A revolution in audio rendering - classic from 10 years ago!

[fpitas]

IThe engineers of these femtosecond accurate audio word clock devices, like the Mutec Ref 10 Clock mentioned above, must actually believe it makes a difference or why would they design these units ?
I cannot imagine an architecture meeting where they are proposing specs knowing that this is a multi-thousand dollar waste of time.

At a guess, they get paid to do it. It's up to the marketing people to get suckers to buy it.

 

[JayGilb]

At a guess, they get paid to do it. It's up to the marketing people to get suckers to buy it.

Probably farmed out to a design house where the end product is not of their concern ?

 

[fpitas]

Probably farmed out to a design house where the end product is not of their concern ?

Maybe. That's a good guess. I doubt these snake oil concerns have good engineers on staff.

 

[Keith_W]

I think it is very bad form to criticize a poster on another forum without anonymizing his name from his image that you took. It would be more polite to scrub out the name with MS Paint before reposting it on ASR.

 

[fatoldgit]

I think it is very bad form to criticize a poster on another forum without anonymizing his name from his image that you took. It would be more polite to scrub out the name with MS Paint before reposting it on ASR.

I thought about that but that isnt his real name AND if you were a regular reader of Audiophile style you would know that @austinpops is a major contributor and everyone knows his real name, geographic location etc cause he freely shares it.


He even posts with his real photo... so I am not invading his privacy in any way.

It would be like scrubbing John Atkinson's name from a Stereophile review!!!... @austnpops is at the same level at Audiophile Style... albeit an unpaid content writer given its a forum.

Here is a link to his latest review (which is prominently displayed on the websites home page) :

Electrostatic Headphone Amplifiers Review: Mjölnir Audio Carbon CC and HeadAmp Blue Hawaii Special Edition

Audio: Listen to this article. Electrostatic Headphone Amplifiers Review: Mjölnir Audio Carbon CC HeadAmp Blue Hawaii Special Edition Rajiv Arora When I reviewed the Stax SR-X9000 and Audeze CRBN electrostatic headphones a year ago, I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I would have lik...

audiophilestyle.com

The intro has his photo and his name and if you have read other threads we know he lives in Austin.so if I wanted to say stalk the guy, he has made it real easy!!.


Secondly, I am not attacking/abusing the guy or his ilk (I never called him stupid, crazy etc and see my closing comment about its a hobby, its their money, free to do what they want)... just pointing out that there is a much broader set of beliefs within the diehard Computer Audio group that goes beyond memcpy.


We all have our beliefs (someone above succinctly suggested I was blowing smoke in regard to media convertors) but thats what is ultimately great about this hobby... different camps can argue/disagree *** and pursue happiness as they see fit. If we all had a 'mono culture' this would be a very boring hobby


Peter


*** even within broad churches, people disagree: See massive Class A Tubeys verses 5 watt SET'ers as an example and lets not even touch on OTL'ers!!!!

 

[formdissolve]

I think it is very bad form to criticize a poster on another forum without anonymizing his name from his image that you took. It would be more polite to scrub out the name with MS Paint before reposting it on ASR.

It's a ten year old post, and if I blocked out his name, a simple Google search of the title of the thread would yield the page and reveal the name

 

[fatoldgit]

It's a ten year old post, and if I blocked out his name, a simple Google search of the title of the thread would yield the page and reveal the name

The thread in question, started by @austinpops is dated January 2, 2017

A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming

Note from @austinpop While I am now the OP of this thread, I did not start it. That would be @romaz. I have just been given authorization by him to take on the OP role. A brief history of this thread - by @austinpop Last update: Dec 13, 2018 This thread is almost 2 years old, with over 12,000 pos...

audiophilestyle.com

Its massive... 727 pages but feel free to read it all.... I have and its very interesting

Peter

 

[fatoldgit]

As a point of interest, the last post on that thread (dated march 5th) mentions that the poster is playing around with the following BIOS settings to see what they can do in regard to audio quality.

The list of BIOS options include the following:

Native ASPM
PECI
ACPI Sleep State
Enable Hibernation
DMI Max Link Speed
DMI ASPM
DMI Link ASPM Control
AMT BIOS Features
Interrupt Redirection Mode Selection
Thermal Monitor
Enhanced C-states
Energy Performance Gain
Processor Thermal Device
Package C-State Demotion
Package C-State Un-demotion
Package C State Limit
HW Notification

ASF support
PCI Latency Timer
PCI-X Latency Timer
PCI Express Clock Gating
Legacy IO Low Latency
PCH Cross Throttling
LPDDR Thermal Sensor
PCI Delay Optimization
Pcie Pll SSC


Again not criticizing, just pointing out the lengths some people will go to leave no stone unturned.

Peter

 

[MAB]

Well.... about 3 years ago I "discovered" the Computer Audio forum (now renamed Audiophile Style) and there were numerous voodoo threads on there about tweaking your computer for better audio.

There were threads on different RAM memory modules that made massive differences (ECC memory from a specific brand was best)

Threads on different motherboards, CPU's, Sata cables, network cards, usb cards, LPS power supplies, SSD disk drives etc making massive differences (all cumulative of course!!!)

And of course threads on all types of network tweaks: reclocking routers and switches, specific routers/switches, different ethernet cables, power supplies attached to routers, switches and media convertors, OS level network changes etc making massive differences.

All of this stuff is expensive... check out the stuff from JCAT.

Its bloody hard to do a real unsighted test/instantaneous switching for comparsion when your have to spend several minutes swapping out RAM, hard drives etc.

The only "obvious to anyone" tweaks that might make a difference would be media conversion (i.e. ethernet -> fibre -> ethernet) and an LPS on the endpoint computer (i.e. that which plugs into the DAC).

I am now 100% PC/USB DAC based and aside from implementing the above two tweaks (to soothe my paranoia, less than $US 300 spent) the other simple thing is to have a two PC system: a big grunter storing your files/upsampling/EQ'ing not in your room and a low powered, silent diskless PC that boots into memory off a USB stick that is the end point into your DAC.

So people ended up with topologies like the one below to get music from their router to the DAC (including 7 LPS's, reclocked switches, high end ethernet cables, PS audio perfectwave, Chord DAC's etc... the last two being ASR favourites!!!).

View attachment 272357

Yeah, I discovered them when they had a good primer on network audio hardware, software, and protocols, which I knew nothing about. I quickly had to flee when people started burning money on this nonsense, and flaming anyone who didn't burn money like they did.

 

[fatoldgit]

Yeah, I discovered them when they had a good primer on network audio hardware, software, and protocols, which I knew nothing about. I quickly had to flee when people started burning money on this nonsense, and flaming anyone who didn't burn money like they did.

I started my computer based journey with a Slimdevices Transporter in ~2007 and it wasnt until I retired in 2019 that I had time to really get into replacing the Transporter with a pure PC endpoint..given USB DAC's had matured over that time.

Being a computer guy with a wide range of skills I burnt endless hours on my own custom Linux image, writing from scatch my own skins for LMS and Kodi, heavily modifying the LMS and Kodi back ends etc. I finally settled on my hacked version of Kodi (let the flame wars begin but my knowledge of the internals of LMS and Kodi is pretty good!!!)

I also started looking at the hardware side and thus hit Audiophile Style and yep, some of the ideas presented are potentially unprovable in regards to efficacy but I did read everything I could and it help me develop my own "best practice" with regard to the hardware side.

So not time wasted.

Aside from my software development time, I have spent less than $US 900 on my computer audio infrastructure.

Its all be fun and my wife approves cause it keeps me out of the Pub.

Peter