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... according to o3, at least (don't shoot the messanger!): Below is a set of reference-quality, widely-loved recordings for ten major genres. I weighted three things: Engineering & mastering quality – wide dynamics, low noise, natural tonal balance, and (where possible) excellent modern...

... according to ChatGPT o3, at least :). Below is the actual output from o3, with no edits: Below are ten mini-canons – 20 essential albums for each genre. I weight historical impact (how much the record changed the idiom), critical consensus (recurring high rank in “all-time” polls), and...

With the Christmas break, I finally managed to find some time to compare the analogue outputs of some DACs playing real music (as opposed to sine waves), using @pkane 's excellent DeltaWave nulling software. In the next post I’ll outline the equipment and method I’ve used. But I’d like to...

Take a 24-bit track. Convert to 16 bits. Convert back to 24 bits. Use DeltaWave to compare original 24-bit track with converted track. I'm getting results such as the following: I understand that it might be useful sticking to 24 bits in the studio (for further processing), but what's the...

My two teenage boys were becoming increasingly vocal about my late-evening listening habits. (No doubt my choice of music didn't help.) So, I had no choice but to set up a headphone rig. Tried various permutations with an assortment of gear, including great-measuring and powerful solid state...

My stating that I believe I hear a difference between DACs (not between my modern DACs BTW), was just context-setting for explaining my motivation for starting the thread. It had no bearing on the thread itself, or on the results of the null test, which were proving interesting, IMO. The DAC...

I recently acquired a 13-year-old dCS Scarlatti CD transport, DAC, clock and upsampler. What seemed immediately apparent to me was how different it sounded to the two modern DACs I have here: an Okto dac8PRO and an RME ADI-2 Pro BE. I think I hear very subtle differences between these modern...

I've just put this cheapish system together for my 10 year-old, who's really getting into music (grade 5 piano, synth player with band at his school... loves Michael Jackson!): - iFi Zen Stream (to stream lossless from Roon, or directly from Qobuz) - SMSL DO200 DAC (volume control and source...

In a recent interview (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/61374774), Toto Wolff said this of the current Mercedes W13: "It is a car that is super-difficult to drive and on the edge of dipping in and out of the performance window - more out than in. And dissecting the data with a scalpel is...

Any reason why https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/amplifiers-phono-preamp-and-analog-audio-review.13/ is down? Mani.

Recently, quite a few people have asked me how I've gone about setting up active crossovers just using Roon alone. I thought I'd start a thread to discuss the process. I'm just going to dump a number of screenshots, which are hopefully fairly self-explanatory (if you know Roon, at least). We can...

Priors: 1. For many years, I'd been certain that I could hear clear differences between bit-identical playback means (e.g., different USB cables, streaming vs. local playback, different software players and their bit-identical settings, etc.) - something that has bugged me no end over the years...

I thought some people here might be interested in how the MOTU UltraLite-mk5 performs as a multi-channel DAC in a fully active setup. Roon -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 monos -> Impulse H2 speakers (British speakers from the '90s) All DSP done in Roon. I absolutely LOVE the...

My recent look at my 'Truth' preamp, and a comment I received about the cables I used during my loopback tests, got me thinking about all the audio purchases I've made in the past. I'll admit that I've been taken in by BS marketing on more than one occasion, and made a whole bunch of mistakes...

Background Many software players (and an increasing number of DACs) offer ‘leaky’ filters that are not optimized in the frequency domain. (Even pro companies like RME offer 'NOS filters’ in their DACs nowadays!) The rationale cited is that such ‘soft’/’smooth’/’slow’ filters are optimized in...

If you think digital sound was solved years ago, feel free to skip this thread... Following on from Amir's M4 review, I thought I'd share a couple of needle drops using my RME and MOTU: I know this'll sound sacrilegious to some/many/all here, but I've been trying to capture the sound of...

Here's the output of my DAC running in 24/44.1 NOS mode (1kHz sine wave input): I understand that the out-of-band (>22.05kHz) distortion is created by imaging above the Nyquist frequency. What I don't understand is what's causing the in-band (<22.05kHz) distortion. Here's the NOS output up...

I thought I'd start a new thread documenting the issue I have with my new Element X (and hopefully its resolution), rather than corrupting the review thread any further. I was playing around with my newly-received X over the weekend, and noticed that all 7 internal filters sounded identical to...