Sound Quality Vs. Measurements

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Time smearing, as Rife apparently is talking about it, is just phase shift;

It is not the common phase shift. Rife is not inventing a new thing here. We are talking not about analog here but digital, and more about sampling mechanism. It is irreparable.

Bottomline , according to Rife, is that the medium itself is hopelessly flawed.

Yes of course, so what, that's the question. I think this is a few reason why there has been very slow acceptance of CD to replace the TT no matter problematic the TT was.

Note that some people want insanely very high slew rate and bandwidth in an amplifier. No one can explain this clearly (to all people to agree). Why should we need linearity up to frequency we cannot hear??

In creating the 44k1 CD (down-sampling from 96k), very sharp filter (anti-aliasing) has been used, which affect the content above 22k05. The question is, what music is available beyond 22k05? Little of course. But I believe that the issue is not whether the music content above 22k05 is "changed" or not (its not the music!).

This excess frequency has been considered as HF noise in tapes and TT. Is it a taste that some of us like to hear noises?

It is hard to explain theoretically, but some people with good hearing just "know" something is happening, including in the sound of non-oversampling DAC.
 
That's nonsense, Jay ...

The theory is not nonsense. The implication or the claim that it is the cause of the audible perception in sound quality, yes, I think it is nonsense.

About jitter, unfortunately, I'm not one of those who have heard the sound of jitter. To hear a jitter you have to have special system (theoretically). The first time I implemented reclocking, my intuition said that I prefer to remove the reclocking from my system so I learned almost nothing in the process.
 
Think of everything before R7 as a 60dB (or so) flat gain block. No need to worry about the details. The worst-case load at the HF limit is R7 + R9, which is over 20k.

I will, SY, I am not intimidated with tubes, it just takes me longer to get it.

This may surprise you, bit I feel tubes are well neigh perfect for preamps. No big currents required, a reasonable selection available at still sane prices, what's not to like?

In my modest experience, looking back, the best tube audio devices I have heard to date were almost all preamps, buffers, and such like.
 
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The theory is not nonsense.
Well, you'll have to point me to the "theory" which makes sense - over the years I've read so much dribble about why CD "doesn't sound right" - and it's all silly stuff! Digital doesn't sound up to scratch because somebody hasn't put enough effort into getting the particular setup to work properly - "implementation" is the key word here - it's as simple as that.
 
I'm with you on that, Frank.

My own humble NAD C 565 BEE CD player is living proof of what you are saying. NAD is hardly a High End company, and its purchase price was humble, yet it clearly shows what can happen when people do their work properly.

I literally hate the sound of Burr-Brown's 2134 FET input op amps, it has come to the point where on a number of occasions I called it out without knowing what's inside a device. Yet, that NAD is chock full of them, and they sound way better than I ever heard them sound before, anywhere.

All of which tells me two things: 1) do it right and it can sound better than we would expect of its price class, and 2) it's not the device, it's how it's used.
 
Well, you'll have to point me to the "theory" which makes sense - over the years I've read so much dribble about why CD "doesn't sound right" - and it's all silly stuff! Digital doesn't sound up to scratch because somebody hasn't put enough effort into getting the particular setup to work properly - "implementation" is the key word here - it's as simple as that.

Why does it have to make sense or not. Silver has a higher electrical conductivity than copper, that's theory, doesn't have to make sense or not. Silver cable sounds better than copper cable, that's up to you.

To tell you the truth, you have made the same mistake in many of your logical reasoning across many debates/argumentation in this site Frank. It could be a strawman's argument and/or other types of fallacy, SY knows better :D

To come to an agreement in a debate, both parties must FIRST have a willingness to understand what the other party is talking about, SECOND, he must understand what the other party is talking about.

That's why when both parties can not understand each other, for example because one party is too strong in "theoretical skill" and the other party is too strong in "empirical" skill, a debate will end up in a dead end because they talk about different things, each ones talk to no-one but himself.

Ask Pavel and the other knowledgeable guys here, it is often hard for them to put their message across when what they understand is not understood by the other party. Same thing goes to the theory guys who has limited hands-on experience and have tin ears. Even to understand/accept that they have tin ears, they cannot.
 
I'm with you on that, Frank.

My own humble NAD C 565 BEE CD player is living proof of what you are saying. NAD is hardly a High End company, and its purchase price was humble, yet it clearly shows what can happen when people do their work properly.

I literally hate the sound of Burr-Brown's 2134 FET input op amps, it has come to the point where on a number of occasions I called it out without knowing what's inside a device. Yet, that NAD is chock full of them, and they sound way better than I ever heard them sound before, anywhere.

All of which tells me two things: 1) do it right and it can sound better than we would expect of its price class, and 2) it's not the device, it's how it's used.

Performance per cost, NAD products are OK. C565 is probably one of the cheapest DAC using WOLFSON chip. It's lower class use the lower quality PCM chips like the PCM1710. DAC chip is what makes a big difference in DAC sound.
 
