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Sonoma Model One electrostatic headphone system
Oct 16, 2016 at 3:00 AM Post #31 of 330
alcoholbob said:
  If you just want a high end transportable headphone, why not the Focal Utopia? Outside of it's limited soundstage, it pretty much keeps up with much more expensive electrostatic systems, and not having to carry a dedicated electrostatic amplifier on top of whatever DAC/DAP you have seems really convenient. Of course if your main complaint with the Utopia is the soundstage there's not much that can be done I guess other than doing earpad mods (making the ear openings bigger and using thicker foam to create wider separation)
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What's funny is that I've been reading more impressions of the Utopia tonight.
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Oct 16, 2016 at 7:36 AM Post #33 of 330
Utopia is an awesome headphone, but at that price every downside [ie. - soundstage] should ideally be considered.
On that note, I do agree the Utopia is the best all-rounder 4K headphone available, but is it worth it over some of the 2K offerings?
The Sonoma is 5K, so "close" in the grand scheme of things. We'll hear how it is :]
It's still outside my budget for now, regardless 
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Oct 18, 2016 at 1:42 PM Post #34 of 330
At 5000$, the Sonoma system sounds like a bargain for people who want to get into the electrostat world. I'm definitely tempted. If I can get an opportunity to audition it I may pull the trigger.
 
Curiously, if Sonoma is the original DSD recording solution, and now that they're all presumably working for themselves. Where does this leave Sony's current DSD engineering team at? I thought they were the biggest pusher of DSD editing / publishing (SACD) and playback.
 
Also the mandatory DSP made me think of how Sony described their ZH1ES DSD Remastering engine:
 

 
And I believe this also converts analog input into DSD. Very interesting.
 
Oct 18, 2016 at 8:30 PM Post #35 of 330
thanatosguan said:
  At 5000$, the Sonoma system sounds like a bargain for people who want to get into the electrostat world
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You can get into the electrostat world for just a few hundred dollars. (Or even under a hundred dollars with electrets.) Just look for used entry-level STAX. There's lots of info on this thread:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/676272/the-entry-level-stax-thread
 
Oct 24, 2016 at 12:42 PM Post #36 of 330
alcoholbob said:
   
If you just want a high end transportable headphone, why not the Focal Utopia? 
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Agree.  For le Utopia sound like a small stax.
 
And the SONOMA cannot run on battery like a DAP + Utopia.
 
Oct 29, 2016 at 12:00 AM Post #39 of 330
thanatosguan said:
  At 5000$, the Sonoma system sounds like a bargain for people who want to get into the electrostat world. I'm definitely tempted. If I can get an opportunity to audition it I may pull the trigger.
 
Curiously, if Sonoma is the original DSD recording solution, and now that they're all presumably working for themselves. Where does this leave Sony's current DSD engineering team at? I thought they were the biggest pusher of DSD editing / publishing (SACD) and playback.
 
Also the mandatory DSP made me think of how Sony described their ZH1ES DSD Remastering engine:
 

 
And I believe this also converts analog input into DSD. Very interesting.
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The Sonoma System is the result of the DSD partnership of Sony-Philips.   I believe Philips actually in short time went their own way and ended up developing the Pyramix DSD recording/editing system.  So there ended up really only being two major players for recording/editing DSD/SACD.  Sonoma and Pyramix. 
 
As far as Sony's own work in the format, they historically use the Sonoma system, that takes advantage of so called 'DSD-Wide' for editing, which really only differs from Pyramix editing system in that when the 1-bit DSD is filtered to a multibit editable signal, a gentle filter with a conservative amount of taps is used to maintain DSD's beneficial impulse response, or at least somewhat.  The other novelty is they don't throw out any of the potentially redundant samples, preserving the original sample rate. This gives the benefit of allowing for a noise shaper after the filter, so the actual word length can remain low (8-bit) since at the time of the system's development something like a 32 bit 2.8mhz work file would have been prohibitive from a bandwidth standpoint.  At any given DSP, though, there are multipliers applied, so the signal can and does exceed 8 bit in word length, but it is then re-noise shaped back to 8-bit.  And it is precisely the eventual build-up of noise after many DSP filters are applied that caused Philips to start looking for other ways, and led to them settling on DXD in the Pyramix system.
 
  I have no idea how the various partnership and licensing works, though.  Who knows.  But if its recorded or edited by Sony, you can pretty much count on it using the Sonoma workstation. And others, of course.  Telarc made use of the Sonoma workstation for its highly acclaimed series of 'Native' DSD recordings.  An interesting bit of trivia is one of their top engineers didn't want to work in the DSD-Wide edit mode, so he kept everything in one bit, sent all recorded channels to a DAC, which fed an ANALOG mixer for all the post mixing, which was then redigitized into 1 bit DSD.  Michael Bishop, I think.  For my part, I can't imagine how that could be superior to working in the DSD-wide realm, but it was his ears, his projects, and ultimately his artists who had to live with it.  (Like one of my favorites... Hiromi)
 
 
Now, as I said, the other major player, and the system probably in the most use today, since it is still under active development, and is still pushing the standards forward, such as support for DSD128 and DSD256, is Pyramix.  Yes, if your DSD is greater than DSD64, it was probably recorded on the Pyramix system.  But Pyramix does not use a noise shaped equivalent sample rate low word length PCM for editing.  They use long word length, low(er) sample rate PCM for editing.  DSD64 gets edited at 32 bit 352khz, DSD128 is 32 bit 704khz, etc, etc......  actually, myself I would lean to the Pyramix was of doing things, if I needed to do any substantial post production or editing. 
 
