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Dutch & Dutch 8Cs

frangle

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Hi


Hey Keith, just out of curiosity, would you say the 8cs, or any speaker you've ever listened to manage to reproduce music in a way that is essentially indistinguishable from a live performance?

There's an interesting review of the Hedd Tower Mains where they guy says a piano track was playing and he thought someone was actually playing the piano in the room. Sometimes my Type 20s give me a similar impression on vocals.

That said, I'm wondering if there is a speaker technology that has advanced to the point where the sounds is essentially indistinguishable from a live performance if you say walked into the room blindfolded and were asked to decide the sound was coming from speakers or from a live performer.
A "someone actually playing in the room" comment which we could rephrase as "realism" depends largely on the experience of the listener with audio gear. If a listener is used to very basic gear, hearing an incrementally higher quality system is going to sound more realistic and might elicit such a comment.

I have no data to back this statement up, but I imagine that in-room bass reproduction is particularly important to creating the illusion. Curtailed low bass will lead to a distinctly different sound (or feeling) to reality, especially with pipe organ music but also piano, cello etc. Boomy bass can easily be distinguished as a reproduction artifact. And of course, bass is predominately what you hear from another room. The bass performance of the D&Ds presents no issue here, though room correction needs to be checked.

At some point you get to a bit of a plateau in system performance where the most significant arbiter of quality becomes the recording. What I notice most listening to the D&Ds is enormous variability in the quality of recordings / mastering, and not any disturbing performance limitation of the speaker.
 

tuga

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A "someone actually playing in the room" comment which we could rephrase as "realism" depends largely on the experience of the listener with audio gear.

"someone actually playing in the room" depends on how the musician was recorded. Close-mic'ing removes all ambience cues and the instrument or vocal sounds "dryer", closer and more detailed, as if it/he was playing/singing in your room.

If distant mic'ing is used in a space with natural reverb then the mics will capture ambience cues from that space which when reproduced will transport the listener into that space (with narrow dispersion speakers and/or treated/subdued side-wall reflections).
 

frangle

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I see that the latest beta release of REW now supports equalisation of the 8c:

Changes in V5.20 beta 56:
  • Added support for the Dutch&Dutch 8c eq features, including support for measuring using sweep signals generated by the speakers. 8c firmware V1.4.50 or later is required. Select the 8c as the default equaliser in REW's preferences to activate all 8c features.

I wonder when we will hear about availability of V1.4 firmware.
 

Purité Audio

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I belived the new delivery were 1.4 something REW compatible, I will check.
Keith
 

murl

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Would there be a problem with using a raspberry pi with an SPDIF hat then an SPDIF to AES cable? Looking for a cheap roon endpoint until roon ready so that I can get my headphone amp back on my desk.
 

Purité Audio

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Would there be a problem with using a raspberry pi with an SPDIF hat then an SPDIF to AES cable? Looking for a cheap roon endpoint until roon ready so that I can get my headphone amp back on my desk.

Better to use an AES HAT if you can find one. If you do use an S/PDIF HAT then use an impedance transformer rather than an S/PDIF to AES cable. Neutrik makes one that can be plugged straight into the back of the first speaker in the chain.
 

murl

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Better to use an AES HAT if you can find one. If you do use an S/PDIF HAT then use an impedance transformer rather than an S/PDIF to AES cable. Neutrik makes one that can be plugged straight into the back of the first speaker in the chain.

I was trying to avoid the AES hat due to the price and I may not use it very long. Thought about getting the minidsp shd studio but that is ~expensive too. I am getting ready to install Roon ROCK on a NUC. Any ideas on coming out of that other than using a separate dac?
 
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I was trying to avoid the AES hat due to the price and I may not use it very long. Thought about getting the minidsp shd studio but that is ~expensive too. I am getting ready to install Roon ROCK on a NUC. Any ideas on coming out of that other than using a separate dac?

You just spent the best part of £11k on a superb pair of speakers. It would be a shame to hamstring them with a compromised source.

