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repiv posted:Their weird FPGA design does work at least, the performance is pretty good Amir was a bit more critical of the Mojo. It doesn't measure nearly as well relative to competition as the one you linked. Perhaps the designer had to cut back on the filter design a bit when trying to make a battery powered version, though it still runs rather warm. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-chord-mojo-dac-and-amp.5120/ Seems like the Mojo's summary is: pay a lot of money for decent but not great performance, a weird and bad 1970s sci-fi user interface, and high power consumption.
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Aug 22, 2020 19:07
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Foxtrot_13 posted:A Rolex isn't any better at keeping time than a £60 Chinese mechanical watch but it looks a drat sight better. A new Rolex will, they have -2/+2 seconds per day guaranteed accuracy than usual -20/+40 in most mechanical watches. Still that $8000 toy will keep worse time than 10$ quartz. Agree about looks though.
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Aug 23, 2020 11:24
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I never understood Rolex watches. They're ugly as gently caress. They belong to the time where men wore huge shoulder pads in their navy blue jackets and sported long wavy hair.
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Aug 23, 2020 11:43
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Combat Pretzel posted:I never understood Rolex watches. They're ugly as gently caress. They belong to the time where men wore huge shoulder pads in their navy blue jackets and sported long wavy hair. Depends on the model. The thing is people who buy Rolexes want you to know they're wearing a Rolex, so they get the most ostentatious ones, rather than the ones that are actually attractive.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:24
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KozmoNaut posted:"This device is so much better, you just need to open it and add some cardboard" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. EQ and filters are not inherently bad or wrong. It’s also not exactly difficult to implement the basics in a way that is predictable, but they don’t seem to manage that. Does it not strike you as odd that you’re defending a DSP unit that isn’t good at DSP? If you just need a high pass and low pass filter, and no EQ, why buy the unit in the first place? They’re also not latency compensated at the output stage, so you need to constantly readjust your time alignment if you’re using extra filter points. Even then you have what, two or three per band? You might want to go over these slide notes from an AES presentation: https://bennettprescott.com/downloads/DSP_Differences.pdf There is an article version of the data here: https://www.bennettprescott.com/downloads/TwoProcessors.pdf The “filters narrowing as you approach Nyquist” traces are from a dbx DSP. Also, here’s a photo from one of the dbx DriveRack 360 that I had to replace the mains cabling on for another provider, mid show in Brazil.  One of them was brand new. All of them powered on, but would not pass audio because of a failure in the post-boot preamp check. Of course, this isn’t displayed anywhere, it just doesn’t work. It’s a well documented issue, and their own support just shrug their shoulders. The limiters work as a basic non-infinite compressor even with OverEasy disabled. It raises the RMS level very quickly, leading to earlier thermal failure on woofers. I will say that their iPad app is very nice, but it’s certainly not worth the asking price for that alone. dbx is another brand that once was great, but now just sits firmly in the overpriced MI grade range. Corner cutting is rife there, sadly. I’m not sure how many “thousands” of engineers outside the weekend warrior level would stand by the dbx as a professional piece of kit now either. It’s not bad, for a hobby system, but there are far better options at that price point. If you want a badge then I would recommend that you go for a second hand BSS or XTA unit. Neurophonic fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 12:54
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And yet people seem to be getting perfectly fine results with the hardware, because it works despite perceived and possible genuine flaws. Funny that. E: To be clear, I don't have any sort of blind brand loyalty to any brands, nor am I going after you personally. I do respect your experience, but I do find it odd that you seem to have a serious grudge against dbx in particular. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 13:01
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Aren't DBX and BSS both owned by the same company?
KillHour fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 15:08
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Gentlemen, you can't swing around over-bearing opinions in here! This is the ridiculous audiophiles thread!
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Aug 24, 2020 15:15
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KozmoNaut posted:And yet people seem to be getting perfectly fine results with the hardware, because it works despite perceived and possible genuine flaws. Funny that. Likewise on blind loyalty, but if I’m spending over £500 on a unit, I expect it to at least be competitive. Holding products to some basic standard is important, especially from a once reputable firm. I dunno, maybe it bugs me more than it should, but I’ve seen a lot of sound systems at various levels that don’t sound their best because of dbx “quirks”. That’s also operator error, to an extent, but it’s normal to have faith in something that costs a not-insignificant amount of cash. Isn’t it a saying in this very thread that digital audio should be a solved problem? KillHour posted:Aren't DBX and BSS both owned by the same company? Yes, and that’s part of the problem. The BSS units I mentioned are pre-Harman. They don’t make any standalone non-modular DSP units now. The original BSS guys left after that deal and now run Linea Research. Who make pretty excellent kit, albeit much more expensive.
