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196  Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / London 3/6/17 on: June 04, 2017, 01:00:34 pm
My playlist this morning:

1. Henryk Górecki - Symphony No. 3 Op. 36; III. Lento (cantabile semplice)

2. David Munrow - Palastinalied

3. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells, Pt. 1

Mani.
197  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 26, 2017, 04:05:12 pm
There must be something special in your situation with the Intona.

Sure, two things spring immediately to mind:

1. I use two separate AC mains circuits, one for the music server & Mach II, the other for the NOS1 & amps. I therefore require galvanic isolation between the Mach II and the NOS1. But the Phisolator should provide this just as effectively as the Intona does.

(Incidentally, I did try the Mach II on the same AC circuit as the NOS1, and there was absolutely no difference in SQ whatsoever. I decided to switch it back to the music server AC circuit, to keep the load on the PS Audio P10 regenerator powering the NOS1/amp circuit as low as possible.)

2. I use single-ended tube amps with my high efficiency horns. Compared to the high quality push-pull solid state amps I have here (Einstein and BD-Design at the moment), the tube amps sound way more laid back, and simply more natural to my ears. Although I didn't try it, I suspect I would have had less of any issue with the Phisolator sounding too 'soft' and 'rounded' had I been using either of the SS amps.

Mani.
198  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 25, 2017, 10:28:25 pm
Just before sending both my NOS1s in to be upgraded, I was enjoying simply the most satisfying sound I'd ever managed to achieve in my listening room. But since receiving them back in their G3 guise, there has been something continually bugging me. Yes, overall the sound is better, but it sounds overly 'soft' and 'rounded'... a bit like DSD! The same sparkle that I was so much enjoying isn't there. Removing the Intona before the Phisolator has helped. Switching back to Arc Prediction has helped. But I think I've now found the culprit...

I had a couple of hours to play around with things earlier this evening. So I tried the following:

1. PC -> long Clarixa -> input A, ouput B -> short Clarixa -> input C

Oh dear, this simply amplified the 'softening'/'rounding' effect even further.

2. PC -> long Clarixa -> Intona -> short Clarixa -> input C

Yippee, the sparkle is back! The sound is simply stunning.

So, the upshot seems to be that I don't like the sound of the Phisolator, or that I prefer the sound of the Intona at least. I also think that in scenario 1, the short Clarixa was simply acting as a window on the sound of the Phisolator, and wasn't itself messing the sound up.

If other G3 users are happy with the Phisolator, that's great. But as things stand, I'll be continuing with the Intona in place.

Tomorrow, I'll try my second Intona (yes, I have two of everything!) with the G3 in my office system - I have the same criticisms of an overly soft/rounded sound there too, compared to the sound before the upgrade.

Peter, thanks for adding the A, B and C USB connectors to the G3, allowing us to try these things.

Mani.

Edit: I'm finally happy to write a 'review' of the NOS1 G3, which I'll do in the next day or two, and post on CA.
199  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: NOS1a and HQPlayer on Win 10 on: May 21, 2017, 06:34:01 pm
... now onto HQP as NAA.

So help me out here. How would you be able to connect the NOS1a to an NAA without a Linux driver for the NOS1a? What am I missing?

I use the following chain in my office system:

Roon (on music server) -> direct ethernet connection -> HQPlayer (on W10 audio PC) -> NOS1a

Here, the audio PC can't be regarded as an NAA, because it's doing the heavy lifting for HQPlayer... right?

Mani.
200  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 14, 2017, 02:03:08 pm
… today there's no leanness whatsoever and the accuracy ony shows better than before (I'd say).

Yes, and I’d say to the extent that even AP doesn’t sound a tad too lean any more.

Moral : All is now so enormously better (whatever that exactly means) that all matters enormously more as well. Try another OS for fun ...

I’m not sure I’m going to be able to bring myself to try this anytime soon.

It actually is a completely new DAC but this is "able" to not express in each track (or album). I don't have the examples at hand, but some times I play something I did not play for a longer time with high expectations (justified to almost everything) and then it does not work out (sounds similar to 5 years back). So it also has to depend on the music styles you usually play.

