Review and Measurements of Totaldac d1-six DAC

[Joachim Herbert]

People on forums often ask questions their education and experience means they can not understand the answer to.

Then one has the choice of trying a simple explanation for the layman or a parable.

My experience during 30 years as a journalist in the business and it trade press: The more somebody knows about a subject, the better he or she is able to cut the umimportant stuff. This may be leading to simplistic explanations, but it may give an entry point for somebody new to the subject and lead to further investigation, one interest is stirred.

However, there must be an understanding that the explanation given is the simple version of a much more complex one.

 

[Frank Dernie]

My experience during 30 years as a journalist in the business and it trade press: The more somebody knows about a subject, the better he or she is able to cut the umimportant stuff. This may be leading to simplistic explanations, but it may give an entry point for somebody new to the subject and lead to further investigation, one interest is stirred.

However, there must be an understanding that the explanation given is the simple version of a much more complex one.

Yes, I can say aerodynamics and tyre temperature are the two first-order effects on F1 racing car performance. Easy.
I can even give a reasonable expansion of what is important about them, and why. But how to achieve optimum? Very, very difficult to explain, even to experience people, which is why there is such a gulf in performance between the teams.
When I retired I gave a talk to senior engineers at my then current client giving them the "benefit" of 35 years of learning the above.
None of them believed it because it isn't in textbooks or magazines

 

[Wombat]

Yes, I can say aerodynamics and tyre temperature are the two first-order effects on F1 racing car performance. Easy.
I can even give a reasonable expansion of what is important about them, and why. But how to achieve optimum? Very, very difficult to explain, even to experience people, which is why there is such a gulf in performance between the teams.
When I retired I gave a talk to senior engineers at my then current client giving them the "benefit" of 35 years of learning the above.
None of them believed it because it isn't in textbooks or magazines

Well it is up to you to show that. Not always easy to translate intuition or subjective impressions. If you have the data then the interpretation needs to be confirmed. But if you make the claim …….. .

 

[JJB70]

Engineers can be as guilty of group think as anyone,and speaking as an engineer myself we do tend to follow the prevailing orthodoxy for the most part. Not surprising if many in a particular field have been educated at the same educational institutions, using the same text books, read the same papers, venerate the same great minds etc.

 

[Wombat]

Engineers can be as guilty of group think as anyone,and speaking as an engineer myself we do tend to follow the prevailing orthodoxy for the most part. Not surprising if many in a particular field have been educated at the same educational institutions, using the same text books, read the same papers, venerate the same great minds etc.

Of course.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Well it is up to you to show that. Not always easy to translate intuition or subjective impressions. If you have the data then the interpretation needs to be confirmed. But if you make the claim …….. .

Not really, can't be arsed, pearls before swine.
I didn't need to keep the info secret any more and offered it, they were too conventional to believe what took me years to discover, not my problem.
Nobody who knows ever tells journalists what is important (the reverse usually) and nobody who knows has ever written a textbook, so the conventionally educated have no access to the facts and an inability, it seems, to think for themselves.
As far as I am concerned they can stay at the back of the grid
Generally those that say don't know, those that know don't say - I should have left it that way.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Engineers can be as guilty of group think as anyone,and speaking as an engineer myself we do tend to follow the prevailing orthodoxy for the most part. Not surprising if many in a particular field have been educated at the same educational institutions, using the same text books, read the same papers, venerate the same great minds etc.

The engineers I hired were the ones that were not like that and it worked well.
I was a questioner of conventional wisdom and, luckily, got lots of encouragement from a well known like minded engineer in the field, Keith Duckworth who became a good friend.
As you write there aren't many like that.

