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Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

Snoopy

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If I were to get a streamer, which ones work with Apple Music via Airplay2 and has a USB output?
The ifi zen streamer is the cheapest device I can find that has both Apple Music via Airplay2 and has a USB output.
Raspberry pi 4 with Roopiee XL (AirPlay, roon, NAA etc).

I use it to cast audio from a iPad to my headphone setup to watch movies In the evening.


But why not just connect a iPad with usb directly to a DAC if all that is required is apple music?
 

funnychap

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Raspberry pi 4 with Roopiee XL (AirPlay, roon, NAA etc).

I use it to cast audio from a iPad to my headphone setup to watch movies In the evening.


But why not just connect a iPad with usb directly to a DAC if all that is required is apple music?
hi.
For wireless I don’t want to build a pi, and Jay’s Iyagi said it doesn’t sound as good.

For wired hires lossless, i currently use my iphone12proMax with the apple lightning-to-usbCamera adapter but it will eventually have dropouts due to the wire being bent due to usage.
but at $15 used to $30 new versus a $400 Ifi zen streamer, i could replace 14 lightning-to-usb dongles and have Hires lossless.

currently my wireless streamer is the Apple airport express (airplay2) via optical into the Denafrips Ares II 12th, and i cant hear a difference compared to wired USB using the lightning-to-usbCamera dongle.

I found some great streamers with airplay2 and i2S port.
3 youtubers have said that the Ares II 12th with the Denafrips Iris (a DDC) via i2S port significantly improved sound quality to match the higher model Denafrips Pontus in all facets except details (the Pontus has 4 rows of r2r versus 2 rows in the Ares II 12th).
If a streamer has i2S, then i don’t need the Iris to convert usb to i2S.


 
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Killingbeans

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and Jay’s Iyagi said it doesn’t sound as good.

The dude has a seriously lively imagination...

3 youtubers have said that the Ares II 12th with the Denafrips Iris (a DDC) via i2S port significantly improved sound quality to match the higher model Denafrips Pontus in all facets except details (the Pontus has 4 rows of r2r versus 2 rows in the Ares II 12th).

The statement of 3 YouTubers does not make an accurate assessment of reality. Don't listen to those people. Learn about how things really work, and do your own assessment. Or at least listen to people who really knows and don't have a horse in the race. There's more than a few in here.

If a streamer has i2S, then i don’t need the Iris to convert usb to i2S.

Nobody needs external I2S, IMO. But whatever helps you sleep at night ;)
 
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funnychap

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The dude has a seriously lively imagination...



The statement of 3 YouTubers does not make an accurate assessment of reality. Don't listen to those people. Learn about how things really work, and do your own assessment. Or at least listen to people who really knows and don't have a horse in the race. There's more than a few in here.



Nobody needs external I2S, IMO. But whatever helps you sleep at night ;)
The 3 youtubers who reviewed my Ares II 12th and the Iris are: A British Audiophile, Tharbamar, and Wave Theory.





 

Snoopy

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The 3 youtubers who reviewed my Ares II 12th and the Iris are: A British Audiophile, Tharbamar, and Wave Theory.






They make a living with this stuff... It's not surprising that they review this stuff the way they do. Because they want to get more of it send by the manufacturers.

Would U send stuff out for free to people that review products as a waste of space?
 

Purité Audio

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Think of them as shills rather then ‘reviewers’,
Keith
 

funnychap

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e.g., realism, 3D, details, tight bass, tonality, attack/power, fullness/thinness, decay - just your feelings. None of that is relevant to audio quality.
Well maybe decay does, but it's not part a dac anyway.
You don't seem to understand that the best metrics may not be the most fun.

Example: I have a bought new bold red 2017 Corvette with the upgraded 4 big center mounted louder exhausts and stickshift. I could have bought a Tesla that I test drove which by metrics is quieter and even more autonomous than my Vette's manual stickshift that I have to row the gears.

But the Vette is 10 times more fun because it's sexy, has a removable roof, rumbles, loud, the stickshift/clutch feel like extensions of my limbs, real gauges and knobs for that tactile awesomeness, corners like it's on rails at 1.1+ lateral G, stops from 60mph-0 in 90ft.

 
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Killingbeans

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The 3 youtubers who reviewed my Ares II 12th and the Iris are: A British Audiophile, Tharbamar, and Wave Theory.

My bet would be that they share a belief in the same mythology. If they had no idea what was in the box, what its price tag was, or what kind of reputation the manufacturer has, the three "reviews" would be wildly different. Both from the R2R mythology and from each other.

Completely useless as data points, if you ask me.

You don't seem to understand that the best metrics may not be the most fun.

Example: I have a bought new bold red 2017 Corvette with the upgraded 4 big center mounted louder exhausts and stickshift. I could have bought a Tesla that I test drove which by metrics is quieter and even more autonomous than my Vette's manual stickshift that I have to row the gears.

But the Vette is 10 times more fun because it's sexy, has a removable roof, rumbles, loud, the stickshift/clutch feel like extensions of my limbs, real gauges and knobs for that tactile awesomeness, corners like it's on rails at 1.1+ lateral G, stops from 60mph-0 in 90ft.

A better car analogy would be two vehicles that both has performance beyond human comprehension in any possible way. The exhausts sound better than humans can perceive. The stickshift/clutch feels more perfect than the human senses can appreciate. And so on, and so on.

Honestly doesn't make any sense. A car analogy doesn't really work.

That's the main problem. The high-end audio industry really likes pushing the idea of any and all audio components having a "feel" and/or a "personality". It's relatable and it sells well. The fact that human hearing has limits, and that most components in a well designed playback chain hit those limits with ease, is not very fun or sexy.
 

funnychap

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My bet would be that they share a belief in the same mythology. If they had no idea what was in the box, what its price tag was, or what kind of reputation the manufacturer has, the three "reviews" would be wildly different. Both from the R2R mythology and from each other.

