[Jeff Y]

 

 
That's of course a choice, but consider this simple thought exercise: humans do not hear above frequencies of 40KHz, music instruments do not produce sounds above  40KHz, most microphones do not record above  40KHz and most headphones/speakers do not reproduce sound above  40KHz. So what exactly is the use of 384 kHz sampling speeds yielding undistorted analogue waves of up to  96 kHz frequencies (assuming the generous 4x multiplier)?
Again, in an overwhelming majority of realistic and imaginable scenarios nothing is produced, recorded, reproduced or heard above 40 kHz.  Why would we want to try to hear that, and why would that improve the sound fidelity? And once DAC manufacturers inevitably hit us with support for 768 kHz sampling rates, why would anyone ever want that?

 
Once you get the hang of the basics of digital sampling theory, it inevitably puts into perspective wildly optimistic (and inappropriate) claims by the likes of Neil Yong and his Pono "to the infinity and above" endeavors:

Lol. I laughed so hard at the Pono pictures.
 

I'm embarrassed to admit I have a number of 96/24, 192/24 albums in my collection too. I convinced myself to do this in the name of science but to me, they sound the same as Redbook CD, 44/16. The one hope I have is that maybe, if record producers think we care enough to pay $25 for an album instead of $9.99, maybe, just maybe they'll do a better job of recording, mixing, mastering and converting/dithering to 44/16. The word length matters more to me than sampling rate, because I hate hearing a noise floor (noise floors ruin the whole audio illusion to me). Of course, you need an amp with a low noise floor too. That's one big plus of the X5ii. I've read on other forums how "all amps have a noise floor". (At least that's the quote you usually hear from manufacturers of amps that have very audible noise floors!) I'm sure the X5ii has a noise floor too, but I can't hear it at all. Not even with my Sure SE846. Hopefully the X7 will be the same in this regard.

I suspect Fiio are simply caught between a rock and a hard place here, e.g. deciding if, perhaps, they should offer less sampling/bit depth than that natively supported with these modern DAC chips.

I hear differences between recordings that have different resolution. IMO it depends on the recording quality, mastering, and more whether or not it's easy to tell the difference with a low res recording and a high res one. YMMV depending on equipment, recording, genre, ears, and more.
Basically, I find that certain recordings hard to tell apart while others are easier.
 
I think that companies should have no problem deciding whether or not they should try to support very high-res recordings since lots of them use words like "DSD" and such for marketing.
And hey, some people do think they make a difference and they are ready to buy stuff so why not make such a thing eh?
 
I'll be happy with my 24 bits and up to 192Khz of recordings... for now...

 

[landroni]

I'm embarrassed to admit I have a number of 96/24, 192/24 albums in my collection too. I convinced myself to do this in the name of science but to me, they sound the same as Redbook CD, 44/16. The one hope I have is that maybe, if record producers think we care enough to pay $25 for an album instead of $9.99, maybe, just maybe they'll do a better job of recording, mixing, mastering and converting/dithering to 44/16. The word length matters more to me than sampling rate, because I hate hearing a noise floor (noise floors ruin the whole audio illusion to me). Of course, you need an amp with a low noise floor too. That's one big plus of the X5ii. I've read on other forums how "all amps have a noise floor". (At least that's the quote you usually hear from manufacturers of amps that have very audible noise floors!) I'm sure the X5ii has a noise floor too, but I can't hear it at all. Not even with my Sure SE846. Hopefully the X7 will be the same in this regard.

I suspect Fiio are simply caught between a rock and a hard place here, e.g. deciding if, perhaps, they should offer less sampling/bit depth than that natively supported with these modern DAC chips.

 
Indeed, hopefully all the brouhaha over sampling rates will force studios to do a better job on the basics...
 
I too am a victim of noise floors. I had poor experience with the stock E12 amp and returned it back (when paired with Grados SR225i). The E12DIY is a whole different ballpark however, squeaky clean in terms of noise threshold. From what I hear same holds for E12A. Never had an issue with X3i either, and I suspect that X7---with its IEM amp module---will be geared precisely towards a very low and inaudible for most noise threshold. Kudos to FiiO!
 
 
As for rocks and hard places, I agree. Most people in the mainstream audiophilia are caught in the middle of ever increasing rhetoric on sampling rates marketing. This is why Cozoy/Shozy are producing ware working natively only at 44.1 kHz *and* marketed as Hi-Res... But it's hard to overcome deeply ingrained beliefs, though. Either way, Cozoy/Shozy engineers are clearly concerned about implementation and fidelity at lower sampling rates, and I hope other companies take note... 
 

