Never tried it


I already thought you might take my words like that. But no ... it should be so that EAC just doesn't "want" to go faster, or else something is wrong. Compare it with "burst" versus secure ripping. "Burst" would be super fast, but super wrong. Just as an example !

Leo,

I now realize that "direct" isn't much possible with SPDIF. So what it comes to is this :

When you set everything to 44.1/16, you will notice destortion when you attenuate too much. Never mind at which level this is, at some point you will start to hear "radio" sounds, which are in fact the harmonic distortions of throwing out too many bits. No, remember this level (of the XX volume slider).
Now connect everything like 96/24 (or 24 anyway !) and again play the 44.1/16 file at the same level;
If the distortions have gone and instead you hear normal music, you will have used more bits (in the Altman).

Keep any other volume sliders at 0dB ! (like from the Fireface).

The C2 is okay. But the 11x seems way to high to me. Possibly certain drives can do it properly, but since you have the glitches ...

Btw, are they audible ?

Dave,

I think that the lot of your post can be put down in other words, which anyway is how I perceive it myself over and over : all is direct in your face now. So, "direct in your face" *is* a description which might be new to audio, but when you once heard about the phenomenon (like now hehe) you may start to recognize it all over ...

Voices (for sure female) have become super-tight or "steady", "stable" or maybe I can say tout (I'm not sure whether the latter is applicable to bass only). This is the same with guitars and all and more tenor saxophones start to sound like I though only Jan Garbarek could do it (which btw would be a most challenging test for the audio chain).
The same it is with bass.

But it implies another -I think- important matter : when things are in your face, and it is clear that this is about things which naturllay "can" be in your face (a trumpet would be the best example), this implies "more towards you" just the same. And, since not all instruments and noises are "in your face", there's a depth change implied.
Whether this is similar to what Edward told about the headphone I can't tell, but it sure looks like it.

Since I usually listen in the back of the room (actually the kitchen), cooking and boozing and all -and which is at 11 meters / 33' from the speakers- it occurs to me that when the music is loud enough the woman, guitar and all "shout" in my face at one meter distance, while at the same time "background" comes from (more) far. This sure wasn't so ...

It *also* implies a negative, of which I wonder wether anyone of you noticed it : more buzzing. Especially more high key notes are more or less back to before-XX days, and reflections start to play a role again (my all so ever teaching about standing waves being disappeared ... they've come back a bit). In the bass too.
But like I said elsewhere (I think), things seem to start colliding in mid air. So, not so much because of reflections to walls, but merely within itself. Each time it happens I really wonder whether this would be avoidable in nature ...

Leo (and everybody !),

As far as I can tell, what you see is the Fireface. So, it won't look through to the Altman.
Now, since (as far as I recall) the Altman won't accept 24 bits for input, you'd be playing 96/24 through the Fireface indeed, but then into the Altman the last 8 bits will be cut off.

That you can still perceive this as good is another matter, which is because at the level you play the lower 8 bits (or attenuating 48dB) will be lost in the noise anyway. Supposed you attenuate 30 dB (you could check your level of attenuation with the volume slider of XX with the pre-amp at max) you'd loose 2 bits compared to normal 16 bit data. We know by now how that can sound (read : very OK if you only let XX do the attennuation).

All 'n all, the Fireface provides you a means to play 96/24 files. When you'd be able to connect the DAC directly, I don't think it can ...
Can I be right ?

For Dave : you could do it too my such means.


Another thing : sadly I don't have any 96/24 sources with music I could compare with.
What would be true, is that you have a means of playback of these files, which becomes important when the album etc. is not available at a lower rez.

One other thing I noticed, is that a rip can be rather full of "zero" values. Thus, right in between, say, 1Volt values suddenly 0Volt. Your DAC would loudly crack on that. Now :

What I understood (but maybe I'm wrong) is that a 0 value for a DAC implies "do nothing". Or IOW, repeat the last received value (1V in my example). This would be a typicle example of influencing the sound throughout. This would be a "full of glicthes" situation, but one sample long only (only one sample would be repeated).

So, that this can happen at EAC ripping is for sure, but what I'm not sure about is what the DAC does with it. I mean, when the DAC has to step from the smallest 00000000 00000001 value to 00000000 00000000 the "1" value would be repeated also ? That looks wrong to me ...

In fact I am 100% sure things like that *will* influence. Also, and sadly, this is -then- something EAC will *not* report upon.
I once used a drive a couple of days to rip 40 CDs or so, and after that, at listening, those rips were full of glitches. Now poper glicth detection is very handy, because it gives you insight in what happens at a rerip. It could be a matter of trying that particulair track over and over until you have a good rip. Since my glitch detection also reports where the glitches are, it was clear to me -in that situation- that the glitches could occur at various different places at re-ripping. My conclusion : it's interrupts from the system causing them. But : in the end it was the drive inducing for it. Somehow ...

True. WaveLab has similar too. That's why I created my own, as "intelligently" as possible. In its current stage it can be rather infinitly extended.
I was planning to stuff it into XX but actually forgot about it ...

