Recent content by cjl
  1. cjl

    Slow VS Fast roll off and Minimum VS Linear phase

    Most DAPs on the market are these: http://www.apple.com/ipod/ , or  these: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ , or these: http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy/ or similar, none of which have digital filter options. The DAPs on that page that you linked make up a vanishingly small minority of DAPs sold.
  2. cjl

    Benchmark talked about headroom for intersample peaks in DAC, does it really matter?

    It can indeed be a problem, but it should be relatively easily solved by lowering digital volume on your computer to 80-90% so the DAC doesn't ever see 0dBFS samples.
  3. cjl

    MQA: Revolutionary British streaming technology

      I'm in a nitpicky kind of mood, so just to make sure this is perfectly accurate, redbook doesn't perfectly store signals at any level, it always adds some noise or distortion. That noise level can be well below even -96dBFS though if dither is applied intelligently, allowing encoding of...
  4. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    I'd prefer my amp to not sound like anything. I want it to make the signal louder and do nothing else. Luckily, there are some good options that do that.
  5. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    See, to me, that implies that the Mjolnir is worse, since sounding different than a pure solid state device (assuming the solid state device is well-engineered) tells me that the Mjolnir is adding distortion. When you said the Mjolnir was better, I assumed that meant there was something audibly...
  6. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    What's wrong with the Fulla, out of curiosity? I haven't seen enough measurements to make a judgment about whether the Fulla should be audibly transparent, but the specs certainly indicate it should be.
  7. cjl

    Is highend audio evil science?

    The strange thing about that, though, is that for some strange reason, they can only hear that it sounds better when they can also see what it is. When they don't have knowledge of what is playing, it frequently mysteriously sounds exactly the same as other, cheaper gear (assuming competent...
  8. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    To be fair, distortion is an important factor. However, it's by far the most detectable when testing via fast-switch A/B. Levels of distortion that are inaudible if just listened to in isolation can be detected if you have the contrast of an A/B. You can experiment on yourself here...
  9. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    Planars fall in that "esoteric and hard to drive" category I mentioned, unfortunately, but the 400i at 93dB @ 1mw is not too bad. If we (pessimistically) use the 50 ohm power figure for the Fulla, that gives a peak SPL of 118dB. This is probably enough, assuming you have a gain structure that...
  10. cjl

    Amp. What's the point???

    Burn in for the vast, vast majority of components does not matter, and gear matching only matters if your gear is so woefully poor that it is coloring the sound in some way. Good quality amps, dacs, and sources are completely transparent and will sound identical and interchangeable.   As for...
  11. cjl

    Understanding Digital and Analog Jitter

    I don't have time right now to address everything, but that's far from a good video. It contains some misunderstandings in how digital signals are conveyed, as well as how signal timing is used to reconstruct the waveform. It contains a lot of handwaving, but zero actual measurements or examples...
  12. cjl

    The Obsession with Loudness in Portable Headphones -- Why?! + "Hearing Loss from Headphones a Myth"

    High sensitivity improves compatibility with a larger variety of portable sources, and improves battery life during playback. I don't think any manufacturer of high sensitivity headphones expects you to just crank the volume all the way and listen to them that way.
  13. cjl

    Converting tracks by sampling rate or bit rate, questions please.

    Interestingly, even when converting to an integer rate, you don't just want to take every fourth sample. You can introduce aliasing if you do that, which can add very audible artifacts. What you actually want to do is lowpass it first, then resample, to ensure you have eliminated any frequencies...
  14. cjl

    Speaker and Amplifier matching

    There's no evidence at all that amp differences are audible, so long as they measure sufficiently well (to be fair, to truly quantify this involves a more detailed set of measurements than just frequency response).
  15. cjl

    Speaker and Amplifier matching

    If the specs are accurate, they really should both sound identical. What sounds different?
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