 

[viper2377]

I also thought so in the beginning, but after reading several more level-headed takes like the one linked above and understanding a bit more on human hearing as well as the science behind digital audio, I've quickly come around. I also thought that maybe *I* had a "golden ear"; sad truth is I probably don't.


This will be a long a rant, sorry reader!, so feel free to skip it:





To get the easy out of the way, Re 128k mp3 and lossless WAV, I believe that brain adaptation has a large effect to play here. People accustomed to 128kbps MP3 for all their lives played from poor sources on poor gear will simply have a brain not used (or not caring) about subtle notes or details in a piece. If you reverse it, I suspect that people accustomed to lossless WAV from good gear for all their lives would immediately be shocked by the poor sonic qualities and averaged blandness of a 128k mp3. Their brains would simply be accustomed to all the detail retrieval in lossless files. Many today fit in the 128k mp3 generation... OTOH, those who had a taste of unabridged playback in the golden age of analogue sound (the vinyl era) will often hark about how poor today's audio reproduction is (although they've probably never had access to good digital recordings and decent DACs and gear.)


As for the more contentious part, let's start from the facts. Adult humans do NOT hear above 20 kHz. And this is a generous upper limit; from what I understand, beginning with late 20s there is a progressive roll-off in the upper hearing limit and many young adults would be lucky to hear anything above 15 kHz. Most people with access to the wallet required for audiophile tastes---and with sufficient interest and knowledge to get into such debates---will be in their 20s and above. But let's go incredibly generous, and allow for hearing at frequencies of 25 or even 30 kHz. Given the possible intermodulation effects at high frequencies, some allow that content useful for human hearing may be present in sampling rates (or speeds) of about 50 kHz to 60 kHz, i.e. hearing rates of 25-30 kHz. We're scraping the top of the hearing barrel here...


The other important point is that the Nyquist theory, which is at the heart of digital audio reproduction, dictates that to fully retrieve frequencies up to a given hearing rate (e.g. 20 kHz) you need twice the sampling rate (e.g. 40 kHz). According to this white paper (Sampling Theory For Digital Audio By Dan Lavry):
"The great value offered by Nyquist’s theorem is the realization that we have ALL the information with 100% of the detail, and no distortions, without the burden of “extra fast” sampling.
“Nyquist pointed out that the sampling rate needs only to exceed twice the signal bandwidth. What is the audio bandwidth? Research shows that musical instruments may produce energy above 20 KHz, but there is little sound energy at above 40KHz. Most microphones do not pick up sound at much over 20KHz. Human hearing rarely exceeds 20KHz, and certainly does not reach 40KHz."


 
This is one of the reasons for the choice of 44.1 kHz sampling rates for redbook CDs (i.e. retrieved frequencies of up to ~22 kHz), and 48 kHz for much of professional audio/video gear (i.e. frequencies up to 24 kHz). This right here is already hi-res.


Some will point out that in other digital domains (e.g. networking, imaging) sampling rates of 3-4 times are used instead of 2 times. While I'm not qualified to settle this argument, I will point out that 96 kHz sampling rates allows fully retrieving 48 kHz frequencies at 2x, 32 kHz at 3x and 24 kHz at 4x.


 

At this point (96 kHz) we've exhausted most of the theoretical arguments for quicker sampling speeds, and for human applications very little audio quality will be left on the table. If you're really, absolutely paranoid of missing out on some sounds that you might be able to hear, I can see why you would choose to play back digital audio at 192 kHz sampling rates. (Although skeptics will go as far as saying that 24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed.)


But going above 192 kHz is unadulterated overkill. So why 384 kHz? To reproduce 96 kHz frequencies at 4x or 192 kHz ones at the more conventional Nyquist rule of thumb of 2x? If your intended audience is audiophile dolphins or bats, then yeah. But for humans, that's over the board: no adult human will ever hear these frequencies, however you torture them. And where do we stop? Should we start recording and reproducing digital audio at 100 MHz? I can see why 384 kHz sampling rates to infinity and above will appeal to marketeers and poorly informed consumers, but there has to be a limit to the insanity. I'm wondering which wonder DAC will break ground into supporting 768 kHz next... And why?


The theory is very clear, and the math is simple and damning. Bottom line from all this rant is that once we reach support for 96 kHz (and 192 kHz, if we're incredibly generous about the limits of humans and technology), the actual DAC engineering and implementation at 44.1/44 and 88.2/96 kHz will matter much more for audio fidelity than support for exotic sampling rates like 384 kHz. And support for exotic sampling rates may negatively affect fidelity at lower sampling rates.


