CarlSeibert

Wes - My impression, from some of my own recordings that have the occasional peak over the zero line, is that each time the signal hits the zero line, there will be a burst of distortion. If I'm understanding what's happening here correctly, peaks that are tangent to the zero line or maybe ever so slightly below it will also clip, with the attendant release of hash. Thus, this device will increase the number of occurrences by adding the tangent or almost-so peaks to the total instances. Is that sound? And how is it that clipping could occur in the digital domain at anything less than zero? Or is the phenomenon we're talking about really cascading down to the analog section?

ROFL I just sneezed Coke Zero all over my keyboard.

Agreed. Mostly. First off, I'm uneasy with sloppy mistakes that somebody "gets away with" because at the end of the day, the device does what it's sold to do. Just on general principles, manufacturers should get it right. At this moment, I am repairing our stupid vacuum cleaner for the third time because some nitwit under-specced a bearing. It cleans like a dream when it works, but I really have other things I'd rather do than repair it all the time. There's no way - or maybe I should say "no non-back-breaking way" - to design something without being able to measure parameters that directly or indirectly give a clue if you're getting closer to the parameters that are your real goal. Human hearing is a tricky thing, as it's one hell of a lousy test tool but when the device is in use in the long haul it's much more discriminating than most of the measurements at a designer's disposal. From my memories of my engineer father designing industrial equipment, to my own career and everything I've seen along the way, I haven't seen an abundance of occasions where direct measurements of the ultimate parameters being sought are available. Dad used to say something about the line between applied science and art being a bit fuzzy. Joseph D'Appolito has a relatively new book out in which he talks about using measurements in speaker design (and makes a reasoned argument for his own subjective hierarchy of what to aim for). It's pretty obvious there's a lot of art, or judgment if you will, still in the game. And he's talking about speakers, where we are a lot closer to being for-real able "to measure everything." The Beringer unit, according to Larry, sounds like ass. So it loses the war after winning all the bench tests. That's pretty cold comfort. For $29, frankly, I wouldn't expect a second or third design cycle, based on subjective evaluation of some kind to bring the device up to optimum performance. For $129, something's still gotta give. We're not talking Jeff Rowland type stuff here. If it doesn't last for thirty years or if it can't play sine waves I don't listen to (even though, If I'm understanding it right, that seems more of a dumb mistake than reasoned trade-off)or isn't compatible with every headphone in the world (as suggested by the output impedance) but it can play music reasonably well, I'd say it's justified its existence. I like how the newbie puts "sounds" in quotes. That says something.

Happy (somewhat belated) Birthday! Sounds like it was memorable.

Thanks

8,000 words and only about a dozen of them were about how the thing sounds. The NuForce guy pegged him when he said something about listening to music with a scope. And I'm still scratching my head about the zero line nonsense. The zero line is where a digital signal clips, by definition. I don't see how a DAC can make a clipped signal an more clipped. Or if I would be offended if it happened. "Hey, who distorted the distortion in my Lady gaga song!". Yeah, it's possible to make a sine wave be tangent to the zero line at its peaks, and I would suppose that in some sort of theoretical place a DAC should be able to reproduce such a tone. But it comes up in real music exactly just about never, so who bloody well cares. It's a hundred dollar product for cryin' out loud. Larry - Doesn't matter since I've already got the uDAC2, but thanks for the warning.

What I said before. It seems to me that more young people "get" quality today. It's a world that's deteriorating. In that light, concern for quality could be seen as youthful rebellion. So, you're right. Maybe a market. And we get the benefit. Kind of off-topic, but that is a pretty cool video. Clever youthful ideas are a dime a dozen, but a clever youthful idea done with - dare I say it - concern for quality and craft can carry some water. I hope that kid grows to greatness. The "prepare to be eclipsed" notion has been around the track a few times. Adam and Eve probably said that when some smart ass kid peeled an apple. Older folks today seem to be taking it awful seriously. Somehow when today's kids shoot a video with their telephone or wear their pants strangely, it's more profound or more evil than when kids in past generations noodled around learning about self-expression. Then again, maybe it's been like that a thousand times, too.