Now, that’s interesting! I went through a few genres yesterday and there was nothing that I tried that I didn’t feel was the best I’d ever heard it. My only disappointment was being 3dB or so down from where I would have liked to have been with a couple of classical tracks. But actually, at the low levels I was forced to play these tracks (due entirely to the ultra-low gain of the amps in my main system), the sense of ‘depth of stage’ was staggering. Closing my eyes, it was just like sitting right at the very back of a real venue, the only give-away being the lack of sound from the side and rear walls – actually, a little like sitting in a concert hall box, which instead of being located at the front and side, is located centrally at the back of the venue.

Oh and one track I found fascinating was ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Since buying LZ IV on LP in around 1983, I must have listened to this a 1000 times. But never have I noticed JP’s chord changes so vividly in the opening bars as I did yesterday. Did it add to the enjoyment of listening to the track? Well, I think it did, because it gave me better sense of the energy, the action, and I suppose the ‘musicianship’ that went into creating it.

For me, the G3 may really provide a totally new way of listening to and appreciating music.

Mani
201  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 14, 2017, 01:17:59 pm
Dance music ?

Well, certainly not 'Saturday Night Fever' or anything like that! I mean this sort of stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_music.

You don't refer to this as 'dance music' in the Netherlands?

Mani.
202  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 14, 2017, 08:17:02 am
A quick update...

The G3 is everything that Peter and others have already said about it. Here are my views, in my own words.

There is an unwavering 'solidity' to the sound that makes everything sound so right and natural. You don't know you don't have it in the non-G3... until you hear the G3.

Instruments sound fuller, but interestingly, more dynamic too. Before, it was the leading edges of the instruments that gave the impression of dynamics, but now it's the body of the instrument too.

My horns drop off quickly below 40Hz, and I just resigned myself to the belief that they'd never be any good with dance music. But with the G3, they do a pretty good job. No, they won't shake the house down with subterranean bass, but man, they'll get your feet tapping to the beat. I listened to music (all types) for a few hours yesterday, and my neck was hurting by the end of it.

The sound of the G3 is very hard to describe. Six years ago, I wrote this when I compared the then NOS1 to my beloved Pacific Microsonics:

I’ve mentioned before that the NOS1 is like taking an x-ray of the music. It is so crystal clear and pure. And yet it is so easy to listen to. It is exciting and yet relaxing at the same time. I’ve never been too bothered about imaging, but I’ll just mention that imaging with the NOS1 is super, super sharp. I think people for whom imaging is a big deal would love this aspect of the NOS1.

In contrast, the Model Two is more full-bodied. It gives the impression of richer harmonic content. What’s interesting (for me) is that it seems to retain much of the NOS1’s detail but loses some of its super sharpness. It’s quite a nice balance. The bottom end is more pronounced and weightier – but then perhaps a little less tuneful.

At this point, it is a hard one to call. My wife actually prefers the Model Two, and I can totally understand why. It is so musically engaging. It just sounds so nice. Is this down to extra distortion? I don’t know. But if it is, then it’s nice distortion that is adding rather than subtracting from the listening experience.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the NOS1 is more accurate. But it sounds a bit thin in comparison. If this sound ‘fleshes out’ a little over time, I think it will be very, very good indeed.

The 'a' upgrade and the Custom filters in XX certainly helped to 'flesh out' the sound of the NOS1. But my feeling now is that they provided more of a 'translation' to the sound, and not a 'transformation' of the sound.

The G3 isn't an upgrade... it's a quantum leap IMO... but perhaps not an obvious one.

Mani.
203  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Re: Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 13, 2017, 09:37:28 am
Been listening with Arc Prediction this morning. Hmm... I think the G3 mates well with 'thinner' and more 'incisive' sound that AP tends to give, compared to any of the Custom filters. Will stick with AP for now and see how I get on with different types of music...

Mani.
204  Ultimate Audio Playback / Phasure NOS1 DAC / Mani's NOS1 G3 on: May 12, 2017, 07:53:40 pm
I thought I'd start my own thread to share my thoughts about my NOS1 G3 (both of them actually). I was going to just post in Paul's thread, but I think I'll have a lot to say, and wanted to keep my thoughts separate.

Only one thing for now, because the NOS1 in my main system has only been on for a couple of hours.

The Intona before the Phisolator totally kills the sound.

