strange SMSL M500 high 3rd harmonic

[TheTalbotHound]

You don’t read carefully do you?
The key point here is 90khz bandwidth shows little info about how 2khz tone performs in audio band

I do wish amir did 20 or 30k Bandwidth THD measurements alongside the 90k bandwidth one. But hey at least Wolf does a 20k bandwidth THD+N test.

 

[ceausuc]

Be rational or this will probably be your third time being banned.

I hope an admin will ban you for this remark. Who are you?! Really?!

 

[Veri]

JohnYang and liu had been discussing all throughout the thread, it's just tongue-in-cheek (IMO) don't be daft..

 

[ceausuc]

JohnYang and liu had been discussing all throughout the thread, it's just tongue-in-cheek. Don't be daft.

To me it looks like a big difference in tone between them. Threatening a member just doesn't fell right.
Or maybe JohnYang is the owner of the site and some of us missed that

 

[JSmith]

Who are you?

I believe that member is from Topping.



JSmith

 

[JohnYang1997]

I hope an admin will ban you for this remark. Who are you?! Really?!

No one will help you if you think this is a threat. But a friendly reminder.

 

[liu]

Or maybe JohnYang is the owner of the site and some of us missed that

I was banned many times for criticizing (predominately Chinese) products like this.
I don't really care about being banned --- I don't work in the industry so this account id means nothing to me.
So I just tell the truth.
John is a Chinese manufacturer (Topping) who the admins on this site will never ban.
So he can threaten anyone he wants.

No one will help you if you think this is a threat. But a friendly reminder.

No. This is a threat. It is very serious.
You're verbally attacking people like me. This is just unacceptable.

Yeah, admin on this site will never ban you. But this doesn't mean what you're doing is right.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I was banned many times for criticizing (predominately Chinese) products like this.
I don't really care about being banned --- I don't work in the industry so this account id means nothing to me.
So I just tell the truth.
John is a Chinese manufacturer (Topping) who the admins on this site will never ban.
So he can threaten anyone he wants.



No. This is a threat. It is very serious.

I was simply reminding you the couple of times you were banned for saying stuff like that.
And again you are saying stuff like this. No you were not being banned for criticizing a product. You were relentlessly, irrationally accusing other people for doing stuff they didn't do. You thought you knew everything but you really don't.

 

[liu]

I was simply reminding you the couple of times you were banned for saying stuff like that.
And again you are saying stuff like this. No you were not being banned for criticizing a product. You were relentlessly, irrationally accusing other people for doing stuff they didn't do. You thought you knew everything but you really don't.

Again, this is a very serious attack on me. You should stop!

 

[JSmith]

But a friendly reminder

To be honest John I don't think the comment was really appropriate or required and adding a winky face at the end didn't really make it come across as tongue in cheek from my perspective. I think we should keep in mind that without @liu, this issue wouldn't have been identified or be on track to be rectified due to his contact with SMSL. I'd suggest it's best to keep this thread amicable and on topic to the issue at hand.

Both of you are knowledgeable and an asset to this forum.



JSmith

 

[JohnYang1997]

To be honest John I don't think the comment was really appropriate or required and adding a winky face at the end didn't really make it come across as tongue in cheek from my perspective. I think we should keep in mind that without @liu, this issue wouldn't have been identified or be on track to be rectified due to his contact with SMSL. I'd suggest it's best to keep this thread amicable and on topic to the issue at hand.



JSmith

Yes. It's great he found a issue and let everyone know. He's obviously doing the right thing there. And he PMed me during the whole time and I was very friendly and we were having healthy conversation.

But once in a while he's doing these relentless rant without any backup and many claims are easily proven wrong. That's the part of the issue.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Also the thing was I didn't want him banned that is why I told him to be rational. He's likely not having a good day or frustrated by something at the time.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Again, this is a very serious attack on me. You should stop!

Attack? Read your own comments on Amir. You were obviously attacking Amir for doing what he did. Ok. I'm off with this bs.

 

[JSmith]

rant without any backup

Some may simply view this as an opinion, which tends to happen on forums. Best way to address same is provide "evidence" yourself in refute or if it's a personal matter, taken to PM.

I do agree it's not appropriate either to be attacking ASR or Amir, this is solely at the feet of SMSL who seem to be working on a solution.

banned

From my experience, unless one is a mod, it's never a good idea to throw this term around as it tends to cause argument. I'm sure we all want this thread to stay on topic and generally positive.



JSmith

 

[liu]

But once in a while he's doing these relentless rant without any backup and many claims are easily proven wrong. That's the part of the issue.

I think I explained it very well ---
0. this site's test flow is public knowledge. for sinad, only 1khz tone is tested on this site.
1. people care more about sinad chart than 20-20k 90k bandwidth.
2. 20-20k audio band thd+n is not even measured here.
so for manufacturers who want to promote their products here, optimizing for 1khz sinad is a very rational choice.
We can see this device is a clear evidence of this --- 2khz sinad is degraded by 5db in wolf's test.

Look, no one knows that the sinad would be degraded that much by reading only amir's review.
Similar to the fact that no one knew the left channel has -75db thd before I disclosed it.
So it clearly means the rubric to grade equipments on this site is only partially useful, and is far from telling the whole story.

It may happen that some good designs work well for all frequencies.
but if that's hard, optimizing for 1khz is an easy and straightforward approach.
The rule on this site works that way. Unless that changes, the above always hold.

So no, this is not "relentless rant" or can "easily proven wrong".
We see devices doing that here. I proposed my theory.
If you think it's groundless, you need to show evidence that "company never optimize for 1khz sinad".

