As discussed last month, I've started using Roon as my main music player for the sound room recently. Back in the days of Roon 1.2, many users performed upsampling using HQPlayer. While HQPlayer integration is still available (go to Settings --> Setup to access the installation option), since version 1.3, Roon has incorporated its own DSP samplerate conversion which I suspect would be
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MEASUREMENTS: Roon 1.6 Upsampling Digital Filter Options & A Discussion on "Signal Path" Quality...
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COMPARISON: Roon DSP speed - Intel i5-6500 vs. Intel i7-7700K... (and the value of Intel Speed Shift!)
As mentioned, a little while back when I wrote about Roon, I was about to receive a "drop in" Intel i7-7700K CPU for my Server machine which runs Roon Core. I was able to find the i7-7700K used for a decent price and I didn't feel like dismantling the machine and upgrading the Z170 motherboard since the newest CPUs now need a Z3XX series board. Furthermore, for me, one of the least interesting
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A Look (and Listen) to some audio gear in Taiwan and Singapore...
Hey everyone, as discussed recently, I had an opportunity to visit Asia over the Spring Break. Since it is "audio show season" with AXPONA in Chicago last week and Munich High End coming up in May, perhaps it's a good time to post up some images and descriptions of what I found in Asia this time.
While it was a family vacation, I found time to do a little bit of "window shopping" myself and
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MEASUREMENTS: Experiments in audio component grounding - using a bus bar & HumX. And on the last The Cranberries album, on audio quality legacy...
You may remember a number of years ago, I talked about reducing interference I was experiencing with my Emotiva XSP-1 pre-amp. The issue had to do with the audio system picking up interference and noise through the pre-amp's "Home Theater Bypass" unbalanced RCA input when connected to my AV receiver. This "HT Bypass" mode is used as a conduit for the front channels and subwoofer out when the
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BLIND TEST Results Part 1: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Devices Unblinded! (Plus unusual exuberance & bias in the media?)
Thanks everyone for taking the time and efforts in performing the blind test which we started back in late January!
I officially closed off my survey from submissions May 1st (I promised April 30th, but gave a few hours more for stragglers from different time zones). I trust the 3 months provided plenty of time for everyone who wanted to perform the test to do so. I'll leave the blind
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BLIND TEST Results Part 2: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Relative objective performance. [And a few words about "Legends"...]
Last week, I revealed the four CD-resolution / 16/44.1 playback devices I used for this blind test. (By the way, if you want to have a listen to the original 16/44.1 track excerpts used, I added a link as an addendum to the post last week.)
While I'm still doing some counting, calculations, and writing the summary of the data, I think it's best this week to start by having a better look at
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BLIND TEST Results Part 3: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Listener Results.
Thanks for the patience everyone. We are now into Part 3 of the report on the Internet Blind Test on the audibility of 16/44.1 digital playback using various devices. In Part 1 we talked about the test procedure itself and unblinded the devices (ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard, Apple iPhone 6, Oppo UDP-205 as ethernet DAC, and Sony SCD-CE775 playing a burned CD-R).
Last week in Part 2, we
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BLIND TEST Results Part 4: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Subjective Comments. Final thoughts on blind testing and critiques.
As we close off discussions and posts around the Internet Blind Test of devices playing 16/44.1 music, I want to publish some of the subjective comments from respondents who undertook this test... Impressions in the respondents' own words about the test when they submitted their results to me.
Remember that these are subjective. Human perception, especially when differences are at the
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POLL RESULTS: Music streaming service adoption among audiophiles in 2019...
Click on image to zoom.
Yeah, I know. Music streaming as a subscription model is the latest "revolution" for music lovers. This is why I decided to put up the recent poll in mid-March while we were concurrently also running the blind test as reported on in the last few weeks. Above, you see the overall results based on the visitors to this blog.
Remember that for the poll, I allowed voters to
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GUEST POST: Why We Should Use Software Volume Control / Management by Bennet Ng. (Plus discussions on resampling options, true peaks, etc...)
I received an invitation from Archimago to write something about volume control. While I am of the opinion that digital and analog volume controls can coexist to achieve an ideal gain stage, this article is mainly about PCM digital volume control.
