[Baldr]

Speaking of USB gadgets, has anyone had any experience with this new product? Comments? Thoughts? Reviews?

http://www.psaudio.com/products/lanrover-usb-transporter/

It would be very low rent and inappropriate for me to comment on products I neither designed nor manufacture.  There are other threads where there would be a better spectrum of opinion than here.  This is not to say that the question is unwelcome, particularly if it is a general, not product specific one.

 

[dglow]

Speaking of USB gadgets, has anyone had any experience with this new product? Comments? Thoughts? Reviews?

http://www.psaudio.com/products/lanrover-usb-transporter/

 
I'll bite: yikes! Is PSAudio in trouble? $600 for USB-over-Cat5 is... a lot.
And it's still susceptible to any artifacts the OS chooses to inject. Garbage in, garbage out (along with six Benjamins).

 

[ColtMrFire]

  As I said, the origins of THX - which was indeed developed as a specification for cinemas in order that "The Empire Strikes Back" would have consistent sound from cinema to cinema during it's original release 

 
Consistent sound and image.  Which is exactly what I've been trying to stress.  Furthermore, Lucas wanted the same quality standards for as many films as could be managed.  It makes no sense for him to just want his own films protected, as he is one of the most philanthropic men on the planet and cares deeply about the art of cinema.  He established the George Lucas educational foundation, donated $175 million to his alma mater, and signed a deal to give his $5 billion dollar fortune away to charity.  Does this sound like a man purely driven by selfish greed?  Not a direct question to you, but to illustrate his character and reaffirm that THX was developed specifically as a benefit to flmmakers in order for their work to be shown in the best standards possible.  That was Lucas' intention.  Now, the fallout from this endeavor is another matter, so I'm not disputing it may have become something else.  And I'm not here to sing Lucas' praises, just providing some backstory to reinforce what actually occurred.  And no offense, but you still have not provided any documented evidence of your claims, so I'm forced to dismiss them as hearsay, it's the only reasonable thing to do when presented with something that goes against what's already been widely documented.  If you do have some evidence, feel free to send me a PM.
 
I'm sorry to derail the thread, this will be my last post on the matter.

 

[crazychile]

 

​THX's origins had nothing to do with the business model they created, which was purely to generate a revenue stream.   Lucas absolutely controlled and profited from it.

 
If you have some insider information that contradicts the widespread documented evidence of THX's origins, please share it, because this is not what I've heard.  
 
Everything I've heard and read about THX's origins has to do with Lucas being dissatisfied with the low standards of theatrical exhibition at that point, and wanted his films being shown in the best possible fashion, hence the creation of THX in concert with Tom Hollman.
 
As I said before, I don't know what eventually became of THX later on, but to say it was created as nothing more than a revenue stream goes against everything I know about Lucas as a filmmaker, since his entire Skywalker Ranch creation was a way for him to give back to the filmmaking community he experienced as a student at USC film school.  He gave his friends offices at Skywalker, created Edit Droid (which eventually spun off into Avid and the digital editing suites that are common today) to make the editing of films an easier more intuitive process for artists.  ILM was of course created out of necessity for Star Wars, but became a tool to facilitate the endless imaginations of artists so they could create the worlds in their head.  Everything Lucas created under his Lucasfilm banner was a direct reaction to the tampering Hollywood did to his first two films, which devastated him.  I'm not saying he didn't profit from these ventures, I'm saying he did not create them solely to make money... he was an artist first, and a businessman second.  Besides, he already had plenty money without them.  American Graffiti made him a multi millionaire before Star Wars was even shot.  
 
This is why I have a hard time believing you.  You seem to have an axe to grind with THX and Dolby, and while I can't vouch for Dolby (I know nothing about them), I've read almost every pieces of literature about Lucas and Lucasfilm, but I would be more than happy to be proven wrong about the creation of THX if you can provide some legitimate sources that prove it was nothing more than a profit motivated venture.

I don't disagree with you or @Ableza. The reality lies somewhere in between.
 
I worked in the the industry during the THX heyday and observed the following first hand:
1. Yes, the amps were built to a standard that wasn't absolute crap. So this ensured a basic level of quality, but nothing exceptional.
2. I knew one company owner that tried to get an amp THX certified and couldn't because while his amp sounded great and was built like a tank, it wasn't built "the THX way".
3. I knew of at least 2 companies that built THX and non-THX versions of identical amplifiers. The only difference was the THX logo on the front and $200 difference in retail price. I forget what the THX licensing cost was per unit, but I want to say it was at least $50, and that was also after you paid to have your amp certified.
 
So while the original intention behind THX may have been about establishing a baseline standard of quality, the benefits to the end user were often considered negligible with a considerable price increase. The lasting impression to a lot of people was that ....it was kinda about the money.

 

[Ableza]

   
And no offense, but you still have not provided any documented evidence of your claims

Documented evidence?  Don't be naïve.  They are a company.  They are not altruistic.  I worked for them in the 90's.

 

[dglow]

crazychile and ColdMrFire, you are talking about two different things. The scope and 'mission' of THX morphed over its lifetime. 
 
I would argue that THX jumped a sizable chasm in the move from certifying in-cinema audio to licensing their brand to CE manufacturers. It's still fundamentally the same game, but the addressable market size (and associated opportunities and incentives) grew so dramatically. The stakes changed and so did their motivations.

 

[ColtMrFire]

Exactly.  Anyway, carry on,

 

[Armaegis]

 
It would be very low rent and inappropriate for me to comment on products I neither designed nor manufacture.  There are other threads where there would be a better spectrum of opinion than here.  This is not to say that the question is unwelcome, particularly if it is a general, not product specific one.

