Woooo, where did that come from. There is Solid science behind room correction, active crossovers and phase correction.
That has been demonstrated by Sigfried Linkwitz, Thorsten Loesch, Meyer Sound JMLC and many others. If its properly applied it has way more positive impact than a change of amps, Dacs or sources.
Like the dogma that Aoip has timing issues and is therefore inferior to USB? 😉Naturally I prefer my own dogmas
You can only fix so much with filters and delays. Jagged driver peaks and valleys are often too narrow to effectively correct. Room resonances don't stop resonating just because you turn down the volume level at that frequency, etc., etc.
Can you give an example of a complete device for 100 Euro, with one of the chips mentioned above?
P.S."Ready made" - you mean just assembled PCB or really "complete device" in case?
And the last one I hope is not like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...0!sea!IL!137829664&curPageLogUid=Awx5Qed58LwU
I think it means you would have to use a low-cost dac chip. Low cost doesn't mean it has to sound bad, per se.
But that's true for everything we work with.
A simple visit to a drc demo room that has domestic dimensions is all it takes.
Like Aoip it's just one of these things that can't be evaluated by theory.
You have to audition it.
I have the chance to do drc, crossover, phase correction with regular Hardware, but there are inferior dacs at the output and the signal would have to undergo an additional AD conversion.
@Radian Okay. Can you do what I want in your DSP box? Suppose I want a fully corrected stereo system with 3-way speakers, and stereo subs. That means I need 8-dac channels. I require that for each dac channel any PCM digital is to be resampled at the highest quality to either 176kHz or 192kHz, then I want conversion from PCM to DSD256 at the highest quality. How would you do that today?
If you can do it, how much will it cost including for 3-times as many DSD dacs and 3-times as many very high quality power amps?
If you can't do it, then I will just take stereo upsampled PCM->DSD256, at the highest quality. I would rather have that than the other stuff. I already have good ESL speakers that don't need time or phase alignment. Speakers also already have built-in analog EQ which I don't find a need for (except for a little HF shelving). The stereo subs already have their own LP filters. Power amps are also quite good as is. Its good enough someone might say, once you have heard it you will never want to go back.
If you can do it, how much will it cost including for 3-times as many DSD dacs and 3-times as many very high quality power amps?
If you can't do it, then I will just take stereo upsampled PCM->DSD256, at the highest quality. I would rather have that than the other stuff. I already have good ESL speakers that don't need time or phase alignment. Speakers also already have built-in analog EQ which I don't find a need for (except for a little HF shelving). The stereo subs already have their own LP filters. Power amps are also quite good as is. Its good enough someone might say, once you have heard it you will never want to go back.
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Out requirements mean nothing...
In 2018 I thought I require DSD conversion for my pavel Dac. I even had the AK4137 finally singing to the point that I could not differentiate between it and HQPlayer. That dac was bettered by AKM 4490 with transformer coupling. So the reqired conversion to DSD was not a requirement anymore to reach a better Sound.
I still thought I "required" max sample rate possible but when I compared the same good recording downloaded in 4 different sample rates inkl. DSD, I was perplexed to not be able to reliably tell them apart. This comparsion was done in an excellent room with highly resolving speakers.
There where many more requirements I had in my 40plus years in this hobby but I no longer hold myself back by theories. I test things out.
There is a good reason why more and more people buy $1200 RedNet devices for mere home audio pleasure. They could be content with there $500 USB thingies but made the "mistake" to try these sample rate limited professionell toys. 🧐
$1200 is a lot of money and the added complexity is a choice. Coincentally I spoke to a friend yesterday evening who is a professional sound engineer. I asked if he knows Aoip, Rednet, Dante etc. YES he said and explained all the virtues and all the stuff he can do in halls and all the EQing. With live music and people in large halls one definitely needs EQing and manipulation.
The surprise to me was that he does not use it at home
The surprise to me was that he does not use it at home
Hmmm, something doesn't make sense. It takes two AK4137 chips to convert to DSD256 well, and even then they are asynchronous, which affects the sound.
That's exactly where many channels and support for large distances are needed. Ethernet being a perfect medium for that, unlike USB, SPDIF etc. But if distance is within USB reach and I do not need tens of hi-rez channels exceeding USB highspeed capacity, the advantage of AoIP is beyond my understanding.
Who said I went up to DSD256 ?
I compared several pcm formats to each other and to DSD.
Sometimes I thought I could pick one over the other but when I listened to another recording it was not as clear anymore.
The point is, that different sampling frequency beyond 96khz is way less audible than all the digital gimmicks that pertain to speaker and room correction. Most of the expensive digital correction hardware still work in the 24bit 96khz to192khz domain. Even in modern Studios.
If DSD makes you happy then by all means stick to USB. But don't be fooled and think that even 5% of the master material is native.
Aoip is here to stay and it will not be long until they up the game to the latest formats, that make people happy.