Can you review a Synchro-Mesh S/PDIF re-clocker?

[watchnerd]

I saw synchromesh and thought this thread was about a mashup between SPDIF and automobile transmissions.

I'm so disappointed.

 

[Empirical Audio]

If there's no correlation between two methods of collecting data then how can you automatically assume that one of them is without fault? Shouldn't both be scrutinized further?

Absolutely. This is exactly the point. Measurements may be sufficient, given the right stimulus and protocols. DBT might be very accurate, give the right listeners, equipment, music and protocols. But unless you have a solid correlation and a "relevance" established, they are both interesting but not that compelling. You cannot say with any certainty that a particular component or cable sounds good or bad or one is better than another using only measurements without this correlation and relevance being established and proven.

We need a third type of study that ties together DBT and bench measurements to define the relevance of each. We need to answer whether a particular measurement is important and at what magnitude is it important. Determine how it compares to other measurements in importance.

 

[Empirical Audio]

So be careful of thinking you are continuously improving things. Pause and run a controlled, blind test. It is so easy to chase your tale thinking what you physically improved, must have had an audible difference. Your ear+brain are one of the most unreliable tools here when detecting the results of the work you are doing. That is just the way they work. It is called being human. Our brain is programmed to make us optimistic. It is dying to find reasons to celebrate. If it were the other way around, we would all die of pessimism and negative thoughts!

I'll admit that I have gone down the garden path more than once, but like you I realized that I had and made corrections. Being fooled by two identical tracks is another thing. This has to do more with preconceived notions.

More often I think people are fooled by harmonics and echoes that seem to be better. I have run into people that believe more jitter is actually better or more tube distortion is better. Either of these can actually create compelling sound quality, but it's entirely bogus and full of distortion. Not like live music. I try to dissuade other people on the forums from going down this path. Live music has always been my metric.

 

[HammerSandwich]

...a mashup between SPDIF and automobile transmissions.

Such a device is the Turbo Encabulator.

 

[Empirical Audio]

He doesn't actually. Not that it matters but he has the last generation 2700 Audio Precision analyzer. I have the newer generation. The 2700 is an excellent analyzer though and is only bested slightly by mine:

Mine is the APx555 in black and his is 2700 in blue. Graph is from Audio Precision.

More accuracy and lower noise foor is always better IMO, but this gets to the heart of my other comments on this thread. If you claim that any signal or noise below -110dB is inaudible anyway, then what's the point in having better equipment?

 

[Empirical Audio]

I did, using the Intona USB isolator and different USB hubs, as proposed by Archimago in his blog. No difference with the RME Adi-2 Pro that I could detect in a blind test. Also I could not detect the difference of the small digital processing bit error that I found in the RME's firmware vs. when corrected (you may have seen my thread here), and this error I would naively assume to have a much larger impact than any jitter.

It wasn't the SOtM device. Try again with that one.

 

[Xulonn]

My opinion is that it shows that lots of people like the sound of distortion

I agree.

These days, I find it ironic that rock-centric audiophiles seek minimum distortion audio gear to play back recordings made using extreme distortion. Amplified distortion is essential for most "heavy" or "hard" rock and roll music. Rock and roll climbed to its heights of popularity fueled by electric guitar distortion - things like digital fuzz and grunge, vacuum tube amplifier distortion, and damaged guitar speaker distortion. Linc Wray's "Rumble" is one of my favorites of this type from the days of my youth, and I never knew that he had punched holes in his speakers to get the sound on his classic song. Great article on the subject HERE.

Jazz guitar sonic styles, of course, range from "clean" to "dirty", and jazz guitar is one of my favorite genres.

And of course, I think that we are all aware of the more soothing and warmth of odd-order distortion is preferred by many vacuum tube amp fans for many genres.

To each his own, and may everyone enjoy their favorite flavor/style of playback. Mine happens to be listeing to a clean low-budget system that allows me to experience an uncolored reproduction of the recording - warts and all.

 

[watchnerd]

Such a device is the Turbo Encabulator.

That's analog!

