XXHighEnd

Hi all,

This week I had the opportunity to listen to the Phasure NOS1 DAC,
For me its only a 100 km drive to Peter's place, So I grabbed the change.
He also stacked the fridge with "some" beer, and said its no problem if I spend the night there.
So we played music all night, I believe it was 6 or 7 o clock in the morning, before I put my ears to rest.

I believe we played 10 to 12 hours of music, and tied to keep up with the technical stuff (stories, discussions) Peter came up with ;)

I've been to Peter before, about six months ago.
And had the change to listen to SPdif vs I2S and had my first NOS experience.

NOS is absolutly the way to go as many people know by now.
That combined with a decent connection like I2S or FireWire (FW), FW is still work in progress. (happy tweaking with your new proto-board, Peter)
Add the ARC upsampling to that.
And you have Best sounding DAC I've ever heard, Its not that good but its not as bad as the "rest" out there.
Its just clean.
And because its that clean, there is more place for music and yes I'am still discovering new things in the music I never heard before.
10 hours of listening and NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF HARSHNESS, not anywhere.
Even with music playing really loud, we could easely understand each other, without being annoyed by the harshness in the music.

I won't go into: what songs I've played and why, because I don't think I need (like) that, It needs to be good on all music, and it does.
So we took all kinds of music, there was a humble choice of 18.000 albums so............ hehe

Everything beyond this is new for everybody, for me too.
So I had to trust my ears, and I do, believe me I really do.

I LIKE IT, I LIKE IT A LOT

If this would be the end result I would be really happy with it.
But you know Peter by now, not taking this a step further.
But the overall sound will stay like this, I know for sure.

I wanna thank Peter and Ciska for there hospitality

Roy

Well Roy, a bit late maybe (no, for sure), but thank you very much for describing your experience "en public" which out of all should be honest (as I asked you to, when doing it anyway).

As you know the final PSU (as per design) came late and you missed that. It is running here now, and partly to my own expectations, but for the largest part now ... hmm ... what to say ...

As known by now, it seems that any "minor" theoretical change has a huge impact on sound quality, but where "SQ" as such has become a wrong description. It seems obsolete. Sound Impact may be more adequate, but that is just what it is these days, when starting off with something which seems "right" at the first place.

Now, this is just a PSU to the DAC itself, and not to the I/V (analogue) stage for those who don't know. It is just a PSU to those tiny microvolt necessities a couple of DAC chips have. It is nothing a whatever PSU can't cope with, you should say. Well, it turns out to be different ...

Funnily enough, and as you know, the Arc Prediction stuff brings "shortness". In fact dryness, but technically this is about nomally perceived longer "sounds" being much shorter, therewith giving room to the other sounds coming right after the initial attack etc. of the before sound(s). Now, with this as a recognizeable phenomenon, it just can be shorter again.

Without hearing this, it becomes a kind of hard to explain (also to myself ! :yes:), but it looks like it is giving room to the "singing" of (parts of) instruments. It might be small vibrato, it might be the sheer singing of cymbals (as a by itself more common phenomenon from analogue I guess), and it even seems to create a more psychological "more distance from subjectivity" ... but after a night full of listening and presenting some tracks here to my confirming ears Ciska, we come to the same conclusion : again the most different from before, but only positives to come up with.

Ok, in any more normal situation I wouldn't be able to explain any further to you all, but with the help of Roy's experience I may (remember, everything is relative to a before known situation, or "reference", and what happens here is challenging those references again and again).

So first to Roy : What we listened to is what we'd say is the most approximazation of reality. Whether this was the most interesting is another matter, and here I refer to my own earlier experiences of "the most interesting", but tyering after a couple of hours. This is sure *not* fatigueing as we all know it from digital, but just tyering because you are not able to cope with all the interesting noises and smashes all over. I am serious here.

