High quality (personal) but easy vinyl digitising

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Indeed. It was just an analogy, to where bigger and apparently better numbers can be either misleading, or perhaps merely pointless. This was in the context of the discussion with matts about whether 16/44.1 was 'enough' or whether, for my needs, 24/192 was worth payyingg for.

I would be reading through reviews,to see standard performance,. If there is "good" 24/192 performance it's a bonus,ie,something to have a play around with. I suspect by now you have a range of choices,despite the disagreements!

Also regarding numbers,I once listened to a headphone system at a major show which.....wait for it....priced as much as a BMW i8. It was basically the Bugatti of headphone systems,had more boxes than my Hifi! I was not impressed,and neither was my mate.

I previously listened to another system from a small company. It was so small,the owner had travelled from Asia,and he was the only representative of his company,and he didn't talk much. The headphones were powered off a small battery powered amplifier....and they sounded better,than most of the bigger brands at the show. Still quite expensive at around £1500~£2000 for the whole shebang(not spending that kind of money). But honestly Hifi has gone to silly expensive levels now. I remember talking to older hobbyists who said back in the 1970s there was much less of the marketing rubbish we have now.

However,one company I do have some respect for is Marantz...after listening to a talk from Ken Ishiwata,who basically was responsible for the KI series range of products. Went into a lot of details about how CD was developed,and the short cuts they needed to make,etc. But what he told people,is that he never tried to "sell" his products as the "best",as everyone has a different view of what sounds best. This was totally in contrast to literally everyone else at the show!

[Saracen999]

I would be reading through reviews,to see standard performance,. If there is "good" 24/192 performance it's a bonus,ie,something to have a play around with. I suspect by now you have a range of choices,despite the disagreements!

Also regarding numbers,I once listened to a headphone system at a major show which.....wait for it....priced as much as a BMW i8. It was basically the Bugatti of headphone systems,had more boxes than my Hifi! I was not impressed,and neither was my mate.

I previously listened to another system from a small company. It was so small,the owner had travelled from Asia,and he was the only representative of his company,and he didn't talk much. The headphones were powered off a small battery powered amplifier....and they sounded better,than most of the bigger brands at the show. Still quite expensive at around £1500~£2000 for the whole shebang(not spending that kind of money). But honestly Hifi has gone to silly expensive levels now. I remember talking to older hobbyists who said back in the 1970s there was much less of the marketing rubbish we have now.

However,one company I do have some respect for is Marantz...after listening to a talk from Ken Ishiwata,who basically was responsible for the KI series range of products. Went into a lot of details about how CD was developed,and the short cuts they needed to make,etc. But what he told people,is that he never tried to "sell" his products as the "best",as everyone has a different view of what sounds best. This was totally in contrast to literally everyone else at the show!

Re: Marantz, I had a KI-Sig CD player. Damn fine player and, while certainly not cheap (about £400, IIRC) wasn't silly expensive either.

It's hard judging 'phones, or speakers, though because 'nice' sound is so damn subjective. It's why, IMHO, when someone asks for recommendations, I only ever feel I can give guidance, and then the critical advice.... find a dealer that will demo, and listen.

An example. I bought some Stax electrostatic headphones in the late 70s. Not cheap, but not silly prices either. And they are definitely marmite phones. Most people seem to love 'em or hate me, but these days, cheap they aren't. Even entry level is pushing a grand, and their top end! Way, WAY higher. Even allowing for 40+ years of inflation, I didn't pay that kind of money. Ironically, now that maybe I can afford it, my ears are too old to be worth it..

My guess is that those super-pricey 'Bugatti' or i8 phones were, like some watches for example, designed to appeal to those for whom price is no object, but exclusivity is, like pop stars, Hollywood elites, premiere league football players or Russian Oligarchs. Good luck to them, but we have more sense .... and not enough money.

Even in the 70's, there was more than a little pretentiousness and style over substance in hifi, but I certainly agree, not to the extent there is now. But it's a field that's always been a bit that way inclined.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Re: Marantz, I had a KI-Sig CD player. Damn fine player and, while certainly not cheap (about £400, IIRC) wasn't silly expensive either.

It's hard judging 'phones, or speakers, though because 'nice' sound is so damn subjective. It's why, IMHO, when someone asks for recommendations, I only ever feel I can give guidance, and then the critical advice.... find a dealer that will demo, and listen.

An example. I bought some Stax electrostatic headphones in the late 70s. Not cheap, but not silly prices either. And they are definitely marmite phones. Most people seem to love 'em or hate me, but these days, cheap they aren't. Even entry level is pushing a grand, and their top end! Way, WAY higher. Even allowing for 40+ years of inflation, I didn't pay that kind of money. Ironically, now that maybe I can afford it, my ears are too old to be worth it..

