[Music Alchemist]

  At least anyone who joins this topic will have a second opinion to see before paying a hundred dollars in a player.

 
There is a free trial that anyone can try. If you don't hear an improvement (after being sure to experiment with the settings) then you don't need to worry about it. But countless others (including myself) do hear a noticeable improvement.
 
If you really cared about the technical stuff, the least you could do is read those posts I linked to and the HQPlayer manual.

 

[ExtremeGamerBR]

   
There is a free trial that anyone can try. If you don't hear an improvement (after being sure to experiment with the settings) then you don't need to worry about it. But countless others (including myself) do hear a noticeable improvement.
 
If you really cared about the technical stuff, the least you could do is read those posts I linked to and the HQPlayer manual.

I'm going to test it now. I have nothing against someone buying the player. Maybe it actually improves the sound, for whatever reason. As I said, I find it interesting that there is a second opinion. I believe this does not harm the forum at all. I just suggested other ways of testing it, avoiding any partiality.

Anyway, if you're happy, that's what matters, right?

 
Edit: And I'm reading them right now.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I'm going to test it now. I have nothing against someone buying the player. Maybe it actually improves the sound, for whatever reason. As I said, I find it interesting that there is a second opinion. I believe this does not harm the forum at all. I just suggested other ways of testing it, avoiding any partiality.

Anyway, if you're happy, that's what matters, right?

 
For the record, I think it would be cool if people did objective tests on all this stuff...but it's not easy to pull off, and conclusive results are practically impossible much of the time. (At the least, even in subjective listening, you have to test tons of music, not just a few songs, since it's easier to tell differences with some songs more than others.)
 
But anyway, people shouldn't need to prove that they can hear a difference when DSP is activated, because the very purpose of DSP is to alter the sound. The real purpose for tests and measurements in this context would be to determine whether that difference is higher or lower fidelity...but there's already a lot of science behind it, if you care to research it, which is why I directed you to those posts as a starting point.
 
I'm going to make the excerpt from the Chord DAC technology page (which is offline now) more visible since it's relevant to the type of processing HQPlayer does (noise shaping, oversampling, modulation, dithering, etc.), particularly when it comes to transients.
 

768 kHz recordings cannot sound better because of information above 200 kHz being important - simply because musical instruments, microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers do not work at these frequencies nor can we hear them. So if it is not the extra bandwidth that is important, why do higher sampling rates sound better?
 
The answer is not being able to hear inaudible supersonic information, but the ability to hear the timing of transients more clearly. It has long been known that the human ear and brain can detect differences in the phase of sound between the ears to the order of microseconds This timing difference between the ears is used for localising high frequency sound. Since transients can be detected down to microseconds, the recording system needs to be able to resolve timing of one microsecond. A sampling rate of 1 MHz is needed to achieve this!
 
However, 44.1 kHz sampling can be capable of accurately resolving transients by the use of digital filtering. Digital filtering can go some way towards improving resolution without the need for higher sampling rates.
 
In order to do this the filters need to have infinite long tap lengths. Currently all reconstruction filters have relatively short tap lengths - the largest commercial device is only about 256 taps. It is due to this short tap length and the filter algorithm employed that generates the transient timing errors. These errors turned out to be very audible. Going from 256 taps to 2048 taps gave a massive improvement in sound quality - much smoother, more focused sound quality, with an incredibly deep and precise sound stage.
 
The initial experiments used variations on existing filter algorithms. Going from 1024 taps to 2048 taps gave a very big improvement in sound quality, and it was implying that almost infinite tap length filters were needed for the ultimate sound quality. At this stage, a new type of algorithm was developed - the WTA filter. This was designed to minimise transient timing errors from the outset, thereby reducing the need for extremely long tap lengths. The WTA algorithm was a success - a 256 tap WTA filter sounded better than all other conventional filters, even with 2048 taps. WTA filters still benefit from long tap lengths; there is a large difference going from 256 taps to 1024 taps.
 
The new Chord products using WTA filters all start with 1024 taps. The filters are implemented in FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) using a specially designed 64-bit DSP (Digital Signal Processing) core.