 
Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I had at one time a deep interest in DSD and DSD-editing, so I spent countless hours reading all the white papers and propaganda I could find on the subject.  Spent time picking the brain of several audio engineers who know their stuff, etc.  Now, I am still a layman and this is all grossly over-simplified and may not be absolutely accurate, but its very close, I believe about as well as a non-scientist - math flunkie musician can understand. 
 
 
Anyway, the guys behind the continued development of the Sonoma platform, such as Gus Skinas are just super sharp guys who know their audio.  I have absolute trust that in the end this product will be an exceptional performer. 
 
Oct 29, 2016 at 7:13 AM Post #40 of 330
I had read before that dsd editing is done by doing such conversions and it just does not look very impressive. I mean, why bother with dsd when you're doing some edition with conversion and back to standard pcm?

Not to start an argument in this thread but, personally, this just proves that high res pcm is just so much more meaningful than dsd as an audio format. As a matter of fact, I am plain happy playing redbook music through a nos dac, heresy eh :wink:.

Arnaud
 
Oct 29, 2016 at 11:07 AM Post #41 of 330
arnaud said:
I had read before that dsd editing is done by doing such conversions and it just does not look very impressive. I mean, why bother with dsd when you're doing some edition with conversion and back to standard pcm?

Not to start an argument in this thread but, personally, this just proves that high res pcm is just so much more meaningful than dsd as an audio format. As a matter of fact, I am plain happy playing redbook music through a nos dac, heresy eh :wink:.

Arnaud
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Here's a post by Rob Watts explaining why DSD is technically inferior to PCM. (There are probably more if you look for them.)
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/300#post_11943807
 
And some more background info:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital
 
The added fact that seemingly most DSD was originally PCM anyway and that almost no music is available in DSD format in the first place makes it hold little interest for me.
 
Oct 29, 2016 at 11:28 AM Post #42 of 330
music alchemist said:
   
Here's a post by Rob Watts explaining why DSD is technically inferior to PCM. (There are probably more if you look for them.)
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/300#post_11943807
 
And some more background info:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital
 
The added fact that seemingly most DSD was originally PCM anyway and that almost no music is available in DSD format in the first place makes it hold little interest for me.
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Also realhd-audio.com this guy runs a pretty good audiophile recording label and rants a lot about DSD and analog/vinyl.
 
Biggest issue with most DSD offerings are:
 
1. Edited in DXD or PCM. DXD is ultra-high sample rate PCM. Yes the sample rate remained similar but it's still Pulse Code Modulation instead of Pulse Density Modulation (DSD), so any supposed benefit of DSD's similarity to delta-sigma operation or analog signal processing are eliminated.
 
2. Extreme noise shaping. Extreme amount of ultrasonic noise that's too close to the audible frequencies in DSD64. Not a real issue in DSD128 or higher. Not saying ultrasonic frequencies mean anything, but DSD has a lot of noise in these bands. However DSD64 at the time was better than CD quality.
 
3. PCM at the time was only 44.1/16. We're far beyond that now. So is DSD, but DSD comes with all the editing and noise issues, so why bother? (Don't say it sounds like analog.)
 
4. Too big. Like all hi-res audio formats. They are most likely over engineered for the consumer. (There are cases where the high bit depth is useful tho. Like recording a 1812 overture featuring cannons or a timpani concerto)
 
Good stuff:
 
1. If DSD signal chain is pure, it's definitely, theoretically, a very good end to end solution itself. PCM to DSD is the problem. Notice PCM and DSD are entirely different things so you can't think sample rate in DSD mean the same thing in PCM, they're not. DSD is Pulse Density Modulation.
 
2. DSD was originally intended as an archive format for analog master tapes. Analog to DSD is pretty harmless and DSD64 was good enough for any analog tapes at the time. (Analog tapes are far inferior to DSD64 or high grade PCM). At the time high-grade PCM wasn't around so DSD seemed like a pretty good option.
 
3. There are label that produce pure DSD recordings. Meaning the signal from the microphones are putting out DSD signals. No conversion to PCM whatsoever. It's a hassle and personally I don't see or hear any benefit of this methodology, since the sound of a recording (analog, warm, digital, cold, adjectives like that) is too difficult to either quantify or qualify, and everything in the signal chain could contribute to the end product. That being said, Blue Coast Records does pure DSD recordings and they sound awesome.
 
4. Hi-res audio all allow smoother LPF that reduces ringing artifacts. If you have ultra-steep low pass filtering than you're gonna have a lot of ringing artifacts. But this is not limited to DSD.
 
 
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The above points are mostly based on stuff I read on PCM and PDM/DSD formats. If you're an electrical engineer who's familiar with DAC or amp design, I'd really be interested to hear about the advantages of DSD over PCM.
 
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