Performance per cost, NAD products are OK. C565 is probably one of the cheapest DAC using WOLFSON chip. It's lower class use the lower quality PCM chips like the PCM1710. DAC chip is what makes a big difference in DAC sound.

I googled something like "CD player DAC list" to come to a list of DAC chips used by many CD players (I even download this to an Excel). Filtered the list with "Wolfson" and I found 3 brands using Wolfson (Onkyo, Naim, Orpheus). I forget what type of Wofson used by NAD C565BEE but without having to check the prices, I'll bet I will pick from any of the 3 brands than the NAD.
 
On my DAC - I seem to remember reading somewhere that such units, including mine, do not have digital brick wall filters, but do have first order analog filters for ultrasonics. If memory serves, and I'm not sure it does, the - 3dB point is around 60 kHz or so.

That is a reconstruction filter.
It seems to be lowering the IMD to euphoric levels.

Its very difficult to make transparent analogue reconstruction filters, but it has been done: AES E-Library High Quality Analog Filters for Digital Audio
 
The no filter DAC is a nonsense.

I am pretty sure that we are able to measure everything we need for excellent sounding audio. The only issue is personal taste.

Not many non-oversampling DAC chips around and we don't know precisely how much the NOS feature itself contribute to the overall performance characteristics. No, we might not need to measure anything as the chip has come with it's measurement characteristics...

The NOS feature for example, may have been responsible with the awful DNR/SNR. But that is still theoretically "acceptable".

So when we can hear the characteristics sound of such chip, it is then an okay project to find out how far the known limitation will limit the quality of the said DAC. Do the best with anything that can still be improved and let ears know what can be achieved with certain limited (measurement) number.

The characteristics of the bass for example, among other things, has been well known. Is it a wrong kind of bass or the right kind? Does it sound that way because of noise, low damping, or other limitations?

Then if theory and ears agree on something, such as if the bass is okay, then one of my intention is to use TDA1543 to produce low frequency in a multi-amping system.

In the last few years I have done many research on active system, and I have tried to implement the crossover at DAC level with multi-DAC system.
 
Jay, you still haven't pointed me to the theory ...

Frank, why do you want me to point you to the "theory"? You are the one who commented "that's non-sense, Jay", "Sorry, fdegrove, that's wrong" when what we did was telling what Doug Rife has mentioned.

You are the one who should show us why "something" (i.e Douglas Rife) is wrong or a non-sense. You either disagree with him, or you don't understand him. If you disagree, don't you think you are the one who should enlighten us where he had go wrong?
 
Frank, why do you want me to point you to the "theory"? You are the one who commented "that's non-sense, Jay", "Sorry, fdegrove, that's wrong" when what we did was telling what Doug Rife has mentioned.
Jay, Rife never uses the term "flawed" in that paper - he does use the word "distortion", and like all audio reproduction mechanisms there will intrinsic distortion, and extra due to poor implementation. Vinyl reproduction involves large amounts of distortion, and so does tape - yet are they deemed "flawed" in enthusiast audio circles?

We can live with certain levels of distortion, otherwise LP and R2R would always sound terrible - and the same goes for CD.
 
Hi,



You can have smearing in the time domain without necessarily having distortion in the frequency domain.

Cheers, ;)

But "smearing in the time domain" wouldn't be distortion either, otherwise, why not call it distortion? So my question remains: what is this smearing in the time domain?

Mathematically, it would be something very special, to only exist in the time, and not in the frequency domain. Fields medal stuff.
 
Tattoo, Nigel, thanks, but the point I was making in my own vague and indirect way is: "smearing in the time domain" is vague audioramble without any technical meaning.

The addition of the term 'time domain' does give the impression of technological prowess, but in a completely nonsensical way. Because the same phenomenon would have an impact on the frequency domain as well. So, my advise to those prone to marketing speak is the following. Henceforth, speak of "smearing" or "smearing in the time and frequency domain", but please realize when you do so, it still means nothing at all.

Douglas Self has a very similar take on harmonic distortion. He says as best I can remember any mechanism that is doing something wrong will show up somewhere as harmonic distortion. I am attracted to this idea as it seems logical. It might not be a large amount, it should show something. Equally if transient in nature maybe not? The best example I know of is a bipolar amp on the edge of TID or slewing problems seems to show crossover distortion up the wave. No big deal that I guess. Don't think I ever saw it written? Ben Duncan maybe.

The Quantum unit is very weird. As far as I can tell it injects some pseudo random RF and maybe LF noise into the system ( square waves). I had it on the scope and saw that. On a listening test I did notice when using a Naim NAP 250 that saxophone was noticeably sweeter. All very strange. I have wondered when listening to the Hypex amp what all that 400 kHz - 20 db must be doing ? Sounds pretty nice really.
 
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