tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post2148134091875729433..comments2024-03-28T00:31:13.472-07:00Comments on <em>Archimago's Musings</em>: MEASUREMENTS: RME ADI-2 Pro FS as DAC (Part I - output levels & digital filter settings)Archimagohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-32349287001795080232019-07-12T01:09:15.560-07:002019-07-12T01:09:15.560-07:00Hi Unknown,
Personally I prefer linear phase so &q...Hi <em>Unknown</em>,<br />Personally I prefer linear phase so "Sharp" would be my choice.Archimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-91986396252544383672019-07-11T20:37:11.479-07:002019-07-11T20:37:11.479-07:00So should I use sd sharp or sharp?So should I use sd sharp or sharp?Shizo1337https://www.blogger.com/profile/15583814517357552287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-39657169494538000112018-09-23T22:57:11.662-07:002018-09-23T22:57:11.662-07:00Hi Techland.
Now I know what you mean. I am a bi...Hi Techland. <br /><br />Now I know what you mean. I am a bit short of time, because I am busy and will be “on the road” for the next days and so I do not have much time to be Online. <br /><br />Even white noise is by far from being representing “music”, you will have similar numbers concerning intersample overload headroom, as when using appropriate sinusoidal tones (yes I know, they are also JR_Audiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00547557948411188806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-72301811964938110862018-09-23T20:26:50.879-07:002018-09-23T20:26:50.879-07:00Yup. And I see you've been making sure this is...Yup. And I see you've been making sure this is the case in your designs :-).<br />Archimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-63821704644152864972018-09-23T20:21:12.067-07:002018-09-23T20:21:12.067-07:00Well, there's always bragging rights to say th...Well, there's always bragging rights to say that one has created a "ONE MILLION TAP FILTER"!!! Great number/specification for the advertising folks to play with and likewise wonderful for the consumer who owns the "best of the best of the best" to now have such a device on his audio rack :-).<br />Archimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-27434809676651128462018-09-23T12:58:31.428-07:002018-09-23T12:58:31.428-07:00Hello Juergen, I think you misunderstood me a bit....Hello Juergen, I think you misunderstood me a bit. I am well aware of intersample peaks in my music collection, and I use RME's own Digicheck level meters that show True Peak (levels above 0 dBFS) to check and analyze. My point was that many single overloads might not equal white noise, a massive simultaneous overload attack. A DAC might be able to handle typical overloads better. And what I Techlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00511548486704836818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-22397625274039623682018-09-23T10:40:14.120-07:002018-09-23T10:40:14.120-07:00Just an example for intersample overloads. This is...Just an example for intersample overloads. This is a Pop ballad, so not very loud, and not any Rock, Metal or Techno or Hip Hop song. <br /><br />And even there are no sample overloads, meaning that there is no data in 44k1 16 Bit, that does clipp, but the intersamples do clipp.<br /><br />Here is an excerpt from this song where you can see in the table that it shows no sample overload. But when JR_Audiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00547557948411188806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-59913178538660963862018-09-23T08:59:43.988-07:002018-09-23T08:59:43.988-07:00True Techland,
Nobody should be listening to unlim...True Techland,<br />Nobody <em>should</em> be listening to unlimited digitally generated white noise! The problem is that it does happen in the real world.<br /><br />I've tested my white noise signal and it will detect up to +3.01dB overload level as per Nielsen & Lund:<br />https://toneprints.com/media/1018176/nielsen_lund_2003_overload.pdf<br /><br />As you can see in that paper from Archimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-14348455017323375252018-09-23T07:50:08.676-07:002018-09-23T07:50:08.676-07:00PS: And to make it more clear – I haven‘t measured...PS: And to make it more clear – I haven‘t measured any DAC chip (natively as they are) in the last 10 years, that have any headroom for intersample overs, but I have measured some DACs (here I mean complete DA converters), that have headroom for intersample overs.JR_Audiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00547557948411188806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-74207769235915127062018-09-23T06:39:23.017-07:002018-09-23T06:39:23.017-07:00Hi Techland.
