[marcmccalmont]

Alas, at the current oversampling rate, we would need to wait over 11 seconds from hitting play on the PC until we hear sound... So we might need the time machine component as well to skip the wait.

Well I only get home to listen to live music once a month so 2,592,000 second wait for un digitized and only 11 seconds for digitized not bad! I's even accept 60 seconds

 

[Sonic77]

The Eagle has landed.

 

[Jawed]

Yes Virtex Ultrascale + I hope Rob is listening to 100,000,000 taps on a prototype!

That would imply about 60 seconds of delay when hitting play.

In the end, if such a tap count is worthwhile, it would only be practical if the file was processed before listening. In theory it's possible to process an entire file in less than real time. The constraint Rob has with a DAC is that it accepts a stream of digital data - it can't read the entire file, upsample it in its entirety, then play it to you. The DAC has to wait for the samples to arrive!

A streaming product which reads files directly, on the other hand, would be able to do this.

There is then a related problem: When you listen to a piece of music, the sound quality will change over the first minute, and change again as the final minute plays. Within a minute of either the start or finish of the music, there's less samples for the upsampler to use.

Now playing: Laurie Anderson - Let X = X

 

[Sonic77]

Guitars sound bleeping real!

 

[rayl]

That would imply about 60 seconds of delay when hitting play.

...

Your math is better than mine (I misread 10MM instead of 100MM)!

But here's a crazy thought that's useful even with the current latency for 1MM taps... It's a bit pie-in-sky, but at the level of economics, it's not totally crazy.

SSDs and RAM are both cheap. We can maintain a local cache and when the same bits are restreamed, we can already guess the future (and fall back to a shorter filter if the stream starts mismatching what's in cache). With things like Shazam, we already have good music fingerprinting algos....

This can also reduce the latency with the current 1+MM taps.

 

[onsionsi]

Guitars sound bleeping real!

It seems you are not regretting to reorder Blu2

 

[Jawed]

Guitars eh? These sound lovely:



Though I admit the lipsync off YouTube with Blu 2 is probably annoying!

 

[Sonic77]

It seems you are not regretting to reorder Blu2

No, but I waited a long time, too long, Chord needs to expand their manufacturing to meet demand in a timely manner, invest in equipment.

 

[Triode User]

No, but I waited a long time, too long, Chord needs to expand their manufacturing to meet demand in a timely manner, invest in equipment.

Ah, but the Morgan sports cars were always very careful not to quite meet demand and thereby have a wait list.

 

[Sonic77]

Ah, but the Morgan sports cars were always very careful not to quite meet demand and thereby have a wait list.

The wait was worth it, the detail retrieval and the depth and seperation of the instruments is just killer.

 

[onsionsi]

The wait was worth it, the detail retrieval and the depth and seperation of the instruments is just killer.

Anyway, congratulations @Sonic77

But did you use the stock BNC cables or after market cables?

And may I know what is your source and did you use a headphones or speakers system?

 

[Christer]

I mentioned a while ago prior to the demise of Doug Sax that his CD masterings were so well regarded that they could well become worthwhile investments over time. I just noticed this one on Amazon. Blimey!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Joshua-Jud...r=1-5&keywords=lyle+lovett+Joshua+judges+Ruth

The seller is taking a flyer at that price of course but three figure prices are quite common for some ‘new’ highly regarded CD’s these days.

Fortunately I own two of these pressings just in case the first gets damaged.

And I have five of his Direct cut LP masterings.Double copies of some. Already in the late 70s it was very obvious they were very special.
SOTA.
I doubt even DAVE/BLU2 can beat those in all respects.

 

[Rob Watts]

My vinyl only ever sounded superlative with Doug Sax's direct cut discs; indeed listening to one as a teenager on a high-end system got me into this hobby.

And I was fortunate to meet him at the Mastering Lab and spend a day listening to him mastering recordings. A memory I will treasure for the rest of my life.

And yes - IMHO - Blu Dave can easily beat the vinyl direct cut - it for sure does not sound like vinyl - but it sounds very much closer to the sound of un-amplified acoustic music. And that is what this is supposed to be about.

 

[Christer]

Personally I'd like an industry standard bandwidth increase to 40 KHz vs 20 Khz most would argue your not a bat and cannot hear it but your ear can sense a rise time equivalent to over 30 KHz RCA and Bell Labs did many experiments in the early days of audio. One experiment was to feed 30 KHz into one ear and 32 KHz into the other via headphones if you listen to one side or the other you hear nothing if you listen to both you hear the 2 KHz beat frequency. That's why a good turntable cartridge manages such good high frequencies, a Denon DL S1 is flat to 50 KHz! one reason I choose tweeters that go out to at least 35 KHz w/o breakup modes and why so many soft dome tweeters sound soft and metal dome tweeters sound harsh! So please an ADC and a DAC that digitizes and converts 18 HZ to 40 KHz please! Oh one other request since a typical symphony has 120 db of dynamic range lets shoot for more than that in recorded music!
Just some trivia if you sit in an anechoic chamber for long enough you start to hear a noticeable hiss they say that's the air molecules bouncing off you eardrums! Our hearing is better than we give it credit for!

Hmm, do I spot a bit of irony here?
Or are you serious?
I would argue against your statement that "a typical symphony has 120 dB dynamic range".
Copland's third symphony last night might possibly qualify and some Shostakovich. But most "typical classical period symphonies" do not.


I must add that one of the reasons I still value good analogue very highly in spite of its many known and measurable limitations is that at its best it is NOT as bandwidth limited as most digital is.

I suspect bandwidth limitation is one of the reasons rbcd does not sound as realistic as the best of analogue.
Although I have very limited knowledge regarding digital theory ,judging from what I keep hearing live, as recently as last night at a live concert in Singapore not even BLU2/DAVE with 1 M taps seems to be enough.

Better than standard rbcd? Oh YES, vastly so.But as good as the best of direct cut LPs or 24/96 or higher hi res digital? Not really.
Regarding your anechoic chamber quote I have not been in one for speakers. But I practice Yoga since many years and in a completely isolated meditation pyramid you can hear your own pulse and heartbeat easily.

One of my constant problems trying to evaluate SQ in most showroom situations are that they are almost always WAY TOO NOISY.
Dynamic range is NOT as so often wrongly assumed about maximum "bang for the buck", but about being able to hear well into the lowest possible signal levels without external or internal interferences.
The two main culprits being ambient surrounding noise and the noise levels of the DAC/ amp /speakers/headphones.
Cheers Christer

 

[Christer]

Alas, at the current oversampling rate, we would need to wait over 11 seconds from hitting play on the PC until we hear sound... So we might need the time machine component as well to skip the wait.

Hmm, I experienced something like that yesterday with HUGO 2 when against Rob's recommendations I still experimented a bit with maxium software upsampling engaged with Audirvana.
I enjoy being a bit naughty.
It took four -five times as long for my MBP to load tracks at 32/768 than loading the native resolution tracks which loaded into ram play almost instantly.