 

[JJB70]

The problem we have in the industry in which I work is that fewer and fewer policy makers have ever been practitioners (in any capacity, ship design, ship building, ship management or...shudder....time at sea) and it shows. I am going to more and more meetings with government policy makers where people who are actually degree educated naval architects are expounding the most ludicrous ideas because they have no understanding at all of how ships are designed and built, or operated. This is really worrying as in the GHG emissions debate not only are some of the ideas ineffective, they could actually increase emissions. Example, slow ships down to use less fuel, sounds simple and obvious. Most existing ships have already slowed down relative to design service speed, we'll let the fact that going off the design point reduces efficiency because even off design point a ship will still use less fuel at lower speed, the problem is that many ships are at a speed where dropping speed further drops shaft revolutions below the minimum speed for shaft generators to be operable and waste heat recovery units drop off meaning you save a bit of fuel in the main engine but run up diesel generators and oil fired boilers and have a net increase in fuel use. Explain this and be met with blank stares and comments it is nonsense. Not to mention the emissions of the extra ships needed to maintain transport supply. Slowing ships down is an example of a good idea which holds true to a point but which is not a simple panacea and reaches a point where going further makes things worse. Or reduce speed to reduce black carbon emissions, because these people have never studied combustion they refuse to believe that on a camshaft engine (a large part of the existing fleet) reducing engine load is the worst thing you can do for black carbon emissions and will actually increase them. And my favourite (maybe bad word, what winds me up the most) is that to date none of these people understand the difference between power and torque. At lower speeds the limiting factor for ship direct drive engine operability is torque, not power yet I keep going through the same endless circle of having to explain the difference between power and torque to people who should know better.

 

[sajunky]

Great tests and careful investigation is made. A strong 60Hz component from the 'ideal' 50Hz power source required an attention and not missed. However I think that instead of changing power frequency to 60Hz, an ordinary (cheap) step up isolating transformer should be used instead. A cheap part from Radioshack and not giving any chance for ground loops introduced by the electronic power generator to mess up with measurements.

 

[Veri]

Great tests and careful investigation is made. A strong 60Hz component from the 'ideal' 50Hz power source required an attention and not missed. However I think that instead of changing power frequency to 60Hz, an ordinary (cheap) step up isolating transformer should be used instead. A cheap part from Radioshack and not giving any chance for ground loops introduced by the electronic power generator to mess up with measurements.

A precision/lab generator was used, though.

 

[sajunky]

A precision/lab generator was used, though.

Yeah, unfortunately.

 

[Veri]

Yeah, unfortunately.

You mean you wanted to see how (bad) a cheaper transformer would have performed?
I think it's good amir used precision tools so that the lack of "proper" ones could not be blamed for the resulting measurements.

 

[sajunky]

You mean you wanted to see how (bad) a cheaper transformer would have performed?

Exactly!

 

[AudioSceptic]

Here is a smorgasbord:

http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/pwb-price-list

Try this gem. Make sure you're not drinking anything when you do. <http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/the-importance-of-colours-and-sound>

 

[THW]

Try this gem. Make sure you're not drinking anything when you do. <http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/the-importance-of-colours-and-sound>

thanks, I became dumber reading that whole bunch of...nothing

 

[BDWoody]

Try this gem. Make sure you're not drinking anything when you do. <http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/the-importance-of-colours-and-sound>

I think that would have been better, had I been drinking...

 

[Hugo9000]

Try this gem. Make sure you're not drinking anything when you do. <http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/the-importance-of-colours-and-sound>

I thought it was going to be about Alexander Scriabin's ideas on music, or on synethesia in general or something. I had forgotten that business about green markers and colors of the CD label graphics. lol (Synesthesia, or more specifically, chromesthesia, is not the same thing as thinking that the color on a disc that is unseen during playback has an effect on the sound.)

Here are a few quick references for anyone unfamiliar with Scriabin. I think much of his music is wonderful, but he was more than slightly unstable. His color ideas may have been a part of his mysticism, and not really any manifestation of synesthesia, of course. I recommend his solo piano music, and his symphonic music has much that is gorgeous. Underperformed, I'd say. If anyone wants any Scriabin recording recommendations, feel free to PM me, as this is off topic to the TotalDAC, except perhaps in the sense of possible insanity haha!

https://wonderofsoundmusicnotes.com/the-genius-or-madness-of-alexander-scriabin/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavier_à_lumières

 

[saturdayboy]

I’d like to comment. I just purchased a Totaldac, and it is spectacular sounding.
Does that make me a snake oil aficionado? Is the earth really flat after all?

 

[SIY]

The story appeals to you more than the actual performance. Your money, your choice.

 

[saturdayboy]

The story appeals to you more than the actual performance. Your money, your choice.

What story?