OP
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- #81
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E1DA Cosmos ADCiso Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
IVX
Major Contributor
I do all things by myself, design, calibration, assembling, and online support in the discord. When the user mixes up scaler vs scalar, I see that he's not an engineer or DIYer but just a manager who accidentally got my stuff and has no idea what is it. I have no time to explain basic things, so I decided I'd sell my stuff to smart people only.
BTW, Cosmos ADC grade 0 shows me THD+N -125db.. Cosmos APU -131db but the theoretical limit is -135db, hence, a smart person has not only 200x times cheaper device vs AP but in some aspects a lot more precise.
PS: I recollect another example of a similar approach i.e. the product is wonderful but not easy to use without spending some brain effort and forum reading. REW - typical DIYer2DIYers SW! I was shocked at how fast John reacted to my complaint about REW calculating the THD+N incorrectly, John instantly found the solution, maybe within 24 hours if my memory serves well. I don't think that John has a huge money from his REW, just he can improve the product and doesn't wait for another reason to start his work. When somebody asks me to mod FW for them or so, I recollect that good example and push myself to do help rapidly. We are from the same planet, I guess
BTW, Cosmos ADC grade 0 shows me THD+N -125db.. Cosmos APU -131db but the theoretical limit is -135db, hence, a smart person has not only 200x times cheaper device vs AP but in some aspects a lot more precise.
PS: I recollect another example of a similar approach i.e. the product is wonderful but not easy to use without spending some brain effort and forum reading. REW - typical DIYer2DIYers SW! I was shocked at how fast John reacted to my complaint about REW calculating the THD+N incorrectly, John instantly found the solution, maybe within 24 hours if my memory serves well. I don't think that John has a huge money from his REW, just he can improve the product and doesn't wait for another reason to start his work. When somebody asks me to mod FW for them or so, I recollect that good example and push myself to do help rapidly. We are from the same planet, I guess
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OP
OP
- Thread Starter
- #84
John is an incredibly nice and generous person. He is not at all like you. If you were 1% as nice and appreciative as him, it would be a massive improvement.PS: I recollect another example of a similar approach i.e. the product is wonderful but not easy to use without spending some brain effort and forum reading. REW - typical DIYer2DIYers SW! I was shocked at how fast John reacted to my complaint about REW calculating the THD+N incorrectly, John instantly found the solution, maybe within 24 hours if my memory serves well. I don't think that John has a huge money from his REW, just he can improve the product and doesn't wait for another reason to start his work. When somebody asks me to mod FW for them or so, I recollect that good example and push myself to do help rapidly. We are from the same planet, I guess
IVX
Major Contributor
@sarieri, was another guy who I believe, accidentally bought my stuff and he called Scaler as scalar. I taught this guy about how to measure tiny distortions, one or two months in our discord. Now he can teach others if they wish to learn.
www.audiosciencereview.com
PS: diyaudio.com folk told me about another interesting ADC https://nihtila.com/2020/02/02/adc-ak5572-very-high-performance-audio-ad-converter/
That device has only one sensitivity 3.6Vrms 0dbfs, hence, with "standard 4V" test it will simply fall into a hard clipping, THD+N 10% or so.
DIY amp testing (with AES17 filter)
I think, you don't need the coilcraft inductor at all but a coreless inductor, which has the best THD. Yah. Those are way bigger though. I'm still confused about rising H3 when measured with APU-Scalar-ADC comparing to Scalar-ADC. Also, the AUX0025 is clearly having higher rolloff at 20kHz. Not...
www.audiosciencereview.com
That device has only one sensitivity 3.6Vrms 0dbfs, hence, with "standard 4V" test it will simply fall into a hard clipping, THD+N 10% or so.
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Amir, may I humbly repeat my question: what generator did you to test the high performance mode of your AP?
This...
...This type of mindset & speech is absolutely unsuitable for such a (great) place as ASR.
The very purpose of ASR is all about highly competent people wanting to share their technical knowledge and educate others. I'm sure that's what @amirm had in mind when he created this forum.