Pulse Array as a DAC technology has been universally praised for its outstanding natural sound quality. The fourth generation builds on this success; it employs 64 bit 7th order noise shaping, 2048 times oversampling rates and improved pulse width modulated elements. These refinements give much better measured performance; better detail resolution with a smoother more focused sound quality.

 
(The DAVE has 164,000 taps. It measures better than any other DAC in some ways, so that's one thing you can look up if you want proof relating to how these things are higher fidelity.)

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Of course it's adding some coloration.  The people touting it prefer the coloration over bit perfect sound, there's no mystery here.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Of course it's adding some coloration.  The people touting it prefer the coloration over bit perfect sound, there's no mystery here.

 
That's misleading, though, because simply calling it coloration implies that it is less accurate sound, when in fact, it is more accurate sound, exceeding the limitations of your current DAC. (Assuming you are only using an affordable one.) When you use bitperfect output, you are stuck with what your DAC can do. When you use HQPlayer, you can do things that many (if not most) DACs can't. When I use an equalizer, the goal is to get more accurate sound, beyond what my gear (headphones in this case) does on its own. Same concept here, except applied to other aspects of the sound, such as transients.

 

[TheAttorney]

 
Quote:

  That's misleading, though,

 
I admire your diplomacy

.
I'm afraid I no longer have the patience, so best to say no more - because it wouldn't end well

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I admire your diplomacy

.
I'm afraid I no longer have the patience, so best to say no more - because it wouldn't end well

 
ahaha

 
I just hope the Computer Audio section doesn't become too much more like the Sound Science section, with seemingly everyone insisting that $100 DACs are as good as it gets and anyone who believes otherwise are imagining the improvements.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

That's misleading, though, because simply calling it coloration implies that it is less accurate sound, when in fact, it is more accurate sound, exceeding the limitations of your current DAC. (Assuming you are only using an affordable one.) When you use bitperfect output, you are stuck with what your DAC can do. When you use HQPlayer, you can do things that many (if not most) DACs can't. When I use an equalizer, the goal is to get more accurate sound, beyond what my gear (headphones in this case) does on its own. Same concept here, except applied to other aspects of the sound, such as transients.

So let me get this straight. You are going to improve the 1's and a 0's being delivered exactly as they were recorded on your digital music file and this will somehow improve the transients? Really?


If the transients were not there in the original recording somehow your player is going to put them in? Wondor what anyone versed in even the rudiments of information science would say about that?

Take a wild guess.

And, btw, what exactly does that $5000 Dac do that a well designed $100 Dac doesn't? I' d love to see any of these people who say they hear things on this uber expensive Schiit point to the measurables which makes this "audible" difference possible along with the psycho accoustic research confirming it is audible and makes a difference.

Or how about another challenge? Why don't one these "of course different Dacs are clearly audible" crowd use Liberty Instruments AudioDiffMaker to create two files of the same music, one played with a decent, competent $100 Dac, and then replayed on the "clearly superior" uber expensive Dac of their choice. Then use the DiffMaker to create a difference file between the two files, and post the difference file on this site as proof of those "audible differences."

Can tell you right now there will be no more differences between the two files rendered by those respective Dacs than there would between the correct time given by a $35 Casio wristwatch and a $50000 Patek Phillipe.

 

[Music Alchemist]

So let me get this straight. You are going to improve the 1's and a 0's being delivered exactly as they were recorded on your digital music file and this will somehow improve the transients? Really?

If the transients were not there in the original recording somehow your player is going to put them in? Wondor what anyone versed in even the rudiments of information science would say about that?

Take a wild guess.

And, btw, what exactly does that $5000 Dac do that a well designed $100 Dac doesn't? I' d love to see any of these people who say they hear things on this uber expensive Schiit point to the measurables which makes this "audible" difference possible along with the psycho accoustic research confirming it is audible and makes a difference.

Or how about another challenge? Why don't one these "of course different Dacs are clearly audible" crowd use Liberty Instruments AudioDiffMaker to create two files of the same music, one played with a decent, competent $100 Dac, and then replayed on the "clearly superior" uber expensive Dac of their choice. Then use the DiffMaker to create a difference file between the two files, and post the difference file on this site as proof of those "audible differences."

