Golden Earring wrote: > > Low Total Harmonic Distortion measurements are reassuring to a degree, > but most people find odd harmonic artifacts much more objectionable than > even harmonic ones (tube amplifier lovers seem to actually like a bit of > even harmonic intrusion to give a euphoric rather than clinical insight > into their recordings). I'm not advocating even harmonic distortion per > se, I'm just saying that of two pieces of kit with similar THD > measurements, the one with the higher odd harmonic components is likely > to sound less musical unless the designer has managed to get the overall > THD to a spectacularly low level. Yeah, I generally seek kit with 2HD higher than 3HD. Yes even DACs (if only because my OCD). Golden Earring wrote: > > When I was a nipper, much stress was placed on the Damping Factor of an > amplifier, which if I recall correctly was defined as the ratio between > the (presumable relatively stable) output impedance of the power > amplifier to the nominal (and often highly volatile) input impedance of > the loudspeakers in use, which tended to be given as exactly 8 or 4 ohms > somewhat oddly, given the variability of loudspeaker impedance with > frequency. This measurement seems to have fallen out of favour, which is > probably for the best. In the old days loudspeaker manufacturers would > go to extraordinary lengths of driver combinations and elaborate > (passive) crossover designs in order to get a relatively flat frequency > response from their designs *-when measured in an anechoic chamber-* > (charts of these frequency responses were freely published to sell the > designs, little mention was made of THD statistics... ). Sadly few > users had one of these chambers, so they ended up with a sound > principally dictated by the size, shape & contents of their listening > rooms, whilst also presenting their power amplifiers with difficult > reactive loads and a loss of close control of the actual drivers > themselves. It is hardly surprisingly that few of such legacy > loudspeakers that have survived sound very musical when compared to a > halfway decent modern loudspeaker. > ) I'd say a "modern loudspeaker" is active! So a flat anechoic frequency response (staying quite flat off axis up to at least 10kHz) is not a bad thing these days - if it ever was, as you write! Having said that, we could have a long conversation about what is a actually a desirable bass roll off once we take into account room gain! Golden Earring wrote: > > What I am saying is that a continuous & dynamic analogue signal, like > er, "music" may be harder to successfully capture than many people > assume. If all DAC's sound the same, then why should all the hardware in > the Squeezebox family from the original Classic onwards not sound the > same? If that were the case why have so many members of this forum > acquired a Transporter or a Touch? Unless someone is going to say that > poorly designed DAC's were put into the earlier models by Sean Adams who > seems to me at least to have had a pretty good idea of what he was up to > as far as design was concerned... > I don't think there are any issues with the numbers involved in digital audio, in that a perfect ADC or DAC would do be very accurate using extant rates and bit depths. However that's not to say there are no issues. http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?106979-Quick-question-about-DAC-quot-filters-quot&p=876695&viewfull=1#post876695 http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?p=3040013#post3040013
Golden Earring wrote: > > I've put my firefighter's costume on in preparation, lol > A wise move. I shall do the same. Check it, add to it! http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/ SB Touch ------------------------------------------------------------------------ darrenyeats's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10799 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106914 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
