MUSINGS: The Wisdom of Simplicity [RE: Hi-Res Audio]? Standard & Advanced Resolution audio. And a Happy New Year!

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
--- Confucius

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

--- Albert Einstein (apocryphal?)

Only the simplest can accommodate the most complex.
--- Juni Kimura, 47 Labs / Sakura Systems :-)

Let us ponder a few moments on the first "As We See It" column for 2016 in Stereophile. Humorously titled "To the Simple, Everything Appears Simple".

After reading it, I was thinking, what was this article about anyway? An admonition (based on some other Facebook comment) about the perils of blind testing? Another caution to listeners that A/B testing involves the activation of analytical brain networks rather than those we use to appreciate art? Yet another attempt to impress/convince readers that music in a high-resolution container is significant for the home listener (like comments and articles about the virtues of Pono and high-res on-the-go)? A fair warning about jumping to conclusions without considering nuances or alternatively an attempt at instilling fear, uncertainty, and doubt in what should be rather obvious observations?

As we sit here at the end of 2015, I remind readers that "high-resolution" audio has been with us now for a rather long time! Many of us interested in technology and the "cutting edge" have likely been listening, perhaps testing, and evaluating >44kHz and >16-bit audio for the last 15 years. We have seen technologies like SACD and DVD-A essentially come and either gone or linger in some state of stagnation. We have witnessed the promise of a better-than-CD but CD-compatible "format" like HDCD come and go. I suspect many of us bought "music DVD's" encoded in 24/96 or 24/48, stereo, and multichannel years ago to get access to that promise of high resolution and listen for ourselves to satisfy our own curiosity - way before the Hi-Res Audio branding hype or inflated expectations from "evangelists" like Neil Young or the corporate push (eg. Sony).

Merry Christmas! 2015 (NYC)

Season's Greetings everyone! As part of my travels, this past week, I spent some time at the "Big Apple"...

As expected, the crowds were enormous this time of year in Manhattan but what wonderful atmosphere to take in! The museums, the shows, the people, the food... Remarkably mild weather too.

MUSINGS / BUILD: HTPC Rebuild... Skylake / 4K (Part II)

Okay, after laying out the foundation in Part I, let's rip open the boxes and get building the new HTPC!

Right... So I'm reusing the old Antec ATX tower case from 2003(!) for this build. It used to house an old Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU/board you see on the floor there. I put that computer together back in 2007 and it had been in constant use until 2 weeks ago so I really got my money's worth after 8 years! What I'm really impressed by is that there was still one of the early-model 1TB Maxtor HDs in there in good shape. Time to retire this board in any case... Maybe I can still put it to service at some point for my kids.

And here is the new Intel i5-6500/Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 assembled with the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo heatsink (and Corsair DDR4 RAM) living in the old Antec case. Blue SATA connector attached to the ADATA SP600 256GB SSD:

MUSINGS: HTPC Rebuild - time for Intel Skylake and ready for 4K... (Part I)

For many of us, I suspect the image above would be familiar... The 'old' Windows Media Center (WMC) software. Alas, as of this year, with the release of Windows 10, the Media Center functionality has died (although arguably after a long period of being on life support since 2009). Not that I ever used the software much but I do recall the hey-day of when Microsoft was promoting the PC as the center of the home theater hub. In fact one of my early Home Theater PC's (HTPC) was built around a reasonably fast AMD processor and running WMC as a PVR with a TV card installed back in the early 2000's.

Now in the 2010's, functions promised of by the HTPC can be handled by Smart TV's and all those standalone boxes like the AppleTV, Amazon's FireTV, or the myriad of inexpensive devices like this. Perhaps wisely from a revenue perspective, Microsoft has shifted the focus on development of media access through their Xbox One game system (and Sony in their PlayStation 4).

Personally, I still love the idea of a full-functioning HTPC in the media room. A machine that can handle whatever audio and video format I can throw at it (I posted some thoughts back in early 2014). And when not watching a movie or listening to music, something I can turn on and use for software like REW or Acourate, surfing, the occasional game, or computer-based karaoke when friends come over :-). Software for HTPC functions have grown nicely over the years - check out some options here. And for those who insist, there's even a hack to get WMC on a Win 10 install.

MEASUREMENTS: Digital Room Correction with AudioVero's Acourate...

