The Watercooler -- Impressions, philosophical discussion and general banter. Index on first page. All welcome.

[KuroKitsu]

I'm not sure this is entirely what is going on. Yes there is degredation over time and you will eventually get bit rot and drop-outs. But I don't think drop-outs are creating the sonic differences when you have two new cards. I think you are getting the compensations the cards go through to stop the drop-outs, which is called error correction. So the less robust cards will have to error correct more often to get their bits out bit-perfectly. Error correction is a more electrically intensive activity than just reading and brings about heat and noise which, if you follow the thousands of pages devoted to this subject over on Computer Audiophile, is transferred to the source. This is evidently what you are hearing that affects the sound coming from the card. There are some super-deep-rabbit hole dudes over on that forum who have been talking about cards, cables, dac chips, routers, etc and how noise can affect them despite being only 1s and 0s for a decade. Worth a look. But warning: you may never come back!

Solid state media is built to be incredibly resilient. By the time a standard hits the consumer, issues like error correction relative to storage density and heat are non issues provided you are getting stock from a reptuable producer with stringent QC procedures.

Essentially what you're getting is what you stored. If there are any changes down the line, it's probably some other component in the chain introducing it rather than the storage media.

Given portable devices and the density of the components, heat may be an issue if using for a long enough period (providing the battery lasts long enough, to get it up to the ~65 C limit for micro sd), but not from the get go.

 

[Electrocrytic]

But did you test it yourself ?
What are your findings ?
9 out 10 people also post cables don't alter sound ...

There is of coarse zero difference on any of my daps between any of my sdcards, microsd cards, microsd cards in sdcard adapters, microsd cards in usb adapters, usb sticks, usb hard drives, network locations or local storage, even a fake 400gb sandisk sounds the same (real size is 32gb) Blocks of data whatever the media are read into the buffer in RAM. Its from here at regular intervals the dac retrieves the data blocks, as long as the card is fast enough to keep the buffer from becoming empty there will be no break up in sound which is the only time you would hear anything different, broke up sound from a slow card or a crap/faulty card having too many read retries allowing the buffer to empty. There is no difference to the 0's and 1's stored in different locations. If there is then one is corrupt and it either won't play or it will play with sound breakup depending were the corruption is.

 

[morndewey]

No I have never heard of him thanks for the suggestion!


https://wrwtfww.com/album/ryo-fukui-in-new-york

Do you know about Ryo Fukui?

Oh my god. I can’t believe you mentioned Ryo Fukui! I adore his music. I only discovered him about a year ago, and there’s only six of his albums available, from what I can tell.
I listened to his music, to the exclusion of anything else, for two months straight.
When I first heard “Mellow Dream” it was instantly recognizable to me like something out of a recurring dream of my own. Never had a song hit me like that before. Cheers!

 

[wolfstar76]

Reading the discussion on EE, my guess is that the new EE IEM will be a hybrid with planar driver. Will see that in less than a week.

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

I guess the reason behind the ever increasing price of summit gears in IEM market is different since most audiophile here don't want to make a profit or even intend to sell. However, one thing in common is that noboy knows what should be the fair price since the market is so small there is not enough liquidity to create an efficient market.

In my opinion, the reason is much simpler. Price has long been a marketing tool.
To release a top for 1500 is to automatically declare that it competes with other IEMs of a similar price. And to say that it is better than models for 500 or 1000.

To release IEMs for 6-7 thousand - to declare that we are one of the few, we are the best of the best. And there are not many competitors.

It is obvious that such a price does not fully represent the price of the product (in the sense of a 30% markup on the cost price). But such a price provides a comfortable margin for experienced engineers to think over combinations and solutions that form the basis of a new model for years.

 

[wolfstar76]

In my opinion, the reason is much simpler. Price has long been a marketing tool.
To release a top for 1500 is to automatically declare that it competes with other IEMs of a similar price. And to say that it is better than models for 500 or 1000.

To release IEMs for 6-7 thousand - to declare that we are one of the few, we are the best of the best. And there are not many competitors.

