More 'Audiophile' bullsh*t
Discussion
TonyRPH said:
Crackie said:
<stuff about NXT>
I remember the NXT speakers (but not on the scale of those you linked to) and seeing them disguised as picture frames in Richer Sounds and car boot sales lol.They just didn't really take off did they? (not the small ones anyway - although I'm not aware of any current large models?)
I do remember the ones I saw / heard had a limited range (both top and bottom) and IIRC the Wharfedales* (I think?) were sold with a sub to augment the bass.
I think electrostatics still hold the crown for flat panels.
- I seem to recall they were either branded Wharfedale or Mission (or both!)
Between 2012 and 2015 I was a designer at Amina Technologies and experimented to find what the technology is capable of. The bigger Podium speakers sound very good but Amina's transducers are now way ahead of the full range units used on the podium in that review; Amina's full range units are great now and they also use dedicated LF and HF drivers on their higher end models. If you have the space, big panels are excellent and a decent step up from the Podium in the review. imho of course.
Crackie said:
TonyRPH said:
Crackie said:
<stuff about NXT>
I remember the NXT speakers (but not on the scale of those you linked to) and seeing them disguised as picture frames in Richer Sounds and car boot sales lol.They just didn't really take off did they? (not the small ones anyway - although I'm not aware of any current large models?)
I do remember the ones I saw / heard had a limited range (both top and bottom) and IIRC the Wharfedales* (I think?) were sold with a sub to augment the bass.
I think electrostatics still hold the crown for flat panels.
- I seem to recall they were either branded Wharfedale or Mission (or both!)
Between 2012 and 2015 I was a designer at Amina Technologies and experimented to find what the technology is capable of. The bigger Podium speakers sound very good but Amina's transducers are now way ahead of the full range units used on the podium in that review; Amina's full range units are great now and they also use dedicated LF and HF drivers on their higher end models. If you have the space, big panels are excellent and a decent step up from the Podium in the review. imho of course.
AstonZagato said:
Crackie said:
TonyRPH said:
Crackie said:
<stuff about NXT>
I remember the NXT speakers (but not on the scale of those you linked to) and seeing them disguised as picture frames in Richer Sounds and car boot sales lol.They just didn't really take off did they? (not the small ones anyway - although I'm not aware of any current large models?)
I do remember the ones I saw / heard had a limited range (both top and bottom) and IIRC the Wharfedales* (I think?) were sold with a sub to augment the bass.
I think electrostatics still hold the crown for flat panels.
- I seem to recall they were either branded Wharfedale or Mission (or both!)
Between 2012 and 2015 I was a designer at Amina Technologies and experimented to find what the technology is capable of. The bigger Podium speakers sound very good but Amina's transducers are now way ahead of the full range units used on the podium in that review; Amina's full range units are great now and they also use dedicated LF and HF drivers on their higher end models. If you have the space, big panels are excellent and a decent step up from the Podium in the review. imho of course.
The DERA ( Defence engineering research association.) were involved with the tech before the NXT but the Azima brothers were the first to really get involved with developing the tech commercial speakers.
Crackie said:
Do you mean Henry and Farad Azima? They started Mission back in the day and by the late 90's they were heading up the Verity Group which owned Mission, Quad, Wharfedale and Cyrus. They subsequently decided to concentrate on NXT.
The DERA ( Defence engineering research association.) were involved with the tech before the NXT but the Azima brothers were the first to really get involved with developing the tech commercial speakers.
Yes, the Azima's. I seem to recall they were impressive and likeable. I'm wracking my brain to remember the context - I was in investment banking then so it may have been with regard to an equity offering. I remember them demonstrating the tech.The DERA ( Defence engineering research association.) were involved with the tech before the NXT but the Azima brothers were the first to really get involved with developing the tech commercial speakers.
AstonZagato said:
Yes, the Azima's. I seem to recall they were impressive and likeable. I'm wracking my brain to remember the context - I was in investment banking then so it may have been with regard to an equity offering. I remember them demonstrating the tech.
Yes, impressive and likeable sums them up well. They made a few quid out of NXT too, the first share price I recall was £0.06 during the late 90s......they were over £22.00 at their height in the mid 00's.Out of interest, what DAC are you using in your homebrew DAC that gives you a dynamic range of 160dB ? (and the PSU to power it would be interesting to see also 
)
)TonyRPH said:
The problem I have with this is that (in my case for example) the noise floor is already around -160dB, which is well, well below the threshold of audibility.
So even if the noise floor rises by 30dB or 40dB - you're still not going to hear any difference.
And additionally, the PSU ripple / noise of a power amp playing at even moderate levels of 10 - 20 watts is going to completely swamp any potential mains borne noise (not to mention the THD of the speakers and other devices in the chain).
