[Digital Vampire]

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

But the Acoustic Noise introduced by this SMPS is inaudible to human ear unless they have a fan or are unloaded/malfunctioning as per: Switched-mode power supply - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia But I am not sure about this as I have zero knowledge here.

The switching frequency is usually 32KHz or above ranging to even MHz region in some designs, but their harmonics fall well within the audible range. I'm yet to see a comparison between Opus and Minibox (M2, M3..) power supplies on those lines.

[ibm_jennifer]

I'm yet to see a comparison between Opus and Minibox (M2, M3..) power supplies on those lines.

But I haven't noticed any noise in Audio and the Xonar noise floor is very low comparing to my head unit. And I heard the output of the Opus are filtered, may be I am wrong.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by navin

DA, I have put my comments to your post in bold. ...

I am thoroughly confused at any point in this thread with IBM_J's emulation of Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty - never sure whether he is talking about the recording half of the whole process or the playback, whether about the analog part or the digital! He seems to be able to jump from one orbit to another with equal felicity. Oh man, IBM_J, you will be a star in any dance contest, kanna.

The fundamental intellectual divide we are facing here is due to extremely polarized visualization. IBM_J is visualizing everything w.r.t. PC based software (and incidental hardware) with the assumption that if there is a solution available, there must be a problem. Almost everyone else is taking the traditional solution-oriented Engineering approach, with the assumption that if there is a problem, the solution can be / will be engineered. And we know that there are really simple solutions (including "just leave it alone; it will be worse if we do something") which are put together to conquer complex problems.

And IBM_J, I am proud to say that I have been a good student for a long time now , and still continue to learn from others.

[navin]

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

I am just using $100 speakers and my Aim is to deliver the highest possible pure sound using that low end speakers.

Bap re bap! $5000 system for $100 speakers! The most diffcult part of the audio chain is the speakers. Why because there we are converting electrical energy to mechanical and whenever you convert energy from one form to another you get a lot of loss.

I suspect you will get more bang for you buck if you invested in better speakers. Then all that 192/24 stuff that you want to DSP and TA and quantise will make more sense and the differences will become all the more audible which means with your ears you will need 2.8MHz/32bit which means you will need speakers from PHL/Beyma/18Sound/ATC/DAL/Dynaudio/ScanSpeak etc..ha the holy grail. One day IBM_J will realise that it is all a pie in the sky till then he shall keep seeking

"Focusing on nowhere, Investigating miles
I'm a seeker, I'm a really desperate man
I won't get to get what I'm after till the day I die

They call me The Seeker, I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after till the day I die"
- The Who

Originally Posted by DerAlte

IBM_J is visualizing everything w.r.t. PC based software (and incidental hardware) with the assumption that if there is a solution available, there must be a problem.

Nah DA. IBM_J's got himself a hammer so everything must be a nail. That just all. Fortunately he seems to be a good natured bloke (I just saw he is all of 24 or 25) so all you need do is point him in the right direction and let his enthusiasim and youthful energy do the rest.

[ibm_jennifer]

Bap re bap! $5000 system for $100 speakers! The most diffcult part of the audio chain is the speakers. Why because there we are converting electrical energy to mechanical and whenever you convert energy from one form to another you get a lot of loss.

I suspect you will get more bang for you buck if you invested in better speakers. Then all that 192/24 stuff that you want to DSP and TA and quantise will make more sense and the differences will become all the more audible which means with your ears you will need 2.8MHz/32bit which means you will need speakers from PHL/Beyma/18Sound/ATC/DAL/Dynaudio/ScanSpeak etc..ha the holy grail. One day IBM_J will realise that it is all a pie in the sky till then he shall keep seeking

You are right and I completely agree with you.

But my question is which will sound Good?

1. A $5000 Speaker loaded with an Anti-Aliased, Anti-Jittered, Delayed, Filtered, bandwidth limited and with some distortion, phase problems, artifacts, harmonics, crosstalk, interferences and noise

2. Another side a $100 speaker (which also has 20Hz-23Khz FR and its FR Curve is also flatted with real time ARC corrections) loaded with a Pure Sinusoidal non-filtered, non-aliased, non-delayed wave with full FR Spectrum, enough headroom and bandwidth

[DocG]

Thank you Navinji for that post. It is exactly what I was wondering.

