Recent content by bhobba

This inspired me to try the following test. I took the very well-recorded DXD, Carmen Sings The Blues. Converted it to 8 bits with a triangle dither. Dither increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from 48db to 64db. https://www.soundguys.com/what-is-dither-23700/ This reduced the first...

Oh, the claims and counterclaims. All I can say is having organised blind listening tests, especially where expensive equipment and resulting egos are on the line, is a royal pain. I remember one where a DAC had a different earthing path - straight away, the 'losing' DAC makers said that...

Yes. It's how he differentiates his DACs. He once used a diamond transistor (an IC that implements a 'ideal' transistor look alike, but the current can flow both directions between base and emitter) output stage that sounded good to my ears. But he now prefers the transformers - maybe just...

To answer the original question, the point of upsampling is when you put, say, 48kz material into a DAC at 48kz, you get a cascade of reflected images at higher frequencies of the recorded material theoretically forever. Some don't worry about it, and you have what is called a NOS DAC that...

Yep. Rob Watts designs hid DAC's with a 50khz filter, and I suspect many others do as well. It's all part of the marketing hype.

I do not believe MQA is dumb. Paul McGowan, a noted critic of MQA, compared it and the original 192k masters. They were very close. He was impressed by how close the two were. As he said, 'After all, this is a pretty amazing process that allows streaming services to send high-resolution audio...

I think each person can judge that for themselves via a simple blind test. Thanks Bill

What MQA does is not that hard. It is known, but some will argue, that as you increase sampling frequency from 48k to 96k to 192k to 384k etc., the recording sounds better. I have tried it and think it does, but as I say, opinions do vary. A theorem says the maximum frequency that...

Yes - that is the silliness of it. A sinc function exactly reconstructs a bandlimited signal, and its time smear to a Dirac function is horrid. It is part of the marketing BS of MQA. It needs to be subjected to a blind test - but technically, it makes no sense. The significant advantage...

I like it too. But this forum, by its very name, requires more than that. It's okay for the buying decisions you and I make - but science is more than that. Thanks Bill

What both Rob and the MQA people claim is recordings are all noise above 50 kHz so quality downsampling to 96k then upsampling should be audibly the same. If it is true is another matter. Where both camps differ is in how that downsampling and upsampling is done. Rob uses a sinc filter that...

That's where the good old blind test needs to be done. Thanks Bill

It's the response to a Dirac impulse. Dirac in - how wide is what comes out. MQA tries to keep it under 20us. I have even heard them claim to be able with modern recording techniques (beats me how even though I know how MQA in principle works) keep it under 3us. Trouble is they, of...

Not really - it just means they have not investigated it enough to devise something to measure it - yet. Thanks Bill

I should have said - some think they do. I think they do but I never have done a blind test to be sure. Thanks Bill