Completely useless as data points, if you ask me.



A better car analogy would be two vehicles that both has performance beyond human comprehension in any possible way. The exhausts sound better than humans can perceive. The stickshift/clutch feels more perfect than the human senses can appreciate. And so on, and so on.

Honestly doesn't make any sense. A car analogy doesn't really work.

That's the main problem. The high-end audio industry really likes pushing the idea of any and all audio components having a "feel" and/or a "personality". It's relatable and it sells well. The fact that human hearing has limits, and that most components in a well designed playback chain hit those limits with ease, is not very fun or sexy.
our hearing doesn’t have to hear beyond human comprehension like a dog to know which sounds better.

example: i cannot carry a note singing.
at the same singing volume, whitney houston sounds a million times better than me.
 

funnychap

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My bet would be that they share a belief in the same mythology. If they had no idea what was in the box, what its price tag was, or what kind of reputation the manufacturer has, the three "reviews" would be wildly different. Both from the R2R mythology and from each other.

Completely useless as data points, if you ask me.



A better car analogy would be two vehicles that both has performance beyond human comprehension in any possible way. The exhausts sound better than humans can perceive. The stickshift/clutch feels more perfect than the human senses can appreciate. And so on, and so on.

Honestly doesn't make any sense. A car analogy doesn't really work.

That's the main problem. The high-end audio industry really likes pushing the idea of any and all audio components having a "feel" and/or a "personality". It's relatable and it sells well. The fact that human hearing has limits, and that most components in a well designed playback chain hit those limits with ease, is not very fun or sexy.
Of course the car analogy works, everything is fun versus metrics.
When you dance, do you want to have fun or making the correct steps down to the inches?
 
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Killingbeans

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our hearing doesn’t have to hear beyond human comprehension like a dog to know which sounds better.

example: i cannot carry a note singing.
at the same singing volume, whitney houston sounds a million times better than me.

You misunderstand me. I'm not talking about personal taste. There's no doubt that when there are actual audible differences, they can be appreciated differently by different people.

My point is that there most likely are no differences to begin with. Nothing to like or dislike. Whatever's being perceived is fabricated through expectation bias.
 

AaronJ

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Of course the car analog works, everything is fun versus metrics.
When you dance, do you want to have fun or making the correct steps down to the inches?
You’re entitled to think the car analogy works, but it does not. There are dozens of tangible and perceivable differences between cars. The differences between DACs are neither tangible nor perceivable when bias is taken out of the equation. Nobody can tell you how your sighted bias can make you feel though.
 

funnychap

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You’re entitled to think the car analogy works, but it does not. There are dozens of tangible and perceivable differences between cars. The differences between DACs are neither tangible nor perceivable when bias is taken out of the equation. Nobody can tell you how your sighted bias can make you feel though.
the DACs are tangible, they create sound waves , and your ear shape/hair pickup the dancing air molecules
 

Studio Guy

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I have a question for this thread. What is the goal of these measurements? Is it to find whether a speaker accurately reproduces the source material?
 

Newman

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Yes to that, plus, for speakers, whether the speaker has measurements that are highly correlated with listener preference in normal listening spaces.
 

Killingbeans

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EDIT: This is a reply to post #7268

Yes, but our auditory system does not have neither infinite resolution nor infinite bandwidth.

Once you reach a certain point of performance, the audible differences become practically non existent. The reason why we experience one DAC as having a "character" that another DAC does not, despite both being well engineered, is because our brains are extremely good a fabricating such things. Do a blind test with proper controls, and I'll almost guarantee that those wonderful R2R flavor compounds will disappear like magic. At best there will be nothing but near infinitesimal differences left.

And no, DAC's do not create sound waves. They create a simple voltage that changes value over time.

The hard part is making sure that value is correct a all times. No magic or secret sauce though.
 
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Studio Guy

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Then I would suggest that the measurement of frequency response using pink noise is flawed in two aspects. First, the assumption that we hear in octaves and that they have correctly correlated the drop in energy per octave to how we hear is in itself, subjective. Secondly, you cannot know, using a full spectrum of frequencies, if your speaker (specifically, your ported speaker) is producing a frequency that is not present in the source signal.
 

Blumlein 88

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Then I would suggest that the measurement of frequency response using pink noise is flawed in two aspects. First, the assumption that we hear in octaves and that they have correctly correlated the drop in energy per octave to how we hear is in itself, subjective. Secondly, you cannot know, using a full spectrum of frequencies, if your speaker (specifically, your ported speaker) is producing a frequency that is not present in the source signal.
No, measurements with pink noise can give you the frequency response of the speaker. You can do sweeps or pink noise and there is little difference in the results. Such a measurement is making no assumptions about hearing in octaves or a correlation with how we hear. It is a measurement of speaker response same as a sweep measurement, or stepped sine wave measurement or impulse measurements.
 

Studio Guy

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Pink noise has equal energy per octave of frequency. The energy of pink noise falls off in a range of one to three db per octave (pretty wide range in loudness there). Who determined that this is the correct slope of how we hear things? I can tell you that in the first twenty years of my audio career I did a LOT of live sound. I tried the whole pink noise thing with a special (and expensive) flat response microphone. The results were always underwhelming to say the least. When you had finished getting the system perfectly flat, you could speak into your perfectly flat mic and it sounded like someone speaking through a heavy curtain. Certainly not an accurate reproduction of the source. I'm not saying you can't measure the frequency response of the speaker in relation to pink noise, I'm saying that a perfectly flat response to pink noise is not equivalent to perfect reproduction of the source material.
 
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