Interesting.. I relaize I am a bit late to comment, but, I also saw pic improvements. They have been reworking sound to add things like dialog isolation and stuff..
AppleTV X - I am playing with something new
- Thread starter Xymox
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I have done this A/B so many times I have lost count. I have used various kscape HW, cables and all manner of tweaks. Even modded. On my reference display the ATVX wins most of the time, rarely it can be a tie. What I think is happening is the kscape is doing digital processing and decoding that is not the best way. BUT a kscape is also much less performance then a ATV can be because of board layout, part choices, power supply & regulation choices. All this adds up.
While a higher max Variable Bit Rate cap might be good and a better compression profile might be good, how you impliment these and the hardware you play it back on matters.
Taking a 600Mbps post production file and playing this back off a local server that is 4:4:4 thru the ATVX is just stunning. So the ATVX is capable of far higher performance then we see with normal streaming. Now if Kscape made a secure app to play its files on a ATVX,, well then, that might be worth paying for. As is tho while I have a kscape, I never watch anything on it. For me, it does not look as good or most times sound as good as the ATVX and the ATVX has >EVERYTHING<, every app, every streaming service, its all hooked into the Apple ecosystem. While I have GREAT respect for kscape and thier LONG battle over decades, they need to get the studios to allow them to do a app, or, they are going to die off, very regretfully. I would LOVE to play out kscape material via a ATVX. They could just exit the hardware buis and just do licensing and a app. I think this is the best path forward. BUT, kscape is seriously crippled in what they can do because of all the legal fights over the decades.
Yep to all the above. SOund can be ever slightly better because of the files, but, its a bit fuzzy tho and not a easy AB. While the sound format on kscape can be better, the digital jitter is way lower via the ATVX. Also each movie varies on both kscape and on each app on the ATVX. A lot of shows and movies tho get a new transfer and looking over when they get master files for streaming and sometimes the streaming sound can be quite a bit better because of remastering.
BUT... The differences are really close. So, yea, I dont bother with kscape and I modded the **** out of mine and it still does not stand out enough to bother with it.
Interesting, thank you as always, @Xymox!
We know ATV has a hard drive that is fairly large, so I wonder how or if it stores files locally.
Can you 'force' ATV to do this if you purchase or rent and select 'Watch Later' instead of now?
We know ATV has a hard drive that is fairly large, so I wonder how or if it stores files locally.
The underlying technology for delievering pic / sound is not being updated monthly like things were 10 years ago. It seemed every month some new format came along and you needed to buy new hardware. This was the buis model for the consumer electronics industry. Create some new sound/video format that you HAD to get to be current. This drove the TV/Surround Processor buis model for 2 decades. Then one day, it reached a plateau. Your eyes cant see higher rez then 4k from normal distances and higher rez displays had to to upconversion which degraded the pic. So there was a limit. Dynamic range reached limits beyond the eye in the data formats. Color depth and color resolution exceeded the eye in data formats. STreaming became the main delivery target and the cost in doing that is content bit rate. So higher bit rates mean a loss of profits for streamers and studios. So a bit rate limit of like 20Mbps-50Mbps tops is the limit. This limited further pic enhancements. Sound formats maxed out with ATMOS. However, I think ATMOS ( object based ) formats kinda suck. Dont let anyone fool you that ATMOS is "lossless" each channel is synthized, so all channels are all math. I prefer the DTS lossless formats before object based encoding. But sound formats reached a maxed out state. They are lossless and can have a so many channels its stupid. There is no where else to go.
SO.. AV formats maxed out and hit walls.
I am a SMPTE member and keep up with trends in making content, encoding, post production and content delievery. NO ONE in the industry wants to do 8K delievery. That will never happen. Even if it did, it would have to fit in a 20-50Mbps pipe. So it would need to be compressed down to the same pipe as 4K/2K. NO content delievery platform is going to double or triple streaming costs to go to a format no one can really see. So content makers have been thinking about 8K as a capture method so they can do things in post to retain 4K on zooms and pans and stuff. BUT the added cost has meant no one is really doing that. There is a very serious optical issue going beyond 8k, there is a lens limit in resolution that is physics based and so this has also reached a limit.