A few months ago, I posted on the use of the free DRC software for audio room correction. I was already very impressed with what the technology is able to accomplish and wanted to explore this even further. In this spirit, I invested in a copy of (((Acourate))) from AudioVero. As I had mentioned previously, there are a number of other software/hardware packages to accomplish a similar task. While I'm sure other packages would do a fine job, as a JRiver user, I wanted to create WAV-based FIR filters like I did previously with DRC which I could import into the convolution DSP and Acourate allows me to do just that without needing to run any other plug-in.

Acourate isn't inexpensive and does cost 286€. However, realize that we are entering rather "specialized" territory and although I suspect many audiophiles know about FIR-based room correction, it's not exactly mainstream (for example, how often do showrooms at audiophile shows utilize room correction DSP?)... Personally, given the amount of potential improvement, we could easily spend 286€ (~$310USD currently) on stuff like fancy cables and other tweaks achieving likely no actual improvement in sound quality.

MEASUREMENTS: Apple Mac OS X ("Yosemite") Software Audio Upsampling

Well... You knew this was coming, right? After looking at Linux, then Windows, what about all the hub bub with Mac OS X? Depending on which forum one visits, there's often talk about Mac's being "better" as audiophile sources than PCs.

As readers here know by now, I think sound quality these days with a decent modern digital interface is primarily a function of the quality of one's DAC. So long as the digital source device is decent (not a high bar to cross by any means!) with bitperfect results and absent of any timeout errors, or extreme noise pollution, it's just fine. And one can verify the quality with objective measurements of course.

The question being asked today is, compared to the software upsampling in Windows and Linux, how well does the Mac OS X software upsampling measure up?

MEASUREMENTS: Windows 10 "Audio Stack" / DirectSound Upsampling

I know, I know... Windows audio mixer sucks... (From the perspective of perfectionist audiophiles.)

But having just done some measurements with Linux and PulseAudio with some of the upsampling algorithms, I wondered just how well the default Windows 10 audio mixer performed as an upsampler...

MEASUREMENTS: A Look at Linux Audio (ALSA, PulseAudio)

What is that you ask? Well, it is the slowest computer in my house :-). It's a "vintage" HP Mini 110 from circa 2009. I decided recently to stick Linux on there just to see how well it ran... Here's the System Information:

As you see, I've got Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (updates current as of Sept 2015) loaded up on the old machine which has been sitting around unused for a few years. It's one of the early Intel Atom N270 CPU's (32-bit, single-core hyperthreading, 1.6GHz), 2GB DDR2 RAM. Slow 16GB SSD as the main drive. Whole OS loaded up on the tiny storage, no problem. Linux runs fine on the machine but it's obviously not fast, but works for light web surfing, E-mail, word processing... Now, how about for audio?

MUSINGS: Meditations on the limitations of hearing & listening.

For today's MUSINGS, let us take a few moments to think about our sense of hearing. Though the auditory system is not as complex as the visual architecture, the extensive interconnections and association areas they intersect with of course provides us with an altogether unique experience integrating emotions and memories. The "drug of choice" for us audiophiles is in the auditory domain. The music we hear adds to the quality of life, and in so doing, satisfies at least to some extent a sense of meaning to our existence. Much of this is a mystery which perhaps in time with the development of neuroscience, secrets may be unlocked... But even if these remain impenetrable mysteries, there is of course no denying the value and truth to human subjectivity. That joy and meaning is wholly ours alone, it is our right as sentient beings to own and cherish.

As humans, we also recognize that we are limited in every conceivable dimension and sensory modality. We cannot smell as well as dogs, we cannot see as well as cats, we cannot hear as acutely as bats, our proprioceptive abilities pale in comparison to even more primitive primates swinging in the trees... Over the years, I have posted on the importance of being aware of these limitations so as to be insightful about our abilities especially when making claims about what is heard or not heard. For example, I think it's useful to try something like the Philips Golden Ear Challenge as a way to evaluate our own hearing acuity. Having an appreciation of dynamic limits also helps us appreciate the importance of sound levels and silence in the listening environment. Knowing the limits as a human being helps us to understand the importance (or unimportance!) of developments like high-resolution audio and what we should expect.

MEASUREMENTS: Light Harmonic Geek Out V2

I know some folks have been awaiting the results for the Light Harmonic Geek Out V2. As you know, I have already provided a bit of a preview a few weeks back so no need to say much more I think. Generally my feelings about this device have not changes over the weeks... The 3D printed plastic smell has completely dissipated by now. It does sound great and I must say, going into the measurements, the impression was that this is some of the best sound I have heard from these little USB devices! Remember, this is a $235US unit I got as an "early bird" off the Indegogo promotion.

Let's see if the measurements are consistent with some of my early subjective impressions.