What do you think contributes to the "characteristic flat digital sound" you describe? And what have you done to resolve that, out of curiosity?
PS. I am not sure what servers you will be comparing to, but can you or someone compare to a decent CD transport? A number of my buddies own the $30K taiko extreme, and I think it's an embarrassment. A luxury, Yes! But Every time I compared, it gets solidly beat out by a $3K transport from China, leaving the alter kakers who bought it blushing and humiliated - despite the hype from the orgiastic taiko thread on this site.
I, like a lot of people, assumed that the inherent compression was somehow a byproduct of the digital format. Since developing the first commercially successful high-end power cord for audio applications—initially conceived as a way to improve digital sound performance—in 1994 with the original AC Master Coupler, I have worked to make better power cords and digital cables to close the gap with what I hear from the best turntables. And I played around with a lot of DACs, but I came to the conclusion that the issue was likely not in digital-to-analog conversion. So I did what I always do: I look at areas that aren’t being paid attention to or are taken for granted.
The first product we came out with was our UEF Ethernet Switch, which breaks noise transfer in the digital chain. We applied our Electromagnetic Cell Technology from our PowerCell line conditioners, which is extremely efficient at removing high-frequency noise from signal without impeding resolution or current. This brought digital closer to analog. We then applied the Electromagnetic Cell Technology plus ULF biasing from the Galileo PowerCell to our UEF Router. This got us closer still, but not exactly there.
So we worked on rolling all SR technology from ground and line conditioning, as well as ULF biasing, adapted to a PC-based server. For a year, we did double-blind testing, where we listened to different CPUs, motherboards, and other variables, narrowing down our choices between two boxes that appeared identical. Only when we clearly identified what we were hearing in each box would we find out what was inside each box. This process of experimentation and deduction consumed a lot of capital and time.
Ultimately, we built the best-sounding PC we could as a server, and then we rolled in our Linear Power Supply technology developed over the past 15 years for our PowerCell line conditioners and later Active Ground Block ground conditioners. We adapted UEF treatments, which interact with signal at the electromagnetic level so they’re not in the signal path from an Ohm’s law perspective. We refined different implementations of our patented Electromagnetic Cell Technology as found in PowerCell and active ground blocks specifically for the Voodoo Streamer Network Server, and we experimented with Dual Differential ULF biasing, which is extremely important when eliminating high-frequency noise, a byproduct of integrated circuit chips found in digital circuits.
As an insight, overlapping electromagnetic fields affect one another, so even if something is not in the signal path, its electromagnetic radiation will affect other fields associated with signal. That’s why everything, through empirical observation, seems to be in the signal path. A lot of people ask why we don’t lock everything down with heavy traditional shielding, but that also interacts with electromagnetic fields and has a subjective byproduct of compressing the sound field and truncating frequency response.
Through our unique suite of technologies, we’re able to eliminate high-frequency noise, which is a byproduct of integrated digital circuit chips, without resorting to low-tech iron-clad shielding found in most servers. We then replace the high-frequency bias created by Wi-Fi, cell service, and RF from the circuit itself, with harmonics of the Earth’s Schumann resonance. The net effect: not only does analog no longer have the advantage of more realistic spatial cues, the sense that the soundfield is living and breathing, but it actually sounds more compressed compared to the Voodoo Streamer Network Server. And absent what we perceive to be an analog format superiority, we now notice more noise in our reference analog rig when directly compared to streaming Qobuz through the Voodoo streamer server.
This video will give you some insight as to what our technology is doing for the overall performance of the Voodoo Streamer Server when it is turned on and off. For best results, it is recommended you listen on your reference stereo, or through your high resolution headphones.
