Maybe we should throw a damn party, or roast his a$$

[Lex]

Jon Marsh people, he's another digit older today it seems, as well as his evil twin Egor... Happy Biririrthday Jo oh oh oh n Marsh!

We didn't bake you a cake, we just got you a stripper instead...

:boobies: arty: opcorn:

Of course, at his age, we may need some nitro after that to restart the old ticker...

[Alaric]

Happy Birthday , Jon!!!
;b>

[Face]

Hbd Jm!

[Mazeroth]

Happy Birthday, you crazy mad man!

[Jed]

Happy B-day Jon!

[Curt C]

I don't know about you Jon, but at my age, I'd like to see my birthday only come every other year now...

Happy BD!

C

[JonMarsh]

I don't know about you Jon, but at my age, I'd like to see my birthday only come every other year now...

Happy BD!

C

I'm totally with you, Curt, on this one- but thanks for the kind wishes from everyone!

The unfortunate thing, if any, is that I wonder how this 35 year old wound up getting stuck in this older body! :roll:

Thinking about some colleagues and friends that aren't around now, that were this time a year ago, I've got no complaints, considering the alternatives.

Thanks, everyone!

~Jon

[Pat.M]

Happy birthday and pleased to meet you :T

[Johnloudb]

Happy Birthday Jon! And many more to come ...
:banana: arty: :dancenana:

[1oldguy]

Likewise ........HB

[chasw98]

Happy Birthday Jon!

I know a great 'Curmudgeon Trainer' when you are ready to start!

[JonMarsh]

Hey Chuck, I have enough troubles dealing with a Sith Lord and "Chancellor" to add a "Curmudgeon" trainer into the mix! Besides, Curmudgeon just sounds to me like a politically correct Sith Lord stripped of the political aggrandizement and religious aspects!

[ThomasW]

He didn't seem all that excited when I sang 'happy birthday' to him over the phone ... :B

[JonMarsh]

Has anyone else here heard our curmudgeon attempt to sing?

If so, you know why.... :W

[Hank]

This geezer has been 39 for a long time, so I don't wanna even metion the B-word.
Good tequila will take away any thought of aging - take that to the bank, boys.
I hope the Curmudgeon doesn't get any more curmudgeonly after his next...well, you know...
okay, back to my fantasy world...

[chasw98]

Obviously Hank is old enough to remember not only Jack Benny, but the lines he used in his act! And you are right, good Tequila will take away any thought of aging and a few others!

Personally I started counting backwards at 50 and feel very spry these days!

It gets better every year except when the wife looks forward to the discounts she gets in on because of our age!

[cjd]

Wow. I never knew Jon was older than I am.

Happy b-day. now, finish... um, something. Even if it's just a bottle of something good.

[numberoneoppa]

Happy (belated?) birthday! =)

[JonMarsh]

Wow. I never knew Jon was older than I am.

Happy b-day. now, finish... um, something. Even if it's just a bottle of something good.

I DID finish putting together a new drill press this morning- does that count? :B

Yeah, should get some B&B or Armagnac or Tequila- I enjoy that, but just don't stop to sip or drink that much because I've been so busy lately working on my second mid life crisis. :rofl:


The second half of my Birthday is today- new DAC came in yesterday afternoon at the dealer, have to drive to Berkeley to pick it up- and having dinner with my daughter this evening.

I'm at that awkward age when I get only a few senior discounts, enough to tantalize, not enough to make a lifestyle difference.

I should try Chuck's methodology - that way I could be in my early 40's - an age I'm willing to live with. :B

[Hdale85]

What's the new DAC?

[Lex]

Just be sure your in before 10 and you have your evening Geritol Jon... Enjoy your new gear and daughter time.

[JonMarsh]

Just be sure your in before 10 and you have your evening Geritol Jon... Enjoy your new gear and daughter time.

OK "Dad", good words of advice, since I have to get up at 4 for work. :W

I won't have much time for listening, but I'm going to setup it up and get a little break in time going. Of course, I have to be careful, I might get distracted from working on the speakers!