The Audiophonics AES HAT seems to be about £40, which is roughly the same cost as the Neutrik impedance transformer I mentioned earlier. The PI2AES HAT is about £130. I cannot comment on the quality of either product.

Connecting a NUC to the speakers would require a USB to AES or USB to S/PDIF interface, or alternatively a USB DAC. A good one will cost more than either of these Pi HATs. I sell the Matrix Audio X-S/PDIF 2 for £365. I sell the miniDSP SHD Studio for £1,149, which is considerably more than these other options. As you are probably already aware though, the SHD Studio does a whole lot more than any of these other options too.
 

murl

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I understand what you are saying I am hopefully just looking for a temporary fix until the speakers are roon ready hence not wanting to spend $1k for temporary use. I have the matrix audio element x as the source now which is a really expensive streamer and not where I listen to headphones. I just want an inexpensive roon endpoint.
 

murl

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You just spent the best part of £11k on a superb pair of speakers. It would be a shame to hamstring them with a compromised source.

The Audiophonics AES HAT seems to be about £40, which is roughly the same cost as the Neutrik impedance transformer I mentioned earlier. The PI2AES HAT is about £130. I cannot comment on the quality of either product.

Connecting a NUC to the speakers would require a USB to AES or USB to S/PDIF interface, or alternatively a USB DAC. A good one will cost more than either of these Pi HATs. I sell the Matrix Audio X-S/PDIF 2 for £365. I sell the miniDSP SHD Studio for £1,149, which is considerably more than these other options. As you are probably already aware though, the SHD Studio does a whole lot more than any of these other options too.

If I connect the Matrix Audio X-S/SPDIF 2 to the NUC I am building running ROCK via USB it should be recognized as a roon endpoint right? Will I be able to control the volume through Roon?
 
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If I connect the Matrix Audio X-S/SPDIF 2 to the NUC I am building running ROCK via USB it should be recognized as a roon endpoint right?

Pretty much, yes. As far as Roon or the NUC is concerned, it looks like any other USB Audio Class 2 device or in other words like a USB DAC connected directly to the NUC. It will show up as a directly connected device rather than a Roon Ready endpoint, but you just select it and configure it as a zone in Roon's Settings > Audio tab in exactly the same way.
 

murl

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Pretty much, yes. As far as Roon or the NUC is concerned, it looks like any other USB Audio Class 2 device or in other words like a USB DAC connected directly to the NUC. It will show up as a directly connected device rather than a Roon Ready endpoint, but you just select it and configure it as a zone in Roon's Settings > Audio tab in exactly the same way.
This may be the best option for me and relatively inexpensive. I like Matrix Audio, they seem to make high quality gear. I take it there would be no problem with volume control in Roon.
 
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This may be the best option for me and relatively inexpensive. I like Matrix Audio, they seem to make high quality gear. I take it there would be no problem with volume control in Roon.

In theory, you should use the speakers' built-in volume control for best results. In practice, using Roon or another high quality digital volume control (for example the SHD Studio) is no problem at all.
 

murl

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In theory, you should use the speakers' built-in volume control for best results. In practice, using Roon or another high quality digital volume control (for example the SHD Studio) is no problem at all.
Will the digital volume control in Roon work on the MA device?
 

Joachim Herbert

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I use a spdif to aes cable from funk in Berlin which provides a perfect connection to my Adam s3v speakers. Source is roon via pi3 / allo digione, volume control via roon.

Anyway: I thought to Dutch and Dutch is roon ready.
 
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tw99

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New firmware released Monday,
http://dutchdutch.com/update/

Keith

That is a very good update, and to me a great example of how to communicate with customers. It's good to see them being honest about the issues they've had, and also transparent about the ongoing problems with Roon readiness. It's a fact of life in software development that the "interesting" stuff comprises about 5% of the work. The other 95% is all about the surrounding infrastructure and processes needed to make the 5% possible. It seems they overlooked that to begin with, and didn't have proper control over their software and update processes in the field ! Personally I'm still slightly sceptical about whether they can get Roon readiness to work well enough, given the synchronisation issues they mention.
 
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