But beyond "reality" there is another dimension : normal.
This is something in our brains;
Where "interesting" (by now, and as it comes to me) is subjective and in the mean time not good, there is reality as we might like to hear it. It may be about expressed T's at the end of words like mighT or touche(d)T (and mind toucheT does not start with the capital T), which can be perceived as realitiy if we only think the microphone is sensitive. However, this is similar to spitting which can be perceived, which -when heard- of course is reality BUT NOT NORMAL to hear.

In this latter area things have changed again to a large degree.


This is very true (I think), but because of what I just said -it is more normal now- this leads to again a next dimension of "more music".
Maybe this time the music as such was already there (I mean with the before PSU), but things can distract. If a mighT sounds, it distracts from what's coming next. Thus, it doesn't overvoice as such (as ringing would for sure), but the single fact that it distracts makes you miss something. This seems to be all over, and not only with overexpressed T's. So this is what I meant with "again it is shorter". As a matter of fact I am starting to hear cut counds (I think I said that before with te first impressions on Arc Prediction Upsampling) but funnily enough they give room to beautiful artifacts like ... believe it or not ... half touched hammers on piano strings. And remember, half touched here means they hit twice when meant once, and because of that additional harmonics appears, and it buzzes.

You want buzzing ? try Jan Akkerman (he is dutch) and his "Passion" album. This is one large interaction of buzzing half touched strings on his acoustic guitar. Also, I described "buzzing emerging in mid air" long ago, but it was rare. Now it has become a standard.
Similarly I desribed a long time ago the -as it seemed by then- flageolet (which is a similar half touch of guitar strings making *only* harmonics audible) being a measure for good sound reproduction, and the more it appears, the better the sound reproduction is. Listen now ... they are all over, intended or not (too fast played chords to ever be able to press the string in between te frets imply the same).

This all, again, makes your before played music a kind of totally unreconizeable.
Peter

Sounds great!  :NY01:

So....when will be able to buy the DAC and what will we need on the PC side to talk to the DAC?   

Does the DAC1 - or will it - have a pre-amp section so it an direct drive the amplifiers?

I am sorry to answer to this late. But here I just (at last) did : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=979.msg8100#msg8100

Yes, it will have all the drive to well, drive the main amps at 3m (9') distance. This was the objective in the first place and this is what I am doing myself (using the digital attenuation only). Btw, watch out for a new XXHighEnd (0.9y-5) "gadget" on this, I have been working on for over a month, and which I just finished today. :yes:
Some may remember its ever anouncement from quite a while back ... :secret:

But (and I said this in the main Phasure NOS1 topic) :

The output of the DAC is to be seen as some 18dB less as the normal 2VRMS for Single Ended output; 12dB for Differential (Balanced).
This is because anything making that the more normal output level destroys sounds heavily (ok, to my own standards), and I just refuse that.
18dB is not all *that* much, but if you use your main amps with a volume at near full (say, quarter past) you may be in trouble. When you don't go way over 12 o'clock you'll be allright.

Just being honest here. :friends:

Thanks.  That's no worry for me given the high efficiency of my speakers.  I think you are right on track with not going higher on the output....SQ should be priority 1, 2, 3, etc.

Regarding your volume control I am eager to try it in the new version.  In the 0.9y4 I find the latency of the volume control a bit of a challenge to deal with... :)

Sadly this "gadget" is not about that. But you are right that the Arc processing consumes a tad too much time to use the volume control in a convenient means. It is not easy to make this faster, but I guess somehwere in the (near) future I will find some creativity to do it anyway.

What is in 0.9y-5 is that remote commans are queued, which already helps a lot (just press VolUp 3 times in a row).
But this is still not that gadget.

