Mark Levinson on today’s audio industry

[Daverich4]

Almost every DAC upsamples before converting to analogue. Bit perfect and upsampling are two different things and not in conflict with each other.

Most perhaps but not all. My Holo Audio May KTE doesn’t unless I want it to. I use HQPlayer so the May is always set to NOS.

 

[MarkusBarkus]

As far as I am concerned those saviors that would prefer to take away your right to purchase what you want at no ill towards anyone else, instead of just being informational, should be locked away in Tartarus and kicked in the nuts till the end of eternity.

...as far as I am concerned, in addition to agreeing with a certain Mr. Folsom, the juxtaposition of the classical mythos represented by Tartarus with the vernacular of the peasantry: "kicked in the nuts" is comedic gold, and should be lauded as such. Bravo. Carry on.

 

[Jeffy]

kind of

sort of funny coming from Mark since he rebadged Chinese OEM gear under Red Rose Music a long time ago to charge 3x the price.

Red rose was Audio Prism rebranded that I thought was made in Washington state.

 

[Alrainbow]

Most perhaps but not all. My Holo Audio May KTE doesn’t unless I want it to. I use HQPlayer so the May is always set to NOS.

I’ve tried nos on a few dacs I Own
it does not sould musical but after reading more it’s definitely worth trying again
also does anyone hear a difference between native dsd and dop dsd
aside of the display ?
I can’t yet some lay claim to must be native
now my comment is based on listening not measuring
if we go down the road of digital purity many of our loved music is very corrupt
I can tell rebook to high res most times
then add various formats
This gets very confusing and annoying

 

[analogsa]

I want WADAX to submit samples for laboratory testing to confirm that it is manipulating the incoming material to produce the softer more “analog” sound though Digital Signal Processing (DSP).

What particular tests will reveal this? How would the analogue output of a dac reveal the absence or presence of a dsp unless obvious FR manipulation has been performed?

Bit perfect makes sense for some parts of a digital system but not for the entire chain. Assuming you have access to the actual pins of a dac chip, would the data be bit perfect after passing through digital filters?

Otoh, it makes a lot of sense for a server. Unless, of course, it's based upon HQPlayer.

Cannot imagine Wadax actual customers caring one bit whether data was manipulated or not. Why should they?

 

[Carlos269]

What particular tests will reveal this? How would the analogue output of a dac reveal the absence or presence of a dsp unless obvious FR manipulation has been performed?

Bit perfect makes sense for some parts of a digital system but not for the entire chain. Assuming you have access to the actual pins of a dac chip, would the data be bit perfect after passing through digital filters?

Otoh, it makes a lot of sense for a server. Unless, of course, it's based upon HQPlayer.

Cannot imagine Wadax actual customers caring one bit whether data was manipulated or not. Why should they?

I answered this over a year ago and many times after:

Post in thread 'Wadax Server PSU unit has now arrived'
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/wadax-server-psu-unit-has-now-arrived.36722/post-882712

 

[analogsa]

I answered this over a year ago and many times after:

Post in thread 'Wadax Server PSU unit has now arrived'
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/wadax-server-psu-unit-has-now-arrived.36722/post-882712

"what happens when he puts a pure digital sine wave thought the Wadax dac and how it is reconstructed at the analog outputs."

Still not clear to me. How can a sine wave be reconstructed into anything other than a sine wave?

Perhaps checking the FR for a wide range of amplitudes would be more revealing for such simple manipulation.

Which raises the question: if an algorithm that fits in a very basic DSP can produce a sound with such a strong appeal and working on all types of music, why are other manufacturers not using it? Too honest? Too much respect for their customers?

 

[Carlos269]

"what happens when he puts a pure digital sine wave thought the Wadax dac and how it is reconstructed at the analog outputs."

Still not clear to me. How can a sine wave be reconstructed into anything other than a sine wave?

Perhaps checking the FR for a wide range of amplitudes would be more revealing for such simple manipulation.

Which raises the question: if an algorithm that fits in a very basic DSP can produce a sound with such a strong appeal and working on all types of music, why are other manufacturers not using it? Too honest? Too much respect for their customers?

Post in thread 'Why, oh why, does vinyl continue to blow away digital?'
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...ntinue-to-blow-away-digital.38800/post-972489

 

[analogsa]

Post in thread 'Why, oh why, does vinyl continue to blow away digital?'
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...ntinue-to-blow-away-digital.38800/post-972489

"if distortion/harmonics components have been intentionally added to sweeten the sound"

This seems to be well received when done with technically unnecessary tube stages. Which also add reverb thanks to tube microphony. Why would achieving something similar be wrong if done in a DSP?

This is of course pure speculation. It is easy for any reasonably adept owner to perform such simple tests. And it will happen sooner, rather than later.

 

[Carlos269]

"if distortion/harmonics components have been intentionally added to sweeten the sound"

This seems to be well received when done with technically unnecessary tube stages. Which also add reverb thanks to tube microphony. Why would achieving something similar be wrong if done in a DSP?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this in a DSP. The issue is disclosure.

This is of course pure speculation. It is easy for any reasonably adept owner to perform such simple tests. And it will happen sooner, rather than later.

I agree. Eventually it will come out why the WADAX sounds so different than other dacs. When something sounds different than everything else then there has to be something different going on. Especially when WADAX is using an off the shelf Texas Instrument (TI) / Burr-Brown (BB) dac IC chip as the dac converter.

 

[morricab]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this in a DSP. The issue is disclosure.

