Computer sounds flat!

[Pandapple]

I'm sorry but that is just flat out incorrect. The Weiss 202 is one of if not the best measuring dac made, and it uses Firewire and doesn't cost half as much as many top end studio DACs and a hell of a lot less than most high end consumer dacs. He may need to update his viewpoint in light of more up to date information.

To be fair to Bob, on this matter he is speaking relatively and theoretically, and from a design viewpoint. In fact, he himself is/was a big Weiss fan, and I know he uses a firewire interface somewhere now. I am sure Bob would class the Weiss as passing his requirements of being painstakingly well-engineered.

Bob is an absolute gent and stellar at what he does and his book is always cited as a reference in professional circles, but he will be the first to admit he is not an authority on plenty of technical matters.

 

[Pandapple]

are you a recording engineer? Can you qualify your statements?

Um, is Ethan Winer a recording engineer?! Put him into allmusic.com, what do you get? Zilch. (Do you even know who any of these people you talk about actually are?)

He has no relevant professional or technical qualifications to write a book on audio, and he has no success in audio production, and little respect from those within it. He palms off articles to mags for money, this is one of his real trades, and the new book is just his next in the line.

You asked me to back up my statements. Here are some calamities I know about:

1. He has published articles about "Audio Myths" in which he said absolute polarity could never be audible. Unfortunately, someone pointed out to him it could and then proved it with real music.
2. He has published articles in which he says skin effect does not occur at audio frequencies in audio cables. Unfortunately, basic engineering dictates otherwise and speaker cable measurements prove it.
3. He gave a guest talk at AES one year, the same year Stereophile magazine were also guest speakers. He set out strict parameters on what is required for an audio device to be transparent in terms of frequency response, distortion and noise. Unfortunately, someone at a later date asked how many devices achieved these paramaters. Winer responded that virtually all did, even budget gear. It was then pointed out that he was wrong by a country mile, and literally only a handful of devices in the world could possibly meet those requirements.
4. He also said there was no need to dither when converting 24-bit to 16-bit as truncation effects could never be heard. Again, unfortunately someone gave him a music passage that proved otherwise.
5. You can see an amusing and calamitous attempt at Winer being a recording engineer in this video. He goes on ad nauseum about how recording and playback devices are transparent and therefore in the right circumstances should sound exactly like the real thing. You can see how well this went in the video! At 3:50 the fun begins. And he still put it up on YouTube! What he thought would happen, and what actually happened, tells you all you need to know about his audio engineering knowledge and skills.

But anyway, *who cares* about the real facts, right?

 

[CVentura]

What you are actually doing is taking a USb data stream converting it to Spdif via the addition of an external clock then feeding that to a dac that then takes the incoming spdif and strips the timing info passing the data through a FIFO RAM buffer, and reclocking it with a local clock inside the dac. So it's pretty much an utterly pointless step to try and give it a better clock upstream as it is completely dismembered inside the dac.

It might help remove RF noise coming from the USB output but it sure as hell doesn't reduce the jitter seen at the time of conversion inside your Naim dac- because all timing info is stripped out of the spdif data stream by the internal buffering and reclocking.

stubborn fellow you are, aren't you ? This clock HAS NOTHING to do with what the NDAC does with the signal. It is ONLY used to reclock the conversion inside that little box the USB to SPDIF converter and there is no other way to do it cos the NDAC does not accept USB source data

And I can assure you two things; the difference with and without clock is not just subtle and clocks don't deal with RF noise canceling either ....

 

[Mescalito]

Um, is Ethan Winer a recording engineer?! Put him into allmusic.com, what do you get? Zilch. (Do you even know who any of these people you talk about actually are?)

He has no relevant professional or technical qualifications to write a book on audio, and he has no success in audio production, and little respect from those within it. He palms off articles to mags for money, this is one of his real trades, and the new book is just his next in the line.