My guess is that those super-pricey 'Bugatti' or i8 phones were, like some watches for example, designed to appeal to those for whom price is no object, but exclusivity is, like pop stars, Hollywood elites, premiere league football players or Russian Oligarchs. Good luck to them, but we have more sense .... and not enough money.

Even in the 70's, there was more than a little pretentiousness and style over substance in hifi, but I certainly agree, not to the extent there is now. But it's a field that's always been a bit that way inclined.

It's like Swiss watches,which were relatively much cheaper decades ago. The problem by the early 1980s,is that many of these companies which were started by engineers,started having more marketing and accounting folk,etc involved from what I gather,and the older generations started to retire.

Electrostatics headphones are certainly interesting just like the Quad ESL loudspeakers. IIRC,they were bought up by a Chinese company,so there are cheaper models now,but it's still £900ish including the Energizer,which doubles the price I did want a pair,but not enough to spend that kind of money!

[DanceswithUnix]

Even in the 70's, there was more than a little pretentiousness and style over substance in hifi, but I certainly agree, not to the extent there is now. But it's a field that's always been a bit that way inclined.

That's certainly my recollection, though part of the problem was lack of good component availability. My first amp was a 70's model bought second hand in the early 80's. I eventually transformed that thing by unsoldering all the carbon composite resistors and the electrolytic capacitors and replacing them with metal film resistors and where possible non electrolytic capacitors of the same values. I actually did that as a school project, so was measuring the noise reduction as I went. That's no design change, just the improvement in quality of basic components and it was startling.

I think with the ability for things to be better in the 80's and the technology getting more complex (FET amplifiers, the rise of CD players) the scope for the iffy voodoo that was always there in hifi started to really ramp up though.

[Saracen999]

It's like Swiss watches,which were relatively much cheaper decades ago. The problem by the early 1980s,is that many of these companies which were started by engineers,started having more marketing and accounting folk,etc involved from what I gather,and the older generations started to retire.

Electrostatics headphones are certainly interesting just like the Quad ESL loudspeakers. IIRC,they were bought up by a Chinese company,so there are cheaper models now,but it's still £900ish including the Energizer,which doubles the price I did want a pair,but not enough to spend that kind of money!

From memory, my Stax 'phones were something like £70-£100. Date-wise, thinking about it, it was probably early or mid 80's. Of course, even £100 was a lot more than now, both because of inflation adjustments and because at that point in my career, I was still doing my chartered accountant articles, or at best, not long out of them. Against earnings, compared to later years, that £100 (or whatever) hurt.

Given my pretty modest income in those days, hifi took aa serious chunk of it. The Mitchell turntable wasn't cheap either. From memory, cheaper than the 'reference' most people aspired to, which was the Linn Sondek LP12, SME Mk3/Mk4 arm, and whatever flavour of cartridge took your fancy. And the Mitchell was prettier. Stunning, in fact, compared to the notably drab (if extremely good) Linn. If you like that kind of thing. I loved the Black perspex base, solid aluminium platter and the gold-plated solid brass pillars, in a clear perspex case. It's a work of art .... that plays records, and does it surprisingly well.

But even though both times put a dirty great dent in my modest income, here I am, some 35 years (or more) later, and they're both still going strong, giving good service.

As a side note, the Stax 'phones are, as I said, down to personal taste, and ears. To me, the weakest point is bass. There aren't the biggest base I've ever heard, but I like that. What bass there is is the opposite of boomy. It's far more controlled, tight even. Which matches the entire electrostatic sound .... crisp, clean, tight, fast, even analytical. To me, they are very uncoloured, but some people find them too clean and crisp, a bit like a chair in a doctor's waiting room than a comfy armchair.

To a point, I agree. Which is why I also have mid-priced Sennheisers, which are also very good, but completely different. It's not a rule, but I tend to use the Stax 'phones on lighter classical, especially Bach, Mozart, choral pieces, etc, and the Senn's on most more modern music or 'heavy' classical, like Bruckner, etc. Though the latter really works best on speakers, but winding those up can be .... antisocial.

Picking out the gear that suited both my ears and wallet was a challenge, and consumed quite a few Saturday mornings, auditing, but I'm glad to not be trying to pick my way through modern hifi, which seems to me to be a minefield, trying to separate audio gems from marketing masterpieces and appearance and styling is no guide to quality. Truthfully it never really was, but the market has changed, largely (IMHO) because thee disposable income of the majority of potential customers is comparatively much higher than it used to be. All the stuff we've mentioned, including the KI-Sig stuff, was really aimed at discerning listeners and prices allowed for .... stylistic variations.