As for the forgotten 16 bit vs 24 bit vs 32 bit, in digital audio this will not increase fidelity in any way. Technically speaking this serves merely to define the noise level: more bits, lower noise threshold. As far as bits per sample are concerned, the quality of the master recording probably matters more than support for 32 bit samples. I don't have any evidence on this, but I suspect that 32 bit samples won't overcome poor recording quality. And if you're not hearing the noise threshold, then even 8 bit samples at 96 kHz would serve just fine for hi-res reproduction.

Nice "rant" very logical... Well done!

 

[Whitigir]

Off topic, but semi-on topic about X7 high-res DAP.

People forget that high-resolutions music is just trying to get closer to that "Sin wave" that happens in real life. Remember, we can not hear, tell, differentiate those sub-harmonic or ultra sound frequency, we can still some what senses it, feel it. It is true that human perceptions in these senses are much narrower than any other species, but we can still sense it some what. To specifically frame human listening level is generally from 20-20khz is a fault. There were many experiments that proved it.

So, do you just want to hear music ? Or do you want to also feel it, if it was recorded ? Because ultimately your gears and yourself can only hear as much as what were recorded, mastered, mixed, you just can not hear or feel what is not there.

 

[PinkyPowers]

It is ever so easy to trick yourself into thinking you hear something you don't. Even when I overcame that, I still suffer from thinking there's more to music than what you hear. Perhaps we can FEEL frequencies our ears ignore. So I indulge in a handful of 24/96-192 files. But only for special works, like Pink Floyd.

I tell myself, even if there's no practical benefit to this sample rate, there's always the power of the placebo. Belief can shape ones experience as surely as science.

Saying that, I agree that we don't need higher sample rates. Equipment manufacturers are in the position to force reasonableness on the unreasonable masses. Don't support crazy-high resolutions and we will come back down to Earth.

Or your competitor will offer the "audiophile DACs" and we'll flock to them.

It's a tricky business.

-~::Edit::~-
Ah, Whitigir and I are thinking along the same lines. That's something to be weary of.

 

[OwOOwO]

Originally Posted by landroni /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
...

<rant>
...
 
At this point (96 kHz) we've exhausted most of the theoretical arguments for quicker sampling speeds, and for human applications very little audio quality will be left on the table. If you're really, absolutely paranoid of missing out on some sounds that you might be able to hear, I can see why you would choose to play back digital audio at 192 kHz sampling rates. (Although skeptics will go as far as saying that 24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed.)
...
 
</rant>

Wow, thanks for that link. It was a real eye opener.

 

[mochill]

Talking about clean amps, check out the VE runabout

 

[goodyfresh]

Talking about clean amps, check out the VE runabout

Looks interesting.
 
WHere can I find detailed specifications for it?  I can't seem for the life of me to find a homepage for Venture Electronics!  Do they even have a homepage?

 

[Coldheart29]

  Looks interesting.
 
WHere can I find detailed specifications for it?  I can't seem for the life of me to find a homepage for Venture Electronics!  Do they even have a homepage?

Check your inbox

 


BTW, hell, wish i had the money to get this DAP. But i really couldn't justify to spend that kind of money on a DAP just to the use it with a pair of se215. That would be like buying a ferrari and then using it just to go shopping.

 

[landroni]

It is ever so easy to trick yourself into thinking you hear something you don't. Even when I overcame that, I still suffer from thinking there's more to music than what you hear. Perhaps we can FEEL frequencies our ears ignore. So I indulge in a handful of 24/96-192 files. But only for special works, like Pink Floyd.

I tell myself, even if there's no practical benefit to this sample rate, there's always the power of the placebo. Belief can shape ones experience as surely as science.
 

It may very well be placebo, but it may be something else.
 
Either the DAC implementation is worse at lower rates and it does its best only when using higher sampling rates (inconsistent quality of DAC implementation at different sampling speeds):
 
"A key point to understand is that just because a converter sounds better than itself when its switched to a higher rate doesn’t mean that it will sound better than a different converter at a lower rate!
A better converter that takes fewer design shortcuts might easily out perform the higher sample-rate converter, regardless of what sampling rate is chosen. For people in their 30s, 40s and beyond, what differences are left in the form of high frequency roll-off should be impossible to distinguish. What might be easy to distinguish however, are flaws in the design of the 44.1 converter or distortions introduced by a poorly-filtered higher rate.
So, if you are ever using a converter and find it sounds dramatically better at a higher rate, don’t get excited about the sample rate. Get suspicious of the design shortcuts instead! Why isn’t the 44.1kHz on that converter up to snuff? How does this converter compare to the best-designed converters when they are set to a lower rate? Is it still better, or does the advantage disappear?"
 
