Altmann Tera Player - Page 80  

Exactly what I did with my 64gb sdxc SanDisk

Double post! Phone had a brainfart.

May I say therefore this player is totally epic? Blows everything else put of the water. Can't wait to make unassuming friends cry at how awesome it sounds

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I was having difficulty in getting some of my .wav files to play in the Tera. I particularly wanted to be able to play some of the binaural recordings I have made in the past with my digital recorder. I was also unable to get some sinewave test files to play as well, although my signal generator outputs mono signals.

I did try to feed these into my digital recorder which will copy the mono signal to each channel, thereby creating a stereo file that the Tera should play but didn't.

I corresponded with Charles as to why I was experiencing difficulties even with downloaded .wav files. I did send him a sample from my digital recorder and he found that the difficulties were all a result of meta data encoded on the .wav files that was not to the liking of the Tera-Player. It is very demanding due to the requirement to pass very large amounts of data through a very small buffer when reading high bitrate or resolution files.

The solution that he provided worked perfectly. Simply strip off the meta data from the files and they play perfectly. Although I am using a Linux O/S, I do have an application to allow me to run PC .exe programs, so I used Xrecode. One only needs to drop the file onto the app and run it. This removes any extraneous meta data and allows the files to be read without problems by the Tera.

As a final test, I downloaded some 24/96 Steinway & Sons test files that demonstrated the magnificence of their flagship Concert Grand. Using my Shure SRH1840 phones (which seem to garner little respect on Head-Fi), this recording sounded absolutely stunning! The Steinway Concert Grand covers very close to the full audio spectrum, and I was able to detect no rolloff at either end of the spectrum.

I also intend to make some more binaural recordings now that they are playable on my Tera.

I am very grateful to Charles for his willingness to work through my problem and take the time to discover a simple solution to a vexing issue!

Unfortunately, my signal generator has significant roll-off below about 40Hz, so I was not able to make any measurements, although the Tera accurately played back what I recorded with no additional roll-off that I could detect by ear.

At this point, I am completely satisfied with the capabilities of my Tera and will likely not pursue any further attempts at measurements.
Edited by HiFlight - 1/29/13 at 6:11pm

That sounds like a broadcast wave. they commonly do not play on many devices.

Nice to see the TP getting more affirmation.

No, it was not the broadcast .wav codec, it was standard .wav as downloaded from an audio HiRes site. Of course the broadcast wav files will not play either. I have not tried converting one of those, but I have successfully converted .flac and mp3 files to the .wav codec. By successfully, I mean that they play on my Tera.

I'd like to know what was found. There's the riff potion in wav and that's about it. Was it corrupted or aiff etc.? PM if you prefer this elsewhere. I'm just curious and nothing to do with the TP. The evidence of greatness is mounting.

 

Just my 2c, the bass roll-off I heard in my A/B comparisons may be limited to low impedance IEMs, just like that of the Colorfly C4. Unfortunately I didn't try a higher impedance phone, so I can't comment on these.

Nobody has heard any roll-off with the 60-ohm PortaPros, to my knowledge.

 

Most IEMs are 32ohms at max. A lot are only 16ohms, some even less. For the Colorfly C4, measurements have shown that you need at least 50-60ohms to avoid bass roll-off. The Tera Player has not been measured so far, but in my volume-matched A/B comparisons with the 16ohms Sennheiser IE800, its bass was at least 5db down at 50Hz from my other DAPs. The only other source that sounded similar to the TP in bass was my Icon Mobile, which has substantial bass roll-off, according to GoldenEars' measurements.

 

There may be several explanations as to why nobody has reported any roll-off with the PortaPros. First and foremost, if the TP behaves like the C4, then any phone with more than 50-60ohms will be fine. Second, bass roll-off on a bassy phone like the PortaPro is very hard to discern wthout a volume-matched comparison. And last not least, the PortaPros' mid bass hump will mask any deep bass roll-off to a certain degree.

 

I'm not saying that I'm right and others are wrong, just trying to explain that observations with higher impedance phones are not necessarily contradictory to my own findings with IEMs.

 

How did you get the 5db figure and 50Hz? Was this subjective or electronically measured? I have always wondered how tiny headsets are able to product any music in the frequency ranges around 20-50Hz. Large room sized speakers have great difficulty doing 20-50hz properly already and it's often bandied around that it's a common place ability of good headsets.

 

What DAPs were you comparing against?

 

Thanks.

 

Volume-matched A/B listening with the Sennheiser IE800 from the Tera Player, Cowon i9, Samsung R0, Sony A845, iPod classic > LOD > Xin supermicro IV, iPod classic > LOD > Nuforce Icon Mobile. All but the Icon Mobile have reasonably flat FR in bass. The Icon Mobile's bass sounded by far closest to the TP. After that I compared just the TP and Cowon i9 (because the latter has a HQ parametric EQ) and gradually EQed the i9's bass down until it matched the TP's response. This experiment confirmed my prior impressions. The TP has at least the same amount of bass roll-off as the Icon Mobile, which is about 5db down at 50Hz.

 

Lastly I repeated the same procedure with the FI-BA-SS, which are 16 ohms like the IE800, but have significantly less bass boost. Result: the FI-BA-SS sounded worse with the TP than with any other DAP, bleak and virtually sucked out in the low end.

 

Of course all of these are just subjective impressions and hopefully someone will do objective measurements of the Tera Player to confirm or dismiss them.

Edited by james444 - 2/1/13 at 9:29am

I've personally come to the conclusion that it's intentional. I've never seen any player take this long for a set of tests to be performed, unless the results were less than favorable and purposely not posted. Definitely something wrong here,...