Now, I'm convinced a lot of fancy gear is aimed at those with more money than serious listening intentions. A hifi nut might stretch to a few grand, but £50k on an amp, £100k or more on speakers, etc, says more about bank balance than musical interest, though I guess the two sometimes coincide.

Put it this way. To get me to spend £250k on a hifi (and for non-enthusiasts, yes you really, truly, can) compared to a still substantial, say, £5k-£10k, I'd need to be convinced that, first, the former was hugely better than the latter, and second, that I could afford a quarter of a million quid on effectively a whim. To do that, I'd need enough money that there's effectively nothing I can't afford, and that really implies a truly major lottery jackpot win. Even with a £10m lottery win, I can't imagine spending £250k on hifi. Even £10m would run out quickly if you start really indulging in money-no-object spending, and that type of hifi would come a long way down my priority list.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

From memory, my Stax 'phones were something like £70-£100. Date-wise, thinking about it, it was probably early or mid 80's. Of course, even £100 was a lot more than now, both because of inflation adjustments and because at that point in my career, I was still doing my chartered accountant articles, or at best, not long out of them. Against earnings, compared to later years, that £100 (or whatever) hurt.

Given my pretty modest income in those days, hifi took aa serious chunk of it. The Mitchell turntable wasn't cheap either. From memory, cheaper than the 'reference' most people aspired to, which was the Linn Sondek LP12, SME Mk3/Mk4 arm, and whatever flavour of cartridge took your fancy. And the Mitchell was prettier. Stunning, in fact, compared to the notably drab (if extremely good) Linn. If you like that kind of thing. I loved the Black perspex base, solid aluminium platter and the gold-plated solid brass pillars, in a clear perspex case. It's a work of art .... that plays records, and does it surprisingly well.

But even though both times put a dirty great dent in my modest income, here I am, some 35 years (or more) later, and they're both still going strong, giving good service.

As a side note, the Stax 'phones are, as I said, down to personal taste, and ears. To me, the weakest point is bass. There aren't the biggest base I've ever heard, but I like that. What bass there is is the opposite of boomy. It's far more controlled, tight even. Which matches the entire electrostatic sound .... crisp, clean, tight, fast, even analytical. To me, they are very uncoloured, but some people find them too clean and crisp, a bit like a chair in a doctor's waiting room than a comfy armchair.

To a point, I agree. Which is why I also have mid-priced Sennheisers, which are also very good, but completely different. It's not a rule, but I tend to use the Stax 'phones on lighter classical, especially Bach, Mozart, choral pieces, etc, and the Senn's on most more modern music or 'heavy' classical, like Bruckner, etc. Though the latter really works best on speakers, but winding those up can be .... antisocial.

Picking out the gear that suited both my ears and wallet was a challenge, and consumed quite a few Saturday mornings, auditing, but I'm glad to not be trying to pick my way through modern hifi, which seems to me to be a minefield, trying to separate audio gems from marketing masterpieces and appearance and styling is no guide to quality. Truthfully it never really was, but the market has changed, largely (IMHO) because thee disposable income of the majority of potential customers is comparatively much higher than it used to be. All the stuff we've mentioned, including the KI-Sig stuff, was really aimed at discerning listeners and prices allowed for .... stylistic variations.

Now, I'm convinced a lot of fancy gear is aimed at those with more money than serious listening intentions. A hifi nut might stretch to a few grand, but £50k on an amp, £100k or more on speakers, etc, says more about bank balance than musical interest, though I guess the two sometimes coincide.

Put it this way. To get me to spend £250k on a hifi (and for non-enthusiasts, yes you really, truly, can) compared to a still substantial, say, £5k-£10k, I'd need to be convinced that, first, the former was hugely better than the latter, and second, that I could afford a quarter of a million quid on effectively a whim. To do that, I'd need enough money that there's effectively nothing I can't afford, and that really implies a truly major lottery jackpot win. Even with a £10m lottery win, I can't imagine spending £250k on hifi. Even £10m would run out quickly if you start really indulging in money-no-object spending, and that type of hifi would come a long way down my priority list.

Well I went through the same phase too,if you look back to some of the Hifi I owned,but I know people had better gear than me,but there was a limit at which I was prepared to go to,as I had other hobbies(photography being one),so it was too many hobbies and not enough dosh for both! But as I mentioned I did downgrade,and I am happy with what I have - as you have indicated Hifi is one of those purchases which can last decades. I don't have anything as fancy as Mitchell,just a Luxman,but it does sound nice,when I get around to using it!