Whatever how skilled you are (and your are), how performant your products are (and they are), you are definitely lacking in that regard, Ivan.
VF, out.
morillon
Major Contributor
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ADC AK5572 v1.2 available - nihtila.com
ADC AK5572 boards are available again, in slightly modified version 1.2. Despite a rather long list of changes there are no differences in performance and no major changes in functionality. Note that there is also v1.3 now. It is the same as v1.2 except the PCB is green. Changes are...
nihtila.com
IVX: Yass but what is "smart people"? We're here for numbers so I think on every [e1da] product page there should be exact IQ value of potential customer specified so to not cause purchase regrets. We had monetary elitism in high-end audio, so intellectual elitism is great approach to make objective "price independent" audio more inclusive..
he-he [i laugh stupidly
I'm "out of range" simple bloke..]
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
The distortion of the AP may be lower, but its THD+N is limited by the noise, not the distortion, whereas the Cosmos is limited by its distortion, not the noise.
Cosmos is an incredible achievement for very little money from one man. If you can be bothered with the messing around, calibrating levels, considering the input impedance for each range and then using an external high quality D/A converter and random free (or paid) software. Add to that, the need to buffer/precondition and attenuate externally and it's certainly not a turn-key solution.
I have a Quantasylum QA-403 which solves all those issues, including having inbuilt range switching for the generator and the analyzer, a standard 100k/200k input impedance as well as having the A/D and D/A synchronized on the same clock. It is also now fully isolated. Sure, having a 200k front end means I throw away 10dB of THD+N, but that doesn't matter for what I do and when the numbers are already down to >-120dB loopback THD, and +N numbers better than -110dB it's perfect for me as a small, mobile analyzer that just works.
It will not compete with an AP and neither will the Cosmos setup.
The QA40x Software is continuously evolving and Matt from Quantasylum is very much on the ball with minor bugfixes/features and add-ons. Just since September 2023, there has been 8 (eight) complete version updates to fix/improve things. It will run on any machine- I even ran it on a 10+ year old Intel Celeron NUC and a cheap Lenovo Pentium with no problems.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
I think you are likely mis-interpreting what he said. It wasn't directed at anyone in particular, just clowns in general who don't know what they are doing and shouldn't be buying the devices in the first place.
And it will be the hobbyists and serious DIYers who will lose out if and when Ivan decides it's all just too hard dealing with the general public and their skyhigh high expectations and entitled attitudes.
morillon
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is it possible to use other software like mt from pkane, virtins , or rew , "asio" , with quantasylum? or only quantasylum software?
;-)
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OP
- Thread Starter
- #94
I answered already. It is the high-performance analog generator in APx555. You will never get such low distortion if you use the DAC generator.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #95
Oh it was. He is talking about me. Same thing he did when I tested his last product. Both times I gave his product the best recommendation I can give and yet, he spits out this kind of poison. I have a short list of companies that I want to have nothing to do with and he was on it. But I decided to give it a second chance only to see a repeat. Like the other people on that list, common sense is not something that was taught to him. Or respect for where he is.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
I can't speak for him in that regard, but I do know Matt is working on progressing ASIO and it could be a while away. The issues of course are controlling the attenuators/gain stages for the inputs and outputs. Overall, I'm more than happy with the cadence of updates and improvements.
There are multiple ways to interact with the device as it stands. Someone could even build their own entire app if they were so inclined.
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restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Oh dear. Sorry to hear Amir. I always like to think language and it subtleties can make someone sound worse than they intend. IOW, we give the benefit of the doubt where we can, and then if that fails, tear them a new a#s.
I think we see something very symptomatic here.
Ivan is producing unique products, by their quality and ambition.
They truely provide options and performance that were unreachable to typical DiYer or amateurs before them: ADC, APU, Scaler, not to forget his excellent phone load board.
Now, this comes at the cost of setup complexity and you need to have some geek-world affinity to really understand them and get the best of them.