An easy solution to eliminate our conflict is to pressure amir to have more comprehensive test suite.
Only when transparent testing data are disclosed can it erase our doubt on such optimization.

 

[bboris77]

Just a general comment: while @JohnYang1997 and I have had our verbals in the past when the L30 issue popped up, I have to give credit where it’s due - John is very quick to respond, very passionate and proud of his designs, and most importantly, seems to deeply care about the reputation of his designs and the brand.

I would rather deal with an overly engaged engineer/manufacturer’s rep than someone that just stonewalls customers and feeds them marketing/corporate bs.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I think I explained it very well ---
0. this site's test flow is public knowledge. for sinad, only 1khz tone is tested on this site.
1. people care more about sinad chart than 20-20k 90k bandwidth.
2. 20-20k audio band thd+n is not even measured here.
so for manufacturers who want to promote their products here, optimizing for 1khz sinad is a very rational choice.
We can see this device is a clear evidence of this --- 2khz sinad is degraded by 5db in wolf's test.

Look, no one knows that the sinad would be degraded that much by reading only amir's review.
Similar to the fact that no one knew the left channel has -75db thd before I disclosed it.
So it clearly means the rubric to grade equipments on this site is only partially useful, and is far from telling the whole story.

It may happen that some good designs work well for all frequencies.
but if that's hard, optimizing for 1khz is an easy and straightforward approach.
The rule on this site works that way. Unless that changes, the above always hold.

So no, this is not "relentless rant" or can "easily proven wrong".
We see devices doing that here. I proposed my theory.
If you think it's groundless, you need to show evidence that "company never optimize for 1khz sinad".

An easy solution to eliminate our conflict is to pressure amir to have more comprehensive test suite.
Only when transparent testing data are disclosed can it erase our doubt on such optimization.

'manufacturers who want to promote their products here'
That's not how things work. 1KHz is widely adopted as the single one important test for audio product. It's a base line, a simple test to give a long way for how a device perform. It's not limited to this site and no one is really "optimizing" to test on this site but optimizing for best performance possible and inevitably 1KHz is a starting point.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I think I explained it very well ---
0. this site's test flow is public knowledge. for sinad, only 1khz tone is tested on this site.
1. people care more about sinad chart than 20-20k 90k bandwidth.
2. 20-20k audio band thd+n is not even measured here.
so for manufacturers who want to promote their products here, optimizing for 1khz sinad is a very rational choice.
We can see this device is a clear evidence of this --- 2khz sinad is degraded by 5db in wolf's test.

Look, no one knows that the sinad would be degraded that much by reading only amir's review.
Similar to the fact that no one knew the left channel has -75db thd before I disclosed it.
So it clearly means the rubric to grade equipments on this site is only partially useful, and is far from telling the whole story.

It may happen that some good designs work well for all frequencies.
but if that's hard, optimizing for 1khz is an easy and straightforward approach.
The rule on this site works that way. Unless that changes, the above always hold.

So no, this is not "relentless rant" or can "easily proven wrong".
We see devices doing that here. I proposed my theory.
If you think it's groundless, you need to show evidence that "company never optimize for 1khz sinad".

An easy solution to eliminate our conflict is to pressure amir to have more comprehensive test suite.
Only when transparent testing data are disclosed can it erase our doubt on such optimization.

2
People obviously care a lot about 90khz thd+n vs frequency measurement, recently when Wolf published preliminary results of D90se, many people asked why the rising thd+n like other 9038q2m devices. Is 1khz more important? Probably but when any other test shows anything unusual people will point it out and take it seriously. Also look at X16's imd hump. Many people talked about it.

 

[Veri]

I don't really understand why the discussion here gets off tangent and heated once in a while, as the intentions overall are from what I gather, well-meant on both sides. I think it's super great @liu found the issue and that SMSL will fix it. I don't understand however the occasional "(predominately Chinese)" or "Chinese manufacturer (Topping) who the admins on this site will never ban" comment. I honestly don't see what that has got to do with any of this. I don't believe a Western designed/made DAC will be otherwise immune to design issues...? At least, I don't think so.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I think I explained it very well ---
0. this site's test flow is public knowledge. for sinad, only 1khz tone is tested on this site.
1. people care more about sinad chart than 20-20k 90k bandwidth.
2. 20-20k audio band thd+n is not even measured here.
so for manufacturers who want to promote their products here, optimizing for 1khz sinad is a very rational choice.
We can see this device is a clear evidence of this --- 2khz sinad is degraded by 5db in wolf's test.

Look, no one knows that the sinad would be degraded that much by reading only amir's review.
Similar to the fact that no one knew the left channel has -75db thd before I disclosed it.
So it clearly means the rubric to grade equipments on this site is only partially useful, and is far from telling the whole story.

It may happen that some good designs work well for all frequencies.
but if that's hard, optimizing for 1khz is an easy and straightforward approach.
The rule on this site works that way. Unless that changes, the above always hold.

So no, this is not "relentless rant" or can "easily proven wrong".
We see devices doing that here. I proposed my theory.
If you think it's groundless, you need to show evidence that "company never optimize for 1khz sinad".

An easy solution to eliminate our conflict is to pressure amir to have more comprehensive test suite.
Only when transparent testing data are disclosed can it erase our doubt on such optimization.

Onto the test suite. Yeah unless you are the one testing about one device a day, you can't dismiss all his effort. Have you seen what Amir has done to Schiit? Amir promotes good engineering. That's what he's after. There's nothing wrong with it. If you think the test suite is not complete and needs some more tests you are welcomed to do your own. I get your frustration thinking getting a good dac/amp combo m500 but turned out to be faulty but do you really know how many other things that can potentially go wrong? Amir would probably need to take days to measure everything. It's simply impractical.