Dan Lavry

The up/down toggle switch for volume offers some advantages. The volume control interface is digital, but the volume control circuitry itself is analog. You can call it "digitally controlled analog volume": 1. When attenuating by analog means, you do not truncate digital bits. Say you have a CD with 16 bits resolution, and you want to attrenuate the signal by 24dB. You end up losing 3 bits so you are listning to 13 bits... Figure for each 6dB attenuation you lose a bit. 2. The matching between channels is far better then a dual analog pot, and it holds its accuracy over the whole range. That is a lot bigger issue then many realize. Say you want a pot to "work well" over 40dB range. The number 40dB does not sound like much, but dB describes the ear sensitivity to volume. The pot itself is not an ear, so you really need to change the resistance by a factor of 100:1 ratio. If the range is 60dB then we are talking 1000:1 ration. A stereo volume control calls for dual pot on a single shaft. So you need to have 2 mechanical devices with a common shaft. The tolerances of the mechanical parts alone should be a fruction of 1% to end up with good matching to 40 dB range. Add to it the pointer (contact) touching the resistive surface (carbon, cermet or whatever), and you are way off... The switch method I use offers better then .1dB accuracy over the whole range, and the stereo matching is even better then that. 3. Unlike analog potentiometers, when you set the gain with a digital display, you get reliable and predictable level (such as 56 mean 24dBu, 55 means 23dBu...). When you move an analog pot, you lose the calibration. My digitally controlled analog volume is a lot more expansive (and sohfisticated) then a dual pot. I did what I did for the above reasons. Regards Dan lavry

Sorry, I did not mean to quote anyone, not Smeggy not anyone else. ! My mistake. It was an "operator error". I just wanted to get into the thread so I hit the "quote" button. I should have erased the quote, I did not by mistake. I do wish the thread to get back on track, and away for the personal attacks that often are just a waste of time, in my view. Regards Dan Lavry

Can it be that no one read the thread I pointed at? http://lavryengineering.com/white_papers/DA11_PIC.pdf This is about a new feature, a new type control designed for the playback location. This is something different, and it is a significant step forward, that is, for the few millions of us audio and music people, out of some 5 trillion people in the world. You can actually change the stereo image width. This is no subtle stuff. This is not a argument about silver wire or gold wire, the kind of stuff that is subtle to the point of being questionable. That image width is very audible, and there is no added distortion, noise, EQ, compression.... The DA is as pure and transparent with the image as it is in normal mode. Regards Dan Lavry

The DA11 has a new feature - the >PiC< - which stands for Playback image control You can see a description of what it is at my Lavry Engineering site: Lavry Engineering :: View topic - DA11 >PiC< : Playback Input Control - a new featur Regards Dan Lavry

The DA11 pakage includes a couple of good XLR female to RCA female adapters. I say "good" because the quality of such adapters ranges from poor to good. The specifications of the unit are met with the adapters in place. The DA11 lets you set unbalanced Pin 2 hot, unbalanced Pin 3 hot or balanced operation. The settings are controlled from the front pannel, so there is not need to open the chassis and set jumpers. Other headphone related improvments (relative to DA10) are: 1. One can turn off the rear pannel signals, so the only active analog outout is the headphone. This is also controlled from the front panel. 2. There is a circuit that eliminates the "loud clicks" that take place during power up and power down (turnning the unit on and off). The DA10 has a power up "click protection", but not power down. The DA11 has both power up and power down protection. The idea is to protect the ears. At very high volume, one can still hear a tiny power down click, but at much lower volume then the music. Without any protection, the click is huge. I am in the habit of removing the headphones prior to power down... And of course, the >PiC< (Playback image control) is very much oriented to headphone. Almost all of the music material is produced by monitoring through speakers, and the PiC enables the headphone listen to a stereo image closer to what was intended by the mixing and mastering people. Regards Dan Lavry

Hi Voltron, Thanks for your comments. I will look up the date for the big meet. The next few month are very busy for me, some of it is about meetings and conventions, but I will try to make it. It is not too far from Seattle... Regards Dan Lavry

Hello, I am up to my ears with work, but I could not ignore your post... There are formats, and there are hardware. AES format and SPDIF format are different, but there are also a lot of format similarities. The data (the bits that carry the music) is virtually the same in both formats. The XLR, RCA and Optical connectors are very different. Typically the XLR carries "high power" (2-5V into 110 Ohms), the RCA is based on .4V into 75 Ohms, and the optical is a completely different signal (light, not current). It is true that SPDIF started as a particular standard calling for RCA, and Toslink was started with a certain aim (consumer 44-48KHz). Similarly, the AES/EBU has some history. But the "lines have been blurred". Some Toslink implementations can now handle 24bits at 96KHz, one can send and retrieve SPDIF music data on an XLR and so on... I am talking about the music data only, but for a DA, the music portion of the format is what one needs... The DA11 can receive either spdif or AES format on any of the three connectors. That is very handy for driving multiple sources into the same DA. Clearly, I would choose XLR's for long cables, or for very electrically noisy environment - the XLR offers higher power plus balanced transformer coupling. Optical is pretty good, and RCA is somewhat weak, but works fine with short cables. AD's require all sorts of parameters to be set by the user, such as the format type, number of bits, sample rate... But with a DA, much of the operation can be done "automatically". You can feed the DA11 as few or as many bits as you have (16-24 bits), and it will process them correctly. A 16 bits word is "viewed as" a 24 bits word with 8 zeros... You can feed the DA11 say 44.1KHz, or 48 or 88.2 or 96KHz and it will measure the actual sample rate and display it (in setup mode). It knows what is coming in; it knows what to do with it. You can send to the DA11 either AES or SPDIF to the XLR, RCA and TOSLINK. You can send an AES signal into the optical, or a SPDIF into the XLR, or any other "combination". The DA11 will play the music present on the selected input. Regards Dan Lavry Lavry Engineering - Unsurpassed Excellence