Did anyone use the Odyssey Stratos on the M80s ? Asking because they're 4 Ohms (albeit sensitive) and I'm not sure how low they can drop so I rather make sure I'm not underpowering them ? Any subjective opinion on the acoustic match would be good as well.
As well, any experience with groneberg quattro reference cabling and M80s ?
thanks much
-- tony
Tony, nobody's jumped in on this because it's unlikely that they have any experience with using the equipment you mention with the M80s. I'll give you some thoughts anyway. All I know about the Stratos is what I've read, but it's inconceivable that a heavy-duty amp such as that, which has a high 4 0hm rating, would have trouble with the M80s. You can see the M80 impedance curves along with other parameters on the NRC measurements part of the SoundStage review which you can find at ecoustics.com. If anything, that's more amp than you need, but if you're willing to pay for it, that's your decision.
Forget about "acoustic match" ; it'll sound the same with the M80s as any other properly designed amp operating within its power limits.
So far as speaker cables, don't waste your money. Copper wire is copper wire and there's nothing better. The significant factor is the length of the run. Regular 16 gauge lamp cord would be fine up to about 20 feet and 12 gauge could be used if the run is longer than that.
call klaus and ask him-i bet he giggles because the stratos will handle those speakers no problem, he's a great guy.
of coarse i'm bias because i just recieved a pair of stratos monoblocks with extreme upgrade-
John, ok, thanks for answer. I spoke with Klaus and yes, the amp is of course too much (I'm getting the dual mono) and it should handle the 80s easy since it can take dips down to 1Ohm but I will probably wander later into some more demanding speakers so I don't mind getting it. Not so sure about the acoustic match but I will be driving other speakers with the setup and we'll see whether it matters. Cables I opted for the Groenbergs Quattros that Klaus is selling and I will bi-wire the 80 to see what I can get out of it in terms of quality. I like the fairly forward, detailed speakers (my fav so far was big infinity kappas) and I assume I'll find roughly a similar speaker with that one. I'm also getting a TacT 2.2 (which is silly, it's almost 2x amp+speakers combined) but I'm a computer guy and my setup in terms of room is not ideal either ;-) I heard it on some Acoustic Research around the class of the Ti80s and certain things throughn the TacT sounded amazingly good, better than $4000 speakers.
Anyway, I'll let you know how the Ti80 stands up ...
-- tony
In reply to:
Cables I opted for the Groenbergs Quattros that Klaus is selling and I will bi-wire the 80 to see what I can get out of it in terms of quality.
You've been conned.
1) It's copper. It's transmitting a very low frequency signal and it doesn't take much to properly shield a cable at these frequencies, assuming the amount of copper is sufficient to comfortably move the current.
2) Bi-wiring is the single silliest concept in the history of silly concepts that audiophiles embrace. Anyone that buys into this needs an intro course in electrical engineering, specifically a quick into on node voltage analysis. It's the same fricken signal on both posts of the speaker regardless of whether or not the bridge exists as a gold plate between the posts or two spades connected to the same output terminal on the receiver.
semi_on... You sure have a way with words.. It appears not everyone out here has had all the training and experience you have ? You might want to take that into consideration next time, before you lay down the law..
We all ask 'silly' questions for time to time, but this forum is for learning, and that means "silly" questions will be asked..
Newbies will be asking many of the same old questions that have been asked and answered before.. It's an open forum, and that's just the nature of the beast..
Semi_On:
You can squak as much about your vast knowledge on electrical engineering. There have been numorous tests to disprove copper wire and bi-wiring but equally or more tests that prove otherwise. If there was no difference then why is there even close to the market out there providing bi-wiring setups and more expensive copper. Even I have heard a DIFFERENCE between my old Monster cables vs my new Kimber cables. If copper is copper why is there an audible difference? If bi-wiring and bi-amping is a silly concept then why are there even remotely as much people enbracing this concept. I think you need to check your ears. If you can't even tell a difference between your 16 gauge Radio Shack copper and yes although expensive $2500 USD Cardas Golden Cross (I would never afford such a thing) your batteries from your hearing aid must have expired or you have tinitis.
MIKEY, I apologize if my response seemed offensive to the poster. It wasn't intended as such. The problem isn't him but the silly audiophiles that led him to believe he needed bi-wiring in the first place. hence my comment that he had been conned.
My posting style in general tends to be very dry when discussing technical matters. It's hard for me to convey human compassion over black and white text when staring at a fairly sterile computer.
Saturn,
In reply to:
You can squak as much about your vast knowledge on electrical engineering. There have been numorous tests to disprove copper wire and bi-wiring but equally or more tests that prove otherwise
Prove it.
Provide ONE that utilized a double blind test. I've never seen anyone able to do that.
In reply to:
there was no difference then why is there even close to the market out there providing bi-wiring setups and more expensive copper.
A sucker is born every day? There are plenty of markets that exist for silly products that serve no purpose.
In reply to:
Even I have heard a DIFFERENCE between my old Monster cables vs my new Kimber cables.
But did you use a double blind test to determine which
sounded better. I've heard many people claim they can hear a difference. I've seen many totally unable to prove it in a scientific setting. I've heard of a few remarkably well trained individuals that can actually hear a difference. None of them have ever scientifically been able to show even consistent preference for one almost insignificant difference over the next.
In reply to:
If bi-wiring and bi-amping is a silly concept then why are there even remotely as much people enbracing this concept.
Same reason religion is so popular, I suppose. People can convince themselves of anything.
In reply to:
I think you need to check your ears. If you can't even tell a difference between your 16 gauge Radio Shack copper and yes although expensive $2500 USD Cardas Golden Cross (I would never afford such a thing) your batteries from your hearing aid must have expired or you have tinitis.
Prove it. And try to do so in a rational matter that doesn't rely on personal insults. Ad hominem attacks are fairly well disregarded by educated people as an ineffective form of debate. If you have to reduce yourself to making fun of people in order to prove your point, your argument has no merit at all.
Regards,
Semi
Saturn (and 2x6spds),
These are tired old arguments made day in and day out.
Read Semi's post and think, is it so hard to believe that large companies market their products with impressive scientific jargon to make more cash off of consumers?
Or is it so hard to believe that your own brain can have preconceptions or bias before you form an opinion about something?
Why do you think the job of a supreme court judge or jury selection is so difficult?
What bothers me so much is forum posters that essentially post their opinions as fact. "Yes biwiring is better. Yes those Cardas cables will make a difference." etc.
You live in North America, land of the ever bombarding commercials. Our thoughts and opinions are influenced everyday by something on tv, on the web or on billboards. Lets remove that bias as much as possible by testing these 'biwiring' and other theories in the lab. They can be tested on a larger number of people to remove bias from individuals having great hearing or worse hearing. They can be tested in a controlled environment where the listener never knows what they are listening to, does not know the price, the colour, the brand name, anything at all. Then from this we can derive facts.
If for a fact you know that two types of cables sound different or that people can actually tell the difference between a biwired and a non-biwired system for example, then post the proof and show us the studies that have been done. I would love to read them. Part of my career is experimental design. I thoroughly enjoy sifting through scientific method searching for impartial setups or holes, looking for improvements.
Before you get started however, i should mention, studies have to come from NON biased sources, which is to say, not from a website, not from a company's information booklets, not by having your buddy down the road come and listen with you, but from peer reviewed, scientific journals on human behaviour and acoustics testing (such as what they do and HAVE DONE at the NRC anechoic chamber in Ottawa).
Semi had it right when he stated the obvious, religion vs. science.
The beliefs that exist in audio are the religion. These beliefs are sold everyday.
It should be obvious why people get angry when you question their beliefs.
Knowledge is the key to understanding, but beware the knowledge spread by the less knowledgable...to coin a phrase.
Speaker Wire - A History
I believe that this link has previously been posted on this board by somebody else, but I feel the link is worth citing here again.
This historical essay by Roger Russel** conclusively settles the "myth" of speaker wires (at least for those of us who are willing to use some scientific reasoning). But perhaps even more importantly, the essay eloquently depicts the process in which a good scientific reasoning succombed to the powerful marketing forces, through what the author calls "Authority Belief."
** former Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. and the founder of McIntosh Loudspeakers.
Allow me to waste some server space to cite a couple of Dr. Russel's paragraphs:
...Gordon Gow's cable demonstration provided a personal experience for customers that could replace the Authority Beliefs they had relied on earlier. The demonstration was controlled. It was an instant comparison and the listeners did not know the wire identification. Gordon held many such demonstrations in dealer showrooms and at shows.
Despite the effectiveness of Gordon's cable demonstration and the truth about speaker wire, people visiting the McIntosh room at the shows, who had not experienced the cable demonstration, were disturbed that we were using ordinary heavy zip cord instead of one of the popular brands of speaker wire. Instead of listening to the McIntosh speakers and electronics, they recalled "bad" things they had been told about "common" speaker wire and this promoted questions about the "inferior" wire being used. When we changed the wire to a popular brand of wire, customers were happy with the setup, and directed their attention to the McIntosh equipment.
The demand for high quality speaker wire was increasing and appeared to be a new marketing area for several companies. McIntosh did not make or sell speaker wire. The solution seemed very obvious--rather than spend time and effort to create negative sales for McIntosh dealers who were beginning to sell speaker wire, it seemed best to encourage the speaker owner/customer to consult with the dealer about what speaker wire to use. Consequently, I no longer recommended the kind of wire or wire sizes in the speaker manuals.
