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PostPosted: August 3rd, 2017, 2:53 pm 
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Joined: June 4th, 2013, 2:39 pm
Posts: 487
I bought the Elijah Audio cable. Listening to it again now.
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ETA: ...and I remember why I don't like it. :-( Dry and compressed sounding.


Last edited by Grover Gardner on August 3rd, 2017, 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: August 3rd, 2017, 8:03 pm 
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Joined: March 12th, 2013, 11:45 am
Posts: 77
Location: Glen Burnie, MD
Don Diego wrote:
charliewphelps@gmail.com wrote:
At this time I'm using a CAPS server Carbon type computer with linux and a SoTM USB output card with a separate linear supply with a LPS for the computer using linux to work MPD with bit perfect output to the La Scala DAC. For the first time in my life I think that analog has lost. I never would have believed it could happen. If anybody is interested they can stop by for a listen after I get back from Grover's (I'm heading out there to see him next week). I don't have to much space but one or two at a time could be accommodated. I haven't listened to analog in months -- hi res digital is more than I could ever have imagined.

Charlie.


Heresy :violence-duel:

I listened to the La Scala and Formula DACs in May and deemed them to be a toss up. Each one bested the other depending on the music but if I had to characterize the differences I would say I found the La Scala to be more dimensional and musical and the Formula to be more detailed. I need to go back up to NYC for some more listening comparisons. Have you listened to any DSD128 files and compared them to Hi-rez PCM?



Don, The US Importer/distributor is right here in NOVA and is a friend of mine. We can arrange another audition without you going to NYC. Charlie has a LaScala II in his system.


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PostPosted: August 12th, 2017, 2:14 am 
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Joined: June 4th, 2013, 2:39 pm
Posts: 487
Just an update on this topic. Charlie was here this week and we listened to some wonderful music. This afternoon the final parts arrived for adding the SOTM USB board to my Celeron-based mini-PC. I had to order a mini-PCI to PCI-E adaptor and a PCI-E extension cable. I popped in the adaptor, connected the USB board and powered it with a little 7.5 volt supply I have from another audiophile gadget. Fired up Snakeoil-OS, selected the MPD player and it saw the DAC right away. No hitches whatsoever. The difference is astonishing--much cleaner and sweeter, with a big open soundstage.

Next step is the HDPLex LPS to power both the computer and the board. Then I'll probably order a new Celeron motherboard so I can add the SOTM SATA filter and an SSD.

Honestly folks, if you don't think this makes a difference you need to hear it. It was like getting a major transport upgrade for $400. If you have a motherboard that can accomodate it I highly recommend it.


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PostPosted: August 12th, 2017, 7:33 am 
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Joined: February 28th, 2013, 3:31 pm
Posts: 363
Awesome. Glad you were able to try it, Grover. The final results should be even better.


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PostPosted: August 12th, 2017, 9:29 am 
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Joined: February 19th, 2017, 9:43 am
Posts: 530
KLH007 wrote:
Don Diego wrote:
charliewphelps@gmail.com wrote:
At this time I'm using a CAPS server Carbon type computer with linux and a SoTM USB output card with a separate linear supply with a LPS for the computer using linux to work MPD with bit perfect output to the La Scala DAC. For the first time in my life I think that analog has lost. I never would have believed it could happen. If anybody is interested they can stop by for a listen after I get back from Grover's (I'm heading out there to see him next week). I don't have to much space but one or two at a time could be accommodated. I haven't listened to analog in months -- hi res digital is more than I could ever have imagined.

Charlie.


Heresy :violence-duel:

I listened to the La Scala and Formula DACs in May and deemed them to be a toss up. Each one bested the other depending on the music but if I had to characterize the differences I would say I found the La Scala to be more dimensional and musical and the Formula to be more detailed. I need to go back up to NYC for some more listening comparisons. Have you listened to any DSD128 files and compared them to Hi-rez PCM?



Don, The US Importer/distributor is right here in NOVA and is a friend of mine. We can arrange another audition without you going to NYC. Charlie has a LaScala II in his system.


Said friend and demo LaScala are supposed to be here in about a half hour. If anyone is interested in hearing it here let me know.

