[paulgc]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-mojo-2-speculation-thread.885405/post-16324058

something tells me @Rob Watts that you really haven’t been keeping something from us and this is just photoshop.

 

[Kentajalli]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-mojo-2-speculation-thread.885405/post-16324058

something tells me @Rob Watts that you really haven’t been keeping something from us and this is just photoshop.

And here is what I cooked up earlier:
Post in thread 'Chord Mojo DAC-amp ☆★►FAQ in 3rd post!◄★☆' https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-mojo-dac-amp-☆★►faq-in-3rd-post-◄★☆.784602/post-16312127

 

[118900]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chord-mojo-2-speculation-thread.885405/post-16324058

something tells me @Rob Watts that you really haven’t been keeping something from us and this is just photoshop.

A site stuck out in the middle of Poland apparently famous for scams starts selling a product that hasn’t even been announced yet. Sounds legit

 

[118900]

So it seems that regardless my having left most of the threads I was on I still can't avoid getting into an argument somewhere, oh well. I just wanted to send a last message to @Rob Watts for all his efforts both in the creation of some lovely products (together with a great team) and in making such an effort in answering our questions and clarifying the various matters raised by all of us.

I take this opportunity to bid farewell to those of you who have accompanied me in many informative and enjoyable exchanges on head-fi.

 

[ZappaMan]

So it seems that regardless my having left most of the threads I was on I still can't avoid getting into an argument somewhere, oh well. I just wanted to send a last message to @Rob Watts for all his efforts both in the creation of some lovely products (together with a great team) and in making such an effort in answering our questions and clarifying the various matters raised by all of us.

I take this opportunity to bid farewell to those of you who have accompanied me in many informative and enjoyable exchanges on head-fi.

Dealing with others can be difficult, but stay in the game, and try to get to the end, headfi is a cool site, there’s room for everyone.

 

[Kentajalli]

So it seems that regardless my having left most of the threads I was on I still can't avoid getting into an argument somewhere, oh well. I just wanted to send a last message to @Rob Watts for all his efforts both in the creation of some lovely products (together with a great team) and in making such an effort in answering our questions and clarifying the various matters raised by all of us.

I take this opportunity to bid farewell to those of you who have accompanied me in many informative and enjoyable exchanges on head-fi.

Well I'll be sorry to see you go.
But don't you think "It takes two to tango?".
Arguing issues is what we are here for, but getting into arguments is a self-inflicted issue.
I hope you reconsider.

 

[griff500]

So it seems that regardless my having left most of the threads I was on I still can't avoid getting into an argument somewhere, oh well. I just wanted to send a last message to @Rob Watts for all his efforts both in the creation of some lovely products (together with a great team) and in making such an effort in answering our questions and clarifying the various matters raised by all of us.

I take this opportunity to bid farewell to those of you who have accompanied me in many informative and enjoyable exchanges on head-fi.

What did I miss?!?

 

[miketlse]

What did I miss?!?

Looks like he has been getting frustrated, by relatively minor disagreements.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths.486598/post-16324925
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361/post-16316902

 

[griff500]

@juansan - did you wander into the 'science' part of the forum where they think measurements are the same thing as science? If you'd asked first I'd have warned you...

I've found the block button is a good thing to utilise, but hang around buddy.

 

[Rob Watts]

Thanks Rob.
So what is the worst-case scenario if impedance tends to occassionally drop at 1 Ohm say, TT2 overheating?
Would temperature monitoring (with a laser-gun style sensor) pick it up perhaps?
My aim is transparency - I'm happy with the sound of QuTest, but would consider a TT2 if I could get preamp/pwr amps out of the way

It depends upon frequency; 1 ohm below 3kHz would cause overheating and thermal trips operating, but at 20kHz it will do nothing, as music content at 20k is typically at -60dB or so.

