MEASUREMENTS: Roon 1.6 Upsampling Digital Filter Options & A Discussion on...
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...
View ArticleCOMPARISON: Roon DSP speed - Intel i5-6500 vs. Intel i7-7700K... (and the...
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...
View ArticleA 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,...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: Experiments in audio component grounding - using a bus bar &...
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...
View ArticleBLIND TEST Results Part 1: "Do digital audio players sound different playing...
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,...
View ArticleBLIND TEST Results Part 2: "Do digital audio players sound different playing...
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...
View ArticleBLIND TEST Results Part 3: "Do digital audio players sound different playing...
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...
View ArticleBLIND TEST Results Part 4: "Do digital audio players sound different playing...
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......
View ArticlePOLL 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...
View ArticleGUEST POST: Why We Should Use Software Volume Control / Management by Bennet...
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...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: 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 (
View ArticleMUSINGS and LISTENING: On Absolute Polarity / Phase... (And on the joy of the...
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...
View ArticleLISTENING: Fully battery-powered wireless streamer & amplifier system (Yeeco...
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...
View ArticleSUMMER MUSINGS: "How Much Difference Does It Make?" - On Balance and Adequacy...
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...
View ArticleSUMMER MUSINGS 2: Multichannel and the audiophile. MCh streaming with a TV...
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...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: "Noisy" Switching Power Supplies vs. Lithium Battery Packs (12V...
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...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: 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...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: Speaker Impedance - Part 1; measurement box, dummy loads and...
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...
View ArticleMUSINGS / DEMO: Why "Bits Are Bits". Let's not add unnecessary fear,...
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...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: Speaker Impedance - Part 2; sealed, ported, and a few of my...
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...
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