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PostPosted: August 13th, 2017, 7:43 am 
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Joined: July 8th, 2016, 4:34 pm
Posts: 570
Anyone interested in computer audio might fine ecasound of interest -

https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/

Look at the features and examples.


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PostPosted: August 20th, 2017, 10:37 am 
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Joined: July 8th, 2016, 4:34 pm
Posts: 570
For linux users there is a project on github of interest -

https://github.com/bmc0/dsp/wiki/System-Wide-DSP-Guide

the documentation is not great but what I think it is doing is providing a simplified command line front end for alsa programming. Note that there is a plot option (via gnuplot) to plot the frequency transfer function of whatever dsp processing you implement. for example the command -

dsp -pn gain -1.5 lowshelf 60 0.7 +7.8 | gnuplot

produces the plot -


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PostPosted: August 20th, 2017, 11:30 am 
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Joined: July 24th, 2015, 4:17 pm
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Location: Parkville, Maryland
Although you all know that I am not fond of digital since I have audio sex with vinyl :lol: but I have learned one thing about digital -- to say that it is slow because you are reproducing audio is not even close to the reality of it. Even when a system is capable of 20-mHz. bandwidth it still can't quite get to the rock dragging through a groove playback and it all has to do with rise times. Digital audio is NOT looking for the presence or absence of a square wave (the basis for the SP/DIF standard as some would believe). it is looking for transitions -- the transition across the top of the digital square wave and the transition across the void to the next -- those transitions is where the code lies. And to make things even more complicated, the data is not sequential as some would believe also. It in disassociated "packets" to give error correction a shot at keeping things going if there is data corruption of some sort.

Rise times of less than 5-nano seconds is somewhat typical and most likely the reason digital interconnects have so much influence on the sound not to mention timing between bit and word clocks and the relationship to the actual data.

Record cutters (Neumann, Ortofon, Scully, to name a few) can easily deal with a 40-50-kHz. bandwidth giving old fashioned analog lots of breathing room. Even so-called high resolution digital that one would think can get the job done, it is still "reassembling a jig-saw puzzle" with the attendant distortions. The British press is far more candid and critical about hi-res than the American press -- one can only guess why.

Shashi's speakers were a work in progress but they reconfirmed my personal experiences -- his Altecs were an "audio microscope" and they mercilessly revealed the digital anomalies that keeps me investing in vinyl playback.

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PostPosted: August 20th, 2017, 4:06 pm 
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Since most new HiRez recordings have 80KHz+ for recording bandwidth, this is much higher than the cutter heads you mention.

Since the introduction of USB2 Audio interface using async high stability clocks and variable buffer lengths, the S/PDIF analogy does not hold. The interface is capable of up to 480Mb/sec data transfer and the packets are loaded into memory before replay and clocked out with low phase noise clocks. Vinyl has more timing error in motor stability by orders of magnitude. You can hear this in acoustic instruments like piano on even excellent tables.

The british have written a few papers on why digital sounds digital. More to do with reconstruction filter type than anything mentioned.

The other issue is that the vinyl system has to compress and filter the signal before pressing onto vinyl. Not so for the analog of digital master tapes used to make them or digitized for HiRez replay. Case in point is Reference Recordings where you get bit for bit copies of the digital master tapes.

The DIY DAC at CAF2016 I built had a reconstruction filter that was not linear phase. Also used an async USB2 interface for I2S Bus feed to the DAC. Very good digital sound for $150.

Computer audio has come a long way for excellent sound!


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PostPosted: August 30th, 2017, 7:15 pm 
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Joined: July 17th, 2016, 6:24 am
Posts: 1099
Excellent MPD Client.

O!MPD is a fork of netjukebox maintained by a polish gentleman. It is a web interface written in PHP with MySQL database. Instead of overloading my MPD machine, I installed Ubuntu, PHP and MySql and O!MPD on an old laptop. Entire process took about 30 mins. Once you mount the music folder in the same path as defined in mpd.conf, O!Mpd manages the music library and mpd.

If you are looking for a good MPD client, give O!MPD a try.

http://ompd.pl/


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