Trinity DAC discussion

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#81
You guys start a thread, about anything you want, and if I'm interested by the subject I'll see you there, you can "DAC bang" on it!

And if the subject is something I figure that I know all there is to know, then you won't see me there asking the thread starter what his intentions are.

Common sense. 🙂

And if I'm smart enough to go beyond that rational way of thought, then I'll bring something new to the old. We all have the power to construct or destruct,
and our words are like weights of gold.
 
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#82
NorthStar said:
Hey Peter, did you read your post's 'rafale' (hail)?

How would you react yourself if someone would burst like in a hail of bullets raining down your guts?

Yes, you took target at me, and not the subject of this thread. Am I wrong or am I right? You tell me because me I'm just digesting what I've been reading.
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I'd say wrong Bob. Or maybe wrong-ish because I can drift off;

I thought you were interested in learning about what LIANOTEC does and can bring, and I tried to reason that out. And since my posts always and ever are too lonng, I thought to split them in a hail rain of posts.
How that took tareget at you (if I understand this English correctly in the first place) really (really !) is beyond me.

Notice that this is my style of (most ad-hoc !) writing :

Peter :
Bob, can you help me out;
Maybe there are more who don't get it quite, but what is the purpose of this thread ?
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Quote from Bob's text :
Our discussion is about the Trinity DAC, and in particular the benefits of the LIANOTEC DAC implementation. ...Measurably, and audibly.
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Peter :
Ah, ok. But still. Can't you just read ecdesign's thread ? It is a bit long, but you (alll) will surely grasp the idea.
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And next I do the best I can to explain the principle of LIANOTEC *and* (mind you) responding to your suggested "benefits" (see quote above) which in my book are not benefits as such; merely the other way around.

I can add to this that I don't like technical blahblah which *will* come across as super duper, comes with a price, but doesn't do much. Remember please, in my book. So again :

Yes, you took target at me, and not the subject of this thread.
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First part I don't recognize nor was it my intention and about the second part I thought to have done explicitly well.
I hope you can see it after all ?

Peter


PS: I'm still not sure where this goes wrong, but might it be your desire to hear about the benefits of LIANOTEC against e.g. Ken's and my stand point then I'm afraid that we need to find someone with different views and arguments. That such a discussion would be very interesting is clear to me, but I'm afraid it isn't going to happen. I hope it is also clear that I would explicitly like such a discussion.
 
#83
abraxalito said:
Right and that's for me what makes consideration of a very expensive design like this one interesting. How much of that stratospheric price tag really is necessary expenditure to achieve the pinnacle of SQ and how much is bling to ensure it has credibility (and therefore sells) in today's bifurcated market?
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Here's some oil for Bob's fire (hopefully) :

Cost price of parts for the Phasure is around EUR 1800 euros / USD 2430. Was (precisely calculated) EUR 1200 / USD 1620 a few years back, but all prices went up and currency rates changed etc.

I emphasized something in the quote above, and although it has been the explicit target, it is all the customers saying that it is the best out there. And some "lonely at the very top" review of course.

I hope that I can say this blundly, knowing that this is a DIY forum so no real commercial activity here. But I can tell you that I *AM* bugged with crazy prices I see and that wherever I have the opportunity to lay out what really will be happening I will do so.
I had some more text, but maybe it needs the questions for it first so I scratched it.

Peter
 
#84
Peter, yes you referred to another thread, and yes you elaborated on the topic.
We all have our own style and I'm certainly learning some.

It's all good right now, past is past.

I will read that other thread that you and Ken mentioned, thank you. You guys are few steps ahead of me.

From now on, only one thing I'm concerned about: I don't want to talk and hear about me, my intentions, my motivations, my directions in life, bla bla bla, I want to hear what people have to say about the Trinity DAC here, and share my own impressions about it too.

No more negative comment and then I won't have to talk like I did.
No personal question, but general technical analysis on the topic at end.
And I already said all the rest.

If you don't like the type of normal exchanges that normal people have between themselves, then go to an abnormal place. That's all I'm asking, or I'll be the one to go somewhere else, it is that simple.

_________________

* The activity that is going on here at diy only depends of you Peter, and nobody else. It's up to you and you only to make the best of it, or the worst of it.