The ATV A2169 does all the formats needed. The biggest pic quality improvement is less conpression, and the ATV can reach 600Mbps if ever needed. 4K, 4:4:4, HDR, ATMOS is a set of formats that can exceed the eye in most areas. So I dont see anything coming that would make the ATV old tech.
Like many things older is better in fact. Trends in many areas are towards higher profits not better quality. The A2169 is a lot better then the newest ATV for example.
The other big factor is that consumers are cord cutting and are moving to mobile devices. TVs, surround and media rooms are all WAY down in sales. So the consumer buis model has shifted away from TVs and surround formats. So there just is not the push for new gear like there was.
Now,,, the newest buis model is to put the letters AI into your product, for no real reason. There is NO reason to put AI into a pic or sound path. The best way is to deliever the pixels are bits EXACTLY the way they come from the streamer, not process them with some hallucinating AI model. But I could see the AI buis model infecting the consumer buis model on all levels. I am highly opposed to this idiocity.
As far as updates go. I run developer beta on my ATVX in the lab. It even auto updates which is REALLY dangerous. A beta could ALWAYS brick a device. DONT DO THIS. But I watch all the new firmware updates and test them way before release. If there was ever a issue I would flag it here and if its a serious issue I would email ATVX clients to avoid the update. SO far Apple's dev betas have been pretty stable for a dev beta. SOmetimes a app will fail. Tidal app failed for months under 18.x for example. But that got fixed.
Remember I am also a ATVX user with 3 systems and use it daily. Even my sis and mom use one. So any issues I would most likely cath them early.
Nothing I do could be affected by firmware. Its all hardware mods. If apple broke something it would affect all Apple TVs..
YES roon is TERRIBLE about updates. OMFG.. NEVER EVER EVER update roon because something will break and could well sound WAY worse. If it works, dont touch it. If you gotta touch it be CERTAIN you know EXACTLY how to revert to the previous state/firmware.
Sadly, no. You need higher bit rate files. You could pull down the whole file for a movie but when you play it back its 20-50Mbps. You need a different file that has much less compression. These files do not exist for any content you would want to watch. There are files for testing at these formats you can download and post production has files like this but these post files are HIGHLY secured and NEVER EVER avaliable to the public.
If your in post production tho, you can get access to these and the frame.io app can play them. Well, the Frame.io stuff is also fairly limited in bit rate. You need the file on a local server on your own network to hit high bir rates.
Adobe has a nice ad that features a appleTV runing Frame.io for post use..
I have a bunch of clients in post using ATVXs. SO I have access to a VERY tiny amount of sample trailers via frame.io.
Not a good idea... NORMALLY this is a great idea. But with the ATVX and Switch X the dongle cable has been REALLY carefully matched impeadance wise and is a huge part of the noise canceling sensing. Simply changing the diameter of the conductor of the cable will cause a degradation. Its so short because a long lenght literally distroys the ability to cancle the high freq noise. Remember this cable would out to 1Mhz. So you just would not find a cable that could do this bandwidth. Its tuned...
PLUS is not a normal cable. its 2 power conductors and then 2 sense wires. The power conductors are large ga and the sense wires are more like phono leads and a twisted pair.
SO... I dont recommend using a longer cable. It has a dongle, so you cant really "replace" it with another..
Its a VERY good question, but, it wont work in this case..
Because of this I used crazy stuff for the cable.
YEP... Grounding, power conditioning MATTER. Power cords. I can even measure these changes and see the affects on the power rails inside the device.
Of course HDMI cables matter.. Big time..
So apparently does dampening, isolation and mass loading.
Yepper... Yea it was a dissapoint for me. I was hoping to take the new one and go beyond the A2169.. I tried REALLY hard with tons of mods and months of work. NO WAY. Not even close.. The current and I think all future units, are just junk.. The A2169 was just stunningly well engineered with a focus on pure performance. APple saw cord cutting and has obviously deviced to get out of the set top box buis.. The A2169 is gonna be just like the Oppo bluray player. Its gonna be the best device..
