What is wrong with op-amps?

jan.didden · 2017-01-17 5:22 pm

gpapag said:
all of you have better hearing capabilities than mine.
I can’t hear the effects of the sample rate conversion (the ‘echo’ that Dan says he hears). Nor do I hear the added dither and/or noise shaping over the music content on the 16bit files.

George

That only shows you have a lack of imagination

Jan

gpapag · 2017-01-17 5:30 pm

A GF used to mention this to me

George

Markw4 · 2017-01-17 5:48 pm

gpapag said:
I hope all of you have better hearing capabilities than mine.

May I ask what data converters you use?
Recently we did a test with some tambourine files, and it was interesting to try to correlate listening results with equipment specifications.

gpapag · 2017-01-17 7:48 pm

The vinyl rip files were recorded using an M-audio Audiophile USB sound card (AK4528VF converter)

In my system I use
CD player Rotel RCD 965BX (SAA7323 DAC)
MiniDSP 2x4 (ADAU1701 converter)

For my headphones at my desk PC I use a DAC with CS4397, soon another one with CS4398

But none of the above is to blame for my deficient hearing

George

morinix · 2017-01-18 1:12 am

DF96 said:
Why list a number of things which do not do anything harmful?

DA has a very minor effect on LF frequency response, mainly affecting subsonics. Certainly much smaller than any speaker/room issues.

Latency refers to the time delay before something happens. It will be the same for all frequencies, so no harm done.

Conversion from parallel to serial data and back again is an example of a cause of latency. Not harmful.

Wait a minute: you were trying to write poetry but I foolishly thought it was prose?

I've been told "that doesn't matter" by very educated people so many times. If I had listened and taken that on face value I wouldn't have a preamp company right now. Come on down to the LA Audio Show in early June and listen to circuits that incorporate loads of "it doesn't matter".

billshurv · 2017-01-18 1:26 am

As the cost of a return flight to LA is about 4x the cost of your preamp I can't see that being a generous offer somehow...

bear · 2017-01-18 2:05 am

1audio said:
I think the common perception is grainy with an unpleasant high end. Somehow the word "smeared" doesn't suggest grainy. I would like to identify something that is consistently "smeared" even if its a loudspeaker. The word suggests all the HF is present but it is stretched in time. However except for speakers that doesn't happen. The other possibility is that the HF content is shifted from the LF content. This would be the "dispersion" that MQA talks about. I still have never actually seen evidence in a digital system. maybe I'm guilty of "listening with my eyes".

IF the "smeared" = extra sibilence, then if it ceases to exist with a component/circuit/gear change, then it is not in the speaker?

bear · 2017-01-18 2:11 am

billshurv said:
As the cost of a return flight to LA is about 4x the cost of your preamp I can't see that being a generous offer somehow...

Perhaps he has "B goods" and if you asked nicely, you might be able to come to some sort of arrangement?

Oh, yeah, the "nice" part may be a factor here. Dunno.

_-_-

DPH · 2017-01-18 2:27 am

Never mind the absolute difficulty of doing remotely earnest listening sessions there.

I tied myself in knots trying to ABX differentiate (via foobar) Mark's files and that was at least in a quiet room, with headphones. Frustrated and headache-laden, I gave up. Good luck having that sort of discerned listening experience at an audio show.

But that's not the point of an audio show, so I mean zero disparagement. Seriously.

jcx · 2017-01-18 2:43 am

Selling Stories works, but I'm missing Sy

morinix said:
I've been told "that doesn't matter" by very educated people so many times. If I had listened and taken that on face value I wouldn't have a preamp company right now. Come on down to the LA Audio Show in early June and listen to circuits that incorporate loads of "it doesn't matter".

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

many of our gurus want to claim commercial success indicates some objective human hearing correlate to their marketing claims

plenty of non-objective scope for commercial success, in fact non-objective factors are usually considered dominant

consider postmodernism, conceptual art, selling self identification/validation as a connoisseur

sincere belief, not tested with known scientific psychoacoustic, perceptual sensory testing controls helps too

morinix · 2017-01-18 3:06 am

As for the dropbox samples; one secret is in the triangle. As the triangle is rung in rapid form, before the iconic William Tell Overture trumpet comes in, it's upper harmonics are diminished and smeared just enough so as to sound like a sustained tone in the lower sample/bit files. Try jumping from #1 to #4. Also the clicks and pops loose a bit of soundstage as the lower bit rates are played.

morinix · 2017-01-18 3:09 am

jcx said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

I don't get a salary.

Markw4 · 2017-01-18 3:09 am

jcx said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Are there specific marketing claims by morinix that you feel are disingenuous? Or, were you speaking more generally?

morinix · 2017-01-18 3:20 am

DPH said:
But that's not the point of an audio show, so I mean zero disparagement. Seriously.

I have a copy of MoFi Beatles Rubber Soul. It is in your face enough to cut through some background noise on the floor of the market place room of the shows I have been exhibiting at.

DF96 · 2017-01-18 12:06 pm

morinix said:
I've been told "that doesn't matter" by very educated people so many times. If I had listened and taken that on face value I wouldn't have a preamp company right now.

It is good to know that owning an audio company somehow creates the ability to have your own version of physics and your own private meanings for words. I am pleased that such awesome power is in such safe hands.

Markw4 · 2017-01-18 2:35 pm

DF96 said:
It is good to know that owning an audio company somehow creates the ability to have your own version of physics and your own private meanings for words. I am pleased that such awesome power is in such safe hands.

You sound jelous.

Seriously though, everybody says things at times that may be disputed. And there is more than one useful model in/of physics. Also, for example, the word or term HiFi seems to have various meanings to different people.

I don't know why give morinix too hard of a time. He may have been steered wrong by somebody before. It can happen.

gpapag · 2017-01-18 2:49 pm

gpapag · 2017-01-18 2:51 pm

(continued)

morinix · 2017-01-18 7:14 pm

I don't reinvent physics. When I worked at companies I would be looking at a spec sheet or a schematic and ask an EE about some aspect of it. Many times the aspect I was asking about would be dismissed as non-important. It took a long time, but as I kept on my path I found that the "that's not important" attitude is the reason most EE's keep on repeating the same old circuit dogma leading to pedestrian designs.

Markw4 · 2017-01-18 7:32 pm

morinix said:
I don't reinvent physics. When I worked at companies I would be looking at a spec sheet or a schematic and ask an EE about some aspect of it. Many times the aspect I was asking about would be dismissed as non-important. It took a long time, but as I kept on my path I found that the "that's not important" attitude is the reason most EE's keep on repeating the same old circuit dogma leading to pedestrian designs.

Like any other profession, there are a wide range people in engineering. A few are unusually creative, and most are about average.

However, some of the people here are very well informed about audio.

There does seems to a bias towards purity as represented by low distortion. Kind of as though designing good distortion is easy, trivial, somehow unworthy, or just wrong.

I think its's probably easier to agree we don't want bad distortion. And harder to agree on what might be good distortion.

What is wrong with op-amps?

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