And sixty grands (roughly) for the TRINITY DAC is outrageous, out of this world, totally lunatico, not making any sense at all, pure rip off, total greed, and only very few will embark on that journey to nowhere steady and with the wind constantly changing direction. Good listening to them, enjoy the music.

But that's a subject for another thread at another time when fully composed and predisposed.
 
#87
Did you guys read all the reviews yet on the Trinity DAC, that are on their website, under the [Reviews] section at top?

That would be a great subject of analysis because it encompasses so many world audio variables, and arouse the intellect to make comparisons with other world DAC design leaders.

I am abso!utely certain that some members here have some very interesting thoughts about some of them reviews.

________________

* Ken, all good now, let's go forward from right here, okay. 🙂 ...Into a fresh direction, a new frontier of discovery, an analysis of music listeners' own words (listening through the Trinity DAC), with the room's contribution, the cables used, the music playing (exactly which CD or SACD or hi-rez audio file), the listener's own personal preference (his own set of ears and emotional trance), the resolution, the transcendence, and the ultimate reach; meaning accessibility to the world common mortals or only to the gods of the elite well chosen affair.

If you create something real good, real sweet, real rewarding, ... do you want to share it exponentially or restrictively implosive?

Reviews, let's talk about them shall we?
 
#88
Ken Newton said:
Speaking only for myself, I did not intend to give the impression you describe. I just thought that there may have been something in particular which you were enthusiastic to discuss. I've never heard any of the Trinity DACs, and so can't offer a subjective opinion beyond my belief that the technology has intriguing degree of potential.
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It's all good now Ken, and I truly appreciate what you said above, soon after I read it right away after you posted it.

I'm slowly getting accustomed to the members here; as I am quite fresh.
And so far I truly enjoy reading your posts.

The main implementation challenges of analog linear interpolation are hardware complexity and clock management. The hardware complexity can be managed by locating the interleaving logic in an FPGA, and the incorporation of 8 or more D/A chips is no longer unusual. It occurs to me the the latest ESS Sabre D/A chips featuring 8 independent D/A units might be leveraged to provide an elegant alternative to 8 separate chips. I should think that distributing low jitter, precisely synchronized clocks signals to each D/A unit is probably the more difficult implementation challenge.

If a high enough oversampling ratio (a minimum of 8x, but 16x would be better) can be achieved, then the in-band response becomes satisfactorily flat, and the ultrasonic image products shift up in frequency by a factor equal to the oversampling ratio. That last aspect is very important, as linear interpolation produces such a slow filter roll off, being the equivalent to a 'moving average' digital filter. The benefit of shifting those image products higher in frequency bias oversampling is that it makes them easier to filter away using a final analog filter stage.

If the design is successful, the undesired ultrasonic image products will be filtered away, and the impulse response will be free of 'ringing' phenomena. However, analog linear interpolation via hardware truly is a brute force approach in terms of cost and complexity. A software based linear interpolation could produce much the same result in conjunction with very high sample rate DAC chips (8x to 16x), the few of which remaining are, as far as I know, fully multibit designs. Commercial sigma-delta converters for audio application all appear to be limited to 4x.
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That I like! ...And your mentioning of 16x oversampling over 8x oversampling.
...And, no mention of upsampling.
 
#91
Ken Newton said:
It probably should be mentioned that the application of direct analog interpolation to audio conversion is an old technique. I believe that Krell has before utilized it in the DAC section of their top CD player of more than a decade ago, and that Wadia also apply it. in addition, one our own contributors, -ecdesigns-, has long had such a DIY project thread posted here.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...building-ultimate-nos-dac-using-tda1541a.html
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Five hundred pages since May 2006; that's about 5,000 posts?
Back in 2006 the TRINITY DAC wasn't yet invented. ...Just sayin'.

Also, I had independently developed such a design about a decade ago. However, two interrelated issues, one technical and the other practical, dissuaded me from actually constructing my own design. The main performance problem of linear interpolation is that it introduces an in-band response roll-off (I've got a plot of the curves stored somewhere in my computer). The good news on this issue is that the in-band roll-off becomes increasingly flat as the interpolation ratio is increased. If I correctly recall, decent in-band flatness is not obtained until the interpolation ratio is 8x or higher (I think Trinity mentions they use 16x). The bad news is that because analog linear interpolation is implemented via the time interleaving of D/A chips, the hardware complexity increases by the same interpolation ratio.