Can tell you right now there will be no more differences between the two files rendered by those respective Dacs than there would between the correct time given by a $35 Casio wristwatch and a $50000 Patek Phillipe.

 
I already provided links to start anyone on that journey. (And I even pasted a quote relating to the transients.) Simply read them (in my prior post) and then do more research if you really want to know the truth. It's a well-known fact that many DACs measure differently, and the DAVE measures much better than anything else in some ways. Just look it up. Many things have to be done to accurately convert the data in those files to analog, and frequency response and distortion are only the beginning. It's digital to analog conversion, not digital to digital.

(It's just that doing some of the processing in the digital domain makes things easier and more accurate in the end.)
 
The only people who believe all DACs sound the same are those who have not heard them. If you are unable to listen with your own ears, at least read some reviews:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/693798/thoughts-on-a-bunch-of-dacs-and-why-delta-sigma-kinda-sucks-just-to-get-you-to-think-about-stuff
http://www.head-fi.org/t/804153/life-after-yggdrasil
https://www.google.com/#&q=dac+reviews

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Dude, your "proof" that different Dacs sound audibly different is a subjective ranking (sez so in the first ten words, dude) from a SBAF who' taken his handle from the sound his cat makes when he scratched behind the ears? And this is your citation of psychoaccoustic research which maps into the objective measurements, confirming the specific audio qualities he claims to hear? And where the h### is that differrnce file?

And your audio player know just which ones and zeros to add to counteract the limitations of each specific "different sounding" dac. Just how does that work? Any specific technical theory?

 

[Music Alchemist]

Dude, your "proof" that different Dacs sound audibly different is a subjective ranking (sez so in the first ten words, dude) from a SBAF who' taken his handle from the sound his cat makes when he scratched behind the ears? And this is your citation of psychoaccoustic research which maps into the objective measurements, confirming the specific audio qualities he claims to hear? And where the h### is that differrnce file?

And your audio player know just which ones and zeros to add to counteract the limitations of ears specific "different sounding" dac. Just how does that work? Any specific technical theory?

 
I never said it was proof. This is Head-Fi, not Hydrogenaudio. No one is under any obligation to prove their claims. The links to impressions were merely examples of countless people hearing obvious differences between DACs. If you want to call them deaf delusional liars, without even hearing the things you're criticizing, that's your problem.
 
Since you blatantly ignored the technical info I provided, I will link to it again. Read through these.
 
http://web.archive.org/web/20160811140354/http://www.chordelectronics.co.uk/chord-dac-technology.asp
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/1395#post_12262339
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/4515#post_12839928
http://www.head-fi.org/t/800264/watts-up/120#post_12586725
 
That info is merely a starting point. Do your own research if you want to learn more. You can also read the manual that comes with the free trial of HQPlayer. It explains some of the techical aspects. It's not adding information that never existed; it's processing the information in a certain way for a more accurate digital to analog conversion.
 
Also, read this post. Read it carefully.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/812521/best-computer-audio-player-software/45#post_13029200

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Propaganda posts from a guy making $10k dacs 7s not scientific research. Every audio designer, espececially the guys making uber expensive wires and electronics promulgate "theories" which have no grounding in peer reviewed scientific literature ( kinda like the "scientific" proof for quackery like "intelligent design", really). And of course those theories are then "confirmed" by the extended listening sessions of the true believers. Didn't Purrin' call them 'Dac offs'? If that doesn't sound like mutual mental masturbation, I don't know what does.

 

[Music Alchemist]

This is why I avoid Sound "Science" and Computer Audio. Just a bunch o' trolling. I'm out...

 

[Digitalis]

What makes me skeptical are claims a piece of software can restore transients going all the way up to 100khz when most microphones including  Large/small Diaphragm Condenser and ribbon mics are at their frequency response limits at 20Khz and sometimes lower. Most speakers top out at 18~20Khz...any claim that a tweeter can play higher than 20Khz that is largely of interest to those who want to attract bats.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I've gone back to using foobar2000 with no DSP.

 
Turns out I was missing out on a ton of detail and precision when using HQPlayer, though it did make things sound subjectively more natural sometimes.