By 1988, McIntosh no longer supplied audio interconnects with the electronics. Again, many kinds of special audio cables were available to the customer/owner. The dealer could also be consulted about what cables to use.
I credit the success of the speaker wire industry to their expert sales and marketing ability. However, it is my experience that ordinary copper wire, as long as it's heavy enough, is just as good as name brands.
While browsing Dr. Russell's web site, I found the following page also informative, and funny!
Audio Distortions - Truth and Humor
Cheers!
Okey Okey...I had a heated day today at work and people were getting to me. Trying to escape from my task I logged on to see what new info I can gather in this particularly good message board. I apologize Semi for being an idiot and "squaked" like a duck and beligerently stooped to name calling. I think that anger was misplaced. I am sorry Semi.
As always you guys have given me great insight on this interesting world of audio & HT. I give my many thanks.
What I was trying to say earlier is that I personally without bias or coersion (I was able to take home a used Kimber cable for no cost but returning it another day) Based on replacing my old 7 year monster cable with a Kimber 4TC I noticed a difference. A slight difference not necessarily a good or bad one but a difference. I replaced the wires about 5 times. I got even my fiancee to tell me if she noticed a difference. Both of us noticed that the Monster was a little flat, somewhat more lower frequency available. The highs did not come out as prominent as in the Kimbers. How do you account for that audible difference?
Also the other time I was at a friends place I noticed he had bi-wirable cables but had it connected regularly to his speakers with the plates connected to the posts. Without him knowing I split up his wires to the highs and lows of his B&W and took out the joining plate. I played a CD he had in his player. He mentioned to me about 15 minutes into the music he noticed a bit more sounds he never heard before. A bit more clarity. He ask me if I fiddled around with his system. I was really there because I was fixing his setup. He had his fronts and center correctly in his A channel but by mistake put his surrounds on his B channel. So when playing music I was wondering why he was getting stereo full surround without engaging his predated 5.1 AC3 ready Denon.
With respect to finding scientific studies on copper wire. LEt me look around and see with what I can come up with supporting the theory of better cables with technology.
Hi Saturn et al,
I do not think anybody here doubts that you (and your fiance) genuinely perceived an audible difference. We are not debating about that "fact" (your perception), but about the possible reasons for that perception. Here are several hypotheses that I can immediately come up with:
(1) The Kimber cable was truly superior for some real physical/technological reasons.
(2) The electrical connection between the Monster cable and the binding posts on your speaker/amp was for some reason less than optimal, or the Monster cable was in fact defective in a subtle way.
(3) The actual physical sound produced by your speakers was in fact identical down to any measurable degree, yet you did perceive an audible difference due to a subtle change in the psycho-auditory processing in your own brain, that originates from the very knowledge that you have changed the cable.
Any one of these factors can cause a genuine change in your auditory perception. So the challenge is how to distinguish between these possibilities. I have to agree with Semi in that a repetitive blinded test is the
only scientifically acceptable way to distinguish between (1)/(2) and (3). Roger Russell's essay I cited above describes in detail a nice example of how this blind test can be conducted.
As for the "benefits of bi-wiring" that your friend perceived (apparently not knowing what you did to his system), it could simply be that you happened to improve the electrical connection at the speaker terminals by loosening and retightening the binding posts and thus scratching and refreshing the contact surfaces. In fact, such exact scenario is also cited in Dr. Russell's essay. Again, the
only definitive way to exclude that possibility is to conduct a repetitive blind test with your friend.
In my own professional field, the hypothesis (3) above is collectively called "placebo effects." A patient can genuinely feel that his/her condition is improved, just by taking a pill of starch that is labeled as an effective medicine for his condition. In order to exclude the placebo effects, all new drugs have to go through a rigorous process of randomized "double-blind" clinical trials before an FDA approval can be given.
Here, "double-blind" means that not only the patients who participate in the trial but also the physicians who evaluate the patients' conditions have to be blinded as to whether a given patient is taking the real drug or a placebo. This requirement is based on the well established fact that the knowledge (either in the patients or physicians) of being administered with a "potentially effective" drug alone exerts a genuine and significant effect on patients' evaluated conditions.
Honestly, I do not think the person is lying when he/she insists that he heard the difference. What is at stake is the possible mechanism(s) resulting in the perceived difference.
Cheers!
Great Post! I love to be abused by a guy who sounds like me when I was 15 years younger and knew _everything_ _for_sure_ (TM ;-)
Anyway, I heard people seriously dabbing in Audio professionally, semi- and amateurish being split 50%-50% whether bi-wiring buys you anything. I decided to give it a go, something to loose a night on ;-) I'm also a EE and I
_know_ based on my school-knowledge that it should not make a difference but I'm in real world for 20 years now and
I learned that the models taught in school leave many, many
effects out. And worst case, I'll use the 2nd pair later for bi-amping unless semi_on proves that that is garbage as well.
Same for cables, I assume it won't make a difference but why take the risk, it's maybe 5% of the total price of what I'm building and I wasted too many days saving on small stuff like that and then fixing it. Good quality stuff pays and who knows whether copper grain or the way the cables are twisted in the shield matters or not ;-)
Well, I'll let you guys know once I get all the stuff here. BTW, I'm right now starting to model my room with CARA. This is great voodo ;-)
And ehem, yes, it was a thread about odyssey + m80s ;-)
-- tony
so, here's first update, dual monoblock is sucking power since about 12 hours and I already turned off the heating in the room ;-)
Yes, amp handles speakers from start great and whatever I say has to be discounted that nothing's broken in yet. I'll post an update in 2-3 months when things settle.
1) Didn't biwire for several reasons (mostly, won't go into 4 amps later, just don't believe I'll get enough for the money involved). Got decent Groenberg cables though from Klaus.
2) Amp is handling the speakers great, vocals are amazing already now! My wife glued to Sade & Diana Krall playing over it and she's hearing that in decent quality every day already ;-)
3) Bass swims a tad and soundstage is rather flat and shifts but again, not broken in yet. Also, complex orchestration soundstage collapses (Dallas Wind, some good blues CDs)
4) Acoustic guitar is lacking on top as compared to some JBLs I heard (but that was with Millenium, an amp 5x price). I'm not sure it's the m80s or the amp. (Ry Coder)
5) I have a TacT 2.0 inbetween and it _significantly_ improves the sound already now. Vocals get very, very good and bass passable. Eva Cassidy is heart-breakingly well rendered.
6) I don't find the m80s bright at all. They seem right now to lack finesse on top a tad though (albeit maybe a matter of breaking in again)
7) Used CARA to position speakers (putting TacT in bypass to understand properties of speaker/amp first) and it made a big difference in terms of one can get out in terms of quality by placement. TacT is just a tad of an expensive solution for many I assume ;-)
more later, overall happy with the m80s, if I get the acoustic guitar sounding to the 'raise-hair-on-back-of-my-arm' level I remember hearing with the Millenium/TacT/JBLs I will be a _really_ happy guy.
--- tony
So, here is the report after driving the m80s for about a month every day 8-10 hours
(they're in my home office, about 400 sqft or so with sloped ceiling) to get them settled
in. I won't open the can of worms about whether components 'break-in' or your ears
break in or not but I can say that there is quite a dramatic difference in the sound
to my ears after a month.
first the setup: NAD 541i (and tuner & other sources not as good) pre-amped with a
TacT 2.0 going into odyssey stratos monoblocks into m80s. All wiring groenberg (again,
maybe there is no difference to lamp cord but the cost compared to total makes it
irrelevant, I'm going for puresilver interconnects from source to preamp just to
check I don't miss a cheap improvement). Started driving via digital 44.1 interface
and ended up going 96kHz oversampled analog which sounds significantly better
(I'm sure someone here will claim oversampling is a non-issue either). Digital
sounds more precise & lower noise level but much thinner in the middle and highs
(I assume it's the harmonics missing), maybe due to clock jitter? Shows on female vocals.
Syncing the clocks on TacT and maybe Tascam CD player is one of next projects.
Started sitting fairly close (6 feet or so) and moved back to 12feet. These speakers
need a lot of room to sound great. I prefer listening on-axis, I found with
measurements that off-axis the speakers seems to loose flat response fairly
fast (maybe it's my room response though).
Soundstage: Width is very, very good, going on good recording beyond speaker outer
edges easily. Most amazing stuff was actually the clock on the 'kid from cleveland
in the comfort of routine' waters' 'Amused to Death' (recorded Q-sound) that
clocks on the left of me, basically to the left of my head, about 8-9 feet in
front of the speakers! On 'kind of blue'
the alt and tenor sax are 3-4 feet outside the outer edge of the speakers and I can
localize Miles' trumpet head moving when playing.
Depth is ok, the
speakers went from very front to little recessed presentation, depth is however
only 9=12 feet deep I would say. Odyssey seems to be said to be flater in depth so maybe
that's it.
so, in sum, I heard better (but on amp ~10k$). Instrument placement is much better than
at the beginning, pretty good overall I would say.
With lots of power behind them, very loud and complex passages go through
without any congestion (Epiphanies, Number 11 as example). No matter how much
bass and violins romp on the stage.