The basic conclusion we can say regarding digital volume control is that as long as the playback device has higher bit-depth than the file source,
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MEASUREMENTS: Topping D10 DAC. (And a few words on "absolute polarity / phase".)
Hey guys, getting busy around here as I'm preparing for summer holidays coming up in a couple of weeks :-).
I did want to post a "quick" report however on the Topping D10 DAC (
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MUSINGS and LISTENING: On Absolute Polarity / Phase... (And on the joy of the modern audiophile.)
Hey guys and gals, I thought for this post we'll spend a bit more time on the topic of "absolute polarity". As you can see from the post last week in the comments, our man in Japan Yamamoto2002 posted a link to his page where he has an interesting test signal for all to listen to.
If we look at the test signal he used, it's an asymmetrical waveform where half of it appears to be a standard
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LISTENING: Fully battery-powered wireless streamer & amplifier system (Yeeco - TI TPA3116D2, TalentCell 12V battery)
A few weeks ago, I read this review on an independent audiophile site about an inexpensive Nobsound Class D amplifier based on the TI TPA3116 chip. I was curious so I ordered an equivalent one off Amazon - the little Yeeco Bluetooth-capable amplifier shown above with box contents including the 12V power supply for <$US32 (for an even cheaper package, here's one without the switching power
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SUMMER MUSINGS: "How Much Difference Does It Make?" - On Balance and Adequacy for audiophiles.
The other day, I was reading Jim Austin's "As We See It" post on Stereophile titled "How Does the Music Make You Feel?". A relatively sensible article putting forward his and the magazine's perspective around finding "balance" between the subjective and objective sides of the audiophile pursuit. I agree with the central thesis, ultimately it is a subjective decision how one wants to
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SUMMER MUSINGS 2: Multichannel and the audiophile. MCh streaming with a TV Box. And Thoughts on the Future...
Hope you're all having a great summer... I thought I should take the opportunity to respond to this comment from Steven on the blog post last time broadly and with more details:
Steven 8 July 2019 at 21:07
What about surround sound? Some of us are into that stuff. ;> It does change things slightly. USB and S/PDIF won't suffice for lossless 4.0/5.1/and beyond audio data. That leaves HDMI
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MEASUREMENTS: "Noisy" Switching Power Supplies vs. Lithium Battery Packs (12V battery with RME ADI-2 Pro FS & Topping D10 DAC results)
Perhaps we don't think about it much or give it enough credit. I believe one of the advances in the last few decades that has provided the foundation for technological progress we enjoy today is the lithium ion battery. Li batteries were commercially released in 1991 and since then, thanks to the energy density available, combined with increasingly efficient electronics, all kinds of things
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MEASUREMENTS: AudioQuest Dragonflies Reviewed! Dragonfly v1.2, Red, and Cobalt.
Audiophiles following the news cycle know by now that the new AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt is out. About 3 weeks back, I noticed out of the blue (no pun intended), almost all mainstream audiophile websites had a post or promotional "give away" for one of these! Clearly this made a significant splash in the collective audiophile psyche.
Over the years, I've reviewed and measured these little USB
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MEASUREMENTS: Speaker Impedance - Part 1; measurement box, dummy loads and single speakers...
As you know, speaker impedance is not a "flat" resistance across the audio spectrum as one would find with a resistor. Rather when we measure the speaker load, we see fluctuations affected by the voice coils and crossover networks inside that speaker "box".
Remember that the electrical signal that represents "sound" are alternating waveforms. Thus we are in the domain of AC analysis when
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MUSINGS / DEMO: Why "Bits Are Bits". Let's not add unnecessary fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Something I have noticed over the years commenting on the audiophile hobby has been how incessant and persistent various themes tend to be. Just like the apparently never-ending arguments of "digital vs. analogue/vinyl", or "CD vs. hi-res", or "subjective vs. objective", there has been this mostly friendly banter between those who feel that essentially "bits are bits" vs. those who
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MEASUREMENTS: Speaker Impedance - Part 2; sealed, ported, and a few of my speakers...
A couple weeks back, I started discussing speaker impedance curves and how one as an audiophile hobbyist might want to measure these ourselves. There are thousands of speaker models out there and while some in the audiophile press do a good job with providing objective results (like Stereophile), sadly, most magazines do not publish the information, and most manufacturers do not openly
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