Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

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Posted by Charles Hansen on February 7, 2009 at 14:14:23:
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.