Or you're hearing distortions and decreased accuracy associated with higher sampling rates, which it turns out you actually enjoy:
“There are reports of better sound with higher sampling rates. No doubt, the folks that like the “sound of a 192KHz” converter hear something. Clearly it has nothing to do with more bandwidth: the instruments make next to no 96KHz sound, the microphones don’t respond to it, the speakers don’t produce it, and the ear can not hear it.
Moreover, we hear some reports about “some of that special quality captured by that 192KHz is retained when down sampling to 44.1KHz. Such reports neglect the fact that a 44.1KHz sampled material can not contain above 22.05KHz of audio…
The danger here is that people who hear something they like may associate better sound with faster sampling, wider bandwidth, and higher accuracy. This indirectly implies that lower rates are inferior.
Whatever one hears on a 192KHz system can be introduced into a 96KHz system, and much of it into lower sampling rates. That includes any distortions associated with 192KHz gear, much of which is due to insufficient time to achieve the level of accuracy of slower sampling.
There is an inescapable tradeoff between faster sampling on one hand and a loss of accuracy, increased data size and much additional processing requirement on the other hand…
Sampling audio signals at 192KHz is about 3 times faster than the optimal rate. It compromises the accuracy, which ends up as audio distortions.”
 
In the latter case, it may be similar to how people adore vinyl and good ol' reproduction equipment: what they enjoyed about the sound wasn't it's accuracy, but precisely the formats imperfections...

 

[PinkyPowers]

You misunderstand me. I don't hear any change, good or bad. I have a hard enough time picking out the difference between 320kbs and lossless. I can't hear ANY difference when going to HD. I just like knowing that it's HD.

And while I have enough storage space on my DAP, I'll keep a few HD albums on there. When I run out of space, I downsample to something more reasonable. Currently, I'm still filling up the 128GB internal storage + 128GB microSD on my AK120ii.

 

[Duncan]

This is getting a bit sound science at the moment, if wanting to discuss the merits or lack thereof of bit rates etc. there is a nice thread there in which to fill your boots...

Let's go back to the X7

 

[goodyfresh]

  Check your inbox

 


BTW, hell, wish i had the money to get this DAP. But i really couldn't justify to spend that kind of money on a DAP just to the use it with a pair of se215. That would be like buying a ferrari and then using it just to go shopping.

Lol yeah the SE215 are quite good for their price-range but certainly not good enough where they will sound significantly (or at all, really) better from a 700 dollar DAP than from a 200 dollar one.

 

[CH23]

  I know it's a music player, I did not mean that it gotta have a fully working Google Play to play Angry Birds. But what about Chrome, Firefox, Notes, Amazon App to search for audio stuff, YouTube, Video Players, microSD Card Manager, launchers, widgets, etc. Customization, one word defines all.
 
For $700, I don't want to depend on FiiO for a good internet browser, a good YouTube player, a good SD card Manager, a good Video Player, etc. I think it's quite reasonable to request a full Android version if you're gonna pay $700 for that device. It has Bluetooth, that's not very useful for a music player. It's not really necessary a WiFi, but if it has, then put into it a great software like Android, cause you're selling it for $700, big bucks (remember the X5ii is $350, and the difference is a touchscreen and software improvement. That does not cost $350).
 
I didn't know that the lower part was removable. That's weird. Why would you want to change it?
 
P.D: may be we're doing some off-topic right here. Is there an official X7 thread?

 
 
i haven't yet read up on everything, so i can't yet answer on software related stuff. reason for the removable, changeable bottom part, is for different needs, different sound signatures. a bit like the E12DIY, without visible circuit boards.

 

[ASpencer]

 
Lol yeah the SE215 are quite good for their price-range but certainly not good enough where they will sound significantly (or at all, really) better from a 700 dollar DAP than from a 200 dollar one.

 
I'm personally glad FiiO is adopting the ability to change amps as the Hifiman 901s encompasses as I do believe it will lessen anyone having dissatisfaction with their respective tastes in sound, especially in relation to differing headphones.  Minibox sounds great with some power hungry cans and the ones that don't perform better with the "balanced" amp card.  I hope third parties eventually start making amp modules for the X7.