BTW IBM_J, I always considered myself tech savvy and Intel Inside ready you have really blasted my hemispheres apart (brain).

However I do have 1 major question:
If all this stuff is so darn good (Not saying it isn't I am lost when I read all these abreviations) then why is it that I've never seen any CarPC setups for SQ/SQL show offs? (have attended quite a few till date. CarPCs do exist, but limited to video entertainment, navigation, OBD functions, never used for sound)

I mean no offense to you dude, but I've seen systems at these events push 60,000 USD and it still didn't feature a carPC!

[ibm_jennifer]

then why is it that I've never seen any CarPC setups for SQ/SQL show offs?

No, You never need a stupid Car PC for SQL setup. I just said that you need a pure analog signal for SQL. And a gramophone is the perfect device for SQL setup than a $50000 CAR PC.

I mean no offense to you dude, but I've seen systems at these events push 60,000 USD and it still didn't feature a carPC!

Whats the format of the source Audio?

Why No Car PC in SQL setups is because people are not really ready to find a solution, they are better searching for an alternative (I know people who are still living with a ground loop in Car PC). They are ready to spend more money, but not time. For example Nachamichi, because solving the noise in SMPS is not their business. Like that you can have a SQL setup without knowing theory, but it will fail oneday when someone follow your way thru theory.

If I am wrong then all the Mastering studios should have a car head unit to hear their final outcome, not a pc. If its possible in a mastering studio, then its possible to produce the pure sound in a car - but not easy as you think.

I've heard that the highest quality audio equipments run from traditional power supplies and not from switching power supplies. I even heard of a Nachamichi pre-amp run entirely from re-chargeable batteries so as to have the purest, ripple-free and harmonics-free DC.

What you are seeing today as path breaking discoveries are actually another step in the process of evolution of signal reproduction techniques.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

... Pure Sinusoidal non-filtered, non-aliased, non-delayed wave with full FR Spectrum, enough headroom and bandwidth

I am sure you would have had severe problems with your college lecturers!

1. 'Pure sinusoid' is a myth. Any sound, good bad or ugly, that your ears hear are modelled mathematically as a combination of sinusoids, no matter what source produced it. That is for modelling convenience. Do you think any musical instrument actually produces multiple sinusoids?

In reality, a sound source need not follow a regular oscillatory motion, a.k.a. sinusoid, to produce intelligible sound. In effect, your ears use continuous envelop detection, or peak sensing - and a lot of those simultaneously. Since infancy, our brain learns to associate those peak patterns with real objects. That's how a mother detects the faint cry of her infant over the general babble of voices in a crowded room. Our ears don't care if the source is a dirty sinusoid or a pulse train - they will sound identical if the envelop is the same, and aliasing be damned
2. Filtering is not an evil by itself - sometimes they are positively a boon
3. Delay is a problem ONLY with lip sync - ears don't care if the song started 0.3s early or late, the only problem is when our trained brains don't accept the delay because the eyes convey a start different from the expected one. XO delay changes character of sound, especially those signals that both the mid-bass and tweeter are simultaneously handling. But that is the problem of the speaker system, not of the signal
4. Aliasing - would anyone look for an anomaly in the tremble in the breath of a passionate singer, or enjoy the general feeling of the moment? The anomaly of aliasing in sound is even less of a nuance as the tremble is
5. And, hello, headroom is used in the context of amplifiers, not speakers. Speakers it is Xmax, beyond which it cannot faithfully peak-follow the signal coming out from the amp. FR and bandwidth are not signal properties, they are observed physical properties of devices used in the chain

Talking of gramophones, I think you should gently nudge the pick-up head, the needle is stuck at one place.

[ibm_jennifer]

'Pure sinusoid' is a myth

Yes in Digital world. But I have created pure sine wave in my oscilloscope.

