regal

Windose users have really been left out in the cold as far as I understand Ozones fantastic SRC isn't avoilable ans a VSt and won't integrate to foobar or winamp for on the fly play back. I mention those to programs because they have HDCD decoding, we no Mac will neve ave HDD decoding. for most its not a big deal but I have 1TB of HDCD encoded music (grateful dead collection.) I am considering off-line decoding of all these files, but unsure of the volume level, dithering issues, plus the HDD space and opportunity for screw-ups (not a fan of decoded archiving.) Does anyone know if a high quality VST or plugin is in the pipeline for windows?

HDCD decoding

That video and project is 5 years old and the work nearly a decade old. Sigma-Delta tech has stagnated. The innovation today is with custom R2R, for example MSB DAC modules are finding their way into many recent 5 figure European DACs. Someone will figure out a way to do it cheaper with modern fab eventually. Its been done already with tubes no DAC straight DSD amplified with tubes, I should have saved the link kind of reminded me of Bill Gates working on DOS in his garage Granted it was more of an experiment but no way I would invest major dollars in a DAC today. Changes are coming.

All this talk about the latest generation super Dac chips? There haven't been any since the ESS and that was almost 5 years ago. And as much as I admire ESS for attempting to correct the deficiencies with S-D, they said they cant measure the issue so how did they engineer a fix ? again there have been no high end DAC chips developed in years. I thinks S-D is no longer really being invested in from an R&D perspective. Big companies like A-D & TI don't see profits from high end audio DAC chips. Smaller elite chip fabrication is requiring less and less capital and hopefully soon we will see boutique small scale SOA R2R converters developed for audio. Similar to what MSB does only more cost effective. The PcM1704 isn't going any where until then, we've been hearing TI will quit making them for a decade but their top instrumentation customers wont allow it. TI also seems to have more development focus on R2R DaC's (for instrumentation) than S-D (wonder why ?) Many USB DAC's will absolutely be most vulnerable to obsolescence because the USB 3.0 standard doesn't include UAC 2. Its already obsolete ,and the work around PC proprietary drivers for hirez USB already don't work with some of intels latest chipsets. Intel and M$ could give a $hit about UAC2 or backwards compatibility with odd proprietary usb drivers. The future of the Dac is moving the over-sampling to the computer, The oversampling algorithm has always been the Achilles heal of digital playback. With the computer there is ultimate flexibility. Future DACs will be 32 bit/384khz i2s & 128 DxD input "NOS", just the input, clock, DAC, and analog stage, no oversampling. Programs like AudioNirvana are already there, the hardware is being developed. In a decade we will laugh at current DAC's like we do 80s cassette decks.

I have searched for hours but the whole thing is just a convoluted mess. I have a decent PC built around a sandy bridge i5-2500, with a TH67 motherboard. I use the onboard HD3000 graphics. It is a very quiet efficient setup. My receiver is an old Marantz that accepts 7.1 24/96 LPCM over HDMI (it does decode.) The player I use is called ArcSoft Total Media Theater. Does anyone know if this uses intel quiksync hardware aceleration so I won't bog down the cpu when decoding the new hirez audio ? Also in order to use the computer software (TMT in my case) I need to make sure I have Protected Audio Path on the graphics card (HD3000 on my cpu), I can confim that the newer ivy bridge cpu's have this but can't confirm that last years Sandy Bridge models do. Anyone know ?

Yes it does. And perhaps I am being to harsh, but look at a modern respected DAC the Berkley Alpha reports which report -110db THD+N which is 0.0003% THD+N. Heck even Valab's latest measures significantly better than the ODAC's THD.

The thing that surprises me is the basic 1k %THD+N is .0027%, this number may seem low but as we all know thd leads to IMD and the sum of all distortion is only -80db down. Now my 1990's Parasound D/AC1100 only has 0.0025% THD+N, just seems like for an "objectivists" DAC this isn't a big leap foward. I was going to try one but the numbers are not generating enthusiasm.

Forget PCI Emu with SandyBridge, I tried several none worked. Basically no multi-channel pci soundcards work with sandybridge from what I can tell. Budget for an Asus pci-e soundcard. Also stick with a P67,H67,68 motherboard for native USB 2.0, the new 2012 ivybridge motherboards have not proven compatible with anything yet, this time I'm not going to be a first adopter .

I think people confuse engineering with science often. There are chemists (scientist) who experiement and develop theory and explaination. Their interest is in knowledge of a working model. Then there are chemical engineers who understand the theories but make a product, many times iteratively, trial and error. The science helps reduce the number of trials, but an engineer's interest is in a end application product or process. Now you also have pysicists (scientists) and electrical engineers. Neither are very relevant to reproducing music, because neither have working explaination of human perception. An electrical engineer's goal is to make a product. Ever see an EE design a speaker? They can't, and the don't design anything in the audio chain except components. First it was tubes, then transistors, now IC's, thats all they do. Its up to someone else with a good ear and broad background to design a good DAC or amplifier, never a classic EE, thats frankly a bit absurd to imply. Its like saying it takes an EE to design a guitar I frankly think concept of neutrality from an audio playback chain that exactly reproduces the data encoded on the CD to be a serious mis-understanding of the human hearing/perception. A DAC, an amplifier, and a speaker compose a musical instrument for playback of a rough snapshot of a performance, a lot of folks are looking to the wrong group of talent to build thier audio components. An example would be an organ builder, I would much rather work with the guy who designed hammond organs than the guy who designed the IC opamp if I was designing an audio component like a DAC or amplifier. EE just isn't the field for this, almost completely irrelevant to the product as a whole. Obviously the physics are important but not all that complicated if you pay attention.