Even listening with headphones it is highly unlikely that any mains borne noise is going to rise above the threshold of other noise and distortion contributed by the source, headphone amp and headphones.
Certainly, if you have a poorly suppressed appliance or light switch, then the odd 'pop' will certainly be audible, but there's no need to buy a dedicated mains clean up device to mitigate against this - just get the appliance and light switch fixed...
Of course, a dedicated mains spur will help here, but it's not really necessary (see above re getting appliance fixed).
Incidentally - the -160dB noise floor I see is measured via a (so called) noisy computer, which again goes to prove the bulls
t surrounding the use of special USB cables, audio cables etc. etc. etc.
Here is my setup used to make the measurements referred to above. As can be seen, no attention has been given to reducing interference from adjacent devices, no fancy cables, mains running close by (hence the 50Hz bump) - there is however a well shielded cable running from the buffer box to the PC, but that's only because it's 1M long, but that too is running adjacent to mains and USB cables.
I think it's clear to see that the notion of mains noise filters, regenerators etc. is just apt for this thread.
So even if the noise floor rises by 30dB or 40dB - you're still not going to hear any difference.
And additionally, the PSU ripple / noise of a power amp playing at even moderate levels of 10 - 20 watts is going to completely swamp any potential mains borne noise (not to mention the THD of the speakers and other devices in the chain).
Even listening with headphones it is highly unlikely that any mains borne noise is going to rise above the threshold of other noise and distortion contributed by the source, headphone amp and headphones.
Certainly, if you have a poorly suppressed appliance or light switch, then the odd 'pop' will certainly be audible, but there's no need to buy a dedicated mains clean up device to mitigate against this - just get the appliance and light switch fixed...
Of course, a dedicated mains spur will help here, but it's not really necessary (see above re getting appliance fixed).
Incidentally - the -160dB noise floor I see is measured via a (so called) noisy computer, which again goes to prove the bulls
t surrounding the use of special USB cables, audio cables etc. etc. etc.Here is my setup used to make the measurements referred to above. As can be seen, no attention has been given to reducing interference from adjacent devices, no fancy cables, mains running close by (hence the 50Hz bump) - there is however a well shielded cable running from the buffer box to the PC, but that's only because it's 1M long, but that too is running adjacent to mains and USB cables.
I think it's clear to see that the notion of mains noise filters, regenerators etc. is just apt for this thread.
red997 said:
Out of interest, what DAC are you using in your homebrew DAC that gives you a dynamic range of 160dB ? (and the PSU to power it would be interesting to see also )
The noise levels I posted are with the input to my sound card muted, not the noise from the DAC. )Additionally, I did add a footnote in one of my posts regarding the -160dB figure.
As I understand it, the software is not accurately showing the noise figure in the absence of a signal, it is just showing the noise in a single FFT 'bin' and hence the measurement is somewhat skewed. Additionally, noise is broadband, so noise sampled by each 'bin' is only a proportion of the total noise.
The other results I posted measuring my DAC show a SINAD of ~ 95.7dB and a noise level of ~ -102dB (environment not optimised for lowest noise).
Below is a measurement I conducted on Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic (v1) - the measurements are not far off the quoted specs IIRC.
red997 said:
ahh that makes sense now
I was wondering where this 'super DAC' came from
(design engineer / manager for consumer electronics for the past 25 years )
No magical ground breaking DACs here lol.I was wondering where this 'super DAC' came from
(design engineer / manager for consumer electronics for the past 25 years )
I was just trying to illustrate that computers are not as noisy as some would have us believe.
Back in the 80's and 90's yes, they were a tad noisy, but not any more.
Improvements to main PSU and on board PSU have largely seen to that (with some rare exceptions).
Even my old Core2Duo HP workstation is very quiet, that with a 'mechanical' disk.
Things can change a bit with high powered GPUs, but even then, so long as the PSU isn't stressed, noise is rarely an issue.
I ran a six core AMD in an ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard for a while (with "X-Fi® Xtreme Fidelity" on board sound) and that too was very quiet.
untakenname said:
Wonder if the audio sounds better if you're resting on top of one of these?
Popped up on my feed just now as one of my friends was enquiring about it, he's the type to spend hundreds of speaker cable and then listen to spotify through it.
Just looked through the T+C, section 13, not exactly sure but does it say in effect buyer beware? Illegal in the UK I thought for a company seeing as they will be covered by UK and EU laws whether they like it or not or do I have I got that wrong? It relates to stuff going wrong but I am not sure if it means the process or items, strange wording. Wonder where it was copied from.Popped up on my feed just now as one of my friends was enquiring about it, he's the type to spend hundreds of speaker cable and then listen to spotify through it.
Then goes on to mention New York State laws or something (copied from....)
But no. Wouldn't want to lie on a anti zap mat.
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