Altmann Tera Player - Page 16  

Hey Peoplez,

This will be my last post for the month, so I can focus on other tasks non-Audio-related.  I know it is hard to believe there are other things beside Audio.  I appreciated the help and advice from ALL, negative or positive.  It is pretty much downhill from here before initiating the purchase.

I still have hope about high resolution even if it truncates the last 8 bits.  I started reading some of Charles' old post and came upon this link:

http://diyparadise.com/web/learn-learn-learn-mainmenu-27/157

I guess it is not about the bits, but about the sampling rate.  I think someone posted that, but did not sink in till I read this article a few times.

The second to last sentence pretty much confirms this, but will try to get further confirmation from the man himself.

Learned a ton from everyone.  Cheers.  Till September... 

Thanks for your help. Didn't know about that article. Having played with sine waves myself, I already knew that they'd look like that. Spring Semester at college I took an assembly language class where we wrote out a sine wave for output. Was tons of fun and it's when I learned about the Tera Player and helped fuel my motivation to do the homework.

EDIT: The great CD Ripping begins once again. Hopefully with a new computer it goes faster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tera-Fi 

Hey Peoplez,

 

This will be my last post for the month, so I can focus on other tasks non-Audio-related.  I know it is hard to believe there are other things beside Audio.  I appreciated the help and advice from ALL, negative or positive.  It is pretty much downhill from here before initiating the purchase.

 

I still have hope about high resolution even if it truncates the last 8 bits.  I started reading some of Charles' old post and came upon this link:

 

http://diyparadise.com/web/learn-learn-learn-mainmenu-27/157

 

I guess it is not about the bits, but about the sampling rate.  I think someone posted that, but did not sink in till I read this article a few times.

 

The second to last sentence pretty much confirms this, but will try to get further confirmation from the man himself.

 

Learned a ton from everyone.  Cheers.  Till September... 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tera-Fi 

Are you familiar with the industrial DAC that is used in the T-P?  The Philips 8852 was used in  the development, but changed to the Philip NOS (non-oversampling?).  It is difficult to do a search without a model number.  He mentions it has better numbers than the TDA1543 and better for portability.  Do you have any familiarity with the TDA1543?  Curious about that chip as it maybe the closest thing to compare with the T-P DAC.

The 8852 is the DAC8852 made by TI/BB - this is an industrial type dual string DAC. I'm guessing Charles currently is using TDA1545A from NXP (used to be Philips) - this does have better numbers and much lower power than 1543( around 20X lower, so ideal for portable). However its CMOS so requires more care in the I/V stage to get good sound than the 1543.

Thank you.  It is quite fun reading up on these vintage DACs.  I believe you may have an accurate guesstimation.  I did a quick search and found this article on the first page:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue27/monica_dac.htm

He mentions the Monica(2) DAC in another article, so he should be quite familiar, and owners describing the T-P sound characteristics parallels the reading in the article.

It seems like this is it or the closest DAC to do further research and reading.  Nice1.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenman345 

Thanks for your help. Didn't know about that article. Having played with sine waves myself, I already knew that they'd look like that. Spring Semester at college I took an assembly language class where we wrote out a sine wave for output. Was tons of fun and it's when I learned about the Tera Player and helped fuel my motivation to do the homework.

 

 

EDIT: The great CD Ripping begins once again. Hopefully with a new computer it goes faster.

Quote:

It's amazing you learned about the T-P via your studies.  Maybe in 10 years, you can offer a similar or complementary product.  Lots of nice DIY products to get started with...  But it looks like you have to want to have to build a better 'Pong' to get started in DIY audio.  It has to have super hyper fast controllers though like Charles' version.

I was lucky to bump into a 'Best Portable / WAV player' thread and someone mentioned T-P a few months ago.  I was also lucky enough to have missed out on the queue and discount when the DX100 went on the market.  I slowly realized the DX100 was not the DAP I wanted.  Once I saw HiFlight was onboard with T-P, interest piqued and now added this to my wish list.

