Tekton Double Impacts

Yes we as audiophiles can now put together amazing sounding systems for reasonable money. Great options such as those from Tekton, Lyngdorf, LTA and others.  

I'm with imswjm, the TDAI 2170 seems almost too good to be true. No interconnects, 1 power cord, short signal paths, plenty powerful, RoomPerfect, and grannyring has tried to advance it's sonics with other amps unsuccessfully, the unit as is is top shelf. It can take HDMI in, so BluRays get included. Grannyring, have you any opinion on the  ICC (INTER-SAMPLE CLIPPING CORRECTION) ? I'm really surprised the TDAI 2170 hasn't gotten more traction/exposure given the stellar reviews? It's too bad he doesn't own DIs.

ICC, well it is always active and I have not listened with it off. I must say I don't know that much about it and should read more in my manual. My bad. I will do so now. 

Here is the explanation from the Lyngdorf site. I understand the point and just know it, the unit,  sounds very good:)  Someone smarter than I in these matters, such as Almag, can perhaps comment on the theory anyway. 

"ICC (INTER-SAMPLE CLIPPING CORRECTION)

When music is being mastered, the level is often very high; upon analysis, you will often find several consecutive maximum samples, indicating something has been clipped away from the original signal. Audio that exceeds 0 dBFS (decibels relative to full scale) will sound very compressed because the headroom is nonexistent. This harsh sound is an unfortunate trend in the music industry and is typically referred to as “the loudness war.”

In order to compensate for this, we have created ICC (Inter-sample Clipping Correction). With ICC, the TDAI-2170 can automatically adjust up to 12dB headroom in the signal processing to avoid clipping of the signal. Through this you will enjoy the full dynamic range and a more natural sound."

http://www.lyngdorf.com/media/43162/without-icc.jpg?width=1800&height=1350&mode=crop&qua...

http://www.lyngdorf.com/media/43163/with-icc.jpg?width=1800&height=1350&mode=crop&qualit...

Hi Bill (Grannyring),

I’ve had occasion to examine the waveforms and associated statistics of tracks from about a dozen or so CDs, encompassing pop, rock, and classical music, using a professional audio editing program (Sound Forge). Most did not have a single sample that reached full scale (i.e., the maximum possible digital value). A couple of them did, both being classical works having very wide dynamic range, but even in those cases that only occurred for a handful of brief instants during the course of a lengthy work. While on the rest of the CDs the maximum instantaneous volume of any sample ranged between a fraction of a db below full scale and many db below full scale. And I would expect in cases where the maximum sample value comes close to full scale that the original captures were made with much greater margins, and levels were subsequently boosted during the mastering process with software assuring that the maximum sample value would not reach 0 db.

In general, I would expect that with the possible exception of some works having extremely wide dynamic range any reasonably competent recording engineer would make a point of not over-driving (exceeding the maximum possible digital value of) the A/D converter.

So I would not expect the issue referred to in the ICC writeup to be much if any concern on the vast majority of recordings.

Also, the major contributor to what is referred to as the "loudness wars" is not what is described in the writeup. That term is usually used to refer to dynamic compression that is intentionally applied in the engineering of the recording, to make soft passages louder and loud passages softer. That creates the perception of a louder recording than if dynamics were not compressed, and makes the recording better suited to noisy environments, such as cars, and more attention grabbing in such environments.

So the bottom line seems to me to be that **IF** the ICC is implemented such that it does nothing unless samples reach 0 db (full scale) it will make no difference on most recordings, and only an occasional difference on the others.

Best regards,
-- Al