The 2 philosophies in DAC design, hands off and hands on. Which is better?

[muralman1]

The Apogee Scintilla is not hard to drive because of the resistance. It is nearly devoid of resistance. That is why it is so hard to power. The speaker has an add on foil resistor, without which the speaker would be a .3 ohm speaker. That is with, about seven square feet of aluminum in the path of the signal. The Monster cable is a 12 gauge wire that, on the negative, connects the terminal to the ribbon cable a few inches away. The aluminum ribbon carries the charge to the top of the 5 foot speaker. You can't get away from that fact.

I do not believe in running the negative and positive cables together, on account they are electromagnetic forces with a field. Magnan runs their flat cables independently. Mapleshade does too.

My 8 year experience with the Apogee Scintilla is 8 more years than you have.

 

[rsbeck]

The aluminum ribbon carries the charge to the top of the 5 foot speaker. You can't get away from that fact.

There's no need to get away from it. As I wrote previously, aluminum is a conductive material, so there's no need to prove aluminum will conduct current.

My 8 year experience with the Apogee Scintilla is 8 more years than you have.

You could spend 100 years with your speakers and it wouldn't cause more signal to run through higher resistance material. You're still stuck with the laws of physics.

 

[rsbeck]

The speaker has an add on foil resistor, without which the speaker would be a .3 ohm speaker.

Interesting. I understand the Scintillas can be configured either as 1 ohm or 4 ohm.

Do you have yours configured for 4 ohm or 1 ohm?

 

[muralman1]

Interesting. I understand the Scintillas can be configured either as 1 ohm or 4 ohm.

Do you have yours configured for 4 ohm or 1 ohm?

Apogee started with a 1 ohm model. Then, for a year they made 1/4 ohm speakers, then switched back to 1 ohm models for the rest. The 1 ohm speakers sound the best.

 

[muralman1]

After listening to a large range of material, I have reached the conclusion no system improvement is needed. I am totally finished. Tomelex made a salient point by saying most audiophiles prefer a generally down sloping frequency response. My system thrives on a flat response. Full high frequency development, if done right, adds a lot to the music sounding it's best. While my singers are full bodied, high frequency attacks are exciting, and not annoying. I will swear on a stack of Bibles it is the very oversampling, and upsampling engineers have foisted on us that has wrested audiophiles from their full enjoyment of high frequencies.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

After listening to a large range of material, I have reached the conclusion no system improvement is needed. I am totally finished. Tomelex made a salient point by saying most audiophiles prefer a generally down sloping frequency response. My system thrives on a flat response. Full high frequency development, if done right, adds a lot to the music sounding it's best. While my singers are full bodied, high frequency attacks are exciting, and not annoying. I will swear on a stack of Bibles it is the very oversampling, and upsampling engineers have foisted on us that has wrested audiophiles from their full enjoyment of high frequencies.

Glad you're happy with your system, Muralman.

Tim

 

[muralman1]

Fire and brimstone

JackD201 is writing about DACs. This is an excerpt:

"Unfortunately, very high-order filters tend to have high phase shift, ringing, amplitude ripples, and other artifacts at frequencies well below their cut-off, i.e. well into the audio band. This is the oft-discussed filtering problem non-oversampled (NOS) DACs face."

I say the non-oversampler will win the day, ONCE YOU GET EVERYTHING ELSE RIGHT. Firstly, I know of no NOS DAC maker who utilizes filters, for the very reason JackD201 describes.

Even though most systems will not live up to the NOS promise, I promise it is artifact free. Jack espouses, the accumulated artifacts in the following chain may make the DAC distortion inaudible (muddy the picture). Actually, it has been my experience what comes before the NOS DAC that can ruin the pure sound, as well as what comes after.

The transport is of utmost important. I have found only one transport that gets it right, and that transport is as simple as it can be made. That transport is the diminutive 47 Lab Flatfish. All other transports fail for many reasons. One is circuit length. While all other transport makers don't buy into simple means better, the Flatfish proves its importance. Up-sampling transports, and those with built in filters, cloud the signal.

What comes after is also critical. Interconnects are important. They must keep the signal happy and wholesome. There may be a number of them that do it well. The preamp is extremely important. The one I have, a solid state, has a wickedly simple circuit. It is the only preamp I have ever heard that gets out of the way better. Amps are very important. I have yet to hear a solid state amp that even approximates the clarity I am listening to. Speaker cables can only be of one configuration, and I have that. Finally, if you want to hear it all, the speaker has to be able to give you all. I haven't heard any that does that better than the one I use.

I know I am repeating myself. It just tics me off when an audio engineer sets up class so he can tell you all about what makes great sound based on his math, and scopes. The music wave variations are wildly complex. That is why they use simple tones. The graphs show the distortion. But, where hast this distortion arrived?

There is a better way to find out whether filters, and up/over-sampling really work, and that is in practice. I have been working in my sound laboratory for 8 years. They don't work. They worsen the music. I know I am right, because I have attained victory for non oversampling DACs. In hearing do we trust.

 

[muralman1]

OK muralman1, in your hearing you trust, but you have said before that you have hearing off the chart, and that means you don't have ears like the rest of us.
I also do not think you are in a league to argue about distortions that can be seen on a piece of test equipment far superior to even your ears. Now, though, I do agree completely with you that simple single tone sinewaves individually ran through a system do not tell us the whole story and there needs to be say null testing at the least to ferret out whats going on.

I also think that DSD seems to be a step in the right direction as far as digital goes, but it does not seem to be taking off, as in the same way the recording world is entrenched in stereo, so goes digital for now.


If I lived out west I would surely come to have a listen at your place.

Tom

Someone here did say he was going to pay a visit. That did not occur, and my messages go unheeded. Equipment may be able to find spurious noise. The thing is, human hearing is designed quite differently. So, when you can't hear a hint of distortion, there is no problem. I sure wished you lived out here. I have a new CD, "The Nutcracker," Kirov Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. There is a real gun shot during the battle with the rats. It surprised the heck out of me.