The dingle arm should be the clue

 

[Empirical Audio]

I agree.

These days, I find it ironic that rock-centric audiophiles seek minimum distortion audio gear to play back recordings made using extreme distortion. Amplified distortion is essential for most "heavy" or "hard" rock and roll music. Rock and roll climbed to its heights of popularity fueled by electric guitar distortion - things like digital fuzz and grunge, vacuum tube amplifier distortion, and damaged guitar speaker distortion. Linc Wray's "Rumble" is one of my favorites of this type from the days of my youth, and I never knew that he had punched holes in his speakers to get the sound on his classic song. Great article on the subject HERE.

Jazz guitar sonic styles, of course, range from "clean" to "dirty", and jazz guitar is one of my favorite genres.

And of course, I think that we are all aware of the more soothing and warmth of odd-order distortion is preferred by many vacuum tube amp fans for many genres.

To each his own, and may everyone enjoy their favorite flavor/style of playback. Mine happens to be listeing to a clean low-budget system that allows me to experience an uncolored reproduction of the recording - warts and all.

Rockers just don't want the their distortion distorted.

 

[solderdude]

I'll ask again (4th time without an answer)....

What are you hoping to learn from Amirs measurements ?
What parameters/signals do you exactly want measured ?

 

[HammerSandwich]

That's analog!

The dingle arm should be the clue

Whatever it is, it must be high-end with all those buzzwords.

 

[Killingbeans]

If you claim that any signal or noise below -110dB is inaudible anyway, then what's the point in having better equipment?

Non-existent

Is that really a bad thing?

 

[MZKM]

Random jitter is like noise events that occur randomly.

Not much different than normal jitter. The only difference is that one is truly random and the other is based on the music (but it’s not harmonics), both result in a raised noise floor. Jitter spikes hugging a main tone are less forgiving. So again, a J-Test is even worse than real jitter, it tells us how a DAC performs given worst case scenario jitter (flipping all bits).

The J-Test does it job, it shows how well a DAC reduces incoming jitter.

 

[Frank Dernie]

If you claim that any signal or noise below -110dB is inaudible anyway, then what's the point in having better equipment?

If listening via an amp with poorer than -110dB distortion and speakers with, at best, -60dB of distortion you are genuinely unlikely to hear anything like that upstream, particularly if your measuring kit is the ears listening to speakers.
The measuring device needs to be an order of magnitude better than the DUT after all...

 

[Empirical Audio]

I'll ask again (4th time without an answer)....

What are you hoping to learn from Amirs measurements ?

If my measurements correlate to his methodology. What limitations, if any, are there when using a DAC for jitter measurements compared to direct jitter measurement.

I wonder if a better DAC with lower noise floor will enable one to see lower levels of jitter and if using an inexpensive DAC will ultimately limit this.

What parameters/signals do you exactly want measured ?

Jitter is all that matters for a digital source, so I want to see the jitter numbers and the jitter impact on the analog signals.

 

[Empirical Audio]

Not much different than normal jitter.

No, correlated jitter is a LOT different than random jitter. I just told you why. Because the brain should be able to identify it more easily.

 

[Empirical Audio]

BTW, Test samples shipped to Amir today.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Empirical Audio]

I agree.

These days, I find it ironic that rock-centric audiophiles seek minimum distortion audio gear to play back recordings made using extreme distortion. Amplified distortion is essential for most "heavy" or "hard" rock and roll music. Rock and roll climbed to its heights of popularity fueled by electric guitar distortion - things like digital fuzz and grunge, vacuum tube amplifier distortion, and damaged guitar speaker distortion. Linc Wray's "Rumble" is one of my favorites of this type from the days of my youth, and I never knew that he had punched holes in his speakers to get the sound on his classic song. Great article on the subject HERE.

Jazz guitar sonic styles, of course, range from "clean" to "dirty", and jazz guitar is one of my favorite genres.

And of course, I think that we are all aware of the more soothing and warmth of odd-order distortion is preferred by many vacuum tube amp fans for many genres.

