mini berry dac has both rca and a set of pad to solder to for output. So, I hope, connect the pads to the buffer and be able to also bypass the buffer by going dac hat straight out the rcas.
> I want to build something dope, but what're the right amount of dollars /effort to spend? $100? $500? $1200?? $5000!? $10000!?!?!
In my opinion, we can build a truly high end digital audio playback system at $1000-5000 depends on the taste, target loudness and speaker / room size, and if I have more budget, I would spend the money for the room.
I would strongly recommend to use a computer and prosumer AD/DA such as MOTU, Audient, because without measurement, it's probably impossible to achieve a reasonable return from DIY system, and will end up spending too much money for something unnecessary.
In my opinion, we can build a truly high end digital audio playback system at $1000-5000 depends on the taste, target loudness and speaker / room size, and if I have more budget, I would spend the money for the room.
I would strongly recommend to use a computer and prosumer AD/DA such as MOTU, Audient, because without measurement, it's probably impossible to achieve a reasonable return from DIY system, and will end up spending too much money for something unnecessary.
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It is an expensive somewhat unbalanced design that one could perhaps argue is the result of too much enthusiasm at the expense of more moderate reasoning. It was an interesting group project (strictly one half since it split into two) demonstrating what may work well and what may not. There have been one or two other group projects on other forums that have also been at best a qualified success. It seems to be a tricky thing to get to work well.
Hopefully there will be more attempts at group projects in the future and this time with the objective of developing a well balanced, high performance, high value design of the kind for which there is a significant demand from people such as yourself with little experience but wanting to start with a reasonable cost high fidelity design rather than a small 2 way. I tried to guide the project in this direction but failed to be sufficiently persuasive and dropped out when it split into expensive and quirky and big and quirky. Disappointing but that is the nature of group projects. They follow the interests of the group shedding and picking up people along the way as the objectives become better defined.
There is no conflict between genuinely subjective and genuinely objective because they are simply different measurements of the same thing. Conflict arises from, to be blunt, ignorance. Audiophiles in the "subjective" camp tend to be ignorant about the fact they make some false objective statements rather than subjective ones. This annoys "objectivists". Audiophiles in the "objective" camp tend to be ignorant about which aspects of "subjective" statements are valid and with are not and tend to condemn too much. This annoys "subjectivists". Education would remove almost all this conflict but ignorance unfortunately plays a fundamental role in how the luxury goods home audio industry works.
This is currently an excellent area to observe the role of ignorance within the luxury goods home audio industry. There is a substantial difference between how educated professionals view and use DACs to do their job and how audiophiles view DACS as luxury goods. The latter are not necessarily wrong, except possibly in a strictly dry technical sense, because as luxury goods the hardware performs a significantly different function.
By configuration I meant the major choices such as:
- mains only, with 1 sub, with distributed subs
- 1/2/3/4 way
- tower, monitor, bookshelf,...
- sizing of the drivers and cabinet
- sealed, ported, transmission line, horn,...
- cost
Once you have settled on a configuration then the more detailed design will involve choosing drivers that work together in a balanced way in terms of efficiency, frequency range, the SPL level distortion intrudes, the sound radiation pattern, the interaction with the cabinet in terms of bumps and dips, the interaction with resonances like that from a port or line,... Designing a crossover to maximise the performance from the drivers. Designing a cabinet to hold the drivers in place and minimise the sound radiation from the cabinet. Etc...
The problem may be finding a design that genuinely maximises technical performance using standard range drivers. By the nature of the hobby DIY folk building multiple designs will tend to come up with slightly quirky ones that explore their current interests. Few will set out to come up with the most boring conventional design that maximises overall technical performance for the minimum cost using the most common boring standard range drivers.
^ So true. As you say it takes quite a bit of knowledge to discern which projects are good for the need and have good value. It is difficult to determine even the need without knowledge let alone what is good value so it is very easy to fall into the ignorant category.
We should remember speakers are just speakers though 😀 If you imagine speakers were black boxes, with desired physical dimensions and cost, what would the "sound quality" possibly be? It is kind of irrelevant how many ways and which brand drivers there are, it is the knowledge that put it all together that determines if the result is better than some other black box with same cost and dimensions. Still people wouldn't build it since it is just a black box instead of the golden binding posts and pointy tweeter tips with known name tag.
Anyway, would be admirable achievement to be able to design and market very good "boring" design and get many people to build it. Maybe there is one? Anyone have candidates?
The situation won't likely change until proper semi standardized measurement sets are published so the actual performance could be analyzed and compared. Not likely to happen unless there was a single entity who does this, not sure how it could be monetized to be worth the effort. There seem to be some on the audio science review and what not, but not too many DIY speakers anywhere?
We should remember speakers are just speakers though 😀 If you imagine speakers were black boxes, with desired physical dimensions and cost, what would the "sound quality" possibly be? It is kind of irrelevant how many ways and which brand drivers there are, it is the knowledge that put it all together that determines if the result is better than some other black box with same cost and dimensions. Still people wouldn't build it since it is just a black box instead of the golden binding posts and pointy tweeter tips with known name tag.
Anyway, would be admirable achievement to be able to design and market very good "boring" design and get many people to build it. Maybe there is one? Anyone have candidates?
The situation won't likely change until proper semi standardized measurement sets are published so the actual performance could be analyzed and compared. Not likely to happen unless there was a single entity who does this, not sure how it could be monetized to be worth the effort. There seem to be some on the audio science review and what not, but not too many DIY speakers anywhere?
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How about group build, but in a black box fashion way, anyone could sent a design with some common criteria to be measured by someone somewhere?😀 Only winner would be published, anonymously. How to judge? Maybe vote on the measurements only, without seeing the actual speaker. Hah, not sure if this would be of any value, but surely there could be a winner if at least one participant came along. If DIY enthusiast, who seeks good middle of the road value project, sees a credibility in the jury they would have found the project they are looking for. Coffee break over.
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Sorry, but this is a misleading statement as it is incomplete. There is no problem with recovering audio information from SPDIF as it basically the clock itself and it has very little in common with the challenges of the master clock at DAC chip. Even in the high end DAC signal paths the crystal oscillator is typically used for calculating the actual sampling rate only.
I like the specs on this Genelec.
Here's a Neumann
Here's the JBL 305P
That's a good indication of why it's hard to find a sweet spot in established DIY designs. Legacy DIY expertise was in passive crossover design, which is a low value skill now.
Good companies have access to anechoic chambers. Then they test them with listeners. They also have the advantage of economies of scale. You get a lot of stuff in a good commercial speaker today that you don't in legacy DIY systems.
Here's a Neumann
Here's the JBL 305P
That's a good indication of why it's hard to find a sweet spot in established DIY designs. Legacy DIY expertise was in passive crossover design, which is a low value skill now.
Good companies have access to anechoic chambers. Then they test them with listeners. They also have the advantage of economies of scale. You get a lot of stuff in a good commercial speaker today that you don't in legacy DIY systems.