At the same time, the ADC especially has a lot of attraction for "normal" people, who don't understand the complexity.
If Ivan wants to survive - earn enough money - he probably needs this wider audience.
Although his main income, I suspect, is coming from the excellent headphones dongles he produces.
So the paradox: I think we see Ivan frustrated somehow to have to explain the complex details that you need to understand to measure with his devices.
It's very time consuming and, at the same time, the same questions come over and over again.
And it seems he also always believes he has to prove his devices are the best. Which, given their price, is not needed: their price/performance ratio is unrivaled. Nobody is disputing that.
Proving your devices are the best is, of course, always challenged, and this, again, I suspect, gives him (unneeded) frustration
If Ivan was able to hire some marketing person that could also produce easy to read documentation for the 2 different profiles of persons he sales his devices to, I think his frustration would decrease and he would be able to focus on what he's doing best -the technical aspect- and earn more from his efforts.
OK, I don't want to seem condescending or giving lessons here.
Just to share my feelings about what I consider as a sadly missed opportunity, given Ivan's talent and genuine will to provide unique products for his customers vs the result he ultimately gets.
Ivan is producing unique products, by their quality and ambition.
They truely provide options and performance that were unreachable to typical DiYer or amateurs before them: ADC, APU, Scaler, not to forget his excellent phone load board.
Now, this comes at the cost of setup complexity and you need to have some geek-world affinity to really understand them and get the best of them.
At the same time, the ADC especially has a lot of attraction for "normal" people, who don't understand the complexity.
If Ivan wants to survive - earn enough money - he probably needs this wider audience.
Although his main income, I suspect, is coming from the excellent headphones dongles he produces.
So the paradox: I think we see Ivan frustrated somehow to have to explain the complex details that you need to understand to measure with his devices.
It's very time consuming and, at the same time, the same questions come over and over again.
And it seems he also always believes he has to prove his devices are the best. Which, given their price, is not needed: their price/performance ratio is unrivaled. Nobody is disputing that.
Proving your devices are the best is, of course, always challenged, and this, again, I suspect, gives him (unneeded) frustration
If Ivan was able to hire some marketing person that could also produce easy to read documentation for the 2 different profiles of persons he sales his devices to, I think his frustration would decrease and he would be able to focus on what he's doing best -the technical aspect- and earn more from his efforts.
OK, I don't want to seem condescending or giving lessons here.
Just to share my feelings about what I consider as a sadly missed opportunity, given Ivan's talent and genuine will to provide unique products for his customers vs the result he ultimately gets.
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Regarding low input impedance of the E1DA ADC that may be an issue for some measurements (preamps, especially tube preamps) can be easily overcome by inserting a high input impedance buffer in front of the E1DA ADC.
Example:
1. Topping DX5 RCA output directly to E1DA, input mono 1.7V /Topping has no issues with low impedance load, this is as a reference/
2. Same as (1), but the DIY input buffer with 100kohm input impedance and 50ohm output impedance is placed in front of the E1DA DAC. Please forgive some mains residuals due to long single ended wires.
This is still acceptable for many measuring tasks and allows to measure sources with output impedance up to 1kohm, at reasonably low cost, to a skilful DIYer. As I have said, E1DA is not for beginners, but it is an excellent value for technically oriented skilful users.
Example:
1. Topping DX5 RCA output directly to E1DA, input mono 1.7V /Topping has no issues with low impedance load, this is as a reference/
2. Same as (1), but the DIY input buffer with 100kohm input impedance and 50ohm output impedance is placed in front of the E1DA DAC. Please forgive some mains residuals due to long single ended wires.
This is still acceptable for many measuring tasks and allows to measure sources with output impedance up to 1kohm, at reasonably low cost, to a skilful DIYer. As I have said, E1DA is not for beginners, but it is an excellent value for technically oriented skilful users.
KSTR
Major Contributor
I just checked and it took me two minutes to find what out it does. Both sliders work in the same way and are interchangeable. The thresholds the mode switching acts upon (sort of) an average of the two settings.
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