To each his own, and may everyone enjoy their favorite flavor/style of playback. Mine happens to be listeing to a clean low-budget system that allows me to experience an uncolored reproduction of the recording - warts and all.

The "style" or "house sound" concept brings to mind another of my pet peeves. It's about synergy. There are always people asking on the forums whether this transport goes well with that DAC or this cable with that DAC etc.. To me, this concept of synergy is totally bogus. If the cable or the source is well-designed, it should not matter what the other pieces of the system are. It is doing it's job correctly and optimally.

Because there are a lot of poorly designed components on the market IME, there is a proliferation of devices and cables that can "tune" poor systems to make them at least not so fatiguing. I don't recommend any of these. If there is an offending component or cable in the system, it should be replaced, not masked by adding other low-performing pieces. I know that there are a lot of poorly designed components on the market because I modded and reverse-engineered many them for a decade. Even components from Sony. Actually some scary stuff there...

Don't get me wrong. There are places in every system where synergy makes sense, specifically the amplifier-speaker synergy. This is necessary because the behavior changes with the amplifier power, output impedance, speaker efficiency, speaker impedance etc..

Steve N.

 

[amirm]

I never claimed that. I only know that my own auditory system is pretty well trained after 38 years.

Did you take some kind of exam with independent grading to confirm this? Have you for example passed online blind fidelity test that others could not?

 

[amirm]

You cannot say with any certainty that a particular component or cable sounds good or bad or one is better than another using only measurements without this correlation and relevance being established and proven.

Here is what we can do: absolutely dismiss any sighted results of such testing. You are guaranteed, let me repeat, guaranteed to produce wrong results. This has been shown before and can readily be repeated. Here is a local and one of the highest end champions of cables, losing such in blind testing whom you know:

Since you are on WBF forum Frank, this should resonate with you. You know Mike Lavigne. For those who don't know him, he has a super expensive system and cherished as one of the highest high-end audiophiles out there. Like you Frank he is convinced that what he perceives in audio is the reality.

Well, back in 2011 he was so sure that he could tell his MIT Opus cable from others that he accepted a blind test challenge in his own home with his gear. The results are were this: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/86-ul...41184-observations-controlled-cable-test.html

"So our results with Mike as our listener were clear: for this particular methodology, Mike could not accurately identify a difference in the cables."

Here he was so sure of his ability hear differences in cables but the moment all but the sound of cables were presented to him, he was unable to do so.

Mike posts this about the experience: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/86-ul...184-observations-controlled-cable-test-2.html

"yes; i have, to some degree, changed my perspective on cable differences....but...my mind is still processing the results and what they mean for me. i hope that i can coherently relate the various thoughts that go thru my mind. as Chris mentioned; the controls were successful at keeping me from knowing which cable was which. for each test i felt confident about my choice (except #6...see below).
[...]
when i made my choice known for #8 i was confident that i was 100% for all 7. then my friend Ted said 'that's it.....test over'. we had discussed prior that any result 7 out of 10 or better or 15 out of 20 or better would mean a positive result and to continue. once we got to only 3 out of 7 it was clear that we were not going to get a positive result.

why did i fail?.....or put another way.....why did this test show no real difference? was i overconfident?

yes; regardless of the eventual answer i was not respectful enough of the challenge.

[...]

in my mind i am not confident that i will ever be able to hear reliable differences between the Monster and the Opus to pass a Blind test. OTOH i am also not sure i won't be able to do it."

After countless years of believing in cable difference through the same type of experiences you talk about, he was shown to be completely wrong.

Sadly he has forgotten all of this now and is back to believing in his faulty methodology. Which is fine but in this forum we don't do that. We learn from such data and advance our knowledge of proper audio evaluation.

I can't caution you enough to not defend this line of reasoning here and now.

I have offered thousands of dollars to high-end audiophiles if they can pass blind tests of cables. This is that sure of a thing.

For this reason, measurements absolutely correlate with listening tests. They show that no distortion or linear response changes in audible band exist. So as a result, when we run the test blind, listeners can't tell them either. Let them see the cables and of course they are fully biased to hear difference as you say. I would too.