OK, rather than a "normal" image of the Alpha DAC, here's one that may be more interesting (no, I didn't open it yet, just found this one online and shrunk it down a little).

[numberoneoppa]

Wow, that looks nice. What input interfaces does it have?

[cjd]

what chip is that DAC using?

Looks like a nice output buffer stage!

[JonMarsh]

An internet cliche... unboxing pictures

It's been pointed out to me that I rarely get something actually worthy of the classic "internet unboxing photos", so taking that to heart, I present just a couple of photos.

(BTW, meanwhile Hiromi "Spiral: Tour Edition" is spinning, and it sounds mighty fine.... piano and cymbals are VERY convincing, and you know how hard that is- it's amazing what the NeoD's are doing with various system upgrades)




Yes, that's an HRx high resolution disk sampler, 24 bit/176 kHz, won't play in CD players, of course, but should be at home in my Mac Mini server. Even has some Stanley Clarke on it, by George- righteous!!



Berkeley Audio Designs was founded by the folks who originally founded Pacific Microsonics, the developers of HDCD, the PMD100 and PMD200, and the professional model Two HDCD encoder/decoder, which is still widely used today. The Alpha DAC's secret sauce is a "new and advanced" digital filter that runs on an Analog Devices SHARC DSP processor, though the D/A chip is "just" an Analog Devices AD1853. My understanding is that the digital filter is is top notch. The receiver circuit must be rather good, too; it sounds very good on SPDIF off my Cambridge Audio 640 CD player.

Quick judgement is that it's a bigger leap ahead of my DL-III than the DL-III was of the Benchmark. Of course, the system has been upgraded with some other stuff since the Benchmark was in it.

Of course, I'm a Hiromi fan, so anything that makes her sound even more "live" is number one in my book! :T :B

[JonMarsh]

OK, I just plopped in one of my Joni Mitchell albums- many of them are HDCD, I've got a collection of Japanese import remasters of her best albums (in my opinion).


And the HDCD lights up on the front panel. So, I presume the decoding of these HDCD disks will be done correctly- should be good with my XRCD disks, too.

Lovely...


The sound, that is. :T

[Jed]

Wow, that dac looks nice, but at 5 grand.... ouch. I was thinking you'd go for the PS Audio dac but this one appears to be on a whole new level.

[Hdale85]

Hah! I was just going to look up the price....5g's that won't be in my setup anytime soon I bet it sounds phenomenal though!

[chasw98]

Some people around here are using some other good stuff too! Look at the Perfect Wave combo at $6,000! And I thought a benchmark was a lot of money for a DAC :T :B

Nice score Jon. Looking forward to hearing that one in person. Know anyone with a used DL III that might be for sale?

[Hdale85]

The benchmark is nothing compared to a lot of DAC's I heard a DAC I up against my dual mono Wolfson 8740 and I liked my DAC quite a bit better. Eventually I want to upgrade though when I get a chance to build the Ardents (possibly?) and build my 2 channel rig.

[JonMarsh]

Hmmm, just listening to "The Ladder", by Yes- I don't want to go blathering on like some typical fanboy, but let's just say I think I got my money's worth. Even mediocre recordings sound better, more natural in overall dynamics and tonal character- it's hard to me to under stand how a digital HF filter could do this- there's something a bit more to their "secret sauce" I think. I know one reviewer found it nearly identical in performance to a $14,000 unit, so let's just say that there is a value proposition here.

Obviously the standard metrics for converters aren't cutting the mustard- by them, a $300 Marantz CD player is plenty good enough and should be much better than what we can resolve through the limitations of typical home speakers. Somehow, I'd say we aren't measuring the right things, in that case. But my listening so far confirms to me that their avowed goal of "getting closer to the microphone feed". If I was a speaker exhibitor at RMAF I'd definitely want to have one of these. It would be like cheating, but... at this point I could just show up with this and the rest of my current system with the NeoD's and have better sound than a lot of the exhibitors the last year I was there, 2007.

Even considering the test reports by someone like John Atkinson of Stereophile, where he looks at a lot of details, including closely at low level distortion, there's other things at work. Meridian, Ayre, Wolfson, PS Audio and others point to their new minimum phase apodizing filters and the difference in time domain response (no pre-ringing), but I don't think what I'm hearing is as simple as that.