Chris has said this and I agree, Apple wants to sell more and manufacture it cheaper, thus dumbing down its build quality from an audio and video standpoint, but keeping it good enough for the masses. An "Apple TV Pro" is not something to bet on ever happening in the forseeable future.
Oh.. Hahaha... Oopsie... YES AC cords make a difference.. Each system is different so which cords work best is system dependent. I have been using Wireworld Plat Electra 1M for most of my R&D, but, I have also used others like Kubala Sosna Realization. I used those because they were handy, I have not carefully gone thru power cables of all brands to determine what is "best".
Busy busy busy...
I am liking my newest version of my active load. The design plan was lower noise on my current drive, differential outputs for measuring and a full 1Mhz bandwidth. Plus a 0.05 ohm output impedance. I was also after very low distortion, so I can now measure harmonic distortion of power supplies and in circuit regulators in gear. Im sure no one has done this.
So I am pretty confident now that i have the best tools ever made to work on power supplies and regulators. You have to be able to see what your doing to do good work and I can now see and measure things in unprecedented detail
The active load can do 100 amp pulses. So 60A is easy.. Of course at 60A doing a sq pulse, there is 5V of noise, hahaha..
So 5mA to 100A.. 0.5V - 60V.. DC/0.01hz - 1Mhz. 0.05% THD.. I am quite happy.. 2 months of work. This will enable me to do more fun things and will become a invaluable tool...
I am liking my newest version of my active load. The design plan was lower noise on my current drive, differential outputs for measuring and a full 1Mhz bandwidth. Plus a 0.05 ohm output impedance. I was also after very low distortion, so I can now measure harmonic distortion of power supplies and in circuit regulators in gear. Im sure no one has done this.
So I am pretty confident now that i have the best tools ever made to work on power supplies and regulators. You have to be able to see what your doing to do good work and I can now see and measure things in unprecedented detail
The active load can do 100 amp pulses. So 60A is easy.. Of course at 60A doing a sq pulse, there is 5V of noise, hahaha..
So 5mA to 100A.. 0.5V - 60V.. DC/0.01hz - 1Mhz. 0.05% THD.. I am quite happy.. 2 months of work. This will enable me to do more fun things and will become a invaluable tool...
I have been on 18.3 in the betas for a bit. I have not noticed any issues.. I have not done a in depth pic/sound A/B vs 18.2 tho.
There does not appear to be a more recent dev beta. 18.3 ( 22K557 )... Interesting as there is normally a dev beta ahead of the current stable public release.. This is kinda odd actually...
OOoOOooo.... I can now easily measure harmonic distortion components of a power supply or regulator... Going where no one has gone before, hahaha.... So the noise components from a 1A load on this power supply has harmonic components 59db down in the noise. Which you would expect, but, fun to easily measure it and be able to do so at any frequency or load.
So is this going to be used for a new project, to refine your existing (Dejitterit) projects, or both?
Well so far after playing with it on the ATVX and Switch X,, these look ideal.. One of my vids shows the linear I already use. I already know the ATVX I cant tweak any better, I spent forever on that. I have had a active load for a decade, its not new to me, this one is just better. Measuring my current linear was fun tho, the specs were impressive. Better then I measured with my old setup.
The ATV has a few key things in the power supply path. It has a cap bank that has 3 different types of caps and these are arranged physically along a set of pure silver wires into whats called a strip line filter kinda arrangement. Its SERIOUSLY tuned. The positions along the strip line and the size types of caps was fairly straight forward to figure out and my old active load was magnitudes better then required. So its all crazy good.
I was able to do 60A pulses thru it and confirm some things tho
So the new active load was fun to play with. I got the 18ga solid silver wires hot with high freq pulses .. I was able to more quickly confirm the tuning.. The caps are also a time domain thing, so I was better able to see this alignment.I am going to look at modding a NUC to make something that can run a roon core. So a music server.
