Hey everyone. It really gets dark in January in Vancouver; just the kind of weather to cozy up in bed with a nice book or maybe some spirits in front of the hi-fi system :-).
So, I thought I'd offer up a few miscellaneous thoughts this week as I looked over recent CES reports.
I figured it'd be good to spend a few moments on the new encoding techniques that came out or were announced in 2014. I
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MUSINGS: Miscellanies on audio encoding (Dolby Atmos & Meridian MQA Concerns)
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'Last' Words on PONO - Mastering Analysis & General Comments
(A friend thought the new Broadway musical hilarious.)
At some point in a relationship, we reach the end of the honeymoon...
That's of course not describing my personal relationship with the Pono idea since I've been critical of the hype put forth by Neil Young and others (like John Hamm) since the start. I'm suggesting rather that the honeymoon between anticipation for Pono with 'the world
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MUSINGS: What Is The Value of High Resolution Audio (HRA)?
enough?
I promised not to talk about Pono anymore, so I won't to a significant degree :-). This article is one about high-resolution audio in general.
It has been interesting seeing the audiophile press's responses to articles such as:
Gizmodo's "Don't Buy What Neil Young Is Selling"
Pitchfork's "The Myth and the Reality of the $43 Download"
with these:
Analog Planet's (Michael
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MUSINGS: The ongoing Vinyl vs. Digital debate...
The always assertive Batman. But assertiveness isn't necessarily correct...
(Just a shortish post this week... I've covered much of this in the past.)
As I mentioned in the comments section of the previous post on HRA, there have been discussions recently again around the sound quality of vinyl compared to CD. I assume it started from this article "Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl
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MEASUREMENTS: Bob Dylan's "Shadows In The Night" - when 24-bit HRA isn't! (Qobuz)
A reader gave me a tip about the new Shadows In The Night album from Bob Dylan. The allegation is that this album in fact is NOT true 24-bits as claimed!
To start, here's a video to show what the inversion-null should look like with a true 24-bit audio sample:
Now, consider what happens when we use a 24-bit track from Qobuz versus the same track ripped off the 16-bit CD:
As you can
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MEASUREMENTS: Ethernet Cables and Audio...
Remember folks, this is what an "ethernet frame" looks like. It's data. There is no "music" in there until decoded and prepared for the DAC! Notice the CRC bytes for error detection. (The numbers represents how many bytes for each segment.)
0. Preamble
Hey folks, over the years, I have been critical of high-end audio cables... Previously, I have shown that RCA analog interconnects
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MEASUREMENTS: The Intercontinental Internet Audio Streaming Test...
Time to go intercontinental. :-) [Scene from the old movie War Games.]
After the ethernet cable results last week and the absence of any difference, there was discussion about an extreme internet music server test. What if instead of maybe 100 feet of ethernet cable from server to player, we had thousands of miles of cables in between?
With help from Mnyb from the Squeezebox Forum, we were
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MUSINGS: Audio Quality, The Various Formats, and Diminishing Returns - In Pictures!
Let me be the first to say that graphs and charts where audio formats are plotted out in terms of unidimensional sound quality ratings are ridiculously oversimplified and can be very misleading! However, they can be fun to look at and could be used as bite-sized "memes" for discussion when meeting up with audio friends or for illustration when people ask about audio quality.
Since they're out
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2015-02-27: HiFi Centre Grand Reopening...
About a year ago, I reported on the B&W Nautilus demo at the HiFi Centre here in Vancouver. That was at their old location... As of late February, they're now in the new place near Vancouver Chinatown and to celebrate, they had a nice (re)opening event (February 27, 2015). It caught some publicity from the Stereophile web site as well.
I decided to go check it out after work on the Friday and
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MUSINGS: Audiophiles "Us vs. Them" (Objectivists vs. Subjectivists) Attitudes and Envy!?
Since I'm stuck at LAX on my way home from a wonderful Spring Break with the wife and kids down in Texas as well as a Caribbean cruise, I thought I'd polish my response to Hal Espen's comment in the last post... BTW, I enjoyed visiting Bjorn's in San Antonio just to see the audio and home theater gear they had on display. Some really nice stuff and it looks like they're upgrading their main
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MUSINGS: Gone 4K / UHD - A "Look" At Ultra-High-Definition...