However,even say 15 years ago,you could get a pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones for £100 from Richer Sounds,just as the HD650 was being released. Like a fool I decided I already had a pair of Grados /Beyerdynamics which were good enough. In hindsite I wish I bought them as they were near the best headphones Sennheiser did,and that £100 would be £150 today!! However,the Grados still work fine.

I noticed what you said with Electrostatics - its why some of the Electrostatic floorstanders have a separate woofer unit,but I did like that clean sound from the Stax's I demoed,but couldn't justify getting one at the time. I did recently nearly get a pair of Koss ESP/95X,as they were priced under £300 on clearance. However,I heard middling reports about the reliability,and I would have to deal with sending them back to the US if there was a problem!

What I did get more recently is a pair of more entry level planar magnetic headphones - these do base very well. I listened to some at a show,and they intrigued me. So it was either a pair of those or a pair of modified HD650 headphones. The Grados are very nice for vocals and rock music,but have that upfront soundstage. The planar magnetics(Hifiman),have a very different sound to them,but the soundstage is better and the base much more tighter,so it suits other kinds of music better.

But as a side note,I don't like some of the modern speaker design. It increasingly is prioritising appearance,and to some degree cost. So instead of larger woofer units(remember the old "racetrack" drivers?),you have more cheaper smaller diameter units in parallel,so the front is narrow,but they end up being too deep. It makes me wonder whether these designers have heard of KISS,as many of these speakers have 1000 units,which all need to be timed properly. Where as I don't mind styling to a degree,it shouldn't compromise the important stuff,which I feel is a bigger and bigger problem you can see everywhere,ie,even phones and computers. I also heard some interesting stuff about costs 10 years ago - apparently the enclosure costs can be more than the electronics in Hifi separates.Apparently the equipment used to make low volume run custom cases is not cheap at all. I don't know how it is now,with 3D printing,etc.

Well for em the rot really has started to get worse in the last 10~15 years or so. £10000~£20000 was probably the upper limit for most of the consumer loudspeakers,outside some one off projects. The last hifi show I went to,I believe the most expensive system I listened was probably closer to £500000!! TBH,even if I played and won the Euromillions,I too would be doubtful about spending that kind of money.

[Saracen999]

Very similar interests, there, Cat. Probably the biggest single restriction (*) on me indulging in hifi gear was me indulging in photography..First of all in enlargers, colour analyser, etc, for a homebrew b&w, then colour, darkroom. Then, largely for work reasons, I was in the the digital revolution surplanting chemical photography and the money pit grew even bigger.


(*) When talking about indulgence, I'm talking about from disposable funds, obviously. Normal living costs, including house-buying, come first.

[DanceswithUnix]

Apparently the equipment used to make low volume run custom cases is not cheap at all. I don't know how it is now,with 3D printing,etc.

Sadly you can't 3D print everything, and cases that have to block EMI are one of those things unless you are 3D printing metal and that is still really expensive. A nicely done bit of tin bashing isn't that outrageous AFAIK, but you do have to pay for the wages of the people who designed it and that tends to push the cost of low volume items up as badly as the tooling.

I'm mainly trying to get my head around 1000 drivers in a speaker unit. Am I really reading that right, it sounds bonkers.

[Saracen999]

Ditto on the 1000 drivers, unless it's a speaker enclosure the size of a house.

[matts-uk]

I don't agree entirely about the distortion,because IMHO that can be a problem in it's own right,especially with certain types of music.

Also regarding the website quite the opposite. If you look at their reviews,the main reviewer does seem to have a solid engineering background,and has pointed out how several more expensive devices are inferior to cheaper devices,which has lead to problems with certain companies. An example Schiit Audio having issues with them,when the chap pointed out there were problems with some of their devices,and cheaper devices from Topping did a better job. Schiit are considered "budget champions" in the US.

Cat, you are drawing me into this further than I intended to go. What I would say about that web site is the reviewer is good at measuring 'things.'

There is an old audio engineers joke, "0.00083% THD sounds terrible at 117.4db (!)"

I am not going to worry about 0.1% THD being a bigger number than 0.01% THD. Both are <1% and distortion from the electronics disappears in the mush just as soon as the needle hits 'silence' between tracks on vinyl. If you intend to listen to music that degrades at the merest hint of distortion, the mistake is recording at home from vinyl in the first place.

It's interesting that you later say you prefer one big woofer over multiple smaller drivers. The smaller drivers shift the same air but faster and with (generally) less distortion. How do you feel about tube amps? Tubes generally have higher THD numbers than the solid state equivalents.

