[coletrain104]

  I am a bit confused about all of this. If it takes 50 hours after a person gets their unit with Femto clocks to work properly with the FTM filter, how can they possibly QC test these things before they go out the door. If they did test it, and it takes 50 hours to stabilize,  then they must have already run the units in for that period.   If we accept that it only takes running the units in once, then an hour to warm up, then the conclusion has to be that LHL did not test the filter before shipment. That would put their entire QC program into doubt for me.

I would assume that they just make sure everything is functioning, rather that doing listening tests to see if it performs up to par.

 

[SilverTrumpet999]

  I am a bit confused about all of this. If it takes 50 hours after a person gets their unit with Femto clocks to work properly with the FTM filter, how can they possibly QC test these things before they go out the door. If they did test it, and it takes 50 hours to stabilize,  then they must have already run the units in for that period.   If we accept that it only takes running the units in once, then an hour to warm up, then the conclusion has to be that LHL did not test the filter before shipment. That would put their entire QC program into doubt for me.

You are assuming that what we're hearing - if we're hearing it - is easily (or, potentially at all) testable. Things can meet spec and still need to settle down. We know super accurate clocks need time and thermal stability to settle in for their best performance.
 
I built a Bottlehead Crack once, and played with swapping the 12ax7 tube. I could never measure a difference between tubes. I could swear I could hear differences, though I never set up a blind A/B test to verify it wasn't all in my head. I hear the same from McIntosh tube guys - the designers say it shouldn't matter, any good tubes will meet spec, but people swear up and down you should get NOS Telefunkens. This does not mean McIntosh were remiss if they didn't test each amp with Telefunkens.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

About 50 hrs burnin time when people started hearing very good results.
 
FTM kicking in after 50? LH says minimum of 30 minutes to take affect, 2hrs to optimum/stabilize. So I think its not the case here.
 
I you're hearing something special after 50hrs. its just the result of the whole unit burning-in. With the FTM sharing its magic. 
 
My 0.02.

 

[mandrake50]

  You are assuming that what we're hearing - if we're hearing it - is easily (or, potentially at all) testable. Things can meet spec and still need to settle down. We know super accurate clocks need time and thermal stability to settle in for their best performance.
 
I built a Bottlehead Crack once, and played with swapping the 12ax7 tube. I could never measure a difference between tubes. I could swear I could hear differences, though I never set up a blind A/B test to verify it wasn't all in my head. I hear the same from McIntosh tube guys - the designers say it shouldn't matter, any good tubes will meet spec, but people swear up and down you should get NOS Telefunkens. This does not mean McIntosh were remiss if they didn't test each amp with Telefunkens.

Yes, I assume that the sort of differences described here would be measureable. I also assume that QC would require the clocks to be stabilized, prior to testing. Common wisdom here has become (mostly because a few people stated it to be so) that the process takes 50 hours. Maybe a bit arbitrary, but still is what gets repeated. So if we are to believe this, then it follows that this break in was not done previously.
 
You mention some other cases which are unrelated. Vacuum tubes and precision digital clocks... hmmm. If the clocks are not accurate, or are drifting enough to degrade the sound, this should definitely be measureable.

 

[miceblue]

There we go:
http://lhlabs.com/force/impression/3682-pulse-xfi-impression-with-lps4-lightspeed-10g-split#58698
[quote="Larry]
My personal experience here ---

Femto clocks need badly ONE weeks burn-in. And leave it on. Once turn off, the first two hours you lost the magic of such a smooth high from Femto.

Elna caps on line-out needs two weeks. The real silk material needs more time. But worth it.

FTM is the best digital mode I like personally for most music. PDLL is more relax due to Femto's accuracy.
I love the violin of TCM and some vocals too. FRM works very nice with some modern records and large scale of music.

FYI. [/quote]



But seriously, this really does sound like snake oil. -___-''
http://www.elna-america.com/tech_audio_series.php

It is well known that silk is spun by silk worms. Since silk is an animal product, the primary constituent of the fiber is protein. Normally, the vegetable fiber (Manila hemp or craft pulp) used in normal aluminum electrolyte capacitors has a cellulose base material. Simultaneously, this gives different shape and different characteristics of the fibers.
...
At Elna, we have moved forward with development activities based on the perspective that this "softness" of silk can mitigate vibrational energy, which is generated from the electrodes in the capacitor. Also, this silk softness will mitigate the vibrational energy of the music propagating through the air and striking the capacitor. Ultimately, the softness will mitigate the mechanical vibrational energy that comes from transformers or rotating systems within the final product.

From the materials tab:

Silk fiber content
* Improves the midrange responsiveness and low range richness there in

Totally not subjective, ambiguous marketing

 

[SilverTrumpet999]

  Yes, I assume that the sort of differences described here would be measureable. I also assume that QC would require the clocks to be stabilized, prior to testing. Common wisdom here has become (mostly because a few people stated it to be so) that the process takes 50 hours. Maybe a bit arbitrary, but still is what gets repeated. So if we are to believe this, then it follows that this break in was not done previously.
 
You mention some other cases which are unrelated. Vacuum tubes and precision digital clocks... hmmm. If the clocks are not accurate, or are drifting enough to degrade the sound, this should definitely be measureable.

For the purposes of discussion they're exactly the same, because we're talking about testing to specs. Meets spec? Great. I'm not sure if LH Labs states they burn these in before sending them out, but worth noting that even for companies that do (e.g., Schiit Yggy) people claim further burn-in effects.
 
The moral of this story is it probably doesn't matter if you burn-in or not, so long as your components start out good, improve with burn-in, and are unlikely to fail early when they'd have been caught beforehand. It's potential early failures that a burn-in period is for, not testing/spec.
 