Filtering is not an evil by itself - sometimes they are positively a boon

Agreed if they are Linear in Phase and as long as in digital domain. Analog filters have a 90 degree phase shift for every 6db/octave due to the properties of capacitors and inductors.

Delay is a problem ONLY with lip sync - ears don't care if the song started 0.3s early or late, the only problem is when our trained brains don't accept the delay because the eyes convey a start different from the expected one. XO delay changes character of sound, especially those signals that both the mid-bass and tweeter are simultaneously handling. But that is the problem of the speaker system, not of the signal

Man, you need to go back to school again. Please learn the difference between Delay and Latency first. Delay itself there are lot of: phase Delay, Time delay, group delay, differential time delay - May I know which delay you need to be in sync with Video frames?

The anomaly of aliasing in sound is even less of a nuance as the tremble is

Can you please explain me what is aliasing? Aliasing not only occurs above 20KHz, it exists as audible artifacts in the lower frequencies. Don't try to argue with me by copy-pasting or learning the wikipedia articles, I have learned them 5 years back.

And, hello, headroom is used in the context of amplifiers, not speakers. Speakers it is Xmax, beyond which it cannot faithfully peak-follow the signal coming out from the amp. FR and bandwidth are not signal properties, they are observed physical properties of devices used in the chain

Headroom is introduced where we start to record/digitize music and not they start from amplifiers. Man, where do you learned about bandwidth in Audio? Its defined by the sampling rate of the signal and please learn audio or keep quite.


I don't need anything else to estimate your knowledge:

Zero DC Offset: mathematical issue only, and one of the basic things that was overcome about 25 years back!

And if you cant find any wiki article for DC Offset, check this: Sweetwater inSync

And please answer my first question before trying to fool/dominate me:

What is the relation bw CODEC and Spectrum?

[Abbas]

Hey ibm,

I think u have a great setup. for a layman like me in terms of gizmos in cars, it looks pretty hi -tech. my only question is, what about the fixtures ect. I mean what if the cars goes thru a very bumpy ride. Will the screen on the dash or the cpu at the back, will they stay in place. and what about dust ect.

i mean you have to take real good care while you drive and how you maintain the car after youhave put such an expensive system.

[ibm_jennifer]

FR and bandwidth are not signal properties

If you people can't believe me then why are you buying this cable to carry the AUDIO Signal? (Dont say me the cable has an inbuilt PHYSICAL DEVICE!) Why do you need bandwidth balanced and time corrected cable to carry audio, if your signals are not depended on FR Spectrum, Resolution, dynamic range, bandwidth, delays, interferences etc... (And yes, I am too using the same cable - but I am not limited by 16/44.1)

Interlink® 400 MkII Advanced Bandwidth Balanced® Audio Interconnect

I don't find any logic behind using High-End RCA cables and High End speakers upto 30Khz, but poor input source like MP3. Doesn't any Flac player exist for Car?

I think u have a great setup.

No more, as B&T started to build his SQL setup.

I think u have a great setup. for a layman like me in terms of gizmos in cars, it looks pretty hi -tech. my only question is, what about the fixtures ect. I mean what if the cars goes thru a very bumpy ride. Will the screen on the dash or the cpu at the back, will they stay in place. and what about dust ect.

I recommend you to screw it with the base. But I designed my Car PC as removable and I stayed with some of the products like 3M Dual Locks, Velcro etc. You can find more details here: Building a $5000 Car PC in TATA Safari | TATA Safari Club.com

[Sam Kapasi]

ibm_j my friend, calm yourself down.

There is no need to get so defensive in your posts. DA and Navin are here to help because they have the experience and knowledge.
You don't have to agree with anyone here, that's fine. Everyone respects your opinion and the words of DA and Navin are not the gospel truth, it is just experience and knowledge talking. If you disagree, please do so in a gentlemanly fashion and everyone will enjoy a good technical debate.

I have created pure sine wave in my oscilloscope.

Impossible to create a pure sine wave in an oscilloscope.

Man, you need to go back to school again.

