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In Reply to: RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... posted by Charles Hansen on February 05, 2009 at 08:28:55
I throwing a few roses. Your introducing an Async mode USB DAC will be good for audiophiles.
I'll throw more roses when the product appears and the pioneers who buy come back without arrows.
As a possible consumer, I appreciate your decision to keep the cost down by forgoing an SPDIF input and a volume control. I'd like to be an Ayre customer so this decision makes it more feasible for me.
I'm assuming that you will implement a digital filter at least as good as an off-the-shelf algorithm run in a PC. So I would not expect to use PC based upsampling. So the current limitation to a 96 KHz sample rate is OK for now.
Right now, there isn't much downloadable with a sample rate above 44.1 KHz that interests me. Some day there may be attractive content with sample rates greater than 96 KHz. If I've bought your DAC, I'll be looking for an upgrade then. Not a problem now.
So show us how good PC audio can be.
Bill
Follow Ups:
If you go to the "What's New" section of our website, the top item is a picture of the USB DAC front panel. It is small -- 8.5" wide.
Just below is a gold symbol with a squiggle. That is the logo on our new "MP" upgraded disc players. It is also the impulse response of our new filter. The link is to a white paper that explains the major features of the filter and how it is different from off-the-shelf filters.
Before I spend a lot of money on anything, I want to understand why it is the right decision.
I'd suggest that you provide white papers on each element of the USB DAC product that contributes to its performance. When you put up a product page for the DAC, explain what elements go into making it sound great and provide a link to each white paper.
Some parts of the DAC may be like existing Ayre products but many potential customers will not already understand that part of your design approach.
Bill
We've been in business for 15 years and these are the first "white papers" we've done. Normally after we finish a product we focus on making another new product instead of writing detailed descriptions of how the previous one worked. There are several reasons for this:
a) We have about 20 people at our company, but I am the only one that has both technical and writing skills. So if we want to have a "white papers", I'm the one that gets to do it. Often there are other items that are higher on the priority list.
b) Normally I spend a lot of time with the magazine reviewers explaining all of the technical details. Then this information is made available in the product review. This is a good way to reach a broad audience, probably far more than would go to our website and download a PDF file.
c) It's not clear how many people need the extra information that we can put in a white paper compared to what's provided in the brochure or a magazine review. Probably less than 10% of our potential buyers. (Of course, to that 10%, the extra information is exceedingly important!)
d) The actual content of a white paper can be tricky. On the one hand you want to explain why the product is better. On the other hand you don't want to give away all of your secrets. A balance has to be struck.
e) There are things for which there are no explanation. Writing a white paper on the digital filters was relatively easy. On the other hand, using different dither algorithms had significant sonic effects. Unfortunately, I don't know of any explanation for why this should be. In the first place we are talking about changing *only* the LSB input to the DAC -- the 24th bit. This should be -144 dB down from full scale. I would hardly think that *any* change to the LSB would be audible. But they were.
And I am at a complete loss to explain why the algorithm we chose sounded better than the other ones. But it did, so we used it. Doesn't make for a very compelling white paper. And most of what we do is like that. For example zero feedback. I have no idea why it sounds better. But it does. Someday I may try to put together a "white paper" explaining why we use it and why it is better than feedback. But it certainly cannot be as clear and concise as the two "white papers" recently posted.
But the bottom line is that you are right. We have a lot of great technology in our products, and we haven't done a great job of explaining that technology to our potential customers. So we'll keep working on additional "white papers". Just keep in mind that they are a lot of work, so just as we only introduce a few new products each year we will probably also only write a few new "white papers" each year.
The only other thing that I can tell you is that we pay close attention to *all* of the design details. So even though there may not be a "white paper" on our chassis materials, or our PCB layout, or our grounding schemes, or any of dozens of other design details, you can be assured that we take it all into account during the design process.
Charles,
I just wanted to thank you for posting these white papers. From a customer's perspective (I squarely fit into the 10% you mention above), I am very excited about the research you've conducted and can't wait to have my c-5xe upgraded. Not knowing too much about digital audio, the information you presented was extremely clear, concise and much appreciated!
Steve
Bravo...
I appreciate your candidness.
I've done many a low noise, high sensitivity design, and sometimes you wonder (as you roll your eyes at the clock and it's midnight) if it's really worth spending the time on certain features of them. The killer is that you just don't know. Who's got the time to model every aspect of a design and layout and confirm it's performance correlation? But one thing is certain: if, to the best of your ability, you "take it all into account", the result will be a hell of a lot better than if you don't.
And that leads to happy customers and successful companies. Even if you CAN'T say for sure that it was worth three days to reduce the fringing on some particular line...
Few users of any product appreciate the importance that design nuance can make in their ultimate happiness.
Regards, Rick
Me too,me too! I'm enjoying my PC Audio.
Vista Ultimate 32bit/Diamond XS Dac/ Sterovox coaxial line in to Insignia Amp/Cambridge SoundWorks& Infinity RS 1001 Speakers
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