JohnW
pfm member
It depends upon our skill / results of our FPGA work - lets see where we are in 6 months time with the MDAC2 ESS / Discrete DAC boards.
MDAC First Listen (part 00111000)
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It depends upon our skill / results of our FPGA work - lets see where we are in 6 months time with the MDAC2 ESS / Discrete DAC boards.
Room correction is a great thing if used wisely I have a DSP plate amp running my bass section,note not a sub.I had a big 50 Hz boom not helped by having a room with the height one half of the width.No amount of moving things around made any great improvement but now I have a notch at 50 Hz via the plate amp and problem solved 😁
Wow, great new ideas John
Sure looks like it makes a lot of sense to forget about the ESS DAC's altogether and really spent time on discrete only designs.
Too be honest, coming this far you shouldn't compromise, I think all involved will agree.
Well not really I need spidif inputs too, so the discreet option won't work for me.
jadidih101
pfm Member
Yes, this exactly
Yes this has been my point of view for awhile now - lets see where the MDAC2 "developments" lead the FDAC - the FDAC will encompass all the advances brought by the MDAC2 and go further with internal PSU and Tube stage etc.
....
I very much agree with this way of thinking. I believe we need to seek progress through evolution as oppose to revolution. It would be very hard to get every thing right first time and it would also be very wrong not to produce something because we think something better might be round the corner.
I think MDAC2+PSU as we have it now would be a very good and strong starting point for many future innovations. Once we have these by September October time (if everything goes according to the plan) we can move on to more refined/exotic ideas.
For sure it would also be more financially viable for JohnW.
stephengrenfell
pfm Member
Will the FDAC have the same main board with add-on daughter boards as options like the MDAC2 ?.
And for example if you have a full MDAC2 will these be user transferable from MDAC2 to FDAC ?.
Great that it supports DSD512 then we can try for our selves if up sampling to DSD and see if it makes a positive difference or not.
The HQPlayer followers claim it does and there is also several on the Roon forum using the Holo Spring DAC that makes the same claims.
Maybe the The discrete "Dacapo" DAC respond different to upsampling thatn the Sabre dac.
I think that Roon claim that they do up sampling and volumen in software without SQ loss all processing is done in 64bit.Yes, this exactly
I'm still not sure that's the solution for DSD - I fear any processing of the Native DSD will destroy DSD's advantages... MDAC2 will give us possibilities to try...
JohnW
pfm member
No, this simply cannot be - DSD's ONLY benefit is better Time domain performance and the ONLY way to preserve its time domain and perform any kind of "processing" is to throw the signal into a modulator operating significantly faster then the raw input DSD stream.
ESS can do this as its modulators are clocking near 100MHz - but any Roon software processing is not going to be anywhere near this rate.
I suspect they convert to some form of PCM then back to DSD which is criminal to the time domain fidelity of a native DSD file.
There's no other magic pill here, you can only process DSD with a far faster modulator if you want to prevent any time domain corruption of the original data.
I believe HQPlayer does manipulations in the SDM domain, hence one of the few that can apply say convolutions without causing much in the way of damage.
It is mighty mighty heavy on the CPU at higher rates as a result, though. We're talking taking full advantage of Intel's AVX2 SIMD instructions - very serious stuff.
Julf
Facts are our friends
But isn't the standard practice for mixing and mastering DSD in the studios to use DXD (which is 352.8k PCM) as the internal format in systems like Merging Pyramix workstations and their ilk, even for stuff labeled "pure" or "native" DSD?
misterdog
Not the canine kind
JohnW
pfm member
Depends what side of the fence you stand - decent DSD recordings such as from NativeDSD are Mastered from a Analogue mixing desk straight to the ADC converters - I don't give a dame about "Fake" DSD recordings I care only for real DSD.
And I not say its "standard practice" - that's only said by those trying to inflame the subject.
For many MDAC2 users, they will get the best benefit of DSD when replying recordings "Mastered" from there own Vinyl with the MDAC2's internal ADC's.
JohnW
pfm member
No, they can be easily bettered by discrete designs and no good for our application (to low power dissipation, crappy PSRR, poor B/W, too low input voltage).
I am not convinced pmd200 would be better than the dual ess9018, is there any measurements or blind listening tests proving it?
I doubt 384kS/s and 16 bit/sample isn't transperent, i bet my money on not a single human being able to hear the difference in any recording, ofc i still want support for native DSD and 768KS/s. The limiting factor will be the tweeter, there isn't any tweeter with decent performance above 100khz.
I doubt 384kS/s and 16 bit/sample isn't transperent, i bet my money on not a single human being able to hear the difference in any recording, ofc i still want support for native DSD and 768KS/s. The limiting factor will be the tweeter, there isn't any tweeter with decent performance above 100khz.
misterdog
Not the canine kind
Value for money at that price point ?
JohnW
pfm member
Quite simply the PMD100 with discrete DAC I designed in 1991 sonically blows away both ESS9018 & Dual ESS9038Q2M based DAC designs.
But why worry? - if it upsets your facilities then just go for the Dual ESS9028Pro DAC board and be happy
JohnW
pfm member
Apparently there are parts from LT around the same price point that are better.
The TI part is more expensive then a discrete design.
We use the TI parts in the Detox.
alloja
Well-Known Member
John,
If I understand the list above correctly, this means the ESS-based FDAC won't see the light of day?
Which, based on your presentation of the DaCapo Anniversary Edition, implies there won't ever be an FDAC with S/PDIF inputs?
Thanks in advance for your clarification, keep up the good work!
Pierre
Yes i was planning to go with the ess boad but i may change my mind, this is why i asked if there was any measurements proving the PMD to be better. You stated the pmd had 10db worse S/n ratio but it may be better in another area(such as better sounding filter).Quite simply the PMD100 with discrete DAC I designed in 1991 sonically blows away both ESS9018 & Dual ESS9038Q2M based DAC designs.
But why worry? - if it upsets your facilities then just go for the Dual ESS9028Pro DAC board and be happy
Since the ess board will be released first i think i will go for that and just be happy, i also paid 300£ for a slave unit but i am not sure if i want to wait for fdac, maybe i just pay the rest of the cost for the mdac2 minus the 300£ i paid earlier.
I remember you posting about you developing a dac ealier and abandoning it when the ess was released, maybe that could be an interesting project to reboot later.
btw: i assume the ess version also will support 1536 KS/s at 16bit/sample, support for 3072KS/s at 8bit/sample would also be awesome, i will se if i can find a suitable tweeter capable for frequencies up to 1mhz but i doubt it exists.
update: I just decided to go with the ess board now but i am still undecided when it comes to the fdac.
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