Bass: I am lost how people can make such strong statements about bass quality
unless they have very, very good listening rooms with no room modes. I did CAD
(Cara) modelling to place my speakers, still the peaks and dips below 300Hz are
unbelievable. And my room doesn't echo much, has sloped celing and is very
non-rectangular. Correcting using TacT makes the bass a completely different game!
Dimensions taughter so a kick drum can be easily told from drum/contrabass/bass guitar,
even when very loud.
Anyway, when corrected, the bass is very good and deep for a floor-stand. I measure
the speaker keeping up decently down to 20Hz and then still trying down to 10Hz.
What helped was a lot of solid state amp power, of a smaller NAD 50 or 70W amp it
sounded ok but no way as open as now. It's probaly some of the best bass I heard without subs.
Middle: very, very good but I think it's primarily the amp. Stratos seems to
be very good here as well. Female vocals/sax are outstanding.
There is one gripe I think I attribute to the m80s. There is in upper mids a
'hole' in localization where instruments seem to shift or loose localization.
I assume that the dome tweeter and mid drivers are phase-reversed (dome vs.
cone) and that flips/kills localization for the crossover frequencies (seems
we humans are doing localization via phase of mid/higher frequencies?). As well, either
my amp or Axioms do not like that much very sharply plucked instruments with
lots of harmonics (acoustic guitar). It is very good still but the 'raise-my-hair'
magic I heard on AR with 10K$ amp is not here. That's irregardless of running through
the TacT DAC, the CD's DAC and TacT ADC. Maybe the CD player has a weak spot here,
don't know.
Top: Yes, it is bright in the sense that it's almost flat, rather than rolling 3/6dB
off like lots of speakers/gear does. I verified the very flat response using measurements on
the TacT. So, the speaker is great, most recordings are however not standing
up to that much scrunity. I listen now with a 3db rollover from 300 to around
10k and then about 6db rollover to 20kHz. Only few recordings sound good
flat. The tweeter is very, very sensitive, listening over 80dB peak I hear any noise/
quantization of the CD or whatever it is on most CDs unless it's few good HDCD recording
(yes, also when driving digital toslink or 75Ohm). And on most classicals you hear page-turning,
piano player breathing, on jazz you hear the guy getting his lips on the trumpet.
Not necessarily what many people may care for.
So beware, if your recordings are not that great, Axiom will be punishing you
unless you can like me play with the target curve on a TacT to dumb things down.
Also, I think that when played very loud (>85dB peaks) the speakers starts to
emphasize the mids and highs (storing energy? enclosure vibrations?).
I can't objectively measure it but on recordings with problematic presence
region the sibilants become worse when played very loud. I can equalize the problem
away (TacT has very neat digital software equalizer) and think I will dump couple of
ten pounds of lead shot on the speaker top.
Summary: m80 and odyssey monoblocks (which I don't review here but can only highly
recommend) are a complete
_steal_ for the money and from my hearing comparisons come up with a sound close
to 20k$+ setups I listened to. With a TacT thrown in, there were few things that sounded
better I heard and all of them had hair-raising price tags on them. If you have
patience and money for esotherics like 4 speaker setups,
electrostats, ribbons, tubes and LAMM monoblocks, you can get
quite a better sound in certain areas but with no-maintainance floor-standing cones
& A A/B solid-state
the setup seems to cover way over 80% of what's possible.
BUT
i) it's a very
revealing setup, if your sound material is not that great, be sure you listen to
it first, you may realize that you don't like it anymore (I scrapped about 50% of
my most preferred CDs, they're unlistable on this setup that mercilessly reveals
faults [things like no soundstage, crappy vocals, very 'hot' mixes, too much
'playing' with soundstage]). Most 'studio' recordings in the 'pop/rock' departement
went the way of the doodoo.
ii) you need lots of room, I would say closer than 10 feet don't listen to m80s.
iii) with a lot of amp-power m80s sound much more 'airy', especially bass improves.
disclosure: no affiliation with any of the products mentioned except as happy
customer.
prz,
An interesting review, primarily your summary after the "BUT' part.
A couple of things offhand:
1) More power often equates to louder volumes which listeners perceive as 'better sounding'.
2) i would never equate more expensive to better sounding, that is quite presumptious, a 10k amp will not automatically sound better than a $500 amp
3) clock jitter was explained by Alan in this old post, you might want to take a read of
his explanation
4) How were you measuring the M80 down to 10Hz?
Seems that your TacT will take care of most of the issues you felt were issues with the M80s.
Enjoy the sound!
In reply to:
And on most classicals you hear page-turning, piano player breathing, on jazz you hear the guy getting his lips on the trumpet. Not necessarily what many people may care for.
You piqued my curiosity there. Are you suggesting that music may sound better (say, for many people) if those "noises" are less audible? If so, I strongly disagree, and propose that without the performing noise, the music would sound instantly "dead" and detached. The breaths of the keyboard or string player, the "hiss" of woodwinds (especially flute) and brasses, and even foot thumps of the conductor... Those are, im my opinion, fairly important "sound component" of the acoustic genres of music. If you go to a violin recital, you will clearly and constantly hear a fairly loud "phrasing breaths" of the violinist, which carry the power to connect and engage the audience to the performer.
An OK audio equipemnt reproduces the sound of instruments very nicely; a great audio set will reproduce the "performance" by the human being.
1) sure, I listened level-matched (TacT preamp has one big frigging number showing you the dB peak level ;-) and my comment holds for bass at high volumes, at low volumes less power did ok, from about 70+ on, bass started to fall off with less amp power.
2) agreed (but the 10k$ amp was better though, especially on guitar ;-)
3) will do
4) TacT seems to measure that low, at least when you look at graphs (it has an individually calibrated microphone and software with each unit, since it's pricey gear, not surprising ;-)
yes, I'm happy very much with the m80s after tactifying my music, but I assume for most people a TacT or even couple of good quality eqs are expensive (read the equalizer thread, very interesting) so they may have issues.
Hmm, sushi, not suggesting anything here. I think it's all personal preferences.
As example, I listen to some pretty old jazz and lots of live recordings and boy, those have sometimes lots of noise at the bottom (over 70dB almost everything recorded before late 80's has a distince noise bottom) but nevertheless I love lots of those dearly compared to many clinically black-canvas engineered HDCD. I can abstract the noise away and the performance carries me but then again, when I try to play it to any non-high-end-audio-tinted friends here, they immediately say 'oh, it's noisy, I don't like that' so my reading is, most people cannot deal with it well.
With classics, I admit personally to prefer not be bothered with people noises. My non-high-end-audio-tinted friends as well often think it's 'intimidating' to hear the performance so clear and so close to you. One guy that is in New York's concert halls a lot let me pick a target curve that rolls of from 4k to 20k over 10dB! when listening to 'rites of spring' he heard recently. and then said "oh yes, it's like the real thing now". He sits always way, way back and that's how he likes it! For me like I said, people noises are something I do not look for, though there is one exception where I want every finger on the fret, every breath and every tap, namely live blues, one of the great recordings is the 'Hard again' by Muddy Waters, there is a whole room of old guys with you there saying 'yeah, man ...', 'that's it ...', 'you go it ...' and slurring their feet when Muddy hits it. Unbelievably engaging ;-)
So, everyone to its liking, I just wanted to emphasize that a odyssey/m80 combination is not a laid-back-polite-english gear like mission, this stuff etches the material on you whether you like it or not.
Read the jitter comments by Alan. It's in his usual style [slight irony on] 'get a couple pieces of lamp cord, your mom's portable player and two empty cans and you built the equivalent of a 100k$ setup, oops, not cans, axioms' [/slight irony off]. That all maybe true scientifically, but why did I hear a discernible difference when running my gear of a 541i vs. a Audiotron over toslink. Both put out a digital stream. And why is the 541s analog oversampled output discernibly better than the digital (which surprised me a lot)? DAC, clock jitter? Shouldn't be either according to Alan. The best explanation I have is right now digital 'clock jitter' so maybe I'll try to follow it up. It can and has been measured that there is jitter on S/PDIF [clock is recovered from signal] influenced by material played. And of course, my digital preamp is having another unsynchronized digital clock taking that in. So the wave form, when restored at wrong time, may get warped significantly enough to matter? Why not clock sync the CD player and the preamp, can't be bad, except some money wasted ;-)
finally, I agree completely with Alan that room response and speakers response is _dimensions_ more important than the 'jitter' kind of stuff. I am still flabbergasted how people talk about 'more controlled bass' when changing amps in a room. Without room correction, bass is all over the place unless you have a room calculated and built just for listening and without room modes. Bass peaks of 5dB are already very good and on average setups I see +/-30dB!
But once you corrected for it, it may be that the smaller differences start to become more discernible. don't know, I'm searching here ...
BTW, I have a Ph.D. in software and my dad is a E.E. so I have a strong technical/scientific background and not musical. I always prefer science over rumors but I learned that most science is built on models or controlled experiments that only mirror reality to a certain degree and then either the model has to be improved or you get a guy with a lot experience and serious gut-feeling ;-)
In reply to:
As example, I listen to some pretty old jazz and lots of live recordings and boy, those have sometimes lots of noise at the bottom (over 70dB almost everything recorded before late 80's has a distince noise bottom) but nevertheless I love lots of those dearly compared to many clinically black-canvas engineered HDCD.
