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marconi barbosa

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  1. Not exactly contributing to answer your question...but my 2cents here I am personally not willing to pay more than the price of a macbook on a transport in the foreseeable future. To my knowledge you can find better performance today with a dedicated transport, but at a price. One reason, for example, the usb implementations that are evolving... My guess is that a Computer based transport has the potential to be a less costly solution, for various reasons, including that it does other stuff too. I own two stello's dac and a macbook, very happy with this for now. Another point is, just a thought: I reckon physical media (like CD's, SACD's) will soon disappear, I mean, CD will be the last widespread media type, will never die, but won't be replaced....(just my view), and hi definition war will lead to a software era, the master flac type era.... Cheers, Marconi
  2. Clay, I think you are absolutely right, both in content and form to put it. Others did so as well, but it seems that it will have no end.... I've been silently sharing the same disgust, trying to avoid this tread but it kept creeping on me. How absurd these pseudo-scientists, in the "name of science", come here to teach their ill funded, arrogant, "technological opinions" aggressively on issues that may be or may not be. We all should know better, a real scientist ought to be humble. And as far as the psycho-physics (acoustics) of jitter perception is concerned the best we could do is to say, maybe? This is totally unrelated to the price of stuff. I posted before, lost in the nauseum, trying to halt this war (which I don't see as subjectivism/objectivism) , dismissing psycho-physics (acoustics) as "subjectivism". Radicals (ill informed) be aware that although that may not appear in your dusty old book, these perception questions do make objective sense and can be approached, of course it is not a true/false statement, but will always be displayed as statistics on population, such as maybe "an slight" trend. e.g (you don't hear anything above 20khz right? why bother with needles/capsules that do 50khz?). Anyway, sick as I am of this tread, I am happy this mess occurred in the beginning of the site so we can choose how to better it in time and save this space from ill informed "scientific hooligans". Or just give up, given the energy this sort of debate sucks. Hope anyone will not be shy to ask, even more subtle questions related to computer sound, as for example the effects of the hardware/software implementations on jitter. Just a last word on the ear. The last big quantum mechanics prediction was confirmed, if I am not wrong in the 80's because a fella (student) did plug his earphone on the equipment instead of the complex signal analysis hardware built to detect such a signal buried in noise. This is not even psychophysics, it is just how good ears are. Cheers to all. Ps. Notice that, I don't pay for usb cables, they are free aren't they? they are not my priority whatsoever. Marconi
  3. Thanks Steve, I been searching for such for a while, i am still yet to be comfortable with these " computer and/or audiophiles" guys methodologies in testing things. This review while important plays with so many variables that is still hard to see the point. Nice you pointed out the terrible Stello USB thing. It is just a pretty good traditional dac with a me too USB connection. I am not a super sensible golden ear guy. I just can't have digital from the computer sounding wrong, by it, I mean, worse than basic 70's LP gear. I like free lunch, that is my problem. I will check all I can first, if I need to step up from poppulse/trends to yours I will. Have you follow the tread about USB cables? what you think of that? I mean, both the topic (if usb cables matter) or the way people are getting silly there! If you did read something there, I better identify myself ( in order not to be bashed :0) I am physicist (phd), computer scientist (pos-docs), and have been working in the field of biological vision perception for a while now (psycho-physics) stuff. All this don't matter of course, as don't matter any of my equipment brands name. And I am humbled by nature. I think subjetivism will, as science evolve, and should be accounted for, reproducibly. Certainly, what we have now to measure is our ears and vague words to describe it. Equipment can do a fair bit, but not all.... Cheers, Marconi
  4. I agree that the subjectivist view are indeed causing trouble not only in perception of sound, but at many places, as in perception of God too, see poor Darwin! But, this tread reminds me of people that says why the dac in a computer could possible be bad? Why a transport is bad or good? isn't it only 0 and 1's? Don't I open my documents right? No matter how much I copy them? The scientific, physics, music cenario is, time domain and the quantity in scrutiny seems to be jitter. Music (from a computer) is not like your email, word office doc or your latex/emacs file for the next IEEE/APS paper you writing. But, the scientific, psycho-acustics, tells you many things. One thing is people have different perceptions, but like mp3/org/ their algorithms follows a trend only, to satisfy the mean of a (restricted) population, so does all standards. So, anyway, it is always good to compare equivalent orders of effects. Now to the lab, as far as I can see, usb cables would be the last thing I would consider changing!!!! As for usb, if you are using power from the computer you are more or less screwed. Go buy some batteries or even an el cheapo power suply. I think, that different usb cables might sound different, but then will sound bad anyway (comparing with the same thing with a proper power) with probability 1. In other words if your usb cables sounds different, it is very likely they failed standards badly, jittery somehow (god knows how), notice that is very easy to stamp an usb symbol in a plug without ever passing tests!!! In short, I would change DAC, or the USB link, a good one should be able to recover from a resonably bad cable, if there is really one in the universe. Cheers, ps. Before changing cables/dac do this: Turn your monitor off. Turn wireless off. Turn visualization plugins off. and just for the hell of it...use the money wisely and improve to older pure malt?
  5. Hi Guys, first of all congrats for all you pushing ahead for better audio from computers. Particularly for the founders of the site. I hope I don't get misunderstood in my first post here, but I had a funny impression on the site reviews of equipment. I did read a few of dacs reviews and didn't check names of reviewers. While they are all very informative, sometimes much more than the companies brochures, they don't seem to me very critical, let alone comparative. Comparing the Cambridge Audio Dac with a 10 times more expensive DAC don't say much, particularly with all the DAC's at the same price range already pilling up there. I own a Stello Dac da100 (both signature and standard), an Audio Sector Dac, 2 usb link (trends, poppulse). Using this stuff in two systems (office/home) with macbook and itunes. Contrary to my wildest expectations, the usb implementation in the Stello is not as good as it could be. Adding the usb link improves de sound from wrong to right! I wonder, from the experience you guys had, which of all these usb dacs are better. Look, this question is hard to answer, one has to try them all and it can be subtle. What I would like to see is a lot of pair (triple) not too rhetoric comparisons. My contribution is simple. Both links I have perform equivalently. The nos-dac sound very relaxed and vinyl like (whatever that means). The Stello without the link sounds *wrong*, but has at lot of things that might impress initially, but then is tiring. Plug an el cheapo usb link and the sound becomes gorgeous, just *right*. Because of this search for the *right* sound from the computer, I almost spent money updating parts of my Rotel1070/pre/power/nordost/wharfedale diamond 9.6 chain. The office system is a Dared mp5 (in this case the stello sounds much better the the internal usb, but now I know it can improve a lot with a link too). Now I am a happy camper. I am not selling links here, I just wonder, why Stello left such a bad usb get into such a nice DAC?? just for us to have one more of these weird boxes, an eyesore(both of them), around. Cheers. Marconi.
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