Thanks John for your two detailled posts on OP amps, caps and power supplies.
Always a pleasure to read you, well understanding there is of course "far more behind" but that gives me already something to chew during the night 🙂
Claude
Always a pleasure to read you, well understanding there is of course "far more behind" but that gives me already something to chew during the night 🙂
Claude
The measurements do correlate to what our ears are receiving. What they don't correlate to is the effect our mind has on our perception of what we are hearing.
When I was young(er) I got a new amplifier for Christmas but had been stuck, for the days surrounding Christmas, with family, hours away from home. We returned home, with said amplifier, a few days after, very late at night. I was feeling queasy (motion sickness), was tired and had a headache. Still when we got home I connected up said amplifier and put on a song. It sounded terrible, but I felt like crap, so I went to sleep. The next day, headache gone, nausea gone and well rested I put on the same song. It sounded fabulous.
The system measured the same in both instances yet one time it sounded terrible and the other it sounded great. No measurements can account for the human mind and condition at the time of listening. So unless you've gone to extreme lengths to try and remove your brain from the equation the only thing we can trust are the measurements.
You can go into listening, without any preconceptions, because you genuinely have no idea if the modification will sound better or not. But something as simple as feeling a little thirsty after implementing said change, but you'll get a coffee and a biscuit after you've listened to the cap swap or whatever, will influence what you hear. You could be impatient because you want a drink and think it sounds worse. Or you could be thinking about tasty biscuits...Mmm biscuits, Homer Simpson noise. And everything sounds better with biscuits.
You can make a cap swap and measure the difference with a soldering iron stuck in your eye Vs measuring it as you sip your favourite beverage and receive a shoulder/neck massage. The measurements will be the same in each case, but try listening for a difference under the differing circumstances...the meter can be trusted, your mind cannot.
Oh and I am actually in this thread for signal because I'm building stuff with the AK4499. I'm not really here for the noise that this side show of a tangent has gone off in.
Let me repeat this clearly once again - back in early 90's I met on several different occasions with gentlemen who worked on the design of the LS3/5A while they worked at the BBC - at this time I don't recall there names, but I can ask around with others who where also present if they recall if its so important to you then next time I meet any of them....
Regarding the topic of this thread, my experiments with AK4499 thus far make clear that dacs using the AKM chip will all sound different from one another at some level.
Why? Mostly because the sound of dacs is very dependent on implementation. The dac chip is only one component. It sets an upper limit on how good a dac using it can sound, everything else is set by the implementation.
From the looks of the AK4499 dac market so far, mostly there seem to be a few entries from China, particularly those from Topping and Gustard. A few reviews are starting to come out and it kinda looks like Topping may be doing a little better than Gustard so far. One early example: Topping D90 Review – A Genre Master!
Given the price point of the Topping, one may wonder if its really as good as an AK4499 dac can get. Eventually I hope to be able to compare one with the modded AK4499 eval board here, then at least a couple of people will have a better idea 🙂
Why? Mostly because the sound of dacs is very dependent on implementation. The dac chip is only one component. It sets an upper limit on how good a dac using it can sound, everything else is set by the implementation.
From the looks of the AK4499 dac market so far, mostly there seem to be a few entries from China, particularly those from Topping and Gustard. A few reviews are starting to come out and it kinda looks like Topping may be doing a little better than Gustard so far. One early example: Topping D90 Review – A Genre Master!
Given the price point of the Topping, one may wonder if its really as good as an AK4499 dac can get. Eventually I hope to be able to compare one with the modded AK4499 eval board here, then at least a couple of people will have a better idea 🙂
This thread has been split from the AK4499EQ - DAC thread.
Sorry if my point was not clear: It is not just an engineering challenge to most of us designing new dacs. Most of us are trying to design for improved sound quality, and a few other people are trying to design for test and measurement applications.
Of the remaining few people designing for the engineering challenge alone, for them it is like asking why go mountain climbing when watching TV as easier, safer, cheaper, etc.
Of the remaining few people designing for the engineering challenge alone, for them it is like asking why go mountain climbing when watching TV as easier, safer, cheaper, etc.
I know, that's obvious, otherwise DAC designers would be out of a job, it's not like making shoes for children's feet.
Interesting example you chose. In today's world shoes are mass produced in factories and made to fit standard sizes. That can be done because many people's feet have been measured, and shoes can be made to fit the average foot. What if someone's foot is not close enough to a standard shape? Then shoes tend to get expensive if they have to be custom made. Same type of things happens with other mass-produced clothes. Because the items can be mass produced by machines, many people are out of a job.
Maybe something similar happens with mass produced dacs too. A small sample of listeners are measured and dacs are designed to fit the average. If some particular person finds the average dac not a good fit to their way of listening, then dacs can get more expensive. More or less like shoes although not exactly. Dacs are not usually custom made for a particular person, but perhaps made in small quantities and less efficiently than the mass produced items for average listeners.
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😀 Re children's shoes, they get worn out, are not designed to last, and children grow out of them. They can't be passed on to smaller children and so have to be thrown away. Not at all like DACs......but.......nice try 🙄
If you have read my posts and understood, you wouldn't have come up with such supposition.
How was the listening comparison set up? It matters because you can hear a difference from the same DAC when playing levels are different.
That's what it is, he tries, over and over again.
His analogy doesn't relate to present day DAC technology at all. It lacks the supporting evidence of his audibility claims and subjective listening impressions don't count as evidence.
You seemed to have been led/guided by reading many audio opinions on a subject that has been created by individuals obsessed with their equipment.
The reality is, this "break in" or "burn in" period is only valid for a few electronic components, and the actual effect is so subtle that normal people don't notice a change.
Tubes - may "settle in" after a few hours of use.
Phono cartidges - the cantilever suspension may soften up after playing one record.
Electrolytic capacitors - would "season" themselves in short order.
Speakers - the cone suspension may "loosen up" after a few hours of heavy bass.
Other than those, and particularly solid state equipment, components do not realistically "change" or get better with use - that is a dreamt up fallacy by nervous obsessed people who's minds are living on another planet.
My most significant experience is full-range drivers. It is fairly easy to show that many drivers need 100 or more hrs to break-in. (2 identical boxes with the same drivers, but 100 hrs or so difference in time since new, something i have done more than a few times).
One designer has said that in some of his speakers he expects that break in time for the spider he designed is over 1,000 hrs.
Break-in on speakers can be very significant. And it can take some time.
dave
All speakers age. The speakers with 100 hrs plus on them clearly sounded different/better than those fresh out of the box. Sometimes fresh were quite disappointing.
dave
dave
My LS50s took a month of continuous play (face to face, out of phase) to be listenable.
Since we are way off topic again 🙂 can you answer my question about the subject of capacitor break in you raised Dave :
One has to be careful, at leas with FR, to avoid heavy input (ie break in slow & gentle) so that the spider (it exists on almost all FRs), and surround get a memory that causes FR anomolies.
dave
dave