The problem with obsessing over numbers, IMHO, is our ears don't read numbers. We 'perceive' sound and we 'feel' music. For instance, we perceive odd order distortion very differently to even order. Comparing specs and scope outputs might get you so far but ultimately how it sounds is the test that matters. How I feel about the sound quality of my audio kit is oh so personal and can vary hour by hour, day to day. I'm not asking you or any one else to approve of it.

Then look at the review of the Chord Mojo:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-and-amp.5120/

It uses an FPGA,which is advertised as "state of the art" by many publications.

FPGAs are the state of the art for designing digital filters. Whether filtering in the digital domain is 'better' than filtering in the analogue domain is a subjective argument. They both have their pros and cons. However designing convincing digital filters is what I call, properly difficult. No one is forced to like the sound of Chord gear or to sponsor Robb Watts efforts.

The whole takeaway from the reviews,and especially the ODAC project,is most of the boutique DACs are a waste of time. Many of these companies don't appear to do proper measurements,and just take onboard official components specs,without proper measurements.

It's not really anything I am interested in but I would say you are trying to compare a restaurant chain to my local bistro. Both make perfectly fine food but in my local bistro the chef adds a signature flavour and the menu is full of nonsense about notes of sea mist. Beyond the mass produced mainstream what you are paying for in esoteric audio kit is the audio engineer's time and expertise in tuning the sound by ear. Selling with superlatives is hardly new or restricted to Hi-Fi kit. I've got a little more respect for an audio engineer making a living selling amps for £100K than say politicians, footballers and TV presenters.

The distortion issues include the more expensive UHD202HD and UHD204HD:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...e-review.9856/
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-review.10187/

So the price difference between the UHD204HD and a 2i2 is around £30 at most.

Why are we even talking about the UHD204D? I certainly did not mention it.

With regard for the review. Do you have any gear in your Hi-Fi stack that outputs 1V at the line-level jacks? Let me answer that for you, no you don't. Consumer kit is standardised around -10dbV, about 400mV. Read a little further and the reviewer concedes that when the level is wound down to about 400mV the UHD204HD gives a half decent performance. Better still when the analogue stages are bypassed. A lot of what is in that review is bleedin obvious IMHO. Oooh the analogue stages are a bit meh - Exactly what do you expect of a £100 box with an ADC inside supplying 48V phantom power from a 5V USB bus

It seems to me you are reading the numbers and seeing a piece of kit that is not as good as some more expensive piece of kit. What I see in those numbers is an audio engineer wringing the best out of an inexpensive design. But no, it's not really suitable for plugging in the end of Angus Young's 100m guitar cable.

I never suggested the UHD204HD though. What I bought were the UCA/UFO202 at 1/5 the price. No phantom power, XLRs or 1/4" connections. The 202s are equipped with RCAs and 3.5mm which pretty much tells me what they might be good for. I spent more money on an automatic record cleaner.

I think in some instances he has pointed out how the onboard sound on a laptop has done a better job than certain DACs!

The onboard sound on a laptop is in the same box as a CPU running at GHz from shared power rails. You don't see that being a problem? I guess the reviewer can't quite afford the test equipment to reveal it.

What I take away from that website is just a hint of repressed resentment

The PCM recorder is probably more for recording events via a microphone. But instead of using the line-in connected to a microphone,you can plonk a line-in from another device and record to SD card. It basically cuts out the whole need of a computer.

Yes, I said I was worried a hand-held PCM recorder might be optimised for performance. The line level input impedance is likely to be matched to +4dbU and may not necessarily be kind to consumer kit. A whole computer is still needed to clean, cut and label LP tracks.

It isn't so much about resolution - I never talked about resolution,etc. Don't get me started about resolution....that is more marketing stuff there. High resolution is important for mastering,not so much for normal listening.

Increasing sample frequency increases resolution.

I agree, high resolution is important for mastering. Every process in the mastering chain is going to lose resolution. Hence, I prefer 16/44 for recording at home from vinyl, as the audio is only processed once if you clean the tracks and with less strain on CPU and storage during recording and playback.

I talked about distortion.Jitter maybe one thing,but distortion isn't great either. For me to bother digitalising a record and going through the effort and time of doing it,I would probably attempt to get it as close to decent as possible,but not to spend excessive amounts of money.

You are criticising a device you have never heard? OK. I will leave you to it.

[matts-uk]

With my engineering hat on, I don't see how any competently designed ADC can have noticable jitter. The ADC should sample on a rock steady sample rate using a timer, and I would hope those readings would get buffered as they go into something like a USB interface.

TL;DR With your engineers hat on, have you ever come across a perfect clock pulse or any other truly instantaneous electrical transition?