Hmmm. I have one and mine sounds fine. Much better after it warms up and certainly not as good as really top gear. But it seems to provide value for money spent. Interestingly, the guy who points out what certainly look like stupid design and manufacturing flaws says his sounds fine, too. He concedes that the Benchmark sounds better but minimizes the difference. But the NuForce is unsatisfactory and he's returning it. I wonder how it would sound if he had never measured it? A little suggestible, maybe? I wish I had known about the Beringer. It's way cheaper and very sleazy looking. Chintzy looking was actually something I was looking for. Assuming it doesn't sound like ass, that is. You can safely conclude that a grain of salt goes a long way over there, IMHO.

Happy Birthday Nate

> "Even CDs are 16-bit, and the sonic quality of a CD is an accepted definition of consumer-worthy HD quality." Fucking geniuses. Or maybe I shouldn't be making fun of the hearing impaired. Or maybe it's just that they've appointed themselves rightful arbiters of what we're "worthy" of.

Happy Birthday Dan!

All over town we're seeing concern about quality. Artists offering high res or lossless on their sites. Now this. Everybody talks about how horrible young people are because they listen to MP3s. But I don't remember much outcry when we (well, some of us) were young and most people listened to cassettes, duped on those dreadful high-speed machines. Maybe today's young people are less deaf. I'm choosing to be optimistic about this. Hell, in the last year or so, I've even heard - or thought I have anyway - some backing away from the loudness nonsense. Maybe.

Do you know off the top of your head which ones will run on PPC hardware, or for that matter which ones will run on OS 10.5? I mourn the passing of Cog, not that it matters, since it does work on my machine and that's what really matters. Hog mode would be nice, though.

Damn. The board ate my reply. I just made a little amp stand with the shelf part 3/4 Baltic birch glued to 3/4 MDF. It's pretty stiff and very dead. (And cheaper than two layers of BB.) I've been semi-fascinated lately with the idea of making shelves out of concrete, a la a concrete counter top. Or a concrete and wood structure. I made a set of speaker stands that way ad am reasonably happy with them. The pillars are actually PVC pipe, filled with concrete and veneered. the bases are basically a wooden tray, filled with concrete and flipped over. Add trim and veneer to taste. Point is, the possibilities are endless. How about a two layer, air suspension shelf? Or maple coupled in various ways to a masonry paving slab (like a buck at Home Depot)? Once you have the frame with cross bars, you could experiment forever. The price of admission is the gall-darned aluminum. But then again, hardwood is ridiculously dear nowadays, too.

Twitter feed appears to be working fine for me.

So, on to the gory part. How much would enough extrusions to make a rack cost, more or less?

Happy Birthday Jeff!

I'd love to, depending on all the usual stuff.

Ouch. I remember that stuff vividly from my days as a photographer in Palm Beach.

- Punctuate the following sentence: Susan ran down the hall naked. How does this work? Is a

Thanks guys! Let's do lunch next week in any case. Maybe Jim could come along and have a listen on the spot.

A buddy of mine asked my opinion of these today. I told him I like the way the 801 sounds, but I haven't heard the newer, cheaper ones. Has anybody heard them?

I followed him on Twitter. Geez. More tweets than the Egyptian crisis. Sweeping generalizations. Shameless trolling. Pretty annoying. I'm all for people saying their system sounds better playing this or that format. I've heard it. There are all sorts of plausible explanations, not that it matters if any of them are actually correct. It's totally rational to play what sounds best on your system and entirely optional to understand why. But I wish people, when they don't understand why, would listen with their ears instead of their mouths. Or at least own up to the limitations of their opinions. How hard would it have been for him to say "in MY system.... I know I changed too many variables at once to have a clue which one was in play, but I thought I heard..[whatver]...." He is getting paid for representing the hobby in the press, for crying out loud. Anybody who needs to can test this in an entirely subjective way, BTW. Just change only one variable at a time. Take a WAV. Transcode it to FLAC or ALAC or whatever and then back. Put both WAVs in your library and listen a few dozen times over the next couple months without obsessing over which is which. If you can keep your ears open and the little voice inside your head quiet you'll be sure. (I actually did this once. I was confident in the eventual answer.) I'm not sure that the two WAVs will actually generate the same checksum. IIRC, I tried it and there was a create date or something in the file that threw a wrench in the works.

It sounds like there's a consensus for cloth. Birgir - are the new pads better or at least different enough to be amusing in some way? So that I don't feel bad about having to pay forty-some dollars for them when the old ones don't really look at all deteriorated to me?

Earpads and cloth or foam as an assembly. If I was to guess, I'd say the cloth or foam is glued to the earpad, which begs the question "why not just let the customer glue the stuff himself?". I suppose the answer is "$35/$55"