Ah... The noise introduced by recording equipment/technology is, of course, a totally differnt beast than the performing or human noise -- the former is always "bad" thing. Just to make sure that our thoughts are in sync on this...
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That all maybe true scientifically, but why did I hear a discernible difference when running my gear of a 541i vs. a Audiotron over toslink. Both put out a digital stream.
prz, see my post in this thread above on 2/13/03 (response to Saturn). Have you already "scientifically" eliminated the possibility (3) described in that post?
The point still stands.
Audible differences may not be due to the electronics. If it is, then it is measurable, and using the graphs of the TacT software, it might be possible to test that.
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That all maybe true scientifically, but why did I hear a discernible difference when running my gear of a 541i vs. a Audiotron over toslink.
Having not been in your experiment, I can only offer a possibility. You were expecting a difference, you knew which source you were listening to, so you heard one. Psychology plays a major role in these which is why those of us that demand proof require blind listening.
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DAC, clock jitter?
My company produces the best timing silicon in the world. Unparalleled. As such, I'm pretty familiar with timing schemes. In a digital music stream from identical CD players, there is absolutely no difference in the raw data received unless one of the players is of such a poor caliber that it can't provide the digital information to the amp. Having had a few decades to play with CD's, no one designs that poorly. Clock jitter is the average difference between one cycle of the clock signal and the next. While it can be measured, it would have no effect on the system unless it was so massive as to cause the DAC to actually be mistimed. The result of that would definitely be audible in that the entire piece of music would be garbage as the bitstream wouldn't even resemble the final piece. But more importantly, CD's are designed with parity, and the players have a large buffer in which the final bitstream is compared to itself to make sure no bits have been lost in transmission long before it's actually played through your speakers.
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The best explanation I have is right now digital 'clock jitter' so maybe I'll try to follow it up.
Only because it doesn't appear you understand the circuit involved. It is FAR from a good explanation.
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the wave form, when restored at wrong time, may get warped significantly enough to matter?
Remember: you're talking about a digital bitstream, not an analogue wave form. If the bitstream is screwed up, the result isn't an output that's a little off like an analogue wave that gets distorted. It's an entirely different piece of information. That's the beauty of digital. It's either 1 or 0. Screw that up, and there's only one place it can go.
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Why not clock sync the CD player and the preamp, can't be bad, except some money wasted ;-)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. Are you saying we should opperate the CD player and the preamp at the same frequency? What possible purpose would that serve?
Regards,
Semi
ok, semi,
1) I understand the 'psychology' effect, I don't have the equipment for double-blind. So I _believe_ to hear a significant difference. Good enough. Funny enough, when
running the CD transport via toslink or 75Ohm (it has both) I don't _believe_ to hear a difference.
2) Trust me, I'm a bit believer in digital, I went from EE 20 years ago to software for that reason, 1 is 1 and 0 is 0. I started to build everything digital, only TacT. I realized that digital amps have their problems though ;-) and no digital speakers are around. And right now, 96kHz analog oversample sounds better ;-)
3) ok, on a technical level I admit I don't understand why jitter should be such a big problem. First, I hope you got my setup. I run digital CD transport feeding a TacT preamp and the preamp ADCs the wave to an analog amp. So, the digital stream with the clock comes from the CD and it should be digitial-wise perfect as you say, even if the clock jitters. Fine. Now, it shows up at the pre-amp digital input. Now, the preamp sucks up the bits (which cannot have bit-skipping like you said) and puts them into its
DSPs and then on the DAC which all run of its internal clock which is very high quality (maybe your companies ;-). Now, if the DAC has jitter, I see clearly how that can screw up the resulting wave. So the whole clock-sync between CD and TacT doesn't seem to affect stuff. But lots
of people with a sound clue say that clock-syncing the TacT
and the CD transport improves the sound significantly (including the guys that developed tact ;-). And funny enough, I _believe_ to hear the effect they describe as digital jitter effect. So why should that be if not digital clock jitter from the CD transport somehow affecting the DAC or DSPs in the preamp ?
And last, in all respect, It would hurt my ears tad less if you didn't try to go into offensive that quickly on your posts.
I'm sure I know much stuff you don't know and vice versa. This forum is to have some fun, learn and discuss, not to prove who's bigger ?
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Now, the preamp sucks up the bits (which cannot have bit-skipping like you said) and puts them into its
DSPs and then on the DAC which all run of its internal clock which is very high quality (maybe your companies ;-).
Not likely. When I say the best, I'm talking about 12GHz clock distribution chips with jitter below 200 femto-seconds... I doubt they have a need for anything remotely that precise.
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Now, if the DAC has jitter, I see clearly how that can screw up the resulting wave.
The clock merely tells the DAC at what pace to perform its activity. The DAC is not operating very fast so you'd have to have jitter at such a proportion to matter to that device as to make the chip misstep. A high bit rate 24bit 96kHz DAC is representing a piece of data in steps of 1 point per 10 micro seconds. Your everyday standard, and very cheap Silicon based clock generator has jitter in the nano-second scale.
You're at least 1000 significant figures away from a timing problem...
Incidentally, this is also why jitter isn't much of a concern to digitial designers until they get into the >500MHz range at the very least and really not more than 1GHz.
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But lots
of people with a sound clue say that clock-syncing the TacT
and the CD transport improves the sound significantly (including the guys that developed tact ;-). And funny enough, I _believe_ to hear the effect they describe as digital jitter effect. So why should that be if not digital clock jitter from the CD transport somehow affecting the DAC or DSPs in the preamp ?
Lots of people who are considered experts claim you can improve your sound with $2000 digital interconnects. That doesn't mean its true. Our brain is FAR more complicated than we give it credit for. It's ability to affect our perception of the world is phenomenal and shoudl always be taken into consideration when discussing such things.
That said, if you're happy with the results and are perceiving an improvement, that sounds good to me. All that really matters in the end is whether you enjoy the results. It seems clear to me that you do.
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And last, in all respect, It would hurt my ears tad less if you didn't try to go into offensive that quickly on your posts.
I'm sure I know much stuff you don't know and vice versa. This forum is to have some fun, learn and discuss, not to prove who's bigger ?
This is brought to my attention fairly often on this site. I really don't understand the nature of it. I'm not intending to be abrasive and I've actually been trying to pad my posts with hugs and kisses in order to temper the problem some here have with them. I certainly don't mean for you to interpret what I say as offensive or hurtful. Can you point out specifically what gave you this impression? By my eye, I'm just direct and perhaps lack a little warmth in computer correspondence due largely to the fact that I'm staring at a cold piece of machinery.
Regards,
Semi
prz,
I would have to say that Semi does have an indirect style of writing but usually does not mean anything offensive by it.
The hardest part about responding to ideas and questions sometimes on forums is not knowing the level of intelligence (or the technical background) of the individuals doing the reading or the posting.
Often a poster can get a little too technical or the reverse, too condescending in their explanation. Writing at a computer easily puts a poster at the face of an unemotional beast widely known for headaches (the windows operating system for most ppl). Combine these two together and you get blunt, forward postings that lack any sense of emotion.
However, i believe Semi felt you did not understand how clock jitter works and with respect to your background, has tried to give you information at a level of understanding that is useful.
I certainly feel like i have a better explanation and understanding about clock jitter now and i also have a science background, although a biological one more than electrical.
Semi's point about negligbile jitter effect makes sense.
A clock working at microseconds with a 'variation' in the nanasecond range is very negligible indeed. If any human can hear the off-timing of a musical note by nanoseconds, they would have to be a god.
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Now, the preamp sucks up the bits (which cannot have bit-skipping like you said) and puts them into its
DSPs and then on the DAC which all run of its internal clock which is very high quality (maybe your companies ;-).
Not likely. When I say the best, I'm talking about 12GHz clock distribution chips with jitter below 200 femto-seconds... I doubt they have a need for anything remotely that precise.
nope, I was told that good ears hear waveform differences caused by patterns of couple of pico-seconds deviations
but femto, I pull my hat off, that's what, fractions of inches for light in this time ;-) You guys must have fun, sounds
bleeding edge.
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Now, if the DAC has jitter, I see clearly how that can screw up the resulting wave.
The clock merely tells the DAC at what pace to perform its activity. The DAC is not operating very fast so you'd have to have jitter at such a proportion to matter to that device as to make the chip misstep. A high bit rate 24bit 96kHz DAC is representing a piece of data in steps of 1 point per 10 micro seconds. Your everyday standard, and very cheap Silicon based clock generator has jitter in the nano-second scale.
You're at least 1000 significant figures away from a timing problem...