Don't try to argue with me by copy-pasting or learning the wikipedia articles, I have learned them 5 years back.

please learn audio or keep quite.

before trying to fool/dominate me:

ibm-J, you're talking to a technical person whose experience in engineering and electronics surpasses your entire life's age.

I have faith that you can be a better man than this. Let's start again OK? Thanks in advance.

[navin]

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

But my question is which will sound Good?
1. A $5000 Speaker loaded with .. some distortion, phase problems, artifacts, harmonics, crosstalk, interferences and noise
2. Another side a $100 speaker ..loaded with a Pure Sinusoidal non-filtered, non-aliased, non-delayed wave with full FR Spectrum, enough headroom and bandwidth

1. why would you want to listen to sinusoids? Music is much more fun.

2. I have not listened to a PC based DSP'ed system like the one you are refering to so I cannot make an honest statement to your question but I would like to offer some circumstatial evidence. Why are all SQ based car/home audio system designed around a dedicated CD player, DAC, analog amplifer and speakers?

3. A $2100 speaker would normally be mated to a $1000 DAC, $1000 Amplifer and $1000 CD player. Equipment costing as much as this would normally have been designed so that the distortions you refer to would have been minimised and rendered audibly insignificant. However your PC based DSP system would have been calibrated at one particular SPL. The $100 speaker would perform differently at different SPLs hence in my vew the system with the $2100 speaker would sound better. Analogy - which clock would you say is more accurate - the one that is always 5 mintues late or the one that has stopped. It could be argued that the clock that has stopped is more accurate as it tells the correct time atleast twice a day while the one that is always late never tells the correct time. Yet I would prefer the clock that is late.

4. Sometimes bad limitation is good. Most speakers will perform better when limited to the band in which they perform best. Amplifiers too perfrom better if their input is band limited (within reason). Sometimes crosstalk and phase are designed into the the system. Let me tell you an anecdote. Many years ago I built a stereo tube/value power amplifier that had a single triode for it's input tube. When a friend saw the design he commented that using a single common triode for both channels would lead to crosstalk. However I explained that this stereo amp was being used to drive a tweeter and woofer of the same speaker (a duplicate stereo amp and speaker were used for the other channel). The crosstalk was engineered in so that the 'acoustic hole' between the woofer and tweeter is better filled.

Originally Posted by DocG

I mean no offense to you dude, but I've seen systems at these events push 60,000 USD and it still didn't feature a carPC!

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

Man, you need to go back to school again. Please learn the difference between Delay and Latency first. Delay itself there are lot of: phase Delay, Time delay, group delay, differential time delay - May I know which delay you need to be in sync with Video frames?

Can you please explain me what is aliasing? Aliasing not only occurs above 20KHz, it exists as audible artifacts in the lower frequencies. Don't try to argue with me by copy-pasting or learning the wikipedia articles, I have learned them 5 years back.

Headroom is introduced where we start to record/digitize music and not they start from amplifiers. Man, where do you learned about bandwidth in Audio? Its defined by the sampling rate of the signal and please learn audio or keep quite.

And please answer my first question before trying to fool/dominate me

IBM_J,
I am sorry to say this but the words used above (the ones that I have highlighted in bold) should have not been used and/or could have been better phrased.

DA is no slouch in Audio. He does have to depend on Google/Wiki. He is 20+ years older than you and deserves respect. Besides he is still a TBHP Moderator. He has posted some valid arguments (seconded by myself, DocG and others) to which he has only got a series of "buzz-words" as an answer.

Like I said in an earlier post - you seem to have found yourself a hammer (Car PC) and now everything looks like a nail. It is an understandable reaction. We all fall for it sometime. It takes another person to jolt us back to reality.

A Car PC with all it attendant software tools and sound card has it's uses. Some of it fun (as in a car) some of it serious (as in a studio). In my days (of working in Studios) PC were not prevalent. I wish they were it would have made much of my studio work much easier.

As far as seeing a car PC outperfrom a regular car stereo system of equal cost - I would personally love to see the day. Music storage has moved from the tin foil cylinder to wax cylinder, to bakelite, to acrylic, to laquer "vinyl", to tape, to CD to Hard disk and now Solid state. That PCs eventually take off from where CD are today will just prove that evolution is not dead. As of today I doubt if a car PC can outperform a regular car audio system of equal cost.