An interesting project would be the link to the article above.  For Squeezebox owners, that love the sound of the T-P, to DIY, and to see if the sound is similar side-by-side to the T-P or at least a vast improvement. 

So, firstly, I found out about the T-P here, somehow on head-fi, but it related to me very personally having Assembly experience in my current class at the time. I also understand some of his logic in how he started from trying to make a better pong. The best ideas come about out of pure curiosity and wonder. Train of thought may be useful and all of a sudden you stumble upon something you instantly make a connection to try and do. Weird how stuff works.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tera-Fi 

It's amazing you learned about the T-P via your studies.  Maybe in 10 years, you can offer a similar or complementary product.  Lots of nice DIY products to get started with...  But it looks like you have to want to have to build a better 'Pong' to get started in DIY audio.  It has to have super hyper fast controllers though like Charles' version.

 

I was lucky to bump into a 'Best Portable / WAV player' thread and someone mentioned T-P a few months ago.  I was also lucky enough to have missed out on the queue and discount when the DX100 went on the market.  I slowly realized the DX100 was not the DAP I wanted.  Once I saw HiFlight was onboard with T-P, interest piqued and now added this to my wish list.

 

An interesting project would be the link to the article above.  For Squeezebox owners, that love the sound of the T-P, to DIY, and to see if the sound is similar side-by-side to the T-P or at least a vast improvement. 

OK, now I get it, you stumbled upon like most of us.  I thought somehow you stumbled upon while researching a Assembly project.  I believe Ancient Aliens injected the T-P idea into his head.  That is how I believe stuff works.  I've seen it on television, it must be true.

I love the concept of this player.  The technical stuff draws me in, but the overall concept keeps me committed.  Manufacturers do not give us what we want and he went ahead and created something that he (we) may enjoy.  If I had the capabilities and resources, I would probably end up with a similar concept.  I do not blame the manufacturers though, they have numbers they need to produce.  I think we are fortunate at least to have this option.

Would be interesting if he put this out on Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology?ref=home_spotlight

But not much interest at this site so will probably not even reach critical mass for such a niche product.  It would lower the price point. Maybe for a future project?  Who knows.  I would be interested though.

Are you re-ripping your CD's just for the T-P?

Among other things, yes. But only digital copy of my CD's was on an external drive that died. So I am ripping in 4 different formats including wav in preparation of the Tera Player.

I am also now practicing better back up solutions and have been going by hand and copying the folders to a second external drive. I plan to save a little bit of money and get 2 SSD's and run them in RAID 1? (Mirroring?). Then I may end up re-ripping them slowly to use every possible format I can once I have a long term backup solution in place. I hate doing this over and over again. Hopefully I never do this again for another year. Already ripped about 40 CD's (I average 20 CD's a day).

Also, a member sold me their Tera Player for a nice price. So excited to get it :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tera-Fi 

OK, now I get it, you stumbled upon like most of us.  I thought somehow you stumbled upon while researching a Assembly project.  I believe Ancient Aliens injected the T-P idea into his head.  That is how I believe stuff works.  I've seen it on television, it must be true.

 

I love the concept of this player.  The technical stuff draws me in, but the overall concept keeps me committed.  Manufacturers do not give us what we want and he went ahead and created something that he (we) may enjoy.  If I had the capabilities and resources, I would probably end up with a similar concept.  I do not blame the manufacturers though, they have numbers they need to produce.  I think we are fortunate at least to have this option.

 

Would be interesting if he put this out on Kickstarter:

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology?ref=home_spotlight

 

But not much interest at this site so will probably not even reach critical mass for such a niche product.  It would lower the price point. Maybe for a future project?  Who knows.  I would be interested though.

 

Are you re-ripping your CD's just for the T-P?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenman345 

Among other things, yes. But only digital copy of my CD's was on an external drive that died. So I am ripping in 4 different formats including wav in preparation of the Tera Player. I am also now practicing better back up solutions and have been going by hand and copying the folders to a second external drive. I plan to save a little bit of money and get 2 SSD's and run them in RAID 1? (Mirroring?). Then I may end up re-ripping them slowly to use every possible format I can once I have a long term backup solution in place. I hate doing this over and over again. Hopefully I never do this again for another year.Already ripped about 40 CD's (I average 20 CD's a day). Also, a member sold me their Tera Player for a nice price. So excited to get it :-)

Keep me posted on your impressions of the unit. If you are able to directly compare it to the DX100 please let me know how they both compare :).