Incidentally, this is also why jitter isn't much of a concern to digitial designers until they get into the >500MHz range at the very least and really not more than 1GHz.
so, not sure I follow here, so if you say that I reconstruct something around 10kHz with 10 microsec clock (that's 1e-6 if I'm correct) (which means I'll need at least 20kHz samples to do it anyway decent, that's 1/20*1e3 = 0.5 msec = 500 micro seconds so 1 microsecond clock jitter could be already 0.2% difference on the timescale). Could we hear that one ? My experience with image processing (was a hobby long time ago) suggests to me that just couple of those are surely not to be heard but if such difference happens in a predictable pattern like jitter on another pattern (like music material) I can easily imagine we are able to tell recognize it's going on in an incredibly exact fashion
(analogous to e.g. human eye being pretty
weak with colors, we only see couple thousands if I remember correctly but once we put them close to each other, we can differentiate millions of hues demonstrably). If you think I'm off the charts, read
the reports of NASA that for I think 10+ years thought that astronauts lied their teeth off when they were saying they can see single cars from orbit (it's _way_ beyond the resolution of human retina). They found the explanation, it
makes you shake the head in disbelief as to the accuracy of human senses.
But the core of the problem you didn't mention. What you talk about here is to just make the clock on the DAC very precise, I understand the benefit that it may or
may not bring. I don't understand why there is a claim around that sync'ing the clocks between the transport and the pre-amp should buy me anything. The clocks are
independent and there is a buffer inbetween so the effect should be zero, is that what you say ?
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But lots
of people with a sound clue say that clock-syncing the TacT
and the CD transport improves the sound significantly (including the guys that developed tact ;-). And funny enough, I _believe_ to hear the effect they describe as digital jitter effect. So why should that be if not digital clock jitter from the CD transport somehow affecting the DAC or DSPs in the preamp ?
Lots of people who are considered experts claim you can improve your sound with $2000 digital interconnects. ;-)
I just bought 190$ silver interconnects. Just for the kicks ;-)
That doesn't mean its true. Our brain is FAR more complicated than we give it credit for.
agreed.
It's ability to affect our perception of the world is phenomenal and shoudl always be taken into consideration when discussing such things.
agreed even more. If you want to see something in the audio-visual space that makes your jaw _drop_ look up the work that's going on in
language acquisition. There is a video done in canada or US (some woman I forgot the name off, she's a big shot in children language
development world, Patricia something) where a face is saying a sound [one of the anchor sounds of english language, like 'ka'] and the sound playing does
another key sound like 'ba'. When you close you eyes you hear 'ba', when you open them and see the face you hear yet a completely different
anchor sound, 'fa' or something like
that. It's below conciousness, you can't influence it and the effect is very distinct. As to why, they don't know ;-), obviously the sound we hear
is being modified in the brain by the visual circuitry before it even goes to the cerebreum. So yes, we warp reality unbelievably.
That said, if you're happy with the results and are perceiving an improvement, that sounds good to me. All that really matters in the end is whether you enjoy the results. It seems clear to me that you do.
yepp, I wish I would do double-blind-testing but frankly, I'm too lazy for that and probably rather spend $1K on clock sync to see whether I _believe_ it improved the sound.
Much more fun that way, I'm dealing with commercial, analytical, exact, unforgiving science every day at my job, this is a hobby and it should be a little voodo ;-)
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And last, in all respect, It would hurt my ears tad less if you didn't try to go into offensive that quickly on your posts.
I'm sure I know much stuff you don't know and vice versa. This forum is to have some fun, learn and discuss, not to prove who's bigger ?
This is brought to my attention fairly often on this site. I really don't understand the nature of it. I'm not intending to be abrasive and I've actually been trying to pad my posts with hugs and kisses in order to temper the problem some here have with them. I certainly don't mean for you to interpret what I say as offensive or hurtful. Can you point out specifically what gave you this impression? By my eye, I'm just direct and perhaps lack a little warmth in computer correspondence due largely to the fact that I'm staring at a cold piece of machinery.
Having fought that problem for a long time in my life (and still doing so) I extrapolate that you're a very knowledgable individual who cares very deeply
about his work or area of expertise and who considers 'truth' as
seen by you overriding any social norms which are of course just 'agreements' and not hard axioms (albeit going into greeks I realized
that moral and ethics are basically axioms that allow society and therefore not different from axioms that hold math together. Even deeper here,
I assume you are familiar with Goedel and Wittgenstein and the conclusion I had to draw from their work [one mathematical, the other philosophical]
that math is as arbitrary and unprovable system as society with contradictions being the nature of the beast in the deepest meaning of its sense ;-).
On more tactical terms, telling people straight on they have no clue what they talk about seldom furthers your cause as isn't lack of modesty as isn't
the claim to be the bearer of the truth. I tend to either patiently explain over and over or walk away from forums like that when I tense up and feel
that 'there are too many nuts' or when I feel the competitive edge coming up. And yes, electronic mediums warp things to the worse also often ;-)
Anyway, thanks for good input here
-- tony
Great reply Tony. The problem we have here is that some "experts" in this forum have a god complex. Unless you don't share the same views as them you will get chastised. You will always have to prove yourself. Instead of being enlightened in this forum I leave with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Saturn
I totally agree with Saturn! I manytimes refrain from posting on this forum for this very reason. I do however read this forum daily. I actively participate (read & post) in other audio forums where various ideas are welcomed and you dont get beat up for it.
I for one beleive that I can here a substantial sonic improvement from things like speaker wires, caps, resistors, binding posts, and electrical feed componets. Maybe there is no hard techinical scientific explanation to it but none-the-less I can hear it. It is like love, I know when im in love but science can not prove it.
I do have a question for Tony:
I am curious as to why you bought Axiom M80 speakers given the fact that you spent a lot of money to spring for your high end and very well built pre amp & monoblocks?
Some people may also say "the truth hurts". As long as that truth comes in the form of discussion and not name calling nor demeaning inferences, then why would hearing facts be considering as beating up on someone?
My pet peeve is people that come onto forums and post a load of baloney spouting nothing but marketing jargon they read on websites then try to defend it without a shred of real world proof. So many self professed audiophiles fill this category.
I say if you like the sound and hold those beliefs, fine, but if you are going to post around these ideas as being fact (or sell them as many audio salespeople do), you should expect an opposing opinion. Just because someone refutes an idea on the level of scientific proof does not make them individuals with a god complex.
No one likes to be proven wrong, but bitter apples will not change the tide either.
I think prz (Tony) has ideas and Semi had some knowledge. I feel like i personally know alot more about clock jitter now even though Alan had once described it in a prior post (and i don't recall anyone objecting to Alan's opinion at the time). Tony still believes it is an issue, Semi does not.
Can the human ear actually hear a sound freckle that occurs at a nanosecond point?
I certainly do not believe this while others may ask, what is a nanosecond?
So who is right?
Well, perhaps if someone could produce a simple scientific fact, from a paper or a decently published book on how small a time scale human ears can pick out changes then i'm satisfied. I know it is a high standard to hold since these articles must be researched at more than the public library but hey, that is the standard to which i hold my facts. They have to be proven, pure and simple.
In the world of electronics, there is very little that cannot be measured especially in regards to audible and even (human) inaudible sounds.
For one i'm glad that the Axiom forums have been filled with more fact than myth.
As far as clock jitter goes I just modified my Shanlind cd player with an Audiocom clock & Audiocom power supply. Also put in some new Harris diodes, Black Gate caps, & Vishay resistors and I can tell for for a fact that from the first cd play after installing the new components the sound quality is tremendously better and it is getting even better with some burn in.
Just my listening opinion nothing scientific and if it didnt sound better or was even a mild improvement I would say so.
Steven, i'm glad your additions make you enjoy the music more.
You should upload some pics of your system sometime. I'm always interested in seeing what others have built.
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nope, I was told that good ears hear waveform differences caused by patterns of couple of pico-seconds deviations
I'd be interested in anything scientific you've found that indicates this as it would be incredibly interesting to read. However, the more important part of what I was saying was not whether or not you can perceive the difference but that the tiny difference we're talking about is so small, it's present on everything silicon based and you aren't going to find a better solution. As such, I'm skeptical of claims to hearing improvements when the other solutions would carry the same jitter and that jitter would be so small as to be insignificant compared to everything else in the design of your system.
In reply to:
but femto, I pull my hat off, that's what, fractions of inches for light in this time ;-) You guys must have fun, sounds
bleeding edge.
Our products below 200 femto seconds are all Silicon Germanium based and definitely cool. It would be a lot more fun if the telecomm and networking markets would rebound as they're about the only people on the planet that actually care about this level of precision.
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so, not sure I follow here, so if you say that I reconstruct something around 10kHz with 10 microsec clock (that's 1e-6 if I'm correct) (which means I'll need at least 20kHz samples to do it anyway decent, that's 1/20*1e3 = 0.5 msec = 500 micro seconds so 1 microsecond clock jitter could be already 0.2% difference on the timescale). Could we hear that one ?
I don't think I'm nearly qualified enough in human perception measurement to answer at what percentage of the original signal the human ear begins to perceive the difference. On that, I default to the only scientific information as to what people can and can't hear that has been presented in this thread, Alan Lofft's experience with the Canadian research center. If the general consensus from that PURELY scientific community was that it isn't perceptible I'd tend to believe them above someone trying to sell me their product...
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Could we hear that one ? My experience with image processing (was a hobby long time ago) suggests to me that just couple of those are surely not to be heard but if such difference happens in a predictable pattern like jitter on another pattern (like music material) I can easily imagine we are able to tell recognize it's going on in an incredibly exact fashion
The problem is that the levels of jitter you're talking about are on the same scale as the process deviations in silicon ICs. The only way you're going to eliminate that jitter is with a significantly more expensive technology (the SiGe we use is a good example, GaAs is another as is InPh). Syncing anything together in this fashion won't help you simply because that synchronized clock signal will still have the same levels of jitter as its an inherent result using silicon based tehnologies.
