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  1. Ken Newton

    What is the benefit of very expensive DACs?

    Those same questions can be applied to any audio component. First, there's the law of diminishing return regarding performance/price ratios. Incremental improvements in sound quality become exponentially more costly to obtain. Second, some folks simply do not percieve incremental improvements in...
  2. Ken Newton

    Blind Test Challenge Offered by Engineer on Audiogon

    Steve, That's my long experience with them as well. They like to fancy themselves as protectors of consumers from charlatans and fools. They are self appointed knights of the realm of orthodoxy, as I like to say. They see themselves as righteous warriors, but they behave more as thugs...
  3. Ken Newton

    The importance of Resolution

    Musical resolution/clarity seems an perplexing perceived phenomena at times. I once owned a pair of Martin-Logan electrostats which seemed to reveal music with extreme clarity. Not only were details not heard with other speakers revealed, they seemed to be seperated from each other in space as...
  4. Ken Newton

    Do you believe this Schiit? I don't.

    My first suspician is that your Schiit DAC is faulty. Perhaps, a bad solder joint to ground somewhere. That could be causing both hum as well as interfere with the digital link integrity.
  5. Ken Newton

    Brand Loyalty: Can one be too loyal?

    The brand of a product serves as a proxy for level of product satisfaction which can be expected by the buyer. This is very useful for products purchase decisions in which all the pertinent information about a given product's performance and quality are not esily ascertainable. This condition...
  6. Ken Newton

    The best Dipoles, Dipoles that can do bass?

    Thanks, my delicate sensibilities much appreciate it.
  7. Ken Newton

    The best Dipoles, Dipoles that can do bass?

    You began a thread. You solicited members for their opinions, and received many responses. Why the coy cloak-and-dagger spy routine about your solution?
  8. Ken Newton

    Yet another Grounding Gadget : this time from Schnerzinger

    Yes, equally useful, or equally useless. Whichever.
  9. Ken Newton

    DSD comparison to PCM.

    However, there also is high rate DSD. The trade-offs are the same, relative to a given information rate. In other words, for a given data rate regardless whether PCM or DSD. Distortion isn't a function of the coding scheme. It is a function of the A/D and D/A quantizer design located at either...
  10. Ken Newton

    DSD comparison to PCM.

    I apologize if the following points were already made somewhere upthread. Probably, the two most salient performance parameters for any digital signal coding scheme are the Nyquist bandwidth (which, effectively sets the signal's high frequency limit for audio), and the native quantization noise...
  11. Ken Newton

    What is the benefit of very expensive DACs?

    Perhaps, he means that otherwise, one would require smoothing capacitors that are both high-voltage and high-capacitance.
  12. Ken Newton

    R2R DACs 2017

    They very likely utilize FPGA chips to implement proprietary processing algorithms, and the 1-bit PWM quantizer - as opposed to commercial DAC chips.
  13. Ken Newton

    R2R DACs 2017

    According to their website, the Mola-Mola DAC features high order noise-shaping. Single-bit sigma-delta modulation DACs also feature high order noise-shaping. The actual quantizer Mola-Mola implements here is NOT an R2R, but a pulse width modulation (PWM) type. PWM is a kind of single-bit...
  14. Ken Newton

    Jim Nabors-Dead at 87

    I got a kick out of his rich baritone singing voice compared to his cartoony nasal twang of a speaking voice. I always wondered whether that speaking voice was natural or merely contrived for show business.
  15. Ken Newton

    TAD DA1000 click just before playback starts

    I don't know whether that noise is normal or not for your model DAC, but it's possible that the DAC's output muting circuit is not functioning properly, assuming that it has one. The designers may have simply omitted a muting circuit as these have developed a reputation for sometimes degrading...
  16. Ken Newton

    Time aligning subs to main speakers

    My experience is that physically time-aligning a sub with a main speaker isn't the primary problem. The primary problem tends to either be subs which either output too much upper band content, causing coherency issues with the main speakers, or, subs which cannot seem to integrate with the main...
  17. Ken Newton

    DACs using dual differential balanced designs - have to be balanced XLR out?

    Probably, the first thing to make clear is that an wired signal interconnection can be balanced or unbalanced, but the active electronics driving that interconnection is more properly termed differential or single-ended. Differential drive is not necessarily synonymous with balanced...
  18. Ken Newton

    Why do some people listen to a cello when evaluating a system? What can / could one learn?

    Cello is right in the "power range" of an orchestra. This range translates to the upper-bass through lower-midrange of an hifi music system. Many audiophiles perceive acoustic energy in that range as greatly contributing to the sense of music sounding live. Live cello in particular has a warm...
  19. Ken Newton

    DACs using dual differential balanced designs - have to be balanced XLR out?

    While that DAC may sound it's best in balanced interconnection mode, it doesn't necessarily mean that you wouldn't also like it's sound if converted to SE.
  20. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    The length of a filter's impulse response (it's ringing) is a function of how sharp is the filtering. The sharper the filtering in the frequency-domain, the longer is the impulse response in the time-domain. The two are directly related mathematically via the Fourier transform. Therefore, a...
  21. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    I suspect that even though the final filter function was apparently determined by ear, Stuart intends it to define a single end-to-end system impulse response which performs consistently across all MQA enabled gear. Without an industry standard, any non-MQA DAC, though set for proprietary...
  22. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    That isn't a simple question to answer. The relevant DAC circuit block determining the DAC's time-domain behavior is it's anti-image filter. Which is also commonly referred to as an 'reconstruction' filter, or as an 'oversampling' filter. This filter is what determines the impulse response (the...
  23. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    rbbert, Marketing teams exist to promote the market success of their company's products. Many new product introduction efforts involve the public hyping of the product to gain consumer attention. If only the benefits and merits of a new product were inherently and widely self-apparent. Any...
  24. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    This seems the key issue. What, exactly, was determined to be the optimum conversion filtering? Which, I presume, refers to the A/D anti-alias, and the D/A anti-image filters. If optimum filtering means filters which prioritize the time-domain, then 192kHz will deliver the same time-domain...
  25. Ken Newton

    MQA discussion

    I wouldn't penalize Bob Stuart or MQA too harshly for Robert Harley's typically over-the-top hyper-ventilating style.
  26. Ken Newton

    Schiit Yggdrasil DAC and MQA

    An FS/4 tone is at half the Nyquist frequency. The tone does not in itself contain frequency components above the system Nyquist. What it does is reveal the transient handling flaw of band limited sampling. The tone is perfectly sampled so long as it not only continues forever in to the future...
  27. Ken Newton

    Schiit Yggdrasil DAC and MQA

    Hi, awsmone, I want to address your above interesting point a bit deeper. Any filter with a ringing transient response will exhibit some amount of ringing if subjected to a transient signal. The shorter the transient (the more it approaches an Dirac function) the more readily apparent will be...
  28. Ken Newton

    Schiit Yggdrasil DAC and MQA

    Actually, in such a self band-limited system no anti-alias filter is required at all, brickwall or otherwise.
  29. Ken Newton

    Schiit Yggdrasil DAC and MQA

    Al, I have no personal opinion of whether or not temporal blurring is subjectively audible. I simply haven't been involved in any listening experiments regarding this topic. I do know that Meridian claims to have performed extensive research in this area. At any rate, the DSP mechanism which...
  30. Ken Newton

    Schiit Yggdrasil DAC and MQA

    It seems to me that, contrary to usual proper test procedure, the audio tracks used for comparison should NOT be identically mastered. Subjective listening tests utilizing completely identical tracks would seem to work to obscure whatever subjective sound benefits MQA may possibly bring over...

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