I replaced the NOS1 in exactly the same configuration it had been in before its upgrade, with the Intona in place. And if I'm totally honest, I was going to post that the upgrade had taken away the 'sparkle' that I was so much enjoying before. Yes, the sound was now 'fuller', and the bass was definitely deeper and more powerful, but there was a clear loss of sparkle and the sound was generally grey and flat, with the leading edges of instruments obscured.

But taking the Intona out of the equation has totally remedied these issues.

Lots more to come in time...

Mani.
205  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Ethernet vs USB on: May 04, 2017, 11:08:39 am
Anyway moral : yes Mani. I think we are quite far already with what we achieved with USB. But if you see what can be achieved for enormous difference just by tweaking the USB cable, then who knows what may come of that.

Hey Peter, good luck with this. Over the years, I've spent an inordinate amount of time comparing a whole load of different BNC-spdif cables to each other and XLR-AES cables to each other. They've all sounded different! Changing the length of the cable (i.e. exactly the same cable material) seemed to change the sound. My feeling was that these changes must be due to impedance mismatches at the connections, and that longer lengths can actually be helpful here.

FWIW, I think my longer Clarixa (3.5m) is at least as good, if not better sounding than the shorter Clarixa cables I have. Perhaps down to an impedance mismatch again??? If you've never tried a longer length, perhaps you should?

Mani.
206  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Ethernet vs USB on: May 04, 2017, 07:56:05 am
The endpoint could run...

And this is the issue for me. Whether the endpoint runs Windows (great, we could still use our NOS1s) or Linux (a NOS1 driver would have to be developed), there would still need to be a connection from the endpoint to the DAC. Unless, of course, the endpoint is built into the DAC, which might introduce all sorts of noise issues into the DAC itself.

To me, it's absolutely not clear why ethernet, I2s, spdif, AES/EBU, or any other audio connection would deal with noise inherently better than a USB connection. The galvanic isolation of some of these says nothing about their ability to reject noise, and it's noise getting through to the DAC chips that can be the only mechanism responsible for the changes we hear in sound when we make changes to software/hardware upstream.

My gut feeling is that we (Peter and others!) have taken USB so far now that it might actually out-perform all other audio connections right now. Just a gut feeling.

Mani.
207  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Ethernet vs USB on: May 03, 2017, 07:38:39 pm
You may get the idea that I'm a fan of keeping my upsampling workstation away from the electronics using an Ethernet  Wink

Haha... I remember trying to convince Peter to go the NAA route some 4 years ago:

So where does this leave us? Here’s my ultimate dream setup:

- main PC with W7/W8 (shouldn’t matter at all)
- although HQPlayer is cable of excellent SQ, and even though most of the controls in the Settings area should become obsolete, I’d rather use XX
     - I prefer the library management
     - I really, really want to use phase alignment
- of course, the NOS1 DAC – it’s simply the best I’ve heard

What would it take to achieve this dream setup? Obviously, Peter and Miska (Jussi) need to work together on it, and find a mutually beneficial way to do this. There would need to be appropriate drivers made for the NOS1 to work under Linux. And I think that’s it...

But a lot has changed since then. With the Mach II audio PC, I'm not sure an NAA is necessary now. And in any event, without a Linux driver, we can't use our NOS1s with an NAA.

But USB remains to total PITA, and if ethernet is the ultimate solution, we should pursue it. But audio PC -> ethernet -> NOS1 is surely the way to go (as indeed you seem to suggest).

Mani.
208  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Ethernet vs USB on: May 03, 2017, 08:08:45 am
We have a brand new NOS1a owner in our midst somewhere (so far he hides) who is going to make us such an interface.

From CA:

Quote
I happen to have a very small stash [of PCM1704s] (8 or 16) sitting on the shelf for a very very rainy day Happy Maybe @PeterSt will trade me an NOS1a for my stash :rotfl:

Ah, so you did take these off Jonathan's hands for a NOS1?

Welcome jabbr!

Mani.
209  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Ethernet vs USB on: May 02, 2017, 05:42:13 pm
That link does not work really well...

Yeah, it's the ")" that's missing from the end of the URL when you click on the link (and I can't seem to correct it). Just put it in at the end and you'll get to the correct Wiki page.

The bandwidth looks OK...

Mani.
210  Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Resolator - USB Isolator and Regenerator (external version) on: May 02, 2017, 02:30:30 pm
Wow, doesn't time fly?

Mani.
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