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I don't understand why there is a claim around that sync'ing the clocks between the transport and the pre-amp should buy me anything.
That's because those claims don't make sense. I assume it's just creative marketing.
In reply to:
The clocks are
independent and there is a buffer inbetween so the effect should be zero, is that what you say ?
Yep. More importantly, your synchronized clock signal won't be carrying any less clock jitter as jitter is in everything. Hell, even spacetime has jitter.
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I just bought 190$ silver interconnects. Just for the kicks ;-)
I bet they look pretty cool, too. I figure if you've already spent a few grand on your hardware, a couple hundred on wires isn't that big of a deal if just to have something that "fits" in the over all budget and aesthetics.
That doesn't mean it will result in any improvement as a digital interconnect serves no purpose but to carry a high or low signal. The only possible source of distortion is if it occurs to such a phenomenal degree that highs look like lows or vice versa and it happens so often that the receiver has to issue too many requests for a re-transmission of the datastream while that piece of information is supposed to be played. If you have this happening in your system, you have larger problems than the wires.
In reply to:
agreed even more. If you want to see something in the audio-visual space that makes your jaw _drop_ look up the work that's going on in
language acquisition. There is a video done in canada or US (some woman I forgot the name off, she's a big shot in children language
development world, Patricia something) where a face is saying a sound [one of the anchor sounds of english language, like 'ka'] and the sound playing does
another key sound like 'ba'. When you close you eyes you hear 'ba', when you open them and see the face you hear yet a completely different
anchor sound, 'fa' or something like
that. It's below conciousness, you can't influence it and the effect is very distinct. As to why, they don't know ;-), obviously the sound we hear
is being modified in the brain by the visual circuitry before it even goes to the cerebreum. So yes, we warp reality unbelievably.
That's actually REALLY cool. If you happen to come across a link about it, please send it my way. I'd love to read more about that.
In reply to:
yepp, I wish I would do double-blind-testing but frankly, I'm too lazy for that and probably rather spend $1K on clock sync to see whether I _believe_ it improved the sound.
Much more fun that way, I'm dealing with commercial, analytical, exact, unforgiving science every day at my job, this is a hobby and it should be a little voodo ;-)
As a fellow scientist, I can DEFINITELY understand that. I just wish I had your budget to play!
In reply to:
Having fought that problem for a long time in my life (and still doing so) I extrapolate that you're a very knowledgable individual who cares very deeply
about his work or area of expertise and who considers 'truth' as
seen by you overriding any social norms which are of course just 'agreements' and not hard axioms (albeit going into greeks I realized
that moral and ethics are basically axioms that allow society and therefore not different from axioms that hold math together. Even deeper here,
I assume you are familiar with Goedel and Wittgenstein and the conclusion I had to draw from their work [one mathematical, the other philosophical]
that math is as arbitrary and unprovable system as society with contradictions being the nature of the beast in the deepest meaning of its sense ;-).
On more tactical terms, telling people straight on they have no clue what they talk about seldom furthers your cause as isn't lack of modesty as isn't
the claim to be the bearer of the truth. I tend to either patiently explain over and over or walk away from forums like that when I tense up and feel
that 'there are too many nuts' or when I feel the competitive edge coming up. And yes, electronic mediums warp things to the worse also often ;-)
Understood. I think a larger problem for me is actually that my home on the internet, as it were, is much the exact opposite of this place. Proveable information is respected above all else there and a strong analytical argument is absolutely required. Factual statements that are justified with proof are all that the group really permits in debate which is why I run into so many troubles here where the opposite seems true.
I suppose that's a natural result of the current state of A/V.
Regards,
Semi
hmm, why axioms, pletora of reasons (let me say first I think I did an excellent choice as price/value trade-off):
1. I had no artificial cap on budget so it was only 'how far do you want to go?'. Since I'm a tight-fisted guy and don't believe in high-priced labels (some I do after researching them, I drive a beamer e.g. ;-) I wanted to get most for my money. Both, Odyssey and Axioms fitted in here and I think I was right.
2. I am a big believer in 'internet-review-by-dummies' thing coupled with a couple of experts not being too negative about a product. Again, I think I got a hit here.
3. I am a bloody beginner to world of high-end audio albeit I always loved to listen to music and (dreadfully) sing along. So, I think it's like wine, you can't buy very expensive bottles first since you'd think it tastes like gully since you need to educate the taste and you also have to learn what you like. So a thing like Axiom was probably a good start, I knew I like forward-presentation and detail and it looks like I was quite right here to albeit I seem to mallow out a little ;-) I don't say M80s are beginners' speakers since I can't judge it yet but even if they are and I go into expensive, other gear, it was a good starting point. Maybe I keep them for 20 years, don't know yet.
4. I wanted something very neutral to experiment a lot and see the effects without guessing whether the amp or speakers makes it sound different. Again, Axiom & Stratos seem very neutral on sound.
5. I have this little plan of buying a house right now and setting up a home-theater. Wife will get the M80s and I have a good excuse to go and shop for speakers again in a year or two ;-) I'd go and buy something really expensive now, things wouldn't be that easy and maybe I would hate it in a year.
6. I listened to lots of gear, also very, very expensive and I walked away with the recognition that price from a certain point (about 15k$ for a setup I would say) very weakly correlated to whether you like the sound and that esoteric stuff takes a silly amount of work to get the sound you loved at demonstration out in _your_ home (I don't want to build special rooms and treat them, I don't want to play with fractions of inches placements). The only true exception was TacT, that made me drop my jaw and then the money. The difference is distinct and amazing and actually I have this little feeling that speakers and amp matter much, much less all of a sudden (in terms of very flat frequency response).
'nuff reasons ?
--- tony
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Great reply Tony.
Agreed.
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The problem we have here is that some "experts" in this forum have a god complex.
Insulting those with whom you disagree does nothing to further your argument and only identifies an inability to construct a rational and intelligent response.
I could just as easily say that those who protest so much do so out of ignorance and an inability to justify their beliefs coupled with a mind numbing desire to pass those same beliefs off as fact despite their total inability to prove them. But I don't because I CAN'T PROVE IT and it doesn't help our discussion at all.
We having an intelligent and worthwhile discussion here. If you can't stand to see ideas challenged I'd suggest you find a place where every agrees with you. That way you'll be nice and safe in total stagnation. Debate is not only a healthy thing in a community discussing ideas but a mandatory thing for any growth to occur.
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Unless you don't share the same views as them you will get chastised.
Entirely false. No one has been chastized. I stated my opinion that he didn't understand clock jitter well enough which I then followed up with the pertinent information to help him do so. I think it's very clear now that all involved are well informed of the other person's perspective and the net result is good dialogue and learning on both sides. These are bad things.
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You will always have to prove yourself.
Why is that a bad thing? If you make a factual statement you are required to justify it. That's the basic tenent upon which all learning is based. It's not something you should hide from but something to be embraced.
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Instead of being enlightened in this forum I leave with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I'm sorry you feel that way simply from someone challenging you to prove your claims.
I don't mean to tear into you, Saturn. I like you quite a bit and value your input here. However, you bring up these complaints whenever anyone gets into a debate on these fora. Debate is not bad. It's good and should be encouraged.
Regards,
Semi
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Some people may also say "the truth hurts". As long as that truth comes in the form of discussion and not name calling nor demeaning inferences, then why would hearing facts be considering as beating up on someone?
That's what I don't get. We're just asking for substantiation when something doesn't make sense. And somehow this is interpreted as beating people up. It's basic scientific discussion.
I'm glad you're happy, but I would be remiss to not point out better places to get this stuff if you're looking for basic electronics. The prices at Audiocom make baby jesus cry. My clocks synthesizers are used on telecomm, networking, medical imaging and the actual test equipment used to varify the process that make the other guys' products. To say we're more precise than everyone else is an understatement and we command margins the rest of the semiconductor world would kill for. We also charge a tenth of what Adiocom is charging you for CMOS based clocks!
I really hope you didn't buy the rest of that hardware there also. You can get that stuff direct from the distributors for the companies that manufacture them usually at a 20% margin. We're talking about a few cents for the resistors, caps and diodes here. They may require you to hit a minimum buy target which is usually about $25 for that sort of hardware. In that case, you can order much of it from several chip resellers.
Lastly, never, ever, ever, ever buy a semiconductor component from someone that doesn't provide a datasheet.
Semi, i have this clock at home in my kitchen. It runs on AA batteries and i bought it from Walmart but it keeps falling behind by 5 minutes every other month?
You got any chips i could use to fix that problem?
I don't suppose Walmart has them cheap do they?
In reply to:
Insulting those with whom you disagree does nothing to further your argument and only identifies an inability to construct a rational and intelligent response.
I'm the most inarticulate person I know.
My head knows how to rationalize the situation but what comes out is sometimes unintellible goob-le-legook. Maybe I should not be answering these threads at work, where poeple look over my shoulders, but do it at a more convenient time when I can articulate myself.