It is obvious that such a price does not fully represent the price of the product (in the sense of a 30% markup on the cost price). But such a price provides a comfortable margin for experienced engineers to think over combinations and solutions that form the basis of a new model for years.

However, to price your products at the levels mentioned above without beef in it will result in disaster in both your sales and your reputation. Even though it is hard to justify any price for IEMs, it is not hard to find if the performance of your IEMs are at the same level of your competitors.

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

How does this work with IEMs? Will something like this become a collector's item with a much higher price years from now? (and possibly explaining the rush)

drftr

As for IEM - I don't know if something improves over time. As a rule, these are rare things. However, I do not think that they will exceed the cost of new ones.

Among those models that have recently become a little more expensive - for example, HUM Dolores. This is a very interesting top. I rarely listen to them, but always with pleasure.
And they are rarely sold. And I bought them a few years ago for less than they were recently sold on Headfi.

I'm also currently seeing something similar with ALO Audio CDM. It's been 8 years since its release, and it still remains a great sound choice. And when we talk about rolling tubes - well, this is probably collecting in its purest form. I thought I would have 2-3 good pairs. Well, I have them, but there are also about 20 pairs of very good ones)

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

However, to price your products at the levels mentioned above without beef in it will result in disaster in both your sales and your reputation. Even though it is hard to justify any price for IEMs, it is not hard to find if the performance of your IEMs are at the same level of your competitors.

Of course, I also think that justifying the high price is difficult.

Unfortunately, there have been instances where devices with good sound have been buried by not-so-understandable pricing.
Although I still consider, for example, the Calyx M or theBit Opus 2 to be excellent players when it comes to their sound. And the price on the secondary market.

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

I use the Extreme too and I feel good. I would also like to try the Lexar ....

I use Sandisk usually. I have Lexar and Samsung cards, but I don't feel any difference in sound. However, I didn't conduct targeted A/B tests with two identical devices, recordings, etc.

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

Are there any great sub $1,200-ish portable R2R DAC/Amps that would be a substantial upgrade over my Cayin RU6? Or is the choice limited to either a different brand R2R dongle, a DAP, or a full-blown desktop setup? I'm not finding too much out there (translate: nothing). Tnx...

drftr

I have bad news even if you expand the price.
There are very few decent portable R2R devices. And almost all of them are players.
There is iFi devices, but there are also suspicions that it is not quite multibit.

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

Incredible session with Traillii and LPGT today - by far the best synergy I've heard with Traillii, insane amount of detail and enormous stage... feels like endless amounts of layering.

I guess I understand you)

 

[twister6]

I’ve this one since 2019 but I never tested others, I got a Samsung evo also but I didn’t use it

Quite a few DAP manufacturers, like FiiO and Lotoo, don't recommend using Lexar. Lotoo even has in their FAQ section a specific comment to stay away from 633x cards:

 

[Amadeo Nospherathu]

No, you need a negative ion generator. The negative ions help the Bluetooth transmission reach, and reduces errors. There is significantly more "air", and micro detail. The negative ions also help the Cillia in your eardrum to translate the sound waves more accurately. You can also use a hair dryer with negative ion function, if you don't have a standalone ionizer.

EDIT: I guess you did not read the Warning? Or decided that it must be entertaining if there was such a warning? Well, I guess you were entertained, so it has served it's purpose. Have a good day.

Maybe you mean something like this?)

 

[Rockwell75]

 

[maegnificant]

Oh my god. I can’t believe you mentioned Ryo Fukui! I adore his music. I only discovered him about a year ago, and there’s only six of his albums available, from what I can tell.
I listened to his music, to the exclusion of anything else, for two months straight.
When I first heard “Mellow Dream” it was instantly recognizable to me like something out of a recurring dream of my own. Never had a song hit me like that before. Cheers!

Hey that's awesome! Glad we can share that! I only have 4 Albums of him, "Scenerey", "Mellow Dream", "My Favorite Tune" and this live Album I posted above. Which albums am I missing?