       Its not only about the NOS1 you know, its the whole project by  itself that is intriguing.
       So much nice people here, sharing all info they can find.
       The "you" in the project is really great, "you" can share your opinions, "You" are involved in "your" own project about making it all better.
       AND "you" have to do a little work to set things up the right way, that counts here too a little, but anyway.
       Then there is XX ofcourse especially the latest version, instead of distortion I get "instrument details" WOW and WOW, still works for me
       This IS the next generation of dealing with digital music and the way we bring this in our livingrooms.
       Lots of people don't realize this, their wake-up call will come when hearing (about) this "little" project of Peter.     
       A kind of generation LEAP for me going from CD to XX, just a year ago
            
       Kinda curious what comes from all of this, stories about the NOS1 will be written, compares will be made
       I will not be among the first owners of a NOS1 ($), so will keep track of all that will be written here and elsewere.
       I know what I hear, will they too?
       I am a bit "naked" too here you know, expressing my opinion "en public"
       But feel a little obliged to do so, because I feel greatful versus Peter sharing all his inside and time to explaining the hard things going on in the digital domain.
       Always keeps us interessed with his nice and (not) always understandable posts,
       But don't forget it just starts here, the outcoming of the DAC is not the ending of the project, that is I hope not.\
       Really curious to see how you (Peter) give this a nice "spin", releasing the DAC.
      
       I look forward to an "en public listening day" with snacks, beverages and music ofcourse.
       Setting up a "Perfect system" just for the dutch people, maybe, hehe !?

       But be kind to Peter, he can still decide to just keep the DAC for himself, haha :)
       So please don't piss him off ?!



Damn, I missed that one completly, did I, I kinda explained this phenomenon referring to use the red Black-Gates (BG) to feed to DAC's. (in a PM to you, I believe)
      Many of us know this rather "costly" tweak about using BG as capacitors for power and decoupling of IC's.
      This is were I stopped planning my own DAC, but there was "buzz" in the audio-scene about 3 maybe 4 years ago.
      The Treads were coming in about the use of shunts, those were rather cheap and simple to build, therefore money left over to use just good parts.
      Best of all, you can feed all IC's seperatly. (but its not always easy to work with pre-build PCB, in my case)
      I hope this is what you mean, give all DAC chips their own shunt PSU.
      This would be the cherry on top, would love to hear that change.
      This brings a lot of realism to instruments, this was my experience with the black-gates.
      Really loved the sound of those "red cups", but the use of shunts would be even better.
      Never realized, this still had to be done.
      PCM1704UK's on steroids, hehe


      There is more going on in the brain as well (hopefully that is!, haha), this I was trying to explain,
      do you  know the phenomenon were the music is playing really loud (out of a rather anoying cheap cd-player), people talking.
      Normally I would get stressed by just this, but when music is preceived the right way, I can easely listen to loud music and do conversation as well.
      Then I am more at ease or laidback so to say, this is what its all about, it must bring complete relaxation.
      Especially to the brain, if the brain has to cope with all sorts of distraction (distortion), its has to work very hard bringing it back in proportions.
      Peter knows this very good, Why? How is your ear Peter! hehe (one ear shut for long time, sorry bringing this up) tiring isn't your mind trying to cope all day.
      Not hearing dept and such, your mind trying to cope with this as well, your ears trying to focus by turning your head, even without you wanting it.
      Maybe this sounds a bit vague to you, but anyway.
      Why do blind people hear better? this is about hearing sounds in 3D, hear objects in a certain space.
 
      Something else going on in the brain too, everybody has this library in his head of his most special albums, how they "should" sound (or the way you remembered it as so)
      The harshness as I was refering to in the Original post, try to understand that this harshness is gone, yea strange, but what comes in that place (or space) ??
      Yep, another dimention behind it, so not only the harshness is gone but it has openend up gaps that are filled with so much more detail, music really drools out of your speakers.
      As is said somewhere before, you have to learn all your albums again, and best of all you can acually do that because all albums DO sound good again.
      Mind can go on ease and just relax, this will be a new experience to all of us, I know this for sure.
      It must be right, If I preceive "it" as sounding right,


I have to be honest yes, I felt there was more to come, this will fill the space (dryness), this has to be good.
       Midair colliding of sparkles thats wat we want.

Roy
      

So I did. In 0.9y-5 it will take one second or so. Less I think.