In reply to:
We having an intelligent and worthwhile discussion here. If you can't stand to see ideas challenged I'd suggest you find a place where every agrees with you. That way you'll be nice and safe in total stagnation. Debate is not only a healthy thing in a community discussing ideas but a mandatory thing for any growth to occur.
Agreed. If I was never challenged I would grow bored and move elsewhere where I can learn. I'm challenged all the time. Maybe my perception on audio ideas has been skewed by unintelligent salespeople.
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Entirely false. No one has been chastized.
Yes chastise is a strong word... You may not look at it on your side of things but I was not the only one person who has brought it up. I just sense as do some people on this forum that comments may seem negative and abrupt. And it nots like now we have to watch what we say because this is really just a forum to gather constructive information rather than negativity in comments. Well look at me here I'm writing a negative comments.
In reply to:
I'm sorry you feel that way simply from someone challenging you to prove your claims.
I don't mean to tear into you, Saturn. I like you quite a bit and value your input here
I'm touched.
I'm joking!!!!!!
All in all as I said many times before I have learned quite a bit from this forum even outside of Axiom products. I value the facts and suggestions by all the individuals on this forum.
Last November I had no idea what HTPCs were all about. And with facts and suggestion by you and Sushi I was able to gather enough info to build my own.
In reply to:
I'm sorry you feel that way simply from someone challenging you to prove your claims.
ON the contrary, I have no issue of being challenged. I have an issue of how it was said,rubuttled or worded. Comments inadvertantly can sound negative and bullish from someone who time and time again has to prove/explain to "newbies" what the mass market has been brainwashed about. As in a comment earlier said to me or another indivisual ...
"I wish I had the patience that Chess has .... "
Maybe this forum is getting too personal. Maybe thats not a bad thing.
Regards;
Saturn
Maybe Axiom should add a DIY or Tweak section to this forum.
I have done a lot of tweking to my M60's, VP-150, & QS8's as well as my other components. I think some of you guys would be shocked to hear just how good my system sounds. I have never heard any HT system that sounds as detailed, liquid, sweet, airy,a ll with a huge soundstage where my speakers have all but disappeared.
I am not talking playing loud here and I do not have a very large room.
cheeseroo, you sound like my Ph.D. advisor but I agree ;-)
I don't have scientific papers on sound, I did that kind of stuff on audiovisual stuff in my old days and it's scientifically proven that e.g. we can see way, way, way less than 1% irregularities on a one-color plane as long it's a pattern (pattern is a very complex thing, you go into self-similarity and other hard math I don't feel like doing here). And yes, it does _not_ mean our audio complex is the same way (but I would very hard bet on that, especially in 1-4kHz at normal loudness, speech recognition perfected for million years is a complete marvel when you go a tad into how to do it with computers [used to listen to lots of lectures given by guys in Watson research on that topic, but it was a different angle than what we do of course, albeit very solid science, full of markov-chains ;-)]). Just think quickly what we're doing when in a noisy bar where a dozen people are talking, music is playing and a guy with an accent we never heard is explaining something to us. And he's drunk and blurs vocals.
The pico-seconds stuff we can hear is just something I picked of a web site so no clue whether it's true? no resaerch I can point to here. Any Ph.D. candidates out there listening ? ;-)
For psychological modification of what we hear, the patricia -woman (sorry forgetting the name) has been widely published and it's very solid research (but hey, read Kant, he knew it all the way along).
In your summary you're slightly off, I _don't believe_ jitter is an issue, I was asking for enlightement, I see it as the next possiblity of what to improve unless given better ideas here. Following Occam's razor here, unless given a simpler theory of what to tinker on next ;-)
And finally chesseroo, don't forget that science is nothing else than modern day religion and other approaches have been taken quite seriously much longer than the time passed since Bacon [whom I would loosely label as father of the repeatable experiment on nature as the standard we hold our believes to]. Read Thomas of Acquine (spelling, darnd ?) and Kant's 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' and talk to some of the bleeding edge sub-atomic particles physisicts of today, this is the god-damnd hardest darnd math beyond my brain and when you listen to them, they sound exactly like meta-physicists of the middle-age, 'parallel universes' anyone or 'our brain being an instrument that creates conciousness, physical laws and time'. Heidegger was mumbling about that 100 years ago and was laughed at ;-) ?
-- tony
Saturn,
How have you been enjoying your HTPC, BTW? Have you run into any frustrations with added complexity of the interface or anything like that. That's my largest concern with building mine. I don't want to make it even more difficult to do the stuff I do today.
Thomas Aquinas.
This post gets my vote for Entertaining Post Of The Month. Kant, Aquinas, Bacon, Occam, and Heidegger, all in one post about M80s. I love it. :-)
prz,
I think you were refering to Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin.
oh, missed the response first or maybe we crossed.
For jitter, yes, this is very good information. I go and drive some experts nuts about this jitter now. Now I also remember that CPUs had about picosecs jitter to them, saw it with our ASIC designers (I'm a refugee from some serious full-rack, kick-butt we can heat a house telekom gear startups, been in it for >10 years now ;-) Sounds like you're doing some Stratus I stuff, not much demand for that now from telecom side ;-)
The pico-seconds I explained in other post, didn't see any solid science for, just audiophile website hear-say ;-)
Again, for speech, the patricia woman is very well published, she gave a talk when I was in Bell Labs. Actually, there is much more interesting stuff to it, they tested how we build kind of a 'warp matrix' as very small children (<1year) that zeroes in on the key sounds of _our_ language. So that's e.g. why a chinese cannot hear (where cannot not defined physically but by what arrives in your gray matter) the difference between 'r' and 'l'. There seem to be a sound in chinese language that is keyed on that lies close to both and for a chinese everything that is close enough sounds like this one sound. We (e.g. english speaking) have same problem when spoken other languages to. I'm searching my Bell Labs mailbox but there were thousands of talks :-/ Aaaah, here it is
General Research Colloquium
Friday, February 12, 1999
3:00pm
ARNOLD AUDITORIUM, Murray Hill
Speaker: Patricia K. Kuhl, University of Washington
Title: Language, mind, and brain: How infants crack the speech code
Humans' unique linguistic capacity interests members of
the academy, business, industry, and society at large from
different perspectives. This talk uses new data from behavioral
and neurological studies to suggest a theory about how infants
crack the speech code. Their strategies provide clues that may
help machines understand speech.
Host: Alan Gelperin MH 1C-464 (908)582-5696
Simulcast to: HO(AUD), IH(AUD), OEC(1B-264A), WH(AUD), HOH (Conf Room)
Suggestions and comments are welcome, and may be sent to
grc@research.bell-labs.com
GRC talks are open to all members of Lucent and AT&T communities.
If you're interested in viewing the videotape, please send email to
GRC secretary Judy Paone at judy@research.bell-labs.com
And, the interconnects are for analog, not digital, not even _I_ believe that silver digital interconnect will make an audible difference (then again, pass that rabit foot along, will you ;-)
--- tony
Hey JasonG, glad I made you laugh.
My dad taught me that when you hit them, hit them with all you got and then throw a load of bricks on top just in case. You don't want them to get up, dust off and go after you ...
So only the best philosophers with really intimidating names need to apply to the tackling team [but yes, in case you wonder I read them up years ago and fractionally understood what they had to say {except Nietzsche} so what I wrote should make sense] ;-)
Anyway, those guys were all off kilt, everything that was worth saying was said by the greeks and some romans, the only guy that made sense on a daily basis was Seneca
-- tony out and out
Since we have started to post some journal paper titles while quoting infamous philosophers, allow me to share an article i came across not too long ago.
Here is its reference:
Health and reproduction: the sex-specific clinical profile of Great Tits (Parus major) in relation to breeding.
By P. Horak, S. Jenni-Eiermann, I. Ots, and L. Tegelmann (1999). Canadian Journal of Zoology. p.2235
I'm pretty positive this was intentional, but the 'Freudian slip' is interesting nonetheless.
With respect to DVD playback and cable TV upscaling no problems. DVD looks great and TV looks great. Works well with Rotel learning remote...infrared keyboard keystrokes mimiced on learning remote.
PVR duties. Definitely will need to spec a faster machine as you have noted. Will follow your spec but since I really want a small format box, I will need to pay special attention to heat dissapation and energy consumption. So will need to rebuild a new box with higher specs. Current box will be a gift and do fine for my dads needs.
Didn't do DSCALER as a recommended viewer since the MSI TV@anywhere has the new Conexant chip and is not yet supported by DSCALER. But based on DCSLAR's own site comparison of WinDVD it is not far off. One good thing to note DSCALER can take plugins and such for special filters or other drivers of cards. DSCALER audio support is kinda finnicky. I think some people do a mix of DSCALER video capabilities with another programs driver that does sound. Sounds complicated so I have yet to try it. One thing to note with my setup. Some DVDs are great others have this horizontal scan lines showing on fast scenes. I have not yet discovered if it is the lack of horsepower. Using the built in 2d/3d video card with DVD motion compensation hardware chips. Or if the DVD recording was originally poor. I play the same DVD in an Asia market DVD with super error connection and do not get the scan lines in fast moving scenes. The Asia market DVD is not progressive. But most DVDs are excellent. I am only getting those scan lines from Asia market DVDs (which is suspect)
So software I use is the Intervideo WinDVD and the WinDVR. Its a no brainer (like me) and all the audio/video hookups and decoding work great and with ease. I know the DSCALER can give a slightly better picture but the interface can be difficult.
