With these so-called "Full Digital Amplifiers" like the one I linked to, you actually feed it a digital signal and it doesn't contain a dac in the traditional sense. It actually converts from PCM (or in some cases DSD as well) into pulse width modulation (PWM) in a more direct way than if you feed the output of a traditional dac into a regular class D amp.
As another apt commenter pointed out here, what you're doing in that case is deferring the conversion to analog to the last possible point in the chain.
A gift in the spirit of the season.
A little while ago I asked about making some needledrops from the Mani2 using a Mac.
Needed an A/D everyone says. I remembered that old Macs had analog inputs. I have 2 old Macs, an old MacBook and, better yet, a Xeon Mac Pro.
Using an old version of Audacity I recorded the following two tracks and de-noised them. (using something like 32ft of RCA cables from where the turntable is to where the Mac Pro is).
They are tracks 5 and 10 from Ohm Audio's (RIP) Stereo Demonstration Record. Track 5 is a Flamenco performance and track 10 is Caravan from Hot Stix performed by Ed Graham. Pls let me know what you think and, omg, avoiding clipping is such a pain - takes me back to my LP and cassette days...
Lol! And if you wanna talk pepper grinders, that one word is Peugeot. Not to be confused with, well, the other peugeot. Arguably, the pepper grinder is faster…
Yes, certainly don't want to mislead anybody. Just think the principles behind how those amps work is interesting. Perhaps the marketing of them as "digital" is unfortunate, but such is marketing. I've never actually heard one of them so I can't comment on how they sound.
What I'm really curious about is how that design could work if the amp could be fed DSD and directly convert it to PWM, or perhaps staying in PDM. As far as I know, a class D amp can use PDM instead of PWM. Since DSD is already so close to the representation of the signal within a class D amp maybe it wouldn't actually sound too assy!
a class D amp could theoretically be fed a "bit-perfect" DSD stream (minus the frame/protocol/packetizing, and after buffering / reclocking), with volume control achieved by regulating (over a 60+ dB range, 1000:1, no small feat by the way) the DC rails of the output switching elements.
Apple would have been bankrupt around 1993 based solely on their personal computers. It was their music players, phones, tablets, etc., that saved Apple.
Except all the items you mentioned (with the possible exception of "etc.") were released 10 or more years later. After John Sculley left Apple in October of 1993, they were able to hang on by their fingernails primarily because they still maintained a numerous enough group of zealous customers, many of them in the education market, who continued to resist the Microsoft hegemony and purchase their computers and peripherals until Apple developed and marketed the product lines that put them among the leaders in the consumer electronics world, and the rest is history. It's a remarkable story, and I have no doubt that story to this point and into the future will be studied in business schools all around the world for decades to come.
Many months ago, Albeza mentioned the 5000 shares he got at Apple while doing an internship there in the early 1980s, which he sold a few years later for a small profit. It got me thinking to what would have happened had he kept them, so I calculated that, and IIRC they'd have grown to've been worth $27 million (and additionally over a million $$$ in dividends received) by that point. They'd be worth quite a bit more than that in just the few months since then.
While I've never been an employee of Apple, we have had many, many touchpoints since 1980, in both my personal and professional life.
That's my one big stock market regret. Before Apple unleashed the iPod on an unsuspecting world, the stock would be stable over the course of a year, until their usual summer WWDC when it usually dipped a "usable" percentage.
I had some cash so I was waiting for the dip after the 2001 WWDC.
They announce the iPod.
The usual annual dip never happened so I waited, and waited. Stock never came down...
The Pi 5 is the way when you can get one (pishop.us has 4GB in stock). They moved the GPIO, I2S/C and the USB off the SOC and into the new RP1 chip. Ethernet is still on a separate chip. For me driving an Allo Digione with BNC to Coax cable into the Bifrost 2/64 there was a slightly better resolution over the Pi 4. The transients are now sharper and less rounded compared to the Pi 4. Not to mention I also hooked up a 2TB nvme directly to the new pcie connector using the PineberryPi.com Hat card. HDParam speed measured at 405MB per sec over Gen 3x1 connection.
The Pi 4 is still a great board for a music server. Best performance to date, IMO, comes from the latest addition to the family. For a new build the extra $5 is worth it. Only problem Pi3/4 cases don't fit.
My pi 5 has arrived, and I'm trying it out now with the pi2aes. Wow! I think you are onto something with your observations about improved sound through the gpio. I have never heard my DAC sound like this. I'm using the pi2aes's hdmi/i2s out. This is possibly the most holographic I've ever heard PCM sound.
Haven't tried AES yet. Annoyingly the pi2aes case doesn't line up properly with the USB/Ethernet ports since the rearrangement, so I left that side off and I'm a bit nervous about plugging in an XLR when the output jack isn't fastened to the case. May have to bust out the dremel.
Gee. I post something about some possible yakking about electric toasters here. Then I get busy for the day and come back this evening, and I see more than a few posts about electric toaster and missed out on it!
Lesson: check this forum constantly!
Well, now for something completely different. An early 60's RCA Tube "Suitcase" record player.
My parents gave me and my siblings this exact model for X-mas in 1963. 4 years later I started using it as headphones. Detach the speakers, lie on the floor with a pillow....
I figured out deep listening to music. "You keep me hanging on," Vanilla Fudge 7 minutes, or Voodoo Chile, Jimi Hendrix, 15 minutes long... Beethoven's 5th and the glorious 9th, from Anthony Burgess' Novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). The movie did not come out until 1971. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto's, Edgar Varese, Stravinsky, Ravi Shankar Mind altering experiences; no drugs were involved. Well, RC Cola.
One more: Raga Ragehwar Jhaptal (10 Beats), Teental (16 Beats)
Another member's quote at the bottom of his posts:
“Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder.
Anthony Burgess
Peter Lyngdorf still funds Lars Risbo and Bruno Putzeys in new developments. Most likely he claims the larger parts of the patents benefits.
The most recent development of this duo is the Cue 100 speakers for which they developed new measurement techniques. The very first box speaker I have ever heard that comes close to an electrostatic. Just close, still not on par. Shame they too go for the max pricing. 20K per set without the speaker cloth that sells for an additional € 750. Sigh.
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