I agree. Eventually it will come out why the WADAX sounds so different than other dacs. When something sounds different than everything else then there has to be something different going on. Especially when WADAX is using an off the shelf Texas Instrument (TI) / Burr-Brown (BB) dac IC chip as the dac converter.

where did you read that the WADAX uses an off-the-shelf BB converter? Not that this is a bad thing necessarily but I haven't seen comments on that.

 

[Carlos269]

where did you read that the WADAX uses an off-the-shelf BB converter? Not that this is a bad thing necessarily but I haven't seen comments on that.

From here:

https://www.audioexotics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wadax-Atlantis-Reference-Dac-Review.pdf

 

[morricab]

From here:

https://www.audioexotics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wadax-Atlantis-Reference-Dac-Review.pdf

Interesting…they use only the DAC function of the chip and have a processor that feeds a compensated (for various digital errors) digital signal into the DAC. I guess it then behaves closer to an ideal DAC…at least the digital section. Interesting they chose a BB Sigma/delta and not AKM or ESS.

 

[adyc]

Interesting…they use only the DAC function of the chip and have a processor that feeds a compensated (for various digital errors) digital signal into the DAC. I guess it then behaves closer to an ideal DAC…at least the digital section. Interesting they chose a BB Sigma/delta and not AKM or ESS.

What do you mean by ideal DAC? Do you mean using only the NOS part of DAC chip?

Also Wadax spread fear mongering terms like digital errors but never explain what digital errors are. They are very obscure in their digital processing unlike a lot of competitors who are very transparent how they handle the digital processing.

 

[morricab]

What do you mean by ideal DAC? Do you mean using only the NOS part of DAC chip?

Also Wadax spread fear mongering terms like digital errors but never explain what digital errors are. They are very obscure in their digital processing unlike a lot of competitors who are very transparent how they handle the digital processing.

The BB PCM 1792, 1794 etc. have not only a sigma/delta DAC inside. I think they also have upsampling and other processes included. WADAX seems to be bypassing this stuff and only using the actual DAC module inside the DAC IC chip. They have their own digital processing going on. Your guess is as good as mine as to exactly what they are correcting but based on what I read, they are correcting the signal digitally before sending it into the DAC module of the DAC chip.

I remember a demo once of a digital time correction of a speaker where the digital file was modified with adjustments that corrected for the speaker being used. This was not in real time and was a separate modified file, which means it would only work for that speaker. I guess WADAX is claiming they do something like this when feeding the DAC chip a digital signal.

 

[adyc]

The BB PCM 1792, 1794 etc. have not only a sigma/delta DAC inside. I think they also have upsampling and other processes included. WADAX seems to be bypassing this stuff and only using the actual DAC module inside the DAC IC chip. They have their own digital processing going on. Your guess is as good as mine as to exactly what they are correcting but based on what I read, they are correcting the signal digitally before sending it into the DAC module of the DAC chip.

I remember a demo once of a digital time correction of a speaker where the digital file was modified with adjustments that corrected for the speaker being used. This was not in real time and was a separate modified file, which means it would only work for that speaker. I guess WADAX is claiming they do something like this when feeding the DAC chip a digital signal.

There are many DACs that only using the NOS part of DAC chips like CH, T+A or HOLO May to name a few. There are a lot of over sampling softwares like PGGB and HQPlayer with computing power much higher than Wadax internal processing. A lot of audiophiles using this approach to feed upsampled signal to the DACs to bypass the oversampling functions of the DAC chip.

I think HQPLAYER also offer corrections to the DAC chips although I am not a fan of HQPLAYER.

 

[morricab]

There are many DACs that only using the NOS part of DAC chips like CH, T+A or HOLO May to name a few. There are a lot of over sampling softwares like PGGB and HQPlayer with computing power much higher than Wadax internal processing. A lot of audiophiles using this approach to feed upsampled signal to the DACs to bypass the oversampling functions of the DAC chip.

I think HQPLAYER also offer corrections to the DAC chips although I am not a fan of HQPLAYER.

Could be. It was not so uncommon in the past for a DAC to have internal oversampling (R2R chip type) but for a manufacturer to use an external oversampling filter and feed just the DAC module within the chip.

I don't know what processing capability the WADAX has...they certainly are making you pay for it though...

 

[analogsa]

The BB PCM 1792, 1794 etc. have not only a sigma/delta DAC inside. I think they also have upsampling and other processes included. WADAX seems to be bypassing this stuff and only using the actual DAC module inside the DAC IC chip.

Practically all sigma/delta dac chips contain digital filters. To the best of my knowledge only the PCM1794, among the older generation of chips, offered the option to bypass the digital filter and that required a specific input data format and mono operation. A single 1794 is doomed to use the filters.

Not sure Wadax disclose anywhere the exact TI chip, but the rather interesting speculation @Carlos269 offered assumes it is one of the newer generation chips, like the PCM5252. This chip contains what TI call miniDSP and gives the designer the option to either use the factory offered filters or create their own. Can this DSP be responsible for some very sophisticated sound manipulation? I personally find it unlikely.

 

[gleeds]

Red rose was Audio Prism rebranded that I thought was made in Washington state.

Correct.

 

[Redwoodaudio]

"Aside from this, Levinson also criticizes the stagnation in technological advancement within the industry. According to him, companies often rely on old technologies. Yet, they repackage these with high price tags and market them as “new innovations”."

From the manufacturer who insists his integrated amplifiers don't come with a remote control and must be used with bare wire speaker cable... this is rich. I own his speakers and they're amazing, but his class D amplifiers are nothing special, not to mention overpriced and impractical. The ego on this guy...