This week, I thought I'd take a break from just the audio stuff and discuss a new "toy" I got 5 weeks ago. That's right, as the title suggests, a 4K / UHD screen; it's a computer monitor to be exact:
A view from behind the commander's chair :-). BenQ BL3201PH on the table.
Remember that there's a separate "body" defining 4K movies at the local movieplex - the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI).
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ANALYSIS: DSD-to-PCM Conversion 2015 - Windows & Mac OS X
Impulse Response: One of the talking points from back in the day as a selling point for DSD... Yup! DSD can better reproduce a 0.000003 second "click". Source: Merging Technologies
I. Preamble
It is amazing how quickly another year has passed. About this time last year, I posted the first comparison of DSD Encoders and Decoders "shoot-out" of sorts comparing Weiss Saracon 01.61-27, KORG
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ANALYSIS: DSD-to-PCM 2015 - foobar SACD Plug-In, AuI ConverteR, noise & impulse response...
Noise characteristics of PCM vs. DSD - image found here.
In my post last week looking at the various DSD-to-PCM converters, Solderdude Frans made a good suggestion... Let's have a look at the newer SACD plugin which has superseded the DSDIFF plug-in as the converter of choice these days for foobar. Also, it was suggested by Yuri Korzunov, the author of AuI ConverteR 48x44 to have a look at his
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PERSPECTIVE: Poll - Upgraded USB and Sound?
I enjoy visiting the Steve Hoffman Forums for perspective. I think it's probably one of the most balanced places to hang out at. Of course, as in any audio forum, there will be a number of heated arguments here and there, but overall, it's great to see a place where heterogeneous music lovers of various experience levels and beliefs can congregate, share tips, and get advice... It's certainly one
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INTERNET BLIND TEST: Linear vs. Minimum Phase Upsampling Filters
I. Introduction
Ladies and gentlemen, audiophiles of all ages; you have probably seen pictures like the ones above many times in the magazines, posted online, etc. You know that many DACs these days feature the ability to adjust the way the antialiasing reconstruction filters are "tuned". I remember reading about and becoming fascinated by the different filters back in 2006 with Keith
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MEASUREMENTS: Corning USB 3 Optical Cable, Ground Loops, and Noise.
Folks, remember, the "Linear Phase vs. Minimum Phase Digital Filter Test" is still running as I post this! Please give it a try and report back in the survey. I want data and hopefully an opportunity to report back on what the readership perceives (or not perceive).
I. Introduction
Indeed, "noise" can be an issue with audio systems. There's little worse that can happen to an audiophile after
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Vancouver Audio Show 2015: Pictorial & Comments...
Remember folks! Get me your "Digital Filters Test" results :-). Thanks to everyone who has already responded with the survey submission so far... Great work. Final results could be very interesting; keep the submissions coming.
Over the years I have traveled to other parts of the world and have enjoyed visiting "tech malls" as I just love technology, science, and advancement. There are huge
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Greetings from Toronto...
I've been busy over the last week in Toronto - work plus a little sightseeing and visiting with family and friends. With my hotel nearby, I managed to scoot over to Bay Bloor Radio at the intersection of Bay and Charles streets downtown to have a listen.
I believe this is the largest (by space) audio store in the downtown Toronto area. They have a reasonable selection of audio gear to
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MEASUREMENTS: Computer USB port noise, USB hubs and the 8kHz PHY Microframe Packet Noise
Block diagram of the USB 'PHYsical' chipset. UTMI stands for USB 2.0 Transceiver Macrocell Interface, a standard bus interface for the USB chipsets out there...
One could see the "glass half full" when we run into imperfections in the audio system. For example, it was serendipitous that the Emotiva XSP-1 pre-amp had such a noise-sensitive unbalanced "HT Bypass" input that I was able to
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MEASUREMENTS: The Effect of Speaker Grills...
"Clothed" or "Naked"... What's the difference?
A quick measurement for this week...
I was curious the other day as I was doing some room measurements what effect speaker grills make. My Paradigm Signature S8 V3's have typical fabric and plastic grills up front. Simple question - How much difference does the grill make to the sound of the speaker?
Audiophile magazines and "serious"
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