[gaboo]

Breaking news: http://productionforums.com/emu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1812

The DA analog fiter on 0404 hass less ultrasonic rolloff that 1212m/1820m. Interesting.

 

[Feanor]

But this is'nt in the audible range, right? How does it make a difference?
Thanks for the info, this makes the 0404 an even better choice!
[size=xx-small](BTW, I love your signature. Made me laugh out loud.)[/size]

 

[mikechai]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaboo Breaking news: http://productionforums.com/emu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1812 The DA analog fiter on 0404 hass less ultrasonic rolloff that 1212m/1820m. Interesting.

Hmm ICHI said the DA analog filter on 0404 was redesigned.
Does that mean that 0404 was designed later than the 1212m/1820m ?

 

[gaboo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikechai Hmm ICHI said the DA analog filter on 0404 was redesigned. Does that mean that 0404 was designed later than the 1212m/1820m ?

Probably. The 0404 was released later.

 

[lan]

I don't think the 0404 sounds faster than 1212m/1820m to me. It sounds more lively and it's not in the treble where this less roll off is. Most people don't use >44.1khz so this isn't a deal breaker for me.

 

[gaboo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feanor But this is'nt in the audible range, right? How does it make a difference? Thanks for the info, this makes the 0404 an even better choice! [size=xx-small](BTW, I love your signature. Made me laugh out loud.)[/size]

Nobody knows "for sure" what, if anything, ultrasonic content does to our perception of music. There are theories out there. A recent (and yet to be reproduced) research has measured significantly different brain activity in the presence of ultrasonic music content. Yet the subjects could not consciously distinguish the difference.

We do know however that filters with higher corner frequency behave better for in-band signals. For an argument see this paper. This is most likely what is happening here (coupled with the different DAC “signature”).

 

[bg4533]

I too do not think the 0404 sounds any faster than the 1212M. I percieve more rolled off highs with the 0404 than the 1212M, but I guess I don't know what happens in the ultrasonic range.

 

[Feanor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaboo Nobody knows "for sure" what, if anything, ultrasonic content does to our perception of music. There are theories out there. A recent (and yet to be reproduced) research has measured significantly different brain activity in the presence of ultrasonic music content. Yet the subjects could not consciously distinguish the difference. We do know however that filters with higher corner frequency behave better for in-band signals. For an argument see this paper. This is most likely what is happening here (coupled with the different DAC “signature”).

Thanks for the links, I'm reading through them now. It seems if it's true, sony's 20hz-100Khz marketing BS does have some meaning. With my current phones(hd600) & source(44khz, 16bit), I doubt I can reproduce anything above 20khz...

 

[gaboo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan I don't think the 0404 sounds faster than 1212m/1820m to me. It sounds more lively and it's not in the treble where this less roll off is. Most people don't use >44.1khz so this isn't a deal breaker for me.

I've never even suggested that ultrasonic rolloff translates in any sort of rolloff in the well estabilished audible band (20Hz-20Khz).

 

[Wodgy]

gaboo, I'm not sure I understand your fascination with the analog ultrasonic filters in these cards. I personally don't think it makes a difference. A 40-50kHz corner frequency is so far out of band that ripple, overshoot, and phase distortion in the audible passband is minimal, even if you go by military research into human hearing (20-30kHz, roughly).

IMHO, there are more likely candidates. The oversampled digital filters on both these cards do much tighter filtering than the analog filters and are probably responsible for most of the first-order audible effects that we hear from filtering. There was a big movement in the late '90s towards DACs having switchable digital filter types. It does make a noticeable audible difference. Pioneer still offers four switchable digital filters in the mid to higher end CD players in their Elite line. I've personally played around with digital filters on an Analog Devices DAC eval board and the effects are pretty audible.

My personal feeling is that the two main elements responsible for the sound of different manufacturers' DACs are the different digital filters and different implementations of the SCF banks on the DAC outputs.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Can anyone please explain what you mean by sounding "faster"?

 

[gaboo]

Wodgy, you are probably right. The nanophon paper I linked was about digital filters,

yet nobody seems to have noticed.

CosmoKramer, "faster" was a misquote of mine for lan's "more lively" (dam' it's the second time I do something that). Ask him what "more lively" means.

I never listened to the 0404.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaboo I never listened to the 0404.

So maybe you should stop making so many baseless speculative threads about it until you have.

 

[Distroyed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer So maybe you should stop making so many baseless speculative threads about it until you have.

There have been quite a few, hasnt there? I think gaboo confuses his "pedantic" circumlocution as interchangeable with phenomenologic experience. It's not.

Of course, no offense, gaboo.