CnoEvil said:
- When Linn introduced their Dynamik p/s, it made quite a noticeable worthwhile difference.
Sure, like Naim and Cyrus. I know that their power supplies improve the sound of their components. But if their systems need a better power supply, they should add it from the beginning and be done with it, instead of charging extra.
That's the difference between vendors that try to make the best possible sounding devices, and make a business out of it, and vendors that make business out of consumers trying to get the best possible sound. Funnily enough, the strategy of such vendors is in detriment of consumers, as one of the most expensive parts of modern Hi-Fi systems is often the casing.
CnoEvil said:
- Here is Linn's take on upsampling and what they do: http://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Up-sampling
Just read the document. Sorry, but in my opinion it's full of marketing EDITED—pretty much like those found in the websites of other Hi-Fi vendors. The only thing they talk about that makes sense is noise.
Upsampling does not only not increase the sound quality, it may actually degrade it. When upsampling, interpolation is performed to create the missing data in the increased-resolution audio signal. This operation is not exact in our decimal system—192 or 384 are not perfect multiples of 44.1—, even less with the floating numbers used by computing devices, which may carry a lot of information in the sense that can quantify very small differences, but do not actually round up easily.
The error is of course so very small that cannot be heard. But I'd argue that given the experiment of converting 44.1 audio to 192—or 384 as Linn proposes, it does not matter—, and then back to 44.1 again without rounding numbers, and performing this same process a sufficient number of times, eventually the difference would be heard. In practical terms this experiment would be unuseful anyways—but upsampling the audio signal cannot increase the level of detail or any other quality that is not there to start.
CnoEvil said:
- DCS make some great sounding stuff and provide a separate Clock to further improve the sound......I have only heard their systems that include the clock, but IIRC WHF have heard the positive difference that the Clock makes.
Also Antelope and other vendors that overprice their products make DACs that can use external clocks. Marketing-wise, I'll admit that this is very cool stuff. The clock is only used to codify the audio signal though, and all that matters is that it "ticks" at precise instants in order to prevent jitter. If you heard a sound improvement between two products from the same vendor, and the only difference was an added clock, that means that the lesser product actually suffers from jitter high enough to be heard—which I'd suggest is quite, quite lame for a respectable Hi-Fi vendor.
I know it happens. And we haven't yet seen the limit of creativity when it comes to getting more money out of people. But the truth is that a very precise crystal oscillator costs less than a couple of bucks. And these things are tiny—they definitely don't need casing of their own. Lack of precission is not the reason for jitter for a current product… Probably just a bad implementation, or in case of devices with a central CPU, competition for resources that prevent the device from processing data at the exact moment it has to.
A final thought about external clocks… Since time precission is so vital to prevent jitter, I would have thought that it made more sense to sit the clock right next to the DAC, as to avoid a longer transmission path and any possible interferences. In reality this does not matter so much, as a signal as simple as a tick can easily be guarded from interferences given an adequate voltage, and the time it takes for the signal to reach the DAC does not matter so much either—all that matters is that the delay is equal for every tick so that the interval between them is kept constant. But it is easy to see how the margin for error is bigger with an external clock than with an internal one, and the only reason that justifies this kind of design is pure marketing.