Sorry for stalling. Can't help but have some fun when I can.
My original response to Adam via email discussed a little what we are after.
As Ted has mentioned a number of times, he could tweak the filters to lower the noise in the audio along with a more aggressive filter for the ultrasonics, but it simply doesn't sound as good.
This again goes back to my original email. Could Ted design a DAC that measures better? Absolutely. But what's the point if it sounds worse?
I imagine a lot have already read his post on our forums, but this is his perspective.
"I can lower the noise in the audio band and more and more aggressively filter the resultant ultrasonic noise: but everyone that has listened to that likes the sound less (tho I certainty expect that some would like the filtered top better.) If someone doesn’t like the DS’s sound then the
DS isn’t for them, no problem, there are a lot of fine DACs out there (and TTs, etc.)
I could skip the transformer, but then the
DS would integrate well into fewer systems and have more analog noise. Sure there are a lot of better transformers out there, but they cost too much for a product at this price point. I’m reasonably happy with the performance of the transformers we use. When I started the project I thought that transformers were crazy for this application and did a lot of work that avoided them, but the very first time I simply passively filtered a DSD stream with resistors, caps and a transformer I knew I was on the right track and I had to learn and changed my mind about transformers.
I’m not going to waste my time reading and rebutting the other stuff at his site, I’ve been there before and see how he treats people and how he learns. In any real conversation each party must expect to possibly change their mind. I know that I’m not going to change my mind based on anything amirm says and I know that he’s not going to change his mind based on anything I say. There’s no end in sight in such a circumstance and I don’t need to waste my time making him happy.
I wrote what I thought about his review earlier and knew full well that someone would point him to it. I have in the past privately emailed some more detailed rational for the choices I’ve made to some members of this forum, but some of those private emails were immediately posted on other forums so I have stopped answering technical questions to most people in email.
As anyone who has been here for any length of time knows I’m happy to answer questions that are asked in good faith and I think many of the above questions deserve a good answer, on the other hand I’ve answered most of the questions on asked on this thread before elsewhere (even when I knew that some of the posters were trolls.)
Some people thrive in a contentious environment and some people like a spirited debate, but I don’t enjoy either now that I’m no longer a teenager (no denigration or judgement intended about others who are different than I am) so I’m not going to read any more of this thread."