Shadorne

Sorry again, I missed this. My apologies for the repetition, I obviously should have checked to see if this has been posted already. I feel like I am a lightweight here and just way out of my depth. Good luck and thanks for the fish!

OK. Sorry Try this

Do you mean for the purposes of audio discussions on this thread, stick to “measured performance, THD, SINEAD, gold, silver etc” - things that can be measured objectively? There is still a problem with total pure objectivity (like ASR website makes effort to steer towards) in that a pure gold or pure silver cable can be objectively measured to a degree of purity - similar to THD, SINEAD etc. However objective data is not all of equal importance or relevance to fidelity or what we hear. MP3 lossy compression is terrible fidelity but still sounds pretty good. I am just saying we are kind of trapped no matter how objective one tries to be.

Expectation bias is everywhere and exploited everywhere for profit and power/control. Hi-fi isn’t exempt from this - like medicine it is actually highly susceptible because placebo effect is based on feelings/impressions and so hard to measure and eliminate (unlike MPG epa ratings). Climate Change presupposes that climate isn’t supposed to change (it is a set up because climate has never ever been fixed). A high end restaurant will serve food in a top class setting with well dressed clean servers as our expectation is lower when we get food delivered in a paper bag by someone in sweatpants and a hoody. I could go on but if you don’t see it absolutely EVERYWHERE and aren’t tuned into it - especially coming from “authority” and especially after the pandemic then you may have been born in the last rain…

Shure SE846 are my favorites

Your setup is likely playing a roll here in what you prefer. The speaker drivers are hard ceramic material which will affect sound the most.

@Miska Thank you, and as usual you are highly responsive. Much appreciated! I am aware of your preferences and I feel I understand as to what for you constitutes improved Transients, Space and Timbre. I can see how the amplifier/speakers/room setup may affect preference for one modulator/filter combo over another and how the DAC itself is going to affect the choice of settings - this is before adding personal taste to the equation. To my ears processing Redbook to DSD256 1) apodizing adds slight compression (creates impression of transients because of a more punchy sound in a similar way to all compressors). 2) minimum phase filters affect timbre and softens transients 3) the combination 1 and 2 can in some cases balance but there remains an overall shift in emphasis more towards lower frequencies (so the shimmer and harshness is also gone) 4) traditional long sync linear phase still extracts the most out of a recording and is likely (theoretically) the most accurate reconstruction filter (but it does, as you correctly point out, equally present all of the recording issues too - like poor anti-alias filtering from studio downsampling or AtoD) My ears prefer linear phase traditional sync very long sharp cut off filters, as timbre, transients and spatial cues sound most correct or natural (to my taste) especially for vocals. It may be simply what I am used to hearing and I have learnt to adjust for recording issues. Of course modern music (younger) listeners are no longer exposed to much in the way of natural sounds as everything has been digitally processed (I can hear auto-tune on most modern vocals but most younger listeners may not even realize it having never been exposed to real voices on their favourite music) I can understand that most listeners will not gravitate towards “old school” filters and modulators. On the DSD256 modulator side of things (converting Redbook), I assume noise shaping plays the starring role, and I am amazed at how much the noise floor affects the sense of space. Most digital on most DACs seems trapped largely in the plane of the speakers and audibly I have the impression that sounds emanate more from individual speakers. The ASDM7EC-Super really does magic in freeing the sound from the speakers and making sounds emanate from in between and outside the speakers - it also retains good depth. A superb modulator to my ears, YMMV, depending on the setup. Question: what would be the most rigorous old school long sync filter that I should try? (I know this will have lots of pre and post ringing but this has never bothered me, possibly because I don’t hear above 14.5KHz anyway). Thank you again for your tireless efforts to clarify and give honest to the best of your knowledge answers to the endless questions from the community! I know that your online presence helps market HQPlayer but nevertheless your commitment is commendable if not outright incredible.