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Aug 24, 2020 22:04
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Yes.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:16
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redeyes posted:Yes. Absolutely not.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:27
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GonadTheBallbarian posted:Absolutely not. Maybe?
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Aug 25, 2020 01:31
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KillHour posted:Maybe? Extremely unlikely
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Aug 25, 2020 02:34
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BRB gonna get one of those deep neural stimulators and bypass this speaker question completely. Just gotta find an analog signal path to convert vinyl to brain impulses.
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Aug 25, 2020 02:50
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Is this thread making fun of audiophiles anymore or is it now full of audiophiles? I actually can't tell.
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Aug 25, 2020 14:02
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shortspecialbus posted:Is this thread making fun of audiophiles anymore or is it now full of audiophiles? I actually can't tell. Both. Some audiophiles are trying to cover their self-loathing by insulting other audiophiles, others are celebrating their self-loathing by asking to be insulted.
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Aug 25, 2020 15:57
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As far as I can tell the thread is 90% people arguing about expensive DACs or DAC type things that approximately nobody ever needs.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:31
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shortspecialbus posted:As far as I can tell the thread is 90% people arguing about expensive DACs or DAC type things that approximately nobody ever needs. We're the audio equivalent of car nerds talking about how their LS swapped Miata runs 9s while simultaneously making fun of people who put $10,000 flame decals on their car and claim it makes them go faster. 
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Aug 25, 2020 16:36
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The last 3 pages have been arguing about which $500 DAC is the correct $500 DAC to get. It's not AI at all, there's no clever engineering going on here to build a sleeper. It's basically arguing whether a Maserati or McLaren is the right purchase for your daily commute.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:42
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Except it's not a DAC at all, and in fact, doesn't have a digital input. It's a loudspeaker management system that I'm using as a crossover, limiter and parametric EQ for room correction.
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Aug 25, 2020 17:32
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Well I turn on Rock mode on my Aiwa for room correction and eq 
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Aug 25, 2020 17:37
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KillHour posted:Except it's not a DAC at all, and in fact, doesn't have a digital input. It's still not remotely pertinent to the thread, which is supposed to be ridiculing audiophiles, not getting in never ending conversations about loudspeaker management systems.
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Aug 25, 2020 17:42
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There's at least two threads people can take actual discussion to, maybe more Turntable/Vinyl/2-channel Stereo/Vintage thread - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3021252 For your listening pleasure: The quick audio questions megathread! - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2389259
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Aug 25, 2020 17:47
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shortspecialbus posted:It's still not remotely pertinent to the thread, which is supposed to be ridiculing audiophiles, not getting in never ending conversations about loudspeaker management systems. It's fine and has been a part of this thread forever. Feel free to ridicule them of course but it's not like this thread has too much traffic and we need them to get out so we can get down to serious business
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Aug 25, 2020 17:50
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taqueso posted:It's fine and has been a part of this thread forever. Feel free to ridicule them of course but it's not like this thread has too much traffic and we need them to get out so we can get down to serious business Fair enough. I ridicule you all! 
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Aug 25, 2020 18:00
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shortspecialbus posted:The last 3 pages have been arguing about which $500 DAC is the correct $500 DAC to get. It's not AI at all, there's no clever engineering going on here to build a sleeper. It's basically arguing whether a Maserati or McLaren is the right purchase for your daily commute. I freely admit I spent money on a Topping D90 and a Schiit Gungnir Multibit and honestly I'm happy with the Toppings I bought and mildly regret being such a super Schiit-person for a few years. The Topping A90/D90 stack sounds good to me and IMO isn't insane audiophile grade stuff (I have them all hooked up with Monoprice cables). The only real sleeper option for crashing cost is basically finding a DAC IC from not ESS/AKM that is almost as good / equivalent and then pumping that out at the cheapest BOM cost possible.
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Aug 25, 2020 18:29
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the true sleeper option is the $9 apple usb c audio dongle that measures better than like 3/4 of other stuff on the market
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Aug 25, 2020 19:36
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qirex posted:the true sleeper option is the $9 apple usb c audio dongle that measures better than like 3/4 of other stuff on the market The USB C to 3.5mm?