For example, an 8x analog linear interpolation requires 8 D/A units per channel. not to meantion, that the implications for management of system jitter similarly increases. However, I do believe that with the interleaving control logic neatly located in an FPGA, and with great pains taken to distribute time staggered low jitter clocks to each D/A unit, the benefits of analog linear interpolation can be had. The implications for commercial product cost should be obvious.

It does seem to me that implementing linear interpolation digitally via a high sample rate single D/A unit (per channel), rather than in analog form via 8 or 16 D/A units would be preferable. Certainly, from an system cost standpoint. However, such a single D/A unit would need to be able to support at least 8x oversampled input rates. The PCM1704 comes quickly to mind.
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I am rereading this thread to grasp some more.
And your quote above is interesting.

* I will do the same with Peter's posts.

_____________
 
#92
NorthStar said:
Five hundred pages since May 2006; that's about 5,000 posts?
Back in 2006 the TRINITY DAC wasn't yet invented. ...Just sayin....
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The lengthy thread is actually about obtaining the best sound from the TDA1541 chip. So, in the beginning, the thread focused on developing an analog linear interpolation based solution in that pursuit. Later on, ecdesigns decides to drop the the oversampled linear interpolation approach and focus instead on a strictly non-oversampled solution, utilizing the TDA1541.
 
#93
Yes Ken, that much I understood.

Since then we have accomplished further feats. ...Dietmar has.
Call it DAC involvement and evolution. ...Implementation and manipulation, all in the service of a more pleasant digital sound. ...The music playing.

What I find/found the most traumatizing are the reviews! They are less than complete.
If you want to review the Trinity DAC you better come up with something much more solid, IMHO.

Give me that Trinity DAC for review and that's what you're 'gong' to get, a very thorough and thoughtful review, with exactitudes about everything; including the very specific music recordings (exact versions), all the attirail used, the synchronicity of it, the listener's predisposition, and everything else omitted from them reviews.
...And of prime importance, with timing.

Hey, that's me and all (part of what) I know so far.
 
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#97
I just heard a MBL rig (101 mk2 + power amps) with the Trinity as front end (also pre I believe). This system sounded very good i.e. full bodied, detached from the speakers, proper sized instruments, good height, dynamic. All played at realistic levels in a fairly large room. Nice.

//
 
#99
abraxalito said:
Here's a claim of Adam's which does look to be rather misleading. He says -

The LIANOTEC gives an equivalent of 8x oversampling rate, without using 8x oversampling digital filter.

He goes on later to explain that the additional points needed to go from 1X up to 8X oversampling are 'situated linearly between' the original sampling points.

So then that means additional points are indeed calculated mathematically between the original points and therefore there is a digital filter.

The only way to avoid having a digital filter that I know of is my 'LAID' architecture. This uses delays (as has been claimed for Trinity) but also needs an analog FIR filter to produce the extra sampling points. I see no sign of the analog FIR in either the pictures or the writing about the DAC. Therefore I conclude that there is indeed digital processing going on to calculate the right values for the interpolated points. In engineering speak (rather than marketing parlance) this does indeed constitute a digital filter.
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I think you are right, but I want to write my first post just to have a clarification.
Do you remember Wadia 2000 D/A and its Digimaster algorithm? It was a Lagrange interpolation filter, which works in the time domain, not in frequency domain.
Maybe only few knows that the DAC chips inside the Wadia 2000 works only at 16x-oversampling... but Wadia claims it was 64x-oversampling DAC!
Actually the 64x-oversampling Wadia processor runs at 16x-oversampling in the digital domain, then uses four time-staggered DACs in parallel to get to a 64x rate.
It seems to me that Wadia have implemented the delayed-chain of DAC chips already in 1989. What makes the LIANOTEC technology so special nowadays?
Maybe I don't get the point.
 
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#100
emaspac said:
What makes the LIANOTEC technology so special nowadays?
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Nothing. It's called marketing. Trinity 'invents' the transversal filter and calls it LIANOTEC. Abraxalito 'invents' the transversal filter and calls it LAID. ecdesigns 'invents' the transversal filter and calls it Direct Interpolation. At least Wadia, who makes use of a transversal filter, doesn't claim to have invented it.

The analog transversal filter first appears in the 1930s. The digital version appears thirty years later.
 
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