The easiest to understand article I could find comes first and the depth you want to go into it increases from there...
https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/6...cy-and-jitter/
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0509/
https://www.analog.com/media/en/trai...als/MT-007.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf

There are a gazillion ways sampling can go wrong, but the OS shouldn't have any influence over any of that other than seeing overruns where you miss blocks of samples if the CPU can't keep up with the incoming data stream and any buffers in the way fill up.

Sorry, I wasn't paying enough attention and wasn't very clear about it.

A variable latency O/S is not doing any favours. It's more a playback issue but another contributor to higher frequency sampling increasing jitter.

https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/6...rating-system/
No, I haven't tried installing it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cat, you are drawing me into this further than I intended to go. What I would say about that web site is the reviewer is good at measuring 'things.'

There is an old audio engineers joke, "0.00083% THD sounds terrible at 117.4db (!)"

I am not going to worry about 0.1% THD being a bigger number than 0.01% THD. Both are <1% and distortion from the electronics disappears in the mush just as soon as the needle hits 'silence' between tracks on vinyl. If you intend to listen to music that degrades at the merest hint of distortion, the mistake is recording at home from vinyl in the first place.

It's interesting that you later say you prefer one big woofer over multiple smaller drivers. The smaller drivers shift the same air but faster and with (generally) less distortion. How do you feel about tube amps? Tubes generally have higher THD numbers than the solid state equivalents.

The problem with obsessing over numbers, IMHO, is our ears don't read numbers. We 'perceive' sound and we 'feel' music. For instance, we perceive odd order distortion very differently to even order. Comparing specs and scope outputs might get you so far but ultimately how it sounds is the test that matters. How I feel about the sound quality of my audio kit is oh so personal and can vary hour by hour, day to day. I'm not asking you or any one else to approve of it.

Numbers are objective measures of performance though,unlike subjective measures which vary from person to person,which is as best we can do in lieu of demoing all the units together,especially in the context of a forum. You yourself said people are not an accurate measure of sound quality,so hence numbers are an accurate comparison. I knew some people who actually built and designed their own speakers,amplifiers,etc. Did proper measurements and soundings,so maybe why I seem to be at least trusting measurements a bit more. Don't disagree we all have a bias towards what we prefer though! If not you are going onto subjective measures of sound,and at least with numbers you can compare different devices. The whole argument of numbers don't matter is the same reason people sell expensive devices which measure worse than cheaper ones. But it also can go the same way when someone says their £10 JVC earbuds the same as a £100 pair of HD598s. So I don't fully agree with you in that sense,but I also appreciate your points.

TBF,if you look at the actually books which talk about hifi design,each of the arrangements do have their own pros and cons,but none of it is entirely new.However,the smaller drivers(and using tons of them) are also partly due to changing trends in Hifi appearance. It means you can have a narrower front ends(speakers also are getting deeper),which looks better in homes,and also they can use cheaper drivers with smaller magnets. Having actually helped out with sourcing some of these speaker units,its shocking sometimes how cheap the units which are used in a number of speakers,or the fact they keep selling speaker unit "innovations" which are decades old.

In the past many amps were far less power than many today,yet lots of loudspeakers of the past didn't use a 1000 different drivers...also you might want to actually see the recommended types of amplifier designs for such multi-speaker designs. On the other end of the scale there are designs with full range drivers(which do need more investment in cabinet design),which are an interesting listen.

Regarding Valves,too much of a PITA - did play around with some Valve amps just out of curiosity to see what the big deal was about.

FPGAs are the state of the art for designing digital filters. Whether filtering in the digital domain is 'better' than filtering in the analogue domain is a subjective argument. They both have their pros and cons. However designing convincing digital filters is what I call, properly difficult. No one is forced to like the sound of Chord gear or to sponsor Robb Watts efforts.

Which means diddly squat if they are upselling devices based on "being state of the art" when they can't even implement it properly. It is basically a con,if a cheaper device which is "less state of the art" outperforms it technically.Which is an increasing problem with so many things.

Also honestly to do what?? Most people are stuck at "CD quality" sound,and even "higher resolution audio" such as DSD/HDCD,etc is over 20 years old. Embedded computing power has gone up,costs and power consumption have gone down a lot,so why we "need" these overcomplicated and expensive systems for two channel consumer audio,is a bit perplexing.

It's not really anything I am interested in but I would say you are trying to compare a restaurant chain to my local bistro. Both make perfectly fine food but in my local bistro the chef adds a signature flavour and the menu is full of nonsense about notes of sea mist. Beyond the mass produced mainstream what you are paying for in esoteric audio kit is the audio engineer's time and expertise in tuning the sound by ear. Selling with superlatives is hardly new or restricted to Hi-Fi kit. I've got a little more respect for an audio engineer making a living selling amps for £100K than say politicians, footballers and TV presenters.

