Propeller Head Plaza

RE: Your words, not mine.

160.62.4.10

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I agree with your assessment of the IM distortion test. The questions then are this, "which sounds better and why?"

"I don't think I like these "Listen" filters. I'll take a linear-phase brick wall filter any time (for Redbook anyway). "

Hmmm...have you played around with a DAC with switchable filters??

I have some experience with switchable filters as a friend of mine and I have done extensive listening tests with his DCS Purcell/Delius upsampler/dac combo. It has 4 different filters, one of which is the measure mode and the others are varieties of listen mode. The result?? The "measure" mode, which has pre and post ringing sounds significantly worse than 2 of the other modes. The 4th mode is slightly better than "measure" but loses impact in the music. The "measure" mode sounds much more artificial and "digital" while the two other modes are more analog sounding and have only post ringing I believe.

As mentioned in the review, DCS's more extreme filters have even worse IM performance than the Ayre's but still sound better than the "measure" mode.

So in this case it seems that the wholly unnatural behavior of the standard linear phase filter that gives pre and post ringing (something impossible in the "real" world of acoustic sounds) outweighs the increase in IM distortion, which while possibly audible seems not to be as damaging to the sound quality. Now, I haven't heard the Ayre, but I would let my ears decide and not my eyes on the graph because with digital errors there is nothing in your ear/brain to filter this kind of stuff out and if it is audible then it is likely to sound very unnatural and therefore unappealing.

Of course if the sampling rate is 88.2Khz or 176.4Khz then a filter of this type should give a good result without a lot of IM products in the listening window. Something to keep in mind.

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