That is alot of work.  But you have so many different audio devices, so understandable.  How are your structuring your directory for the T-P?  Root => Artists => Album => Track # Track Name?  /home/artist1/album1/01 music1.wav?  I do not know how the directory structure on the T-P is until I get to fiddle with it.  Just have a general idea.  That would be the easiest way to move files to the SD card if the directory structure and format is already in place.  I will probably do mine on-the-fly instead of having separate formats.  Either by a script or like how Charle's deals with this using XLD.

A few fun scripts I have not bothered with, but interesting:

http://blog.buberel.org/batch-flac-to-ogg-convert.html

http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1491.html

http://smxi.org/opt/acxi

Unfortunately, no flac2wav script and do not want to fiddle too much with it as XLD should do fine.

Would SSD's make any difference for music playback/storage?

Some offsite storage is always good.  Either online or physical.

Wow, so jelly you are getting the T-P before me.  At least the pressure if off me to acquire the T-P before you got yours.  I can now extend my timetable for the purchase.

Looking forward to your impressions.

I'll keep you posted. I plan to do a review of the device for the blog I write for. I'll post the review on Head-Fi as well. It's a bit more high-end to what my normal readers have gotten, but at the moment I am pretty swamped with school coming up and side projects, so I am only doing reviews of my own personal gear for now. 

I can't do a direct comparison. I heard the DX100 once, and that was at a Head-Fi Meet and only one song. I did happen to really love the pairing of my CIEM's with the DX100, but apparently the sound signature has changed a lot with firmware updates since the firmware on the model I heard. I'll see if once I get comfortable with understanding the Tera Player sound stage and signature a bit if I can talk to the member in my area that has one and maybe try it out. I am pretty sure he'd wanna give the Tera Player a go as well. Otherwise my nearest impressions/comparisons of the two would be if their is a winter Head-Fi Meet up in my area that I am able to go to. The person who owns the DX100 that's somewhat in my area organized the Summer Meet-Up in my area (bozebutton(s)). 

I'm really excited to have the player though, even if it doesn't trump the DX100 I think I will be happy. I got a good deal for it, and helped a member fund the return of their home rig in the process. To me, the DX100 is too large, even though it's about the same size in thickness as my iPod Classic and Pico Slim combination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lee730 

Keep me posted on your impressions of the unit. If you are able to directly compare it to the DX100 please let me know how they both compare :).

Cool! I look forward to your impressions. The portability factor though is covered on my end with the Studio V 3rd ANV. Would love to hear a comparison with that unit as well :P lol
 

Who knows maybe we can demo each others players? I think I'd be willing to let you demo my DX100 and Studio V :).

How would I be able to demo your units? I don't really wanna send my Tera Player anywhere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lee730 

Cool! I look forward to your impressions. The portability factor though is covered on my end with the Studio V 3rd ANV. Would love to hear a comparison with that unit as well :P lol
 

Who knows maybe we can demo each others players? I think I'd be willing to let you demo my DX100 and Studio V :).

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenman345 

How would I be able to demo your units? I don't really wanna send my Tera Player anywhere.

Well in that case never mind. I figured I'd send you 1 of my units at a time and you would do the same.

You my friend, are greatly mistaken. I don't have any interest to send my large investments around the country. I am not the interested in hearing the other devices for a side by side. I already have the means to do such things by going to Head-Fi Meet up's or contacting people in my area. Also writing for a blog might help get a sample of the Studio V if I really wanted to try. But like my AS-2's, I hope the Tera Player satisfies my curiosity and I dont care to venture to other devices past it. At least, that's the intended goal.

EDIT: Tera Player should be arriving Wednesday :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by lee730 

Well in that case never mind. I figured I'd send you 1 of my units at a time and you would do the same.