It could be a matter of a wrong drive (read : not properly reading), or wrong EAC settings.
In what time can you usually rip a CD ? (naming the "factor" like 5x is informative enough)

When it is well over 4x you can bet your settings are wrong. So, no matter the native speed of the drive, you should be around 3x - 4x max.
An important setting is the "cache". So, the drive is NOT allowed to cache.

Also, be careful about that glitch detection. I never tried it, but made one of my own. If it works as should, it must ignore "glitches" at the beginning - but more importantly at the end of a track. Otherwise the reported glitches are not real.
Btw, to my own experience when the rip process is prone to creating glitches (but mind the meaning of the phenomenon, which IMO is only 1) it will be audible throughout the CD several times. Mind you, at that stage thousands of samples got "stuck" and keep in mind there are 44100 in a second. A glitch can obviously be 50 samples long as well, but you'll not be able to perceive it as a glitch. But, when many are in there (like sever times per second the 50 sample glitch) it will sure influence sound. When you have 10 50 sample glitches on a whole album, there is now way it will influence sound, and the only thing it could to is create audible small clicks.

I hope it is clear a bit ?
Peter

Edward,


This by itself is nothing strange, because recording people don't pay that much attention to this stuff (mind you, we're talking absolute phase here, which is unrelated to left/right stuff). The only thing what could puzzle me is how they could connect things wrongly, thinking XLR would be properly (hence always the same) phase connected ?
Btw, I have code in there that would auto-set absolute phase correctly, but because of what you now are "able" (?) to hear, it just can't work. This code, therefore, never made it to the public.

Now :
What's happening is actually quite interesting;


To be honest, when I was writing about this to someone via email when I had it just running, I honestly decribed this differently :
... there seem to be phase problems now though ...
By now I wouldn't call it problems, but much more audible what's happening at the recording side, just because it is better audible ...
For example, yesterday I was listening to a recording and the voice sounded so out of phase that after I while I started to pay attention to it and now I'm sure the person was singing through a slight touch of vocoder. I never heard that before ...

That it all causes more 3D positioning is clear to me too, and since I try this with records I know, I'm kind of convinced that it is for the better.
What I feel is that things have become so "sharp" thinking in waves, that colliding in air happens different / more precise (?).

All what we listen to for 3D (or 2D if you want) matters is related to phase and "time alignment". What XXHighEnd now is "starting" (hehe) to produce is better phase conjunction or however to call it.
I'm fairly sure it is also something our brain has to get used to. I don't know why, but so far each day I have the feeling things have to burn in for a couple of minutes to the sense of "is this right ??", while after these few minutes the music becomes as unnoticeable as possible.

At this moment I'm not sure what to make of it all. Think of this :
2 voices sing into their own microphones. The distance to the microphone is not equal (like half an inch difference). Well, that would incur for absolute phase problems, wouldn't it ?
Same with voices versus instruments directly connected (like a synthesizer) or the sound catpured by a microphone again (like often happens with (bass) guitars and the microphone just being in front of a monitor speaker). All those individual distances wouldn't match.
I think this works out differently when 2 microphones capture the mixed sound at e.g. 10 meters distance.

It seems that the "anomalies" coming from the various microphones and all are audible now ?

Hi Terje,

On behalf of customers and users here, could you please re-check ...
Apart from (I think) only the specs of the CD10 mention explicitly 24 bit input being possible, it is my hunch that any device allowing for that would need a special USB driver for it. So, not the USB DAC Audio device.
Could that be true ? if yes, where can it be obtained ?

Also, by now can you please try the DAC Test facility from 0.9u-1 ?
If another player can do it, I be happy to try to get it to work. But as long as theories (and a little practice ) say otherwise it's kind of difficult for me.

Thank you very much,
Peter

Thank you for this one too. The code *is* different so it can matter.

Gerard, I tend to think you are right just the same, or ... more. Anyway, I too think this is happening for a few weeks longer BUT somehow only after a few first tracks of the day ? When it happens once (and it almost always does on a day) it never happens again on that day.
Recognizeable maybe ?

Computers ...

Good that you mention this. Althoug sometimes it may happen, the last days it occurred to me indeed that it was more often now. Thinking of what can cause it, I couldn't make it less or more or anything. So I thought I was imagining it.

Ok, I still don't know where to look, but at least I now know that it's true.
Thank you.

I am really sorry, but I can't determine from your posts when exactly this happens, except for always.


Here too, messages like this I can't deal with. Is this caused by SP1 now ? was it in the few minutes you could try 0.9u-1 the same 9 (I bet not) or was in with 0.9u-0a as well ?

Please try to be more clear, as well as maybe you can answer my questions more precisely. Before SP1 I don't think you quite did already, and now *I* am lost ...

In each occasion try to imagine that I really can't guess what happens in which situation. IOW, tell EVERYTHING you can imagine I can't guess. Ok ?

Ah ... Edward, I take it that this is Doubled (or Upsampled) ?