Chuck, I think you will enjoy hearing this one in person. If you want, I'll bring my DL-III out too so you can hear that particular one- I hadn't really thought about it, but I suppose I could be thinking about selling it, though I'd also been thinking about putting a bedroom system together. We'll be having a friendly shoot out with Thomas's PS Audio rig- his PWT + PWD. That's more of a complete system solution, with a disk transport that can play back high rez disks in the format HRx supports, for example. I'll bring the RME Fireface, too, as it can provide a low jitter clock from my Mac Mini, and captures or plays back up to 24/192.

The dangerous thing about this unit is that the way it handles transients and as clean as it sounds, I'm encouraged to turn it up more...

I've got a long list of CD's to go through checking this out, but I suspect I won't be any where near through with that list by RMAF. It'll be interesting to see what it sounds like on the triamped Acoustat system at Tom's, too.

BTW, all these comments are using it in a "normal" mode in my system, going through the K5 preamp; like the PS Audio PWD, it's capable of operating as a standalone feed to a power amp with it's one electronics volume control, which sets the output level even now feeding the preamp. I think I'm going to save trying out "direct drive" for when I get the Ardents up and running. :W

[Rightbrained]

Happy belated Birthday Jon .
That is one sweet gift .

[ThomasW]

Some people around here are using some other good stuff too!

Really? ....

The benchmark is nothing compared to a lot of DAC's I heard a DAC I up against my dual mono Wolfson 8740 and I liked my DAC quite a bit better.

The DAC 1 was introduced 6yrs ago, how does it compare to the DAC you were using then?.... :W

[Hdale85]

I didn't say the DAC 1 was bad by any means, although they haven't updated it much either but it's still a very decent DAC Of course 6 years ago I had no DAC so can't comment there, I've had my current DAC about 3 years though. But I know what you are saying Of course I understand completely that it's not just the chip it uses but many other factors play into the SQ.

I was just looking at those PS Audio units, they look very nice and use the newer WM8741's. I've heard the AD1955's in the 840c and really liked that player. Not to many DAC's out there with those in it though. I've heard the AD1853's are just as good though.

[Dennis H]

The benchmark is nothing compared to a lot of DAC's I heard a DAC I up against my dual mono Wolfson 8740 and I liked my DAC quite a bit better. Eventually I want to upgrade though when I get a chance to build the Ardents (possibly?) and build my 2 channel rig.

Just being a curmudgeon and observing the trickle-down theory, you can buy a (relatively) cheap Pioneer receiver with Wolfson 8740 DACs. Spend a couple hundred bucks more and you can get one with Burr-Brown upsampling chips feeding the Wolfsons that improve the performance even more. Independent jitter measurements by Paul Miller were impressive. There's hope for guys on a budget compared to a few years ago.

Edit: article talking about playing a CD using a Pioneer BD player hooked to a Pioneer receiver with HDMI, using their quasi-proprietary signal syncing. I say quasi because it's built into the firewire spec that Pioneer was an early adopter of but firewire died and HDMI doesn't have that native capability so Pioneer had to adapt it.

http://www.zinio.com/reader.jsp?issue=406080009&o=int&prev=sub&p=32

[Hdale85]

Yeah the 8740's have been around for a while now. Most of the popular audiophile DAC's have been around for a while actually.

[JonMarsh]

What's made the more recent generation of DACs perform better is, IMO, primarily the ASRC chips used in the front end receiver- (Asynchronous Sampling Rate Converter)- Cirrus Logic and TI having the two most popular. This is responsible for the low jitter numbers measured for the Benchmark DAC1, the PS Audio DL-III, the DAC Magic from Cambridge, and the VDAC from Musical Fidelity. Unquestionably it's enabled a higher level of performance for the money, but it's conceded that ASRC's add their own colorations, and we're still level with the digital re-construction filter - the most recent "public" trend being apodizing minimum phase filters, which shift the energy of the transient ringing to the post transient side of the wave from the pre-transient. One of the first instances I'm aware of for those in moderate price gear is the Marantz SA-11 (got one, BTDT), and more recently in new units from PS Audio (PWD), Ayre (QB-9 and the MP retrofits to their CX-7xeMP and C5-xeMP, and last but not least, the Meridian 808.2 Reference CD player, reviewed in the April 2009 issue of Stereophile, at about $15,995; another $1k if you want the preamp option.