Its a upgrade. Plus I made this one with high precision parts, metal foil resistors and stuff. Its much better signal to noise ratio. I spent a bunch of time getting it carefully tuned with its power FET so I could get really precise square waves over a wide bandwidth and current range. I really focused on making it a real piece of test equip and gave it a big S/N ratio so I could make very clean well defined measurements. I also focused on whats called 1/f noise. This is a physics issue which is a low freq noise limitation. So I really improved its 1/f noise so my measurements down in the 0.01-10hz band are clean. I also did insanity level shielding noise wise. I highly modded the Tektronix signal generation plugins. Cleaned up the Tektronix AM502 differential amplifier. I made the whole setup work as a whole that was easy to use..
A Active load is something i use a lot, so, I just made a REALLY good one. I plan on using this for the next 10+ years.
There are other things you can do with a active load. It can be used for a lot more then just power supply and regulation.. For example I have used one on data busses from/to digital chips. Its basically a active variable resistor. So placing it on a data line and changing the loading on a data line and watching what happens you can pick a more precise loading resistor for a bus and can tune things in circuit. Its just a very valuable tool the same way a scope or meter is.
Right now I am just stuffing it into previous projects and playing around. It makes my job way faster and easier and I get a clearer pic of what I am doing. Its a fun new upgraded tool..
I also make my own gear. Stuff I could never make in production as its just too time consuming to make. So I will use this on some of my own projects. Like my insanely modded Panasonic Plasma. Or the power supply in my audio amps. How analog audio gear power supplies work benifits GREATLY testing like this.
I am not an engineer, but I think that is so. cool. Thanks for sharing a bit with us Chris!Well so far after playing with it on the ATVX and Switch X,, these look ideal.. One of my vids shows the linear I already use. I already know the ATVX I cant tweak any better, I spent forever on that. I have had a active load for a decade, its not new to me, this one is just better. Measuring my current linear was fun tho, the specs were impressive. Better then I measured with my old setup.
The ATV has a few key things in the power supply path. It has a cap bank that has 3 different types of caps and these are arranged physically along a set of pure silver wires into whats called a strip line filter kinda arrangement. Its SERIOUSLY tuned. The positions along the strip line and the size types of caps was fairly straight forward to figure out and my old active load was magnitudes better then required. So its all crazy good.
I was able to do 60A pulses thru it and confirm some things tho
I am going to look at modding a NUC to make something that can run a roon core. So a music server.
Its a upgrade. Plus I made this one with high precision parts, metal foil resistors and stuff. Its much better signal to noise ratio. I spent a bunch of time getting it carefully tuned with its power FET so I could get really precise square waves over a wide bandwidth and current range. I really focused on making it a real piece of test equip and gave it a big S/N ratio so I could make very clean well defined measurements. I also focused on whats called 1/f noise. This is a physics issue which is a low freq noise limitation. So I really improved its 1/f noise so my measurements down in the 0.01-10hz band are clean. I also did insanity level shielding noise wise. I highly modded the Tektronix signal generation plugins. Cleaned up the Tektronix AM502 differential amplifier. I made the whole setup work as a whole that was easy to use..
A Active load is something i use a lot, so, I just made a REALLY good one. I plan on using this for the next 10+ years.
There are other things you can do with a active load. It can be used for a lot more then just power supply and regulation.. For example I have used one on data busses from/to digital chips. Its basically a active variable resistor. So placing it on a data line and changing the loading on a data line and watching what happens you can pick a more precise loading resistor for a bus and can tune things in circuit. Its just a very valuable tool the same way a scope or meter is.
Right now I am just stuffing it into previous projects and playing around. It makes my job way faster and easier and I get a clearer pic of what I am doing. Its a fun new upgraded tool..
I also make my own gear. Stuff I could never make in production as its just too time consuming to make. So I will use this on some of my own projects. Like my insanely modded Panasonic Plasma. Or the power supply in my audio amps. How analog audio gear power supplies work benifits GREATLY testing like this.
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