Food isn't a piece of electronics which can be objectively tested,just like all the other bits of electronics which have to be objectively tested. If not we would having more pressing problems,than what Hifi is better! There is no excuse for designs where proper testing or implementations are not made. Also,FFS this home audio,which for the most part hasn't evolved that much in many ways,whilst available computing power has gone up massively,and the design tools,etc are even more powerful now. Unlike in the past where Hifi was more engineer driven,it's more marketing driven now. Just look at motherboards nowadays. Cosmetic heat-trap heatsinks for VRMs which are far more efficient and dissipate far less heat,and still overheat. Go back 10 to 15 years,and you had VRMs which were less efficient,with proper heatsinks which for the most part could do their jobs. They need to go back to KISS.

Why are we even talking about the UHD204D? I certainly did not mention it.

With regard for the review. Do you have any gear in your Hi-Fi stack that outputs 1V at the line-level jacks? Let me answer that for you, no you don't. Consumer kit is standardised around -10dbV, about 400mV. Read a little further and the reviewer concedes that when the level is wound down to about 400mV the UHD204HD gives a half decent performance. Better still when the analogue stages are bypassed. A lot of what is in that review is bleedin obvious IMHO. Oooh the analogue stages are a bit meh - Exactly what do you expect of a £100 box with an ADC inside supplying 48V phantom power from a 5V USB bus

It seems to me you are reading the numbers and seeing a piece of kit that is not as good as some more expensive piece of kit. What I see in those numbers is an audio engineer wringing the best out of an inexpensive design. But no, it's not really suitable for plugging in the end of Angus Young's 100m guitar cable.

I never suggested the UHD204HD though. What I bought were the UCA/UFO202 at 1/5 the price. No phantom power, XLRs or 1/4" connections. The 202s are equipped with RCAs and 3.5mm which pretty much tells me what they might be good for. I spent more money on an automatic record cleaner.

The onboard sound on a laptop is in the same box as a CPU running at GHz from shared power rails. You don't see that being a problem? I guess the reviewer can't quite afford the test equipment to reveal it.

What I take away from that website is just a hint of repressed resentment

The UMC202HD/204HD are closer in price to other interfaces,the problem is they were "good" when introduced but the market has moved forward.What I take away from that website is objective testing,and not giving two damns if anyone gets annoyed with him. He has annoyed fans of so many companies,especially some of the more exotic kit. But he is not the only one(just relevant to this discussion),a few others have pointed out over the years,how some of these companies seem to not properly engineer products.

Even in some cases,there have been instances of boutique marks selling cheaper products,which have been repackaged in a nice case for much more money. You are essentially paying for a nice case and a brand name.

BTW,that would be closer to £50 for both! However,you can only actually buy the UCA222 at nearly £40 now,as the 202 series is out of the stock.Look,I can understand the simplicty of it all which is appealing.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...r-uca222.2036/

That is the UCA222 BTW which he did test. His laptop despite the "dirty power" beat it. He also pointed out:

Oh, I just realized this DAC does not support async USB. As such, it may be sensitive to vagaries of USB bus on different computers.

That is another problem,if you read the thread,it appears Behringer has cut costs on the UCA222/UCA202 they used a cheap cloned version of the DAC now,to save on costs,which is technically worse than the older units. So reviews from a few years ago,might not be indicative of current units as they are just mixing and matching DAC chips now. So it's a lottery. I have poked around with some of these cheapo devices,and they can be very mixed.

You seem to think I like spending lots of money for the sake of it - if you actually look at many of my posts,I am quite the opposite. But there is also such a thing as going from "Hifi UBER LEET EXPENSIVE only works" to "Hifi UBER LEET only cheap works". In the end,there has to be a balance,I don't think £100 or a bit more on an ADC/DAC is huge amounts of money,especially when the resale values of the popular ADC/DAC interfaces is decent if you finish the project.

Yes, I said I was worried a hand-held PCM recorder might be optimised for performance. The line level input impedance is likely to be matched to +4dbU and may not necessarily be kind to consumer kit. A whole computer is still needed to clean, cut and label LP tracks.

I only pointed it out because you worried about realtime delays using a computer. I would argue the PCM recorder due to the way it works won't have it. I can't comment on which ones are better or not,as I have not researched them.

Increasing sample frequency increases resolution.

I agree, high resolution is important for mastering. Every process in the mastering chain is going to lose resolution. Hence, I prefer 16/44 for recording at home from vinyl, as the audio is only processed once if you clean the tracks and with less strain on CPU and storage during recording and playback.

But your the one talking about resolution and sampling frequency- I was talking about distortion.