[ibm_jennifer]

Impossible to create a pure sine wave in an oscilloscope.

Sam bhai, I just forget to say its for my eyes(!!!!) and I agree its impossible in Digital.

why would you want to listen to sinusoids? Music is much more fun.

2. I have not listened to a PC based DSP'ed system like the one you are refering to so I cannot make an honest statement to your question but I would like to offer some circumstatial evidence. Why are all SQ based car/home audio system designed around a dedicated CD player, DAC, analog amplifer and speakers?

You are Perfect and If every one replied like you, Why should I have to shout?

Even people are telling the 'lies' with confident and they are not even replying to my questions. So whats the meaning of conversation and why should I reply to them? They are asking new new questions without answering to my old questions. I have no other way to ask them to stop posting, isn't it? I have already stopped posting in other's thread because of this people.

A $2100 speaker would normally be mated to a $1000 DAC, $1000 Amplifer and $1000 CD player. Equipment costing as much as this would normally have been designed so that the distortions you refer to would have been minimised and rendered audibly insignificant. However your PC based DSP system would have been calibrated at one particular SPL. The $100 speaker would perform differently at different SPLs hence in my vew the system with the $2100 speaker would sound better. Analogy - which clock would you say is more accurate - the one that is always 5 mintues late or the one that has stopped. It could be argued that the clock that has stopped is more accurate as it tells the correct time atleast twice a day while the one that is always late never tells the correct time. Yet I would prefer the clock that is late.

4. Sometimes bad limitation is good. Most speakers will perform better when limited to the band in which they perform best. Amplifiers too perfrom better if their input is band limited (within reason). Sometimes crosstalk and phase are designed into the the system. Let me tell you an anecdote. Many years ago I built a stereo tube/value power amplifier that had a single triode for it's input tube. When a friend saw the design he commented that using a single common triode for both channels would lead to crosstalk. However I explained that this stereo amp was being used to drive a tweeter and woofer of the same speaker (a duplicate stereo amp and speaker were used for the other channel). The crosstalk was engineered in so that the 'acoustic hole' between the woofer and tweeter is better filled.

I agree and I have no rights to comment unless I test my system with a high-end speaker.

My Aim is not to prove/show I have a SQL setup (actually I don't have!). I am trying to convince you all WHY I need 24/192? But I am sure, one day you all people will use 24/192 even with a $20 car speaker.

But I wonder, if this SQL setups are based on a 16/44.1 source what will happen if they feed it with 32/384? or will they stay with 16/44.1 only in future? Whats your comment? Don't anybody here to accept my points against 24/192?

When HD was introduced for PC, people argued its only useful for DI works and how a consumer can enjoy HD with a 15" LCD monitor. But today even a guy with a 800*600 CRT is searching the torrents for HD Movies(atleast in my college).

I am sorry to say this but the words used above (the ones that I have highlighted in bold) should have not been used and/or could have been better phrased.

Agreed and no more.

As far as seeing a car PC outperfrom a regular car stereo system of equal cost - I would personally love to see the day. Music storage has moved from the tin foil cylinder to wax cylinder, to bakelite, to acrylic, to laquer "vinyl", to tape, to CD to Hard disk and now Solid state. That PCs eventually take off from where CD are today will just prove that evolution is not dead. As of today I doubt if a car PC can outperform a regular car audio system of equal cost.

Why do we need a Car PC for that? Can't a Car 24/96 lossless Flac player outperforms any car PC with high end speakers and $1000 DAC?

[navin]

Originally Posted by ibm_jennifer

Why do we need a Car PC for that? Can't a Car 24/96 lossless Flac player outperforms any car PC with high end speakers?

I dont see any lies in any of DA's posts.

Yes in my opinion as of today a good car audio system playing a CD will outperform a PC based system playing flac (of equal cost). I am willing to be proven wrong. and BTW only God is perfect.

To produce a sine wave you need a signal generator not an Oscilliscope.