Digital Upscaling

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Classicrock
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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Classicrock »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 2:27 pm I am highly suspicious of recently designed DACs and their RF performance, and I am sure some NVA amps have been damaged by them. It reminded me of the arseholes at the BBC back in the early 70's suddenly making speaker 10 times more complicated and blaming some of the amps around then for not coping with them - cart before horse - cart before horse !!!!!!!!!

EVERY TIME in music when you complicate things you make them worse musically and more difficult to accommodate - it is ludicrous and all for the sake of finding a bullshit to help YOU part with your money.
Can you publish a list of Dacs that are suspected of causing amp damage? Just so they can be avoided. What damage was done?
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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

No I can't, it has been suspicious failures only in systems with these expensive Dacs with programmable chips. It is at a level of suspicion ATM. Old style Dacs seem to be fine. I really do not want to change the amp design just to cater for their stoooopidity. Same as 40 years ago with BBC design and litz cables.

Output stage failure.

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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by CN211276 »

My NVA amps have been fine with the Chord Mojo, Qutest and Mscaler.
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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Lurcher300b »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:50 pm No I can't, it has been suspicious failures only in systems with these expensive Dacs with programmable chips. It is at a level of suspicion ATM. Old style Dacs seem to be fine. I really do not want to change the amp design just to cater for their stoooopidity. Same as 40 years ago with BBC design and litz cables.

Output stage failure.
The DAC I looked at that was causing problems didnt seem to have a reconstruction filter on the output and looked like it was not over/up sampling so you could see staircase steps on the output. If that's the sort of HF content that's using you problems Richard maybe a low pass filter on the amp input if it had no detriment might be worth considering?

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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

That is my point, why should I change my designs to cater for eeeediots, IF they have created a problem, so don't do it.

I still repeat over and over again I do not understand people paying stupid amounts for DACs just because they are flavour of the month or have created a new bullshit. I can assure you I won't be changing. It is the sickness of this hobby.

These DACs would have to be massively better at that price to justify it, and they aren't, £5 Dac and my amps are happy. It may be a combo of things if CN is fine, but it should be borne in mind.

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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by _D_S_J_R_ »

Apparently, red-book DACs of old don't really have this issue as they're pretty well filtered apparently. Some of the TDA 1541 DACs had small spikes at 75k or so (I remember from Paul Miller tests and confirmed more recently in odd tests on ASR site) but this isn't where we're talking. It really seems to be audiophile 'stuff' that's been bodged away from the chip makers application notes. Seeing some of the shit apparently coming out of modern DACs when old stuff was actually cleaner 'up there' is a bit frightening though...

I've seen a test of a DAC that appears to be a version of 'our' generic cheapy, only it offers USB as well as optical and coax inputs. It's perfect for red-book CD and streaming equivalents and seemed to be prety well balanced for that role, the negatives being noise, which is still lower than audibility rather than nasty bits of distortion - the lower output was noted though, but that's not a problem really. Anything above this model is largely academic I suspect, but whether you could reliably tell the difference between a Qutest and a sub £100 Topping, level matched and blindfold I have no idea...
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Re: Digital Upscaling

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I like my Arcam Delta black box NOS using TDA1541 (S1 after upgrade) older than my kids - still very musical
At CJ London I tried mscaler - with some top HPs - - show environment etc. but I could not hear a difference.
Chord DACs are very dry musically to my ears - not a big fan of those - I tried at home for 2 weeks smallest
one from them Mojo - Like my Arcam and Grace m9xx more
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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

It strikes me of the usual conundrum of Hi-Fi v Music. It is extremely difficult to get both, so which is more important when you can't get perfection.

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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by karatestu »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 2:27 pm I am highly suspicious of recently designed DACs and their RF performance, and I am sure some NVA amps have been damaged by them. It reminded me of the arseholes at the BBC back in the early 70's suddenly making speaker 10 times more complicated and blaming some of the amps around then for not coping with them - cart before horse - cart before horse !!!!!!!!!

EVERY TIME in music when you complicate things you make them worse musically and more difficult to accommodate - it is ludicrous and all for the sake of finding a bullshit to help YOU part with your money.
I can only completely agree with this (in my limited experience). I read of somebody removing the anologue output stage in their Naim CD3.5 - in fact they had it done professionally by Colin at Chervon Audio. The guy really liked the player when he got it back. Being me and on a mission for KISS i decided to try it. Well, i was bowled over by the improvement in terms of involvement with the musicians and the extra detail on offer. Gone was the artificial sound that plagued this player and which i could not entirely eradicate previously.

I thought about introducing a buffer of some sort between dac chip and passive pre as i was (wrongly) worried about the dac's ability to drive the next stage. I put my unmodified Naim CD3.5 (yes i have a stock player as well for comparisons) in the system and my worries disappeared.There were no problems with the frequency extremes or dynamic ability after all. And the dac chip in the CD3.5 is a cheapie and not that highly thought of. To be quite honest i could not give a toss anymore. I am learning to ignore the bullshit and stick with my simplistic beliefs.

Problem with us audiofools is we are extremely gullible and because something is said to be crap (it must be cos its cheap) then we trust this and move with the flock. Baa. Slapping yourself around the face and chanting "i shall not believe the hype" helps in my experience :grin:
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Re: Digital Upscaling

Unread post by Fretless »

karatestu wrote: Fri Feb 22, 2019 9:50 am Slapping yourself around the face and chanting "i shall not believe the hype" helps in my experience :grin:
Good tip Stu - I'll have to give it a try. :dance: :guiness;

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