kennyb123

I don’t understand this. I purchased a K30 in early 2021 and it improved both in terms of sound quality and user experience without me spending anything additional. That their product line has evolved doesn’t change anything except for the fact that it allowed them to offer an upgrade that would allow me to significantly improve sound quality should I want to pursue that option.

This is a really big deal for those who prefer using Macs. Macs can now pretty much process any track regardless of length, but they may end up waiting a very long time for DSD512 or greater in one stage of processing. At this point, a custom PC build will be the most cost effective and most performant choice for DSD. Despite that, I stubbornly just purchased a 2019 Mac Pro It was one of these listed here. A smoking deal as this would have set on back nearly $10k had they purchased it this from the time it was introduced until last June. The prices tanked because Apple Silicon is so much faster than the Intel Xeon processors in this series. She advantage these Intel machines have though is that they support up to 1.5 TB of RAM. This will matter much more with DSD processing. One expected benefit of the new-old-stock model I purchased is that Apple is treating it as a brand new Mac so it is covered by Apple’s one year limited warranty starting on the day it was purchased. Mine actually wouldn’t power on. The seller offered to replace it but also mentioned that I could lug it to an Apple Store and have them repair it. I did that an am expecting it to be returned to me this week.

When you test or analyze a competitor’s product - do you adhere to the same standard of fairness that you demonstrate when you speak about your competitor’s products when asked about them?

Always bad form to bash a competitor’s product, but what makes it even worse is that he violated the terms of service on that site as well. (“A Member of the Trade may not post subjective assessments or negative comments about the products/services of competitors or other Members of the Trade.”). Not cool, but he did provide a great example showing the use of a straw man fallacy (setting up a dummy version of an opponent’s stance just to knock it down).

I think this contributes much to why we see things differently. I could never lose interest over those things being in less abundance. But if something were to screw with the sound of a drumstick contacting a cymbal, it would be over for me. Another thing I should mention is that the server I’m using underwent an upgrade. The K50 received the G4 upgrade, which brought a massive improvement. Holography in particular improved substantially. I do think PGGB-DSD betters PGGB-16FS in that area but not enough to reprocess all my albums for just that. Given how important that quality is to you, I can most certainly understand why you would be delighted with the gains in that area.

Exactly. I think also you and I are almost exact opposites when it comes to determining what’s right. I try to check my brain at the door so I can rely entirely on my ears and emotions. You have gone about it quite differently, as I would think you’d agree. I couldn’t agree more though with your conclusion: Amen to that!

Don’t you also have the Gustard x26pro? To my ears, it’s been an excellent tool to assess PGGB PCM as my participation in the beta testing had me hearing the same benefits as other testers without me ever feeling that I might be missing out. When other listeners said they felt a particular PGGB enhancement justified reprocessing, I always felt the same. I’ve only diverged now with PGGB DSD as with the x26pro it hasn’t seemed as it’s moved the needle as much as it has for the others. My endgame though is the T+A DAC200, and I am sure that will force me to want to reprocess my entire library. I will point out again though that my listening to PGGB DSD512x1 has been limited so with more listening my impressions might evolve.

I was most concerned about what would happen in the time domain as what I had heard from DSD upscaling up to this point had been harmful to transients. What I’ve heard thus far is time domain performance that on most tracks scaled by PGGB to DSD512 is nearly indistinguishable from the spectacular time domain performance I hear from PGGB’s PCM to 16FS scaling. The PGB-DSD512 improves upon PGGB-16FS by making things sound more natural and easier to enjoy. It’s subtle though probably because the X26pro doesn’t have a pure DSD option. I must admit though that I’ve only processed a listened to a few dozen tracks. What’s interesting as well is that I still prefer PGGB-16FS to anything less than PGGB-DSD512x1 (the x1 indicates that it’s done in a single stage, I think). DSD512x1 processing takes significantly longer than 16FS processing.

I figured you wouldn’t be able to hit the same price point for the Gen 2 given how much more expensive everything is. I have little doubt though that it will deliver a huge bang for the buck. I’m thinking though that you should call the Gen 2 model the EtherFlipflop. 🙂

I think my new favorite technical term is “flip flop”. 😀

Wow fantastic! Nice that it goes to 15.

With the previous generation of the K50, the synchronous outputs were considered superior to USB as the synchronous outputs were reclocked with a high quality clock. Antipodes thought that they made the right bet favoring the synchronous outputs but the market demanded that they emphasize USB. So with the latest generation K50, USB is now also reclocked thus leveling the playing field. The choice of outputs will be more about what the DAC favors.

The more affordable K21 or K22 are intended to be their streaming endpoints. The K50 is equivalent to a K22 plus a K41, but in a single chassis. Their lineup used to feature an S30, which was their even more affordable streaming endpoint. The S series was discontinued but I have a feeling it will be resurrected at some point.

I had some success doing that. DSD512 was too much for it though. This was with HQPlayer 4.x. Thus far HQPlayer 5 consumes much more CPU. Even PCM upscaling chews up more CPU. The lower powered K30 struggled at times with PCM scaling to the point where there were dropouts. It barely broke a sweat with HQPlayer 4. Antipodes is aware of the issue. No not really because it is still passively cooled. It’s more powerful than the CPU in many of their competitors products but a custom build is still the best option for those who want to really push things with HQPlayer.

It runs at the appropriate frequency to support digital conversion of the currently playing track. There are very few audiophile DACs that can accept this. Typically the clock is sent over one of the synchronous outputs.