On Stereophile's "Dolby Atmos: A Bleak Shadow?" - really? š¤
I sawĀ Stereophile's "Dolby Atmos: a Bleak Shadow?" article the other day. Honestly, I found it a bit irritating. The ideas seemed poorly contextualized with little background or meaning for what I...
View ArticleCautionary Tale: Audiophile's dream's end... Make sure to find balance,...
Ā I remember a couple of years ago, I saw this YouTube documentary on Ken Fritz: That is certainly an impressive demonstration of dedication and passion poured into the sound room and audio system! Few...
View ArticleComputer Parts: Marvell AQC113C 10GbE network card (QFly NIC-10G), PCIe x4...
Over the years, I've written about transitioning to faster ethernet here at home with standard copper 10GBASE-T (10GbE) cabling,Ā beginning back in 2018. This works fine even with Cat-5e in the walls of...
View ArticleREVIEW: HUNSN [CWWK] RJ36 Fanless MiniPC - Intel i3-N305 (12th Gen "Alder...
Another year, another upgrade to the sound room MiniPC! š Honestly, for audio streaming purposes, I could easily just use the very low power MeLE Quieter2Q as a Roon endpoint with multichannel...
View ArticleHUNSN [CWWK] RJ36 Fanless MiniPC: Intel i3-N305. Power-limiting, setup, Roon...
Okay, let's continue with our exploration of the fanless HUNSN/CWWK i3-N305 computer discussed last week. This time, we'll focus on what I did here to get it running as my music end-point (for Roon),...
View ArticleREVIEW: AGPTEK A30X Music Player - inexpensive 32GB utility DAP/MP3 Player....
Open box: music player, quite comprehensive manual, USB-C to A cable, inexpensive earbuds, strap, and lanyard (can be a little tough to snake this through the hole on the bottom right, use a needle or...
View ArticleHome Audio Fidelity's (HAF) X-talk Shaper DSP. And is crosstalk...
See video and plug-in info atĀ Home Audio Fidelity site.Let's spend some time talking about X-talk ShaperĀ in this post, a new DSP plug-in that will allow speaker system listeners enjoy crosstalk...
View ArticleEARLY LOOK (Part I): E1DA #9039S USB Balanced DAC/headphone amp - Super...
Hey everyone, it's time to have another look at a product from the engineering workshop of Ivan Khlyupin (IVX) at E1DAĀ - the E1DA #9039S:Notice balanced 2.5mm TRRS phono output.As you can see, it's a...
View ArticleEARLY LOOK (Part II): E1DA #9039S USB Balanced DAC dongle/headphone amp - DSD...
Last week, I published Part I of the review/measurements on the upcoming E1DA #9039S USB dongle DAC/headphone amplifier. Already, we've seen that this ESS ES9039Q2M-based balanced DAC produces very...
View ArticleExpensive Audio & Medical Quackery: Mark Levinson promoting Daniel Hertz "C...
While perusing news updates the other day over Spring Break on my Google news feed, there was a suggestion to check outĀ this YouTube video of an interview with Mark Levinson; apparently Levinson had...
View Article2024 "High-End" DAC Blind Listening Survey!
*Surprise!* It's time for another listening survey.I like doing these once awhile because it's an opportunity for audiophiles to actually listen for differences between devices, resolutions, or even...
View ArticleDetailed THD(+N) vs. Output Level Measurements of ESS ES9039Q2M. Balanced...
Hey everyone, I wanted to post a follow-up of sorts to a couple of previous articles. First, the article "Hi-Res THD(+N) vs. Output Level Measurements (ESS "HyperStream" vs. AKM vs. TI/Burr-Brown). And...
View ArticleAs We Hear It: Audiophile cable truths, claims, and reviewer age....
Hey everyone, this week let's have a look at a recent E-mail I received and think about the "classic" audiophile topic of contention over the decades - cables!It has been awhile since I've talked about...
View ArticleMUSINGS: On Hardware Audiophilia and Wine Tasting.
Across the years of audiophile discussions, we sometimes will see parallels drawn between the world of the oenophile (wine connoisseur) and hardware audiophile. While both pursuits involve a strong...
View ArticleNYC Explorations: Audio46, Stereo Exchange, and dwindling audiophile stores.
New York - after the rain.Hey everyone, it's nice to be back home on the West Coast after the trip to NYC. May is a great time to visit so long as one catches some nice weather! At least it's not too...
View Article"High-End" DAC Blind Listening Results - PART I: Devices Unveiled!
The time has come friends. Over the last 6 weeks, I've been collecting the data from the 2024 "High-End" DAC Blind Listening Survey. The procedure I think is already well described in that test invite...
View Article"High-End" DAC Blind Listening Results - PART II: Results & Analyses
I imagine that the banner graphic above must be so bizarre for some audiophiles! How is it even possible that the audio output from something cheap like the Apple USB-C headphone dongle could be...
View Article"High-End" DAC Blind Listening Results - PART III: Subjective Descriptions
In this last part of the "High-End" DAC Blind Listening SurveyĀ write-up, (see Part I, Part II) let me document the more qualitative aspects of the responses I received from listeners. These come from...
View ArticleThe E1DA Cosmos Stack: ADCiso and 2 APUs. An example of bad multichannel -...
E1DA Cosmos ADCiso Grade A center.Cosmos ADC Prototype I've been using over the years to the left.Readers here probably are aware that over the last few years, I've been using the E1DA line of devices,...
View ArticleMEASUREMENTS: Nordost-like flat silver-plated copper speaker cables. And,...
Cables are fun to play with! They look different, there are all kinds of brands available, and for some audiophiles, there's a sense that the sound has been "changed" if not "improved" when trying...
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