Interesting ,so you actually prefer the Aeon 2 closed to Utopia?
That´s quite a surprise and may upset some real Utopia fans.
Post it over at the Utopia thread.
The Aeons I auditioned with my reference material were model 1 and good for their size and price imho, but not as resolving as my HEKV2 or any of the other headphones I quoted.
Compared to my HEKV2 the Aeons both closed and open, sounded a bit like a smaller almost chamber orchestra version versus big full orchestra to me.
Utopia is again, imho, a highly resolving headphone, but not ideal to me with large scale classical which needs "space to breathe". Utopia can sound a bit too upfront.

It might be interesting to compare Aeon 2 and Utopia with the DGG /Salonen Stravinsky Rite of Spring some here have liked recently, as an example of densely orchestrated music that goes both loud, very loud, and quiet, sometimes both a the same time depending on which section of the orchestra one chooses to pay attention to.
The ability to keep strands apart without congestion in dense music is one of the big advantages with your dacs and HMS.

But not all headphones are up to the job of keeping things apart without congestion or masking effects and good as they were Aeon one belonged in that category for me.
Aeon 2 closed must be quite something if they beat Utopia.

I definitely have to audition those when possible.
I Hope to see you again,at Canjam Singapore, although things currently don´t look very bright regarding travel and Covid in SE Asia.
Singapore hasn´t even opened up to Malaysia yet.
Cheers CC

Yes - I haven't heard any headphone have better perception of depth than the Aeon 2 closed. Utopia is very good, but like you I can find it a bit upfront too.

I hope it won't take too long to visit SE Asia again - the vaccines really are working well here.

Not sure whether this has been seen already. I don't stream music or download MQA files myself but I know a lot of people do and this seems quite interesting, especially considering Chord's propensity to not support MQA .

It's a great video - at last one can see actual measurements. I knew MQA was a potential disaster from the AES papers, and this was confirmed after listening tests on the MQA filters. Aliasing of -40dB is completely unacceptable - if I had launched a product with 1% HF distortion I would have been (quite rightly) ripped apart by the Stereophile/Absolute sound establishment - but to these guys Bob Stuart can do no wrong.

Rob, may I ask do you use with your Aeon's any provided filter pads or any other adjustment instead of original ones? Thanks.

Mine was first production, no pads at all. The tonal balance seems fine without pads, and I feel pads always lose something - better to get the transducer correct in the first place.

I wanted to come back to this post because it seems there are two issues being described here:

1. 705,600 and 768,000 have a lowest common multiple of 112,896,000, whereas 44100 and 48000 have a lowest common multiple of 7,056,000, yet numbers "near" to 104,000,000 are not multiples of 7,056,000. The closest are 98,784,000 and 105,084,000, and then the next multiple is, ta-da, 112,896,000. So the "~104MHz" you use in the DACs and ADC force you to use a fractional interpolation.
   Is the ~104MHz clock a side-effect of having to use an off the shelf crystal? Presumably there is no crystal at 112.896MHz?
   You appear to imply that 44.1KHz or multiples (e.g. 705.6KHz) are exact divisors of the ~104MHz clock. e.g. a clock of 103,723,300 is 705.6KHz x 147. So fractional interpolation is not required in this case, only for multiples of 48KHz. Is that right?
   
   
2. Studios require that a clock that's either a multiple of 44.1KHz or 48KHz is sourced externally to the ADC, so you can't rely upon a crystal inside the ADC? The external clock causes noise problems and jitter.

So this would appear to imply that 44.1KHz (or 705.6KHz) output suffers solely with problem 2, but 48KHz (or 768KHz) suffers from both problems 1 and 2. Is that right?

But, in this post:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/watts-up.800264/page-104#post-15312499

you say:



Which implies some multiple of 7,056,000 doesn't it? If that were true then 705.6KHz and 768KHz would both be integer factors of 112.896MHz, but not "~104MHz". Which would then imply that problem 1 disappears entirely.

But you say that you are using a fractional interpolation filter, which implies problem 1 exists for 48KHz and all multiples up to 768KHz (since you describe the problem in terms of 768KHz output).