Would be great to start a thread on T+A HQP settings. Ok. I like Sinc-long filter with ASDM7EC-Super modulator on HQPlayer feeding DSD256 to T+A DAC200. This is for my Redbook collection which dwarfs everything else (about 600+ albums). I highly prefer DSD over any PCM with DAC200. After thorough testing the above is the best spatial, transient and timbre to my ears. Nothing else sounds quite right to me (although lots of fantastic sounding options - just none are quite as “perfect“ to my taste which is Sinc-Long. Any suggestions what else to try? What is the most rigorous linear phase sync filter (in keeping with audio engineering tradition since the 80’s) that is recommended? Sinc-long seems to have more space and better soundstage than Sinc-L - is there any other Linear phase pure sinc function filter to try? (apodizing or minimum phase filters are audibly degraded to my ears/taste - I have given up on them) thanks anyone who cares to indulge me….or share their favourites. I find running at -4dbfs helps clear up some harshness distortion on loud tracks like U2 Walk On (DAC200 does not handle intersample overs so a little digital headroom is a good thing)

I leave it to moderators. The relevance of my remarks are my perception of a software losing its focus and the acquisition by Samsung/Harmon ties into my perception. Obviously many are welcome to disagree - it is somewhat a gut feeling I have about Roon/

/start rant I am worried. I already feel that Roon has lost direction in the last 3 years. I find I am frustrated waiting for updates/database re-scans etc. I find myself fighting the user interface to know where tracks are and their provenance. Searches now take far too long - it is becoming painful to use (even on the fastest machines money can buy). I am lifetime user since it started. I am finding user interface is worse than when I started. I am finding bugs when playing two DACs simultaneously. I am finding audible processing problems in several situations - for example turning on parallel/core processing causes audible sound quality degradation on my Mac M2 Max Studio. Roon radio used to have good suggestions but recently it is terrible - proposing garbage - I realize this might be due to it becoming mainstream and therefore more listeners have no musical depth (I play highly regarded classics from maestro monster musicians and yet Roon radio proposes modern garbage from lightweight musicians that barely deserve to be called musicians) Sadly Roon suffers the curse of all software. Initially it is developed by people that use it (like Steve Jobs) and they keep it functional. Finally, at the end stage, the software team is full of people who don’t actually use most features of the software and they are just dumping new features into the application until the point that it does everything with mediocrity and no longer excels at anything. I have seen this in my engineering career countless times - it seems to be an inevitable unavoidable cycle and Roon is on it’s last legs. Folks, I am ready to look for alternatives - what are your suggestions? /end rant

Try something with impressive wide deep soundstage. Slave to the rhythm hot blooded mix Grade Jones, Duran Duran Rio album, Amused to Death, Hell Freezes Over Eagles, DSOTM, Tracy Chapman, George Benson Weekend In LA live “On Broadway” etc. The effect of any audible echo will be to collapse the sound to the plane of the speakers.

Since your speakers are fairly narrow on the front baffle, I do not expect you will have any audible edge diffraction. So you should hear the pre-echo if it is strong enough to be audible.

Yes that is correct. It actually upsamples to several GHz digitally and then slowly adjusts (a shift register) by these high frequency samples in order to maintain asynchronous timing with the incoming signal (their jitter elimination approach). The adjusted GHz signal is then downsampled to 211 KHz and fed to the ESS DAC filter so that the built-in brickwall fast linear phase filter is tricked to stay well away from anything in the audible range. The technique produces excellent jitter reduction and excellent specifications but I suspect an equiripple may be created in the initial filtering of the FPGA upsampling tap filter stages from 44.1 or 48 KHz (x2 and x2 again). That said I don’t know how the upsampling is implemented as this is proprietary and mist if what I say here is a wild guess at best. However I do hear something very much like baffle edge diffraction so I am convinced there is an echo.

I have not tested many DACs but I find the sound definitely improves with computer based upsampling from 44.1KHz to 176.4 with Benchmark DAC3, which suggests the upsampling stages on a DAC chip itself can cause issues (not just the final filter) compared to all the processing power available in a modern PC (and accepting some latency). So I would guess that the highest rate is preferred. I can’t say about the filter because some slow filters are minimum phase and that will have some effect too. I would guess that linear phase is always preferred when trying to preserve soundstage. So linear phase slow might be an optimal choice. I can confirm with the T+A DAC 200 that external upsampling to DSD256 is another step up in performance from PCM 192 - subtle details jump out through T+A DAC 200 DSD 1 bit DAC. That said the conventional PCM upsampling or NOS with PCM on T+A D200 is still the best I have heard. I like any of the filters but perhaps the Bez2 has the edge.

Thank you for being open minded to take a look. Looking forward to hearing your impressions. The soundstage improvement is easier to hear than digital harshness - because harshness can be associated with dynamics, loudness levels and many other factors - much modern music is produced with intentional harshness from excessive compression/limiting to begin with.