I've listened to a lot of digital gear at elevated price points in the last few years- including Esoteric, Meitner, Marantz, and the Cary CD 306 Pro SACD player. My search has been driven by my aural memory of the vinyl rig I had in the late 70's, and the way I used to create demo's for the store- to avoid wearing out records, I would record a pristine copy of the record onto an Otari half inch stereo tape machine, and use the tape machine for demo. My source setup was competent, but hardly over the top- a Denon platter with a Rabco tone arm and Denon DL103, a custom DIY moving coil step up transfomer, an Audionics Preamp (the phono stage in it would wipe up the floor with our Mark Leveinson or Luman gear), and a Luxman low TIM 100W/ch amp. Material I used to record included some light and heavy classical, some jazz like R&B (Crusaders), and one of my favorite cuts to demo a bigger system, "School Days" from the Stanley Clarke album of the same name- that cut had dynamics and tonal color out the wazoo! People would be slack jawed hearing that on the big B&W's or on the Levinson based HQD system (HQD stood for Hartely, Quad ESL (pair in stands, one inverted, Decca Ribbon, but we used Janis subwoofers)






Anyway, when the first CD version of School Days came out I was sorely disappointed with the sonics- no bass, no dynamics, very washed out. Clearly a dupe from a 2nd or 3rd generation tape with the limiter cranked up. The second remaster version improved on things only a little. Not much of a case for "perfect sound forever".

A couple of years ago a new "greatest hits" collection was issued; "The Bassics"; it includes several cuts from School Days, including the title cut. MUCH better dynamics and sound, some real bottom end and punch- sounds like it came from a 1st generation tape. But it still didn't have the snap and tonal density of the original record, and the high frequency clarity. Part of me just wrote that off to shortcomings in my current equipment, and having some kind of "halo" effect for my original memory, romanticizing the experience, you know? Considering all the other changes since then, maybe my expectations have just changed and raised the bar.

Well, last night I finally heard digital that matched the original vinyl for School Days- same CD disk ("Bassics"), but new DAC did the deed.

I only had time to check a few other "recordings of interest", but generally had the same experience.

Folks, it's been 26 years since the introduction of CD, and finally good digital is here. Whether it's affordable or not is another matter... but then a Rabco tone arm, Audionics preamp, and Denon Direct drive platter wasn't particularly affordable in 1976, either- about $3,000 altogether, and that was in dollars worth a LOT more than ours today are in purchasing power.

[chasw98]

I am going to assume you were running at 30ips to get a decent S/N ratio with NO Dolby "A" processing! That always worked for me but with an ATR 100.

I am also going to assume that you became adept at adjusting the little 'fingers' in the Rabco so it would track properly? I hated working on them.....

And now I am on my way to get a copy of Bassics.

Am I right in thinking that you are using all these fancy electronics feeding a pair of the NeoD's?

[JonMarsh]

15 IPS did fairly well with that Otari- it was only two channels one direction- fat wide tracks. (I haven't heard anyone mention an Ampex ATR-100 in ages- we one of those in a small studio I helped build in the same time frame).

My Rabco seemed to be a fairly good one- it was relatively trouble free until it was stolen- lost the Audionics BT-2 at the same time- a break-in at home. Fortunately the Luxman was in the store on that evening, and they only got a Dynaco ST150 for an amplifier. :W That BT-2 was a real unsung hero of a preamp- funny they didn't do all that much in that market, they're now known as Rockford/Fosgate.

If you get Bass-ics, you should also get a copy of "Toys of Men"- it's a must for Stanely Clarke fans, IMO.

