About a week ago I landed on a thread on reddit where a few folks were making all kinds of wild accusations about me. I got engaged with one of them and probed into their claims. After a few back and forth, the poster says this:
I challenged him to tell me what specific measurements he was talking about and he linked to this thread on measurements of the SONCOS SGD1 DAC: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...coz-sgd1-asr-measurement-discrepancies.11115/
As a way of background, I tested the original SGD1 and found it to have the famous ESS IMD Hump. The designer @Ben1987 immediately jumped on the issue and not only solved it in his DAC but also documented it for the world to see and use. I did not get another sample to test so my review was limited to the version I had. So clearly on this front the reddit NFTOxaile is wrong. What I tested is not the commercial samples that others had measured. Still, I wanted to investigate and get to the bottom of the problem.
Here is my measurements of the pre-IMD-Fix:
Excellent measurements by any measure. Here is recent measurement posted of new version (I have cropped it for easier viewing; use the above link if you want to see the full snapshot):
Let's deal with a simple measurement thing: the FFT shown has no averaging. This causes all that "grass" at the bottom of the FFT. I suggest folks there use averaging of 3 to make it easier to see the spurious tones and more comparable to what I show. I hate for people to think that means there was more noise.
There were some other differences in measurements but none explained the higher harmonic content they were measuring versus my prototype. I went to buy one to test but none were available quickly. Fortunately member @CrimeInPartner had a unit he was not using and rushed it to me. Upon measuring it, I confirmed that the results were not nearly as good as what I had measured in my version:
One clue that something was different was the output voltage. We are seeing 4.3 volt versus 4.1 before. Meanwhile I had reached out to the designer, Ben, asking him what was up. He picked up a unit at random from his supply and got much better measurements. Moreover the output voltage was lower, measuring my previous measurement. He said this was a firmware fix that was pushed out.
The SGD1 has a hidden Wifi feature that is used strictly for firmware update. I did not know that the owner had changed the Wifi SSID so spent a day going nowhere trying to upgrade. Once he told me that was the case, I reset the unit and it automatically upgraded itself. Here is the new measurements:
As noted, the output voltage is back to where it was and performance while not quite as stellar as it was in my original measurements, it is within shouting distance. And certainly lot better than what others have mentioned.
So to anyone who has a unit they purchased a while back, or regardless, create a mobile hotspot on your phone. Name it ANIG as the SSID/wifi name. Give it the password 12345678. Power cycle the SGD1. If it is all working, it will wait a few seconds and then light up all of its icons. It will then sit there for a minute or two and power cycle. You now have the new firmware and improved performance.
Going back to the poster, it is incredible what stories people make up and how little it takes for them to try to soil other people's reputation. Not only did he have his facts wrong on what I had tested versus what others had tested, he is of course totally wrong about me gaming the measurements to favor companies. As I have said a million times, I have no commercial relationship with any company whose product I am reviewing. If there is ever a conflict of interest, I will be sure to note it and clearly there is none with respect to this DAC. We had a sequence of explainable cause and effects which took a contact with the company to resolve.
I challenged him to tell me what specific measurements he was talking about and he linked to this thread on measurements of the SONCOS SGD1 DAC: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...coz-sgd1-asr-measurement-discrepancies.11115/
As a way of background, I tested the original SGD1 and found it to have the famous ESS IMD Hump. The designer @Ben1987 immediately jumped on the issue and not only solved it in his DAC but also documented it for the world to see and use. I did not get another sample to test so my review was limited to the version I had. So clearly on this front the reddit NFTOxaile is wrong. What I tested is not the commercial samples that others had measured. Still, I wanted to investigate and get to the bottom of the problem.
Here is my measurements of the pre-IMD-Fix:
Excellent measurements by any measure. Here is recent measurement posted of new version (I have cropped it for easier viewing; use the above link if you want to see the full snapshot):
Let's deal with a simple measurement thing: the FFT shown has no averaging. This causes all that "grass" at the bottom of the FFT. I suggest folks there use averaging of 3 to make it easier to see the spurious tones and more comparable to what I show. I hate for people to think that means there was more noise.
There were some other differences in measurements but none explained the higher harmonic content they were measuring versus my prototype. I went to buy one to test but none were available quickly. Fortunately member @CrimeInPartner had a unit he was not using and rushed it to me. Upon measuring it, I confirmed that the results were not nearly as good as what I had measured in my version:
One clue that something was different was the output voltage. We are seeing 4.3 volt versus 4.1 before. Meanwhile I had reached out to the designer, Ben, asking him what was up. He picked up a unit at random from his supply and got much better measurements. Moreover the output voltage was lower, measuring my previous measurement. He said this was a firmware fix that was pushed out.
The SGD1 has a hidden Wifi feature that is used strictly for firmware update. I did not know that the owner had changed the Wifi SSID so spent a day going nowhere trying to upgrade. Once he told me that was the case, I reset the unit and it automatically upgraded itself. Here is the new measurements:
As noted, the output voltage is back to where it was and performance while not quite as stellar as it was in my original measurements, it is within shouting distance. And certainly lot better than what others have mentioned.
So to anyone who has a unit they purchased a while back, or regardless, create a mobile hotspot on your phone. Name it ANIG as the SSID/wifi name. Give it the password 12345678. Power cycle the SGD1. If it is all working, it will wait a few seconds and then light up all of its icons. It will then sit there for a minute or two and power cycle. You now have the new firmware and improved performance.
Going back to the poster, it is incredible what stories people make up and how little it takes for them to try to soil other people's reputation. Not only did he have his facts wrong on what I had tested versus what others had tested, he is of course totally wrong about me gaming the measurements to favor companies. As I have said a million times, I have no commercial relationship with any company whose product I am reviewing. If there is ever a conflict of interest, I will be sure to note it and clearly there is none with respect to this DAC. We had a sequence of explainable cause and effects which took a contact with the company to resolve.