You asked me to back up my statements. Here are some calamities I know about:

1. He has published articles about "Audio Myths" in which he said absolute polarity could never be audible. Unfortunately, someone pointed out to him it could and then proved it with real music.
2. He has published articles in which he says skin effect does not occur at audio frequencies in audio cables. Unfortunately, basic engineering dictates otherwise and speaker cable measurements prove it.
3. He gave a guest talk at AES one year, the same year Stereophile magazine were also guest speakers. He set out strict parameters on what is required for an audio device to be transparent in terms of frequency response, distortion and noise. Unfortunately, someone at a later date asked how many devices achieved these paramaters. Winer responded that virtually all did, even budget gear. It was then pointed out that he was wrong by a country mile, and literally only a handful of devices in the world could possibly meet those requirements.
4. He also said there was no need to dither when converting 24-bit to 16-bit as truncation effects could never be heard. Again, unfortunately someone gave him a music passage that proved otherwise.
5. You can see an amusing and calamitous attempt at Winer being a recording engineer in this video. He goes on ad nauseum about how recording and playback devices are transparent and therefore in the right circumstances should sound exactly like the real thing. You can see how well this went in the video! At 3:50 the fun begins. And he still put it up on YouTube! What he thought would happen, and what actually happened, tells you all you need to know about his audio engineering knowledge and skills.

But anyway, *who cares* about the real facts, right?

Could you please expand upon the rebuttals? I find many of them very difficult to believe. Thanks.

Chris

 

[Basil]

Could you please expand upon the rebuttals? I find many of them very difficult to believe. Thanks.

Chris

Optimism... I remember that.

 

[Mescalito]

Optimism... I remember that.

Polite, though

Chris

 

[Teddy Ray]

Well you did apparently, enough to quote his a learned source. But now it would seem that either you haven't read him or you were reading another book. Can we expect a similar falling out with your other sacred cows soon?

no, ive read both of his books. my "who cares" was a response to his last question.

ive no sacred cows. the katz text is a good overview, some of the articles on gain staging and compression are great. however, i tend to ignore him when he tries to get into deep technical matters, as he is over his head.

 

[Teddy Ray]

Um, is Ethan Winer a recording engineer?! Put him into allmusic.com, what do you get? Zilch. (Do you even know who any of these people you talk about actually are?)

He has no relevant professional or technical qualifications to write a book on audio, and he has no success in audio production, and little respect from those within it. He palms off articles to mags for money, this is one of his real trades, and the new book is just his next in the line.

You asked me to back up my statements. Here are some calamities I know about:

1. He has published articles about "Audio Myths" in which he said absolute polarity could never be audible. Unfortunately, someone pointed out to him it could and then proved it with real music.
2. He has published articles in which he says skin effect does not occur at audio frequencies in audio cables. Unfortunately, basic engineering dictates otherwise and speaker cable measurements prove it.
3. He gave a guest talk at AES one year, the same year Stereophile magazine were also guest speakers. He set out strict parameters on what is required for an audio device to be transparent in terms of frequency response, distortion and noise. Unfortunately, someone at a later date asked how many devices achieved these paramaters. Winer responded that virtually all did, even budget gear. It was then pointed out that he was wrong by a country mile, and literally only a handful of devices in the world could possibly meet those requirements.
4. He also said there was no need to dither when converting 24-bit to 16-bit as truncation effects could never be heard. Again, unfortunately someone gave him a music passage that proved otherwise.
5. You can see an amusing and calamitous attempt at Winer being a recording engineer in this video. He goes on ad nauseum about how recording and playback devices are transparent and therefore in the right circumstances should sound exactly like the real thing. You can see how well this went in the video! At 3:50 the fun begins. And he still put it up on YouTube! What he thought would happen, and what actually happened, tells you all you need to know about his audio engineering knowledge and skills.

But anyway, *who cares* about the real facts, right?

you have posted a bunch of hear say, and repeated myths(the skin effect nonsense).

are you a recording engineer? do you work in the audio industry?

Ethan pisses "golden eared" audiophiles off, and that is reason enough for me to like him. They are the scourge of the audio industry.

he keeps very good company. JJ, among others.

Post your bullet points in Hydrogen Audio. Watch as they get ripped to shreds.