So I can't resolve the apparent contradiction. And, honestly, I'm curious why 112.896MHz isn't used instead, unless there simply isn't a crystal.

I used to use 112.896 MHz decades ago, but the problem is FPGA timing closure - if it was used on the M scaler it would be impossible (I already have to use fast grades of device). The DACs also benefit from a slightly lower master clock frequency, as I would use up less resources to meet timing - and as I tend to use the max for any given FPGA, to wring out that extra performance.

There is a value of crystal frequency - just over 104MHz - that gives a negligible difference to absolute frequency for both 44.1k and 48k multiples but allows integer values. Send me a PM if you would like more details.

 

[Currawong]

Yes - I haven't heard any headphone have better perception of depth than the Aeon 2 closed. Utopia is very good, but like you I can find it a bit upfront too.

Many of us have put Elear pads or similar on the Utopias to fix that. I still use them for non-speaker depth evaluation though.

Anyway, I posted a pic of the TT2/MScaler set that Chord kindly sent out for me to evaluate (I should have asked ages ago, but I hate asking for things to be honest, and I didn't know how things were going with the pandemic) and got this amusing comment:

 

[Ronengeller]

@Rob Watts could you share with us your experience in dealing with more modern, sometimes compressed recordings, specifically the top charts, and making it sound the best they possibly can, and also apart from Hugo and m scaler in the beginning of the chain that bringing the best out of those recordings and even elevate them, can you name specific speakers, headphones and IEM’s that you find personally a good fit for this music? e.g the nighthawks and nightowls that from what I understand surpass all other headphones in its class and higher in this specific category?

 

[feddar]

@Rob Watts,

You have previously stated that the best results for the HMS is with a source that is the same as the original recording, like 44.1/16. Also, MQA are not lossless, and can interfere with the reconstitution of the sound using the HMS. This all makes sense to me. I am wondering if the original recording is in 96/24, which would give better results through the HMS: a released 44.1/16 (ie downsampled in the studio for a CD), or MQA 96/24 (with only software 'unfolding')?

 

[Rob Watts]

@Rob Watts could you share with us your experience in dealing with more modern, sometimes compressed recordings, specifically the top charts, and making it sound the best they possibly can, and also apart from Hugo and m sampler in the beginning of the chain that bringing the best out of those recordings and even elevate them, can you name specific speakers, headphones and IEM’s that you find personally a good fit for this music? e.g the nighthawks and nightowls that from what I understand surpass all other headphones in its class and higher in this specific category?

I don't have a lot of experience with pop music, so I can't really comment. But in the past, as I improved my system, the number of recordings that sounded good shrunk; but now I find the complete opposite; as I make improvements, recordings that I found unacceptable now work musically. I guess I need a certain quality threshold, and before I would hear what was wrong about a recording - now the emphasis is on what is right about it. Of course, improving transparency will not make a bad recording sound great, but I am pleased that pushing the envelope is now making bad recordings musically acceptable.

@Rob Watts,

You have previously stated that the best results for the HMS is with a source that is the same as the original recording, like 44.1/16. Also, MQA are not lossless, and can interfere with the reconstitution of the sound using the HMS. This all makes sense to me. I am wondering if the original recording is in 96/24, which would give better results through the HMS: a released 44.1/16 (ie downsampled in the studio for a CD), or MQA 96/24 (with only software 'unfolding')?

Good question - which does the less evil? My guess would be the 44.1/16 would be the better sounding when using a WTA reconstruction filter.

 

[feddar]

Good question - which does the less evil? My guess would be the 44.1/16 would be the better sounding when using a WTA reconstruction filter.

I am trying to decide whether to stick with Tidal, and deal with MQA forced on me, or move to Deezer where hopefully it is all in 'real' 44.1/16. In Canada we do not have Qobuz. The only way I can compare is with Tidal on UAPP vs Deezer on Android or iPhone direct (UAPP does not support Deezer).

I think I will try the Bluesound Node 2 and compare the services directly (as well as compare it to UAPP).