"EMF will result in some change in current or voltage at the speakers. Otherwise it wouldn't matter." An electron is EMF.

i "In audio technology, the signals to the speakers can only have current and voltage. " Maybe to a physicist from the 18th century. But today we know what an EMF is dont we ?

" Hogwash, I used to read "Scientific American" and the main thing I learned is how much we don't know. " Did you learn that physics is wrong? That quantum mechanics that describe the electrons in our soundsystem everyone frets about is wrong, and that the theory of relativity that breaks down to nonsense with black holes is wrong. Science can't model perception, only thing remotely relavent to an audiophile is CAOHC certified hearing test. Measurements are just a tool, science is just a tool. Your perception, your ears, are way beyond the capability of physics or psychoacoustics. " If *YOU* hear a difference between two boxes, disks, or whatever, a blind test will reveal it " With what confidence ? Are you saying a DBT has a 100% CI ? If you are intersted in testing hypothesis with DBT it would be helpful to take a basic course on statistical modeling. Last question what does ben and jerry's ice cream taste like? Please do a DBT, also show me an FFT of the tongues sensory response before I buy any.

"In science, we can never prove a hypothesis" Bingo. Its very easy to see who understands science and who confuses it with religion in this thread When anyone claims they have a defined "reality", my B.S. meeter goes off. Its amazing that many scientists don't understand the foundation it is based upon. There as of yet no unified theory of even basic physics (gravity , let alone how perception works.

As an engineer in a different feild, when I talk about 'audiophile" hardware that is semi-expensive but has solid design, the other engineers just don't understand and I get looks. They think itunes/ or WPM and a MB output is solid and anymore is paranoia. They can't graps the concept the digital needs good timing and low noise for a precise jitter free playback. To them PCM playback is no different that moving data from a HDD to Ram. Its foreign to them that the digital data is converted to playback in real time and it takes a good analog side to get realistic sound. Many think all transport and DAC's sound the same because they have never heard a good amp and good speakers. Some of them do get the tube interest but that is because they play electric guitar. That is about as far as it goes, so I appreciate forums like this where people from different fields share ideas. There was a real shift the last few years with the Sabre and projects like the O2 amplifier. I am not an objectivist, being an audiophile is empirical. For years objectivist have fallen back on DBT, which doesn't work if you listen with your right brain. Cartesion science has little to offer hardware that is is evaluated by the perception. And I understand the drive to standardize with DBT, but its not good science at this time. Also an FFT snapshot of a few tones is just a guide, not a silver bullet. Music reproduction in the home from PCM is limited, in reality no one wants to hear exactly what the studio's product. There is a lot of imperfection in what gets released. I veiw our "audiophile hardware" as a musical instrument, the goal being realism. The philosophies move over time and for whatever reason the pendulum has swung toward objectivism. The thing folks forget is the studios master their material to different DAC/amp/monitors, for years it was PM2 as the king, with a matching PMD100 for playback at home. With the right mastering engineer the results can be magic. The issue I run latelyinto is I really thing a lot of modern mastering is tuned to wolfson and AKM DAC playback, its not a bad chip but the sound of a good multibit is tough to beat. .

Anyone who owned a good PCI soundcard who upgraded to SandyBridge may understand this message. With Sandybridge, PCI went non-native with intel, meaning it relied on a 3rd party interface. I guess I was the first to point out there were issues especially with multichannel soundcards, now a goodle search shows hundreds of posts across the web with people SOL, obsolete cards. Now with the Ivybridge motherboards the USB2 will be non-native. I have tried a few USB-Spdif devices on USB3.0 ports that don't work in most circumstances. Also the PCIE is changing with Ivy-bridge, potentialy incompatible with any decent soundcard. Especially if you are looking at any form of soundcard or USB DAC that plugs into a computer and requires drivers you need to proceed with caution. Now some companies you can trust will update their drivers for new intel motherboards, but don't assume that when Intel says "backwards" compatible that it works with all audio devices. And also don't assume that all motherboard companies will give a BIOS (UEFI) that will work with your audio device. Notice that Berkley chose to make their USB interface "separate" from their DAC, these are very smart engineers who see the that the computer to audio interface as a technology is still volatile. So if you aren't the type who wants a "separate" computer for audio, and you upgrade to the latest computers but don't have tons of spare cash. The safest bet is a driverless USB1-spdif. The asynchronous firmware coded TAS usb chips (native windows USB driver) are proving to be the most stable and many are finding more of an audio designed component than the Xmos "cpu" clocking at 600mhz. 24/96 is possible with usb1 with the TAS chips, no driver, no odd handling of the audio clock, galvanic isolation on the USB side. Probably most likely to keep working with future intel PC technology. Just something to think about, call me nuts, whatever but money is tight these days and I look at my obsolete EMU1616 and see this situation happening to a lot of folks with much more expensive DAC's in a few years. Let's hope I am wrong.