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Aug 25, 2020 20:54
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GonadTheBallbarian posted:Extremely unlikely
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Aug 25, 2020 21:00
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Olympic Mathlete posted:The USB C to 3.5mm? Exactly that. Get a USB-C to USB-A adapter and use it on your PC. The only minor downside to it is that it only does 1Vrms output, which could be an issue since it won't drive all active speakers/power amps to full output. For the majority of headphones it's all you need, though. I got a Meizu HiFi Pro dongle too, since I wanted a bit more output power for my headphones, and it does 1.7Vrms output, but either should be fine really.
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Aug 25, 2020 21:02
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Olympic Mathlete posted:The USB C to 3.5mm? Yeah https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-apple-vs-google-usb-c-headphone-adapters.5541/
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Aug 25, 2020 21:17
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I like how that is probably the most niche connector they make as only the iPad Pro (i believe?) has a USB-C socket but no 3.5mm analog out, and yet it's still better than the competition.
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Aug 25, 2020 21:55
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EL BROMANCE posted:I like how that is probably the most niche connector they make as only the iPad Pro (i believe?) has a USB-C socket but no 3.5mm analog out, and yet it's still better than the competition. Dont some of the fancier newer iphones also have USB-C and no analog 3.5mm? I remember a bunch of uproar about that.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:17
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shortspecialbus posted:Dont some of the fancier newer iphones also have USB-C and no analog 3.5mm? I remember a bunch of uproar about that. All iPhones are lightning still as far as I know. I think the only thing that has moved to a normal standard is the iPad pro
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Aug 25, 2020 22:19
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shortspecialbus posted:Dont some of the fancier newer iphones also have USB-C and no analog 3.5mm? I remember a bunch of uproar about that. iphones still use apple's proprietary lightning connector they designed it a few years before usb-c was finalized and now we're stuck with it forever e;fb repiv fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 22:21
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Yeah I have no issue being 'stuck' on lightning though, I seem to have acquired more than plenty cables and I know if I plug one in it'll do what I expect it to. USB-C? Literally cannot tell what it is capable of just by looking at it, could be a USB 2 class cable, could be a USB 3 class cable. Pain in the butt for sure, and I found this out the hard way when trying to use one of the thunderbolt ports on my Mac for my disk array to get like 30MB/sec across what I presumed would be a nice speedy cable. At least the blue inlays of USB 3 cable were useful at telling you what you had in your hand, how they took a step back I don't know.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:29
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BobHoward posted:Yeah This is the funniest part to me, it's right there in the "middle" of the pack by one metric, SINAD at 99 dB. IMO audiophiles / that entire industry would do well to start thinking about amps and kind of DACs as artwork and understanding that a lot of them are not necessarily "better" than others, and it's just down to what the person likes. Megabucks only make things fancier, not "better" from a technical POV. Cool, you used ALL discrete components in your amplifier because [reasons] — that versus the modern semiconductor process control on an IC and incredibly tightly matched devices + resistors? Come on. Former makes for cool artwork, but the latter likely smokes it in every kind of objective measurable with equipment metric. Both definitely sound "fine" / "great" to all sorts of people.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:35
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The whole USB-C / TB3 / Whatever mess drives me completely insane. I hate everything about it. It's just all nonsense. There is absolutely no way to know what the gently caress is going on most of the time.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:36
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I'm happy my iPad pro uses USB-C because I have a bazillion USB-C infrastructure and I have one single lightning cable in the house that I occasionally use for the iPod Touch that lives in the glove compartment as a music source for stuff I still have on iTunes and I think I have a MiFi controller that charges with it. I get the discomfort over USB-C cabling being kind of sketchy. That one google engineer who bought like every Amazon cable and reviewed them did a huge service though and if you're actually buying a cable you can be generally sure of what you'll get. Finding random cables and assessing them by eye is indeed impossible though. Outside of that, the USB-C connector is fantastic, and "crappy cables" was always a problem with the various B connectors as well.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:40
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movax posted:Cool, you used ALL discrete components in your amplifier because [reasons] — that versus the modern semiconductor process control on an IC and incredibly tightly matched devices + resistors? Come on. Former makes for cool artwork, but the latter likely smokes it in every kind of objective measurable with equipment metric. Both definitely sound "fine" / "great" to all sorts of people. Yeah to me the shortest simplest signal path seems like it would be best but you have to understand the high end audio industry exists to sell the most stuff, not necessarily the best sounding stuff. You can only sell one $500 power cable if the customer buys a NAD M33 instead of separate steaming box, DAC, preamp and amp at which point you're selling 4 power cables plus interconnects.
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Aug 25, 2020 23:31
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