Actually a lot of what we hear, at least effects that are backed up by double blind A/B[/X] tests, is beyond the range of current test gear. The state of the art is usually using white noise or a frequency sweep, and investigating what happens when two different sine waves are amplified at the same time. That's all. In the real world we use these things to amplify a combination of thousands of diverse harmonics - and what happens then? It's not tested. Nobody does that. Nobody even tries to quantify that! It would be interesting to look into, though.
 
So, keep in mind that even real, audible effects may not be testable. 

 

[krikor]

 
I believe it has more to do with improving the sound of the lower sampling rate files used by Pandora (128 Kbps) and Spotify (320 Kkbps).  It somehow manages to improve, maybe predict, what a higher sampled file would sound like plus fixing jitter issues.
 
From Vi DAC Indiegogo page:
SSM (Stable Streaming Mode) is designed to optimize Vi DAC for streaming music. This mode combats two most important issues of streaming your music: time-fluctuated high jitter music content, and compressed roll off of high frequency harmonics. With SSM, Vi DAC will restore your streaming music's timing using our patent-pending three layer buffer. Expect a richer sound in the mid and high band frequency range.

 
Wonder if SSM is doing anything like what Clari-Fi purports to do.
 
http://www.clarifisound.com/

 

[leomitch]

The burn-in and femto warm-up all have to do with  musicality. I believe that there are unquantifiables involved in musicality and these immeasurable, as yet, factors are detected by the brain's hearing apparatus. Whatever it means when I use the metaphor...the femto warms up and unwinds its muscle or that the burn-in has allowed the unit's parts to synchronize or whatever metaphor you like, it refers to whatever happens to electronics so that they convert digital stuff more musically. 
I am not sure that anyone has yet described the physics of musicality and I am not certain we have sensitive enough programmes to do this right now.
Others will say this is a placebo effect!
Whatever happens, we all, pretty well, seem to attune ourselves to these arcane unquantifiable factors. Our DAC's all sound better to us somehow...I for one struggle to explain. Really struggle! 
Anyone?
 
Leo

 

[mscott58]

Ah! USPS came today while I was home but didn't seem to ring the doorbell, just left a notice. Now that's another day until I get my Infinity. The universe is conspiring against me... 
 
(okay, not really, but a little drama never hurt, right?)

 

[AxelCloris]

  Ah! USPS came today while I was home but didn't seem to ring the doorbell, just left a notice. Now that's another day until I get my Infinity. The universe is conspiring against me... 
 
(okay, not really, but a little drama never hurt, right?)

 
Can't stop by your local post office around 5:30pm and pick it up yourself? I can do that sometimes.

 

[mscott58]

   
Can't stop by your local post office around 5:30pm and pick it up yourself? I can do that sometimes.

Good idea Brian, but unfortunately our post offices around here don't stay open that late - it's a "next day" thing once you get a delivery slip. 
 
Not a huge deal, as there's also a fair chance that my wife is going to steal the box and wrap it up so I actually have to wait until the day of my birthday to open it. 

 

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

That could be true...

 

[mandrake50]

  For the purposes of discussion they're exactly the same, because we're talking about testing to specs. Meets spec? Great. I'm not sure if LH Labs states they burn these in before sending them out, but worth noting that even for companies that do (e.g., Schiit Yggy) people claim further burn-in effects.
 
The moral of this story is it probably doesn't matter if you burn-in or not, so long as your components start out good, improve with burn-in, and are unlikely to fail early when they'd have been caught beforehand. It's potential early failures that a burn-in period is for, not testing/spec.
 
Actually a lot of what we hear, at least effects that are backed up by double blind A/B[/X] tests, is beyond the range of current test gear. The state of the art is usually using white noise or a frequency sweep, and investigating what happens when two different sine waves are amplified at the same time. That's all. In the real world we use these things to amplify a combination of thousands of diverse harmonics - and what happens then? It's not tested. Nobody does that. Nobody even tries to quantify that! It would be interesting to look into, though.
 
So, keep in mind that even real, audible effects may not be testable.

I guess that  we would never be able to measure non-audible effects then could we. No way to measure how well that filter is working that doesn't even exist yet... or to verify that exact point when "magic" happens in the life of an audio device. But we are real good at claiming that we "know" that.
 
My original post was really more to express skepticism about the statements being bandied about in relation  to run in time required for the Pulse. It seems to be attributed to changes in the clock, which in particular I can't see. This for many reasons, but chief among them is the TCXO (temperature compensated) Femto clock used with vanishingly low drift with the typical range of temperatures it will encounter in this application. This, of course, because Larry talked about those vanishingly small audiophile differences after half an hour to two hours.
 
In any case, I know from being around here for a long time that this kind of discussion is a waste of everyone's time. No one ever changes their mind about anything.
 
Leo, my old acquaintance from the knife sharpening world, did you ever consider that your hearing apparatus (not just ears, but the entire ear/brain system) is what changes far more than how those electrons behave ... Have you ever noticed that it is hardly ever (I don't remember any cases) said that anything gets worse with use time?  Could it be because all we ever read is glowing reports? In any case, people perceive what they perceive. I can't argue this point. I do find it fascinating to contemplate the question of what  the mechanism is that causes that perception to be what it is. I am sure that I have digressed quite enough... back to convincing people that it takes 50 hours for a femto clock to learn to tell accurate time...

 

[Paspasero]

So are more people starting to receive theirs? I did the 399 payment plan deal back in December. Paid it off in March, and now I am just waiting.. I think last time i messaged LH customer support they said September... 

 

[nudd]

In my case thr Pulse was actually glitching and not playing music properly on initial plug in.

The rest may be placebo but the glitching fixing itself would not be.