I've got a copy of the new Stanley Clarke Trio album on order, with Hiromi Uhera on piano and Lenny White (he of Return to Forever days), which I haven't heard, but I bet it's great fun- it should be really awesome for me, as much as I enjoy Hiromi. If you don't have any Hiromi yet and are interested, start with Spiral and Brain. I was driving Tom nuts back in 2007 when I was out for the NeoD CC build, featuring the "Hiromi Channel"- all Hiromi, all the time. (good sounding recordings, fun playing, several of them on SACD- her regular bass player and drummer are quite good). Maybe you just have to be into keyboards and fusion jazz to appreciate her....

Yeah, these comments are based on listening with just a regular set of NeoD's, as described in the build thread- they're not chopped liver for a little 1 cu ft box, you know - the midrange and tweeter are very low distortion, the HiVi D6.8 woofers are unusually low in 2nd order and have a very non-resonant frame. It's easy to work with on the top end, though not high sensitivity- it works OK in this smaller box, though larger is better.

Current listening setup is just the Cambridge 640C (paid $399 for that) SPDIF into the Alpha DAC, balanced into the Ayre K5, balanced into the Cambridge 840W (I think ET wrote up some stuff about that in Audio Hideout). Yeah, the speaker cables cost more than the speakers. 'Nuff said about that- the less the better. You do what you have to do. :W

[JonMarsh]

OK, this is going to be my last "spontaneous" post on this topic, but the whole deal is weirding me out a bit-

Just listening to a live album, one I've heard many times, Jonatha Brooke "Live in New York", and the sixth cut, "Love is thicker than Forget" is a simple cut, with Jonatha singing and playing solo Fender Rhodes piano and her backup singers doing the other vocal parts. Now, Rhodes electric, along with Hammond B3, are two sounds I'm VERY familiar with and which never seem to sound quite right on recordings, especially the piano harmonic structure, attack and decay. This isn't loud dynamic stuff, it's just harmonically demanding for realism, with some subtle stuff that goes on about how the notes attack and decay and beat together- stuff you wouldn't notice if you weren't a musician for that instrument or have spent a lot of time listening to studio mic feeds. There is something going on here that at times is subtle and at other times isn't subtle at all, but it definitely takes CD to a different level. If you're curious about what CD can sound like, you need to haul your buns down to a dealer that carries these and give it a listen. There's not many in the country, though, so it's probably a bit of a rare bird for now.

[Jed]

OK, this is going to be my last "spontaneous" post on this topic, but the whole deal is weirding me out a bit-

Sounds like it is weirding you out in a good way, Jon. The same thing happened to me when I went from some very good scan speak mids to the Accuton C173-T90 mid. Literally I was hearing things beside me, not just in front of me in the soundstage. It was so palatable that is was scary (in a good way). Sometimes the really good stuff ($$$) is worth every penny. On paper, it might be hard to substantiate, but the added detail and obtaining that last few percent in data retrieval doesn't come cheap.

[JonMarsh]

No, it doesn't come cheap- but sometimes when you've been sort of banging your head up against the wall and you make a change that is really significant affecting everything you hear- then it's like you have to have all your expectations re-calibrated. It's a similar thing to what you're talking about with the mids- it's not like comparing two expensive cables that have somewhat subtle but different effects- this is more like taking CD to a level I haven't heard from SACD before, for the most part, and that doesn't add up, but there's no question about what I'm hearing, and how consistent it is across all the disks I've had time to spin. From Jacques Loussier 50th Anniversary recording's Tocatta and Fugue in C Major to "All you Zombies" by the Hooters (which has really heavy up front cymbal parts that are are torture test for systems and players).

Gives me even more motivation for the next project, so I can experience my own set of Accuton C1730-T90's! This seems to be one of those things that the better everything else is, the more the impact of the source unit tells on the whole story.

[numberoneoppa]

I'm having a hard time imagining how much better a DAC could make things sound. I've just never experienced what you're describing before.

[Hdale85]

Oh they can make a big difference if your system is demanding enough to reveal the differences.

[numberoneoppa]

Oh they can make a big difference if your system is demanding enough to reveal the differences.

Precisely why I can't imagine it. My speakers are the bottleneck, themselves, right now. :P