 

*ahem*
 
What are your thoughts on using ethernet as an in-between conversion step to extend the range of a usb device (a dac in particular)?
Does the galvanic isolation from ethernet offer any benefits in this scenario?
Do the two extra conversion steps harm/help in any way?
What about jitter/reclocking/emi/gremlins?

 

[bigro]

   

*ahem*
 
What are your thoughts on using ethernet as an in-between conversion step to extend the range of a usb device (a dac in particular)?
Does the galvanic isolation from ethernet offer any benefits in this scenario?
Do the two extra conversion steps harm/help in any way?
What about jitter/reclocking/emi/gremlins?

 
Such an Original Question.

 

 

[wink]

Now we await an original answer.........    

 

[judmarc]

   
The reason that I refer to it as a racket is that it is a monopolistic effort to extort money from all producers of music and makers of audio reproduction for a process which has never been clearly demonstrated in any environment other than their own, controlled one.

 
 
I think it's too soon to talk about monopolies when the company using MQA for streaming thus far has 4.4 million subscribers (1.2 million of whom signed up within a couple weeks of Beyoncé's Lemonade release), Pandora with ~80 million subscribers may use a *different* (plain vanilla?) format for their hi res streaming offering, and the thousand pound gorilla, Spotify with north of 100 million subscribers, is putting out surveys asking whether people would be interested in a "lossless" (RedBook resolution?) tier.
 
It could all change quickly, of course, but at this point I'm still in the mode of waiting for solid info about what the industry at large will do.

 

[Baldr]

   
 
I think it's too soon to talk about monopolies when the company using MQA for streaming thus far has 4.4 million subscribers (1.2 million of whom signed up within a couple weeks of Beyoncé's Lemonade release), Pandora with ~80 million subscribers may use a *different* (plain vanilla?) format for their hi res streaming offering, and the thousand pound gorilla, Spotify with north of 100 million subscribers, is putting out surveys asking whether people would be interested in a "lossless" (RedBook resolution?) tier.
 
It could all change quickly, of course, but at this point I'm still in the mode of waiting for solid info about what the industry at large will do.

Their goals/intentions are clearly monopolistic; in practice, they have a long way to go.

 

[judmarc]

 
Their goals/intentions are clearly monopolistic; in practice, they have a long way to go.

 
 
I suppose what MQA and anyone in the music biz who wants to use them intend isn't as important as what they can do, and while it's still early days it sure would suck if the biz managed to leverage this into some sort of real monopoly.
 
But for whatever it's worth, I do actually wonder whether monopoly was on the minds of the MQA folks. 
 
If I were an intellectual property attorney (I am the latter, but not in the former field) with the MQA boys in front of me, I might say something like the following:
 
"OK, you're telling me you want to protect your special sauce [MQA is essentially a certain configuration or type of configuration of the interpolation filters for digital audio, that you could loosely view, conceptually speaking, as one type of alternative to the megacomboburrito filter], but you're saying it will take about a New York minute for everyone to figure out your filters down to the coefficients as soon as you release this.  Therefore, what I'd advise in order to get the max legal protection for your baby is to (1) attach these filters to a piece of hardware and get a patent; and (2) throw in a little cryptography somewhere - compression/decompression stages are traditional places."  Bada-boom....
 
So this easily could be the result of legal advice in response to the question, "How can we make some money from this without everyone and his brother immediately copying it?"  Again, not that this makes a huge difference if the result is an actual monopoly, but it is a possible alternative to the pure Dr. Evil interpretation of the MQA folks' motivation.  (I know, what fun is that?)

 

[Baldr]

   
 
I suppose what MQA and anyone in the music biz who wants to use them intend isn't as important as what they can do, and while it's still early days it sure would suck if the biz managed to leverage this into some sort of real monopoly.
 
But for whatever it's worth, I do actually wonder whether monopoly was on the minds of the MQA folks. 
 
If I were an intellectual property attorney (I am the latter, but not in the former field) with the MQA boys in front of me, I might say something like the following:
 
"OK, you're telling me you want to protect your special sauce [MQA is essentially a certain configuration or type of configuration of the interpolation filters for digital audio, that you could loosely view, conceptually speaking, as one type of alternative to the megacomboburrito filter], but you're saying it will take about a New York minute for everyone to figure out your filters down to the coefficients as soon as you release this.  Therefore, what I'd advise in order to get the max legal protection for your baby is to (1) attach these filters to a piece of hardware and get a patent; and (2) throw in a little cryptography somewhere - compression/decompression stages are traditional places."  Bada-boom....
 
So this easily could be the result of legal advice in response to the question, "How can we make some money from this without everyone and his brother immediately copying it?"  Again, not that this makes a huge difference if the result is an actual monopoly, but it is a possible alternative to the pure Dr. Evil interpretation of the MQA folks' motivation.  (I know, what fun is that?)

 
Well then, blatant power grab with a Dolby analogy; encode the music with lossy MQA pixie dust; collect $$ from content providers, require their licensed manufacturers to submit to MQA's design prostate exam including complete design disclosure, their testing and approval in their time and on their terms.  If they have such confidence in their process, let them compete in a fair and free market.  That is what the rest of us do.  Phuc them and theirs.  May they assume the dying cockroach position lossy formats deserve in a high quality audio market.

 

[Byronb]

   
Well then, blatant power grab with a Dolby analogy; encode the music with lossy MQA pixie dust; collect $$ from content providers, require their licensed manufacturers to submit to MQA's design prostate exam including complete design disclosure, their testing and approval in their time and on their terms.  If they have such confidence in their process, let them compete in a fair and free market.  That is what the rest of us do.  Phuc them and theirs.  May they assume the dying cockroach position lossy formats deserve in a high quality audio market.

I can fully back this statement.