thank you @astewart8944 - Like I was thinking, maybe this is better as an external gadget.
To put this another way, most of us have no way to tell if a digital source is very poor, mediocre, or great. I'd like a little gadget that could tell me.
Best,
E
|
Look at it another way. We spend a lot of tiem money and effort looking for things to fix. Wouldn't it be good to have a dac that turns red if a particular source is no longer performing well?
I mean, if we hear something change, we often look for cables, power conditioners, or even room acoustics (which are always important!)
I'd love to have a little light saying "Man, it is really hard to lock onto this device now."
Best,
E
|
The reason this is not common as it’s not really needed.
No one has any idea if this is needed or not because end users never get to measure it themselves. The argument here is really that unless it's blatantly obvious to the ear we should not care. To those people I ask: Do you even buy high end equipment? I've read a number of reviews, and experienced enough variance in performance of sources to know that this is not the case. Having some sort of Green/yellow/red indicator about signal quality and noise I think would be helpful. For instance, there are a number of reclockers and signal cleaners on the market. Wouldn't it be nice if our DACs could indicate directly if a particular source might benefit from it? Like, green on CD player, green on streamer, but woah, that AppleTV signal is a mess. So pick your place. Bits are bits and unless the signal drops out I don't care, or I care about signal quality and would like to know if I'm missing something important. Best, E |
If you are going to interject your own agenda without actually addressing the original post it is considered polite to start your own thread.
|
Alternatively, maybe this should be a gadget? Why am I telling you guys all my best ideas ?
Best,
E
|
@celander Exactly.
To answer the question about what we would use externally, jitter, noise and distortion measurements. I don't think we need to have all that test gear in place though.
For instance, there's circuitry which is making choices about adjusting the DAC to the incoming signal. Knowing some basic statistics about that. Like, what is the incoming long term variance? How often are there outliers?
The complicated view techs might see could be reduced in my mind.
I know at least one DAC even claims to compensate for impedance mismatches, so this must be measurable.
Best,
E
|
All DAC's attempt to isolate themselves from jitter, ground loop and noise and do so with relatively different levels of success.
I think given the drop in processing power, cost of excellent clocks and DAC chips, maybe this can take over after everyone is done with MQA. :)
Best,
E
|
Yep, Source programming and delivery can be a problem with some media.
Right? Like with streaming. Would be nice to know |
decooney -
I'm not arguing that the total elimination of noise and distortion is audio nirvana.
I am saying that there could be a boatload of noise in the digital signal chain we are not aware of and it is best to know that than to start guessing what might be wrong.
Best,
E
|
audioman -
The issue there is the same. I’ve read technical reviews on iFi purifiers that show them to be a really mixed bag. They don’t do enough to control power supply noise, and end up just moving noise from one area to another. See if you can find it on google. Lots of charts and measurements in it.
The problem for us consumers is if there is an audible change, we don't really know which is better. What if the purifier, or digital cable is actually awful, but we buy it because it sounds different?
I'd rather have some way, built into my DAC, that tells me. Like signal strength meters or tuning centering meters on old FM tuners.
Best,
Erik
|
Todd -
I didn't know they had that! That's pretty awesome.
E
|
Hi Steve,
Thank you, would love to see what you come up with. In my mind there is more than one type of problem which could occur, not just jitter. Like for instance, what about a CD player which has no jitter, but is just slow? Plus EMI/RFI / ground noise and the like.
Best,
E
|
Hey Steve! I saw your purifier on your web site. One thing that caught my eye was incompatability with XMOS based inputs. Is this because they require a +5 V input?
|
