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In Reply to: RE: the late Al Sekela's choke tweak and True ribbon tweeter posted by Satie on January 15, 2015 at 16:04:47
I'm still very surprised at the cavalier approach Robert Duetsch had for this unit and his apparent gullibility regarding information that was forthcoming from PS Audio. I like to read John Atkinson's comments because you can usually read between the lines very easily to gauge his opinion.
A firmware update won't fix the hardware. You would think that for $6000.00 they could install some adequate transformers to handle the signal levels? I hate to mention this in the context of my go'round with JBen....but this seems to be an issue where inadequate testing took place. A "workaround" that requires you to reduce signal levels 6db seems....interesting.
Anyways, getting off topic for this forum. Back to the normal Asylum silliness.
Dave.
Follow Ups:
I suspect they took the trannie maker's word that what makes the trannie a good filter would also restrict its dynamic capabilities and early saturation. Which is what happens if you use smaller cores. Bigger cores like those in poweer amp output transformers typically outdo 70 khz and better ones can do over 100 khz. The bigger cores and higher nickel materials and fatter wire can extend LF and limit LF distortion and then you can use bad skin effects to limit HF output.
Outside the bass the PW is really a great performer even at that steep price.
To take the Art Dudley side, read his self psychoacoustic analysis piece in the last Stereophile. Perhaps THD should be compiled with a 3-6db discount on even order bands to reflect audibility and how objectionable they are in musical context rather than electrical.
Probably more discount than that. :)
I think Stereophile should turn an editor loose on Art Dudley's articles before they publish them. (It's 90% flowery rhetoric.)
His underlying point is understood though. However, he seems pretty late to the party with his acknowledgment of the subjective aspects of various distortions.
I'm still puzzled by PS Audio letting a product like this to the market though considering the measured performance. However, that assumes they weigh measured performance as much as I do....which they obviously don't. The firmware upgrade though, at least acknowledges an existence of an issue.
Cheers,
Dave.
Transformers are pretty well understood by this point and excellent ones are available off-the-shelf (for not that much money) that could have exhibited better low frequency characteristics. I'm puzzled by that one, but oh well. Distortion correlation to subjective result is an interesting topic. :)
Also interesting to me was the lack of resolution on the unit and the fact that noise completely swamped the standard jitter (J-test) testing scenario. Relatively speaking, that unit did not perform well on JA's bench compared to other DAC's for much less money.
None of this is to say the unit won't sound excellent. Just another puzzling data point in the crazy world of high-end audio. :)
Dave.
In this case, the output trannies were designed for the device by the trannie manufacturer and I am not sure they "got" what was required. The custom trannies are a big portion of the cost of the PW DSD and I suspect it is also the weakest link. They were talking about the difficulties of getting the trannie people to understand the filter function and they were reluctant to make trannies with such "bad" HF performance.
I do actually expect the fuzzy low level 16 bit HF sine traces to sound better than the normal square looking ones.
JA's test results are always an interesting counterpoint to ecstatic reviews of non-NFB SE devices and of "crafted" compression/expansion in some digital equipment that measures as if it were made by a horse...
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