Please use a “good” level meter (fo...Hi Techland. <br /><br />Please use a “good” level meter (for example as mentioned above) und play you favorite music through it and watch the level meter, you will see, that actually all “modern” mixed music have thousand of intersample overs in each songs. Not hundreds, they are thousands.<br /><br />Or, if you have the Mastered for iTunes test tool, just drop the file into this test and you JR_Audiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00547557948411188806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-65403608640561946562018-09-23T02:22:54.868-07:002018-09-23T02:22:54.868-07:00To be more precise: it is bandwidth unlimited whit...To be more precise: it is bandwidth unlimited white noise, digitally generated - an invalid signal. So even less people listening to that ;)Techlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00511548486704836818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-3927456536086567422018-09-23T00:17:58.735-07:002018-09-23T00:17:58.735-07:00Nobody listens to white noise at 0 dBFS, and no mu...Nobody listens to white noise at 0 dBFS, and no music equals that kind of signal. The fact that there is no DAC passing this test might mean that it is not a valid test. Maybe it needs a different test signal to see differences between DACs. I read in the RME forum that their units have about 2.5 dB headroom for DA intersample peaks. If true Archimago's test would not show this, although in Techlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00511548486704836818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-25400409547646183132018-09-22T22:32:22.424-07:002018-09-22T22:32:22.424-07:00When you do software upsampling in Resampler, you ...When you do software upsampling in Resampler, you can guard for clipping and thus partially also for intersample peaks, or even arbitrarily reduce gain e.g. to 98 percent of original. If upsampling to x4 (176.4/192), further upsampling in DAC makes less intersample peaks since the "heavy lifting" is already done and level adjusted.Honzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08793049319792036050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-47464009178375888582018-09-22T22:25:30.222-07:002018-09-22T22:25:30.222-07:00I think they build on that "we are approachin...I think they build on that "we are approaching the megamillion best filter in the world" approach. While initially for sure it made sense to do high quality filtering (which is highly reasonable), on the other hand, change from 164000 to one million taps hardly can change the resulting sound more than e.g. changing the passband cutoff frequency in SoX within interval 20000-21500 Hz. <brHonzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08793049319792036050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-78578120253837090312018-09-22T18:52:22.246-07:002018-09-22T18:52:22.246-07:00Hi Juergen,
Thanks for the note and tips.
Yup, st...Hi Juergen,<br />Thanks for the note and tips.<br /><br />Yup, still a bit of intersample overload present across the board <em>except</em> with the Oppo UDP-205:<br />https://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/06/measurements-oppo-udp-205-part-1-output.html<br /><br />I would not be surprised if the Oppo engineers addressed this by sacrificing a little bit of the ESS ES9038Pro's massive SNR when Archimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-82420245186676357542018-09-22T18:41:41.633-07:002018-09-22T18:41:41.633-07:00Hey there Honza,
Yeah, exactly. We can play with t...Hey there Honza,<br />Yeah, exactly. We can play with the filtering parameters on SoX all day long and achieve very high quality results already.<br /><br />I've seen all kinds of comments and "previews" that are really IMO <em>way</em> over-hyped! Like this:<br />https://audiobacon.net/2018/07/21/the-chord-electronics-hugo-m-scaler-your-prayers-have-been-answered/<br /><br />I meanArchimagohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08642574001287787545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-16826421188717064212018-09-22T17:58:54.590-07:002018-09-22T17:58:54.590-07:00Hi Archie.
Thanks for the measurement.
I haven’t...Hi Archie. <br />Thanks for the measurement. <br />I haven’t measured AKM chips lately, so I am again surprised, that also here, those chips do not care about / prevent intersample overloads. All ESS and TI/BB doesn’t do either. <br />As mentioned in earlier replies, I have some RME Interfaces for different recordings scenario, and use a good amount of headroom during recording, so this is no JR_Audiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00547557948411188806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781727111866727703.post-63326329630704210512018-09-22T17:25:34.476-07:002018-09-22T17:25:34.476-07:00Yes as I wrote in some thread before, mscaler and ...Yes as I wrote in some thread before, mscaler and other Rob Watts-like filtering, although interesting and technically advanced, seem overkill to me. Yes theoretically they are getting close to the optimum but the main frequency where this has sense to think about is 44.1 kHz. With higher sample rates even more relaxed filters start far beyond audible frequencies. If we want to solve the problemHonzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08793049319792036050noreply@blogger.com