Since the box is small it has been a chore to set it up originally. I do not have the most petite of hands. The S/PDIF audio qualities on the onboard connector on the EPIA V version of the motherboard worked rather smoothly. I could not discernably hear a difference in sound quality over my standard DVD via coax digi. One positive note is that I could not believe the quality of downloaded MP3 that have been encoded at 256k or higher. I doubt that its playing at 256k but I was surprised that when feeding a digital signal of the MP3 it sounded awesome. I didn't realize that you coud feed the MP3 signal straight through the S/PDIF. I though it would pipe through the analog output of the speaker section. I only use the analog output for the TV tuner. Since TV cable is analog I do not know if it would be worth it or possible to convert the signal from analog to digital. Most of the smaller boxes come with proprietory power supplies which are all noisy. Small fans spinning fast with high pitched shreik. Had to disconnect the 12V fan and splice hard drive power connectors and figure out the 5V power leads. When all the fans were running 5V rather than 12v. They were spinnin slower but were almost dead silent. The air dissipation was good enough to get the hot air out of box generated by the hard drive, TV tuner card, VIA C3-933, EPIA V series mobo and the DVD rom.
The next box I will try to build is the S968L cube which can take P4 with 533 bus. It also now has 1 4x agp slot and and PCI slot in one small but boxy case.
I hope the power supply is not as loud as my current one. But its spec since it is a 150w could be underpowered (300w is minumum I'm thinking) and as noisy as my older box. Higher CPU and better video card will give me some issues with the small box. I have to be able to cool the thing without excessive noise. Since it will be front center with the rest of the audio pieces it also has to note WAF into consideration.
http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/PC_Servers/CF-968.html
my old box
http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/PC_Servers/CF-7989.html
This is a precursor to my projector purchase (which I thought the DVD player could easily do) which was brought up by you and Sushi and a few other individuals on this forum. Now I also need to to make up my mind with the Panny 300 or Sanyo PLV-Z1. The question I ask myself is $400 US is worth the upgrade to the Panny model. That $400 could be used toward a nice Mies Van Der Rohe leather listening chair.
Regards;
Saturn
In reply to:
Will follow your spec but since I really want a small format box, I will need to pay special attention to heat dissapation and energy consumption.
There are several smaller and attractive cases made by Coolermaster and the like meant for specifically this that use as micro-ATX motherboard. You can get decent micro-ATX boards, though obviously selection will be limitted.
In reply to:
So software I use is the Intervideo WinDVD and the WinDVR. Its a no brainer (like me) and all the audio/video hookups and decoding work great and with ease. I know the DSCALER can give a slightly better picture but the interface can be difficult.
Do you have any trouble seeing the interface cues on the TV. PC text can be a little weird with this sort of thing and the actual control elements can be hard to work with, or at least I expect them to be. It doesn't sound like you have much trouble with that though, which is enouraging.
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I though it would pipe through the analog output of the speaker section.
Your computer is a digital entity. Anything that exists in it will be a digital signal. As such, it's relatively trivial for your computer to passthrough all audio through the SPDIF, including your cable signal, should you so choose.
In reply to:
Most of the smaller boxes come with proprietory power supplies which are all noisy. Small fans spinning fast with high pitched shreik. Had to disconnect the 12V fan and splice hard drive power connectors and figure out the 5V power leads. When all the fans were running 5V rather than 12v. They were spinnin slower but were almost dead silent. The air dissipation was good enough to get the hot air out of box generated by the hard drive, TV tuner card, VIA C3-933, EPIA V series mobo and the DVD rom.
It's a little absurd that only the most expensive manufacturers take sound into consideration. However, it sounds like you have it under control.
In reply to:
I hope the power supply is not as loud as my current one. But its spec since it is a 150w could be underpowered (300w is minumum I'm thinking) and as noisy as my older box. Higher CPU and better video card will give me some issues with the small box. I have to be able to cool the thing without excessive noise. Since it will be front center with the rest of the audio pieces it also has to note WAF into consideration.
I would also be leary of that PSU, especially if you go with a P4 or something similar. 300W is even getting to the point of not quite being enough, depending on what hardware you have installed. The power consumption of these computers is getting to be absurd.
BTW, you can get those same cube cases from several others. Do a search of cube computers on the ArsTechnica Case forum.
Regards,
Semi
In reply to:
Do you have any trouble seeing the interface cues on the TV. PC text can be a little weird with this sort of thing and the actual control elements can be hard to work with, or at least I expect them to be. It doesn't sound like you have much trouble with that though, which is enouraging.
Do you mean the interface to change the settings:
volume
channel
input
picture stuff (mostly adjusted once in the beggining so not need to control)
channel numbers
mute
last channel return
PIP - none existant in my TV card
The commands above can be mimicked via a keyboard so I bought a infrared keyboard/mouse. I put my infrared keyboard port against my Rotel learning remote port and transfered all the keystrokes to the learning remote. So now the PC does not meed a keyboard or mouse. All function can be done on the Rotel learning remote. The remote controls the Rotel, WinDVD, WinDVR, the Toshiba DVD, CAE Kareoke player, Marantz SE68 CD player.
When it comes to serfing which is connect on demand since I do not want to HTPC to auto update. Keeping the connection down until needed keeps it from having any further software issues or if someone has nothing better to do than to DOS attack me.
In reply to:
I would also be leary of that PSU, especially if you go with a P4 or something similar. 300W is even getting to the point of not quite being enough, depending on what hardware you have installed. The power consumption of these computers is getting to be absurd.
Point taken. I might need to ditch the small box method and go with a Mini-ATX factor. With that I can use the standard 450w+ silent power suplies. Some of the newer boards will be using Dual channel DDR(proposed increased speeds). Some new GForce cards even take up 2 slots and is supossedly HDTV ready mpeg2 decoding. Since it will natively support HDTV no need for Powerstrip for HD resolutions(maybe).
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/vga/vga_detail.asp?model=FX5800_Ultra-TD
Saturn
I suppose as long as you don't have a problem and need to interact directly with Windows that would indeed be sufficient. I supose I'm more concerned with having to work on the desktop but it sounds like you minimize that sort of activity.
In reply to:
Some new GForce cards even take up 2 slots and is supossedly HDTV ready mpeg2 decoding. Since it will natively support HDTV no need for Powerstrip for HD resolutions(maybe).
That card is an abortion and won't actually make it to many stores. They only made a few before the enthusiast sites so thoroughly trashed it that nVidia gave up on the card. They're basically going to push right past to the next revision of their chip, the NV35.
If you want stellar MPEG decoding, get the ATi cards. They also have some post process filtering that result in a better picture. As to the need for powerstrip, check the supported resolutions of that card. Not a single one of them are HDTV resolutions so you'd still need powerstrip, unfortunately.
None of this stuff is really perfect yet...
I am myself waiting for the NV35. I noticed only ATI is partnering there fast GPU with a built in TV tuner. ASUS video used to do it a couple of years ago but may have stopped doing so.
I think DSCALER does not list any All-in-Wonders as a supported cards.
So would it be better to just partner a fast card that has the GForce GPU or an ATI GPU and have another card as a TV tuner? Or are the latest ATI All-in-Wonder card supported by DSCALER?
In reply to:
I am myself waiting for the NV35.
You'll be waiting for quite a while...
In reply to:
I think DSCALER does not list any All-in-Wonders as a supported cards.
There are lots of people using AIW's with DScaler on Ars so it's probably just a lack of Dscaler updating their site.
In reply to:
So would it be better to just partner a fast card that has the GForce GPU or an ATI GPU and have another card as a TV tuner?
Personally, I believe so simply because your upgrade path is cleaner. The chances of you needing a new capture card in the near future are remote, but you may wish to upgrade your video card significantly quicker depending on how you use the computer.
In reply to:
Or are the latest ATI All-in-Wonder card supported by DSCALER?
Like I said, I believe they are.
I actually just bought a 9700 pro (non AIW) this weekend!
semi, so of course I couldn't let it be and went for reading on the jitter issue. The best description why all the professional gear syncs clock and why picoseconds make a difference (funny enough, it's not the timing of the main waveform recovery, it's the fact that he DAC starts to produce sidebands of a frequency when the world clock it's being fed is jittered, the numbers say that those can be heard (signal/noise ratio) in single nsecs for 16bit and in low psecs for 20bit conversions) I found in Harley's excellent book, appendix C. Before you cry bloody murder immediately, the assumption/fact there is that the world clock to the DAC _is recovered from the S/PDIF_ so no two independent clocks exist. Why syncing the clocks jitter should help rather than reclocking the signal in front of the DAC I could not find clearly. Me thinks that its seems that DAC components introduce so much clock jitter that it's better to feed the transport the resulting jitter and make sure it delivers the signal jittered in a way the DAC is jittering the world clock already?
So, at this point in time I think the jitter-proponents kind of made their case pretty well since this is logical and their numbers seem about on mark. However, your point that anything in silicon introduces picosecs jitter anyway is also very convienent and therefore all this reclocking in silicon and sending via cables to something else that takes it through silicon again maybe the correct architecture with the execution rendering it pointless again. I start thinking about wasting some money on the issue ;-)
real world's amazing
--- tony