Higher resolution/more detailed audio files are no different then why shooting a photo in RAW makes sense if you intend to do a lot of manipulation before the final image. Why did you think I kept talking about SACD and mastering. It was the way SACDs tended to have better quality masters,which is most of the reason,it "might" have been better than an equivalent CD. The CDs can be mastered to take into consideration a range of more limited devices.I did enough listening tests with a few people,to come to a conclusion,the mastering was the noticeable factor for a home user. You just have to take a CD with the same music and different mastering for it to sound noticeably different.

You are criticising a device you have never heard? OK. I will leave you to it.

I can make the same viewpoints,but when recommending something you can only go by relative numbers. So you could argue the best subjective way would be to buy the UCA202,UMC204H,2i2,etc and demo them together to see if there is a noticable difference and sell the ones you don't want! It's why recommendations are hard,but things such as a DAC/ADC are probably one of the parts which are easier to quantify due to their limited nature.

So the problem is you are running into a scenario,of a device which might be not good for someone else. Better to be conservative in recommendations. Hence I can go by measured numbers,of something which does seem solid.
If quality isn't as important,then it makes me wonder whether it would be easier to stream the songs,or buy the CDs versions of the albums,which can be had a few pence nowadays. Which is ironically what has happened when I thought of digitalising the few records I had,I could pick up the CDs quite cheaply secondhand!

Anyway,I will leave it at that,as this isn't adding anything new TBF. I am sure Saracen,has enough information by now to decide whether he wants the cheaper or the more expensive option.

Sadly you can't 3D print everything......

I'm mainly trying to get my head around 1000 drivers in a speaker unit. Am I really reading that right, it sounds bonkers.

Not a 1000 speakers,but some of the designs have like a dozen drivers,etc. It's kind of ridiculous,especially when you see the stack of amplification needed to run it. Or when I looked at £1500 pair of speakers,and the drive units were under £150 at retail. They did sound nice,but if you can design and build your own speakers,then you are quids in.

Regarding the cases it was also the cost of the extrusion machines and mills,to make the fancy cases,or having to commission the relatively smallish runs of many of these cases. A lot of the higher end UK Hifi companies even back then were making most of their stuff in the UK,even the entry level stuff. Companies like Cambridge Audio and Quad pioneered the whole UK designed and made much cheaper in China thing.

This was like 10 to 20 years ago or so. Apparently the case costs could actually be more than the internal electronics!

Ditto on the 1000 drivers, unless it's a speaker enclosure the size of a house.

Just need a massive power amp(s) to run it all!

[ik9000]

Sadly you can't 3D print everything, and cases that have to block EMI are one of those things unless you are 3D printing metal and that is still really expensive. A nicely done bit of tin bashing isn't that outrageous AFAIK, but you do have to pay for the wages of the people who designed it and that tends to push the cost of low volume items up as badly as the tooling.

I'm mainly trying to get my head around 1000 drivers in a speaker unit. Am I really reading that right, it sounds bonkers.

you can 3d print in plastic and then apply a metal shielding foil to it. I just lined my guitar pickup cavities with some. It's not that expensive.

[Saracen999]

...

Just need a massive power station to run it all!

Corrected for you.

[DanceswithUnix]

https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/6...rating-system/

Don't bother installing that, just use your favourite Linux distro and enable the real time kernel. What will that help with? Nothing. That site is some of the worst tripe I have had the misfortune to read in years. A quick read of the enjoythemusic showed it no better, possibly even worse.

I started typing a really long explanation of why that is all nonsense but it would take me writing a book on the subject and whilst I could do that I doubt it would change anyone's mind as that is how audio arguments seem to work. So I deleted it and will leave one nugget of wisdom:

A DAC is a peripheral which deals with all the timing problems of audio playback, and all the software stack has to do is produce data faster than the DAC consumes it.

[matts-uk]

Don't bother installing that, just use your favourite Linux distro and enable the real time kernel. What will that help with? Nothing.

Clearly the humour was lost on you. My apologies for neglecting the smiley.

That site is some of the worst tripe I have had the misfortune to read in years. A quick read of the enjoythemusic showed it no better, possibly even worse.

I started typing a really long explanation of why that is all nonsense but it would take me writing a book on the subject and whilst I could do that I doubt it would change anyone's mind as that is how audio arguments seem to work. So I deleted it and will leave one nugget of wisdom:

A DAC is a peripheral which deals with all the timing problems of audio playback, and all the software stack has to do is produce data faster than the DAC consumes it.

It's a shame you stopped reading at the Fisher Price explanations. Maybe you could try this paper, that gets to the point and is as approachable as I could find. https://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Lib/Troisi.pdf