#1 - DWS :

I didn't there is such a thread. Anyway, we have done updates on the playback system.

http://www.designwsound.com/dwsblog/?page_id=1914

Some of the features:
- Digital audio background - bit/sampling/latency/jitter/upsampling/DSP
- How digital recording technologies help/destroy today music?
- How to setup computer as source and digital library?
- What kind of digital audio front is suitable for me? USB / Firewire / PCI / Ethernet
- What is the differences between each connection?
- What is MME/WDM, ASIO, WASAPI, AudioUnit sound drivers for WinXP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS/x
- What is the benefit of HQCD?
- Why there is HK$10000/pc Crystal Disc? Does it sound really better?
- Is Sonic Amarra the ultimate playback software?

We tried to pick 1 to 2 computer audio digital front end on category for demo, so attendee can find their best options.
The Seminar Course Note, Reference CDs, Test Tones, Hi-Rez file Download are included.

Playback Demonstration System:
ProAc Response Carbon Pro Eight Speakers:
Chapter Audio Preface plus pre-amp
Chapter Couplet 250S power amp (possible bi-amp)

AudioQuest Wild Blue Yonder interconnect cables
AudioQuest Meteor speaker cables
AudioQuest NRG-10 and WEL’SS power cords

Digital Front End Demo:
dCS Puccini SACD/CD Player & U-Clock
NaimUniti
Naim HDX
PS Audio PerfectWav Transport/DAC:
Cambridge Audio DacMagic
Linn Klimax DS
Linn Sneaky DS
Weiss Firewire DAC2
Weiss INT202
Weiss SARACON

Lynx AES16
MetricHalo ULN8
MetricHalo ULN2

Sonic Studio Amarra software
Steinberg WaveLab DAW
Steinberg Nuendo DAW
Izotope RX
Harrison Mixbus/Ardour2

CD-R VS. HQCD VS. Crystal Disc

#3 - dominique :

最後，抽獎禮物確定如下:

頭獎2名: (星期六和星期日各一套)爵士原音 III – 日本HQCD配方 ML22 & ML23 原母帶 2 張 (非賣品)
二獎1名: 美國Sonic Studio Amarra Mini播放軟件
三獎1名: 趙學而聽聽 HQCD Deluxe 簽名版1套
四獎3名: 爵士原音 III – 雙碟限量版1套
五獎5名: HifiTrack.com – $100 音樂現金券

#5 - lovegerbie :

I attended the seminar on Saturday and the seminar was very imformative and fun. Kent gave us some very useful information. Kent, thank you very much.
For the next seminar, I will like to see an actually installation procedure from setup the hardwares (PC and MAC) to the software or config the OS. The sound comparsion between PC and MAC based syetem. This is my 2 cents.
Kent, again appreicated you are pointing us to the right direction.

Thanks

#7 - mr.paul :

thoroughly enjoyed the seminar yesterday! it was great for a hifi newbie like me, though unfortunately i can't sit through the whole event due to another appointment. hope seminar of this sort can soon be conducted again.

#9 - hercules :

You can leave message to Kent(DWS), he is very knowledgable and willing to answer.

In short 3 hours of seminar, it's introduction of serveral areas in digital audio and inspire more thought if you found problems and questions you would like to go in depth.

in one seminar, some one would like to hear latest digital gear, some would love to see practice installation and setup an HTPC, and some would like to discuss things in technical nature (filter response, sampling, dithering, jitter) while most of the audiance feel extremely boring and never care about it.

It's hard to please everyone wishes in a short talk, it just open the door and the remaining adverture will be yours!

#11 - 527 :

It was a great honor to be in the Seminar Sunday! Simple, informative, detail and great demo of different sources and gears! The most amazing product of the day should be the Amarra. Hope Kent can keep up with the Seminar further down the road so that more people can learn from him

#13 - rainy-night :

some pics of nthe seminar for sharing----

#15 - rainy-night :

pic

#17 - rainy-night :

pic

#19 - rainy-night :

some pics of nthe seminar for sharing----

#21 - hercules :

So brothers wanna setup CAS, just for storing your favourite track only, or moving the whole CD library into computer?

#23 - hercules :

Everyone can check the mailbox, the download link just work and ready to download files.

Kent, quite a good collection of technical papers, some of them been read in few years ago, but so I don't, can spend many hours with them.

anyway, how to use the test tone and the graph?

#25 - ackcheng :

Some of the theories that computer audiophiles believe is not really covered in the seminar. This is the controversial area and very exciting too.

Kent demonstrated Amarra which produce the same bit perfect information as itunes but sounded quite different. This is the same as cMP and cPlay. Existing knowledge and theories on jitter and bit accuracy cannot explained this phenomenon.

#27 - ackcheng :

Very true hercules. But it is interesting to know about the alternative view point!

#29 - agentsmittie :

Did any Amarra representative attend the Sunday session?

#31 - agentsmittie :

＞＞ CAS replay system still cannot supersede a high quality CD transport for Redbook format. This has been confirmed from yesterday's demonstration as well as my own experience.

Well, do tell. I am curious to know how you could came to that conclusion based on last weekend's sessions. How was it demonstrated?

From the Saturday experience there was no direct comparison between Redbook and computer playback.

Kent did play an SACD track with no direct A/B comparison. And as Kent mentioned in the session, A/B comparison was near impossible without level matching. And even then it could only be confirmed with extended listening.

#33 - agentsmittie :

Sorry batman, I did not know you were quoting a previous poster.

I attended the Saturday venue and my read from that event is that the way it was demonstrated did not cater for critical/comparative listening.

I think Simcity hing's assertion could only be drawn from (a) extensive listening from past experience e.g. at home; or; (b) speculation/subjection.

My opinion is there is not necessarily a clear winner. Much of it is dependent on the implementation.

To partly answer your question, from Saturday's session, Kent was playing different sources feeding into an Oracle integrated amp and the Proac speakers. There was never any effort in switching back and forth between different sources with the same material.

And whatever listening we did was brief.

#35 - ackcheng :

I think it is also important to understand that not just any computer with a plugin USB or firewire DAC will give good sound. There are still lots of optimization to do. Kents uses his computer for presentation, for mastering etc.

While in theory this should not matter, but it reality, it does!

#37 - batmanames04 :

While in theory this should not matter, but it reality, it does!

may be using the same clock source for playblack and master

#39 - agentsmittie :

I surmise that a money-no-object CD playback system could better a half decent computer playback system.

But my limited, non technical opinion tells me that with computer based audio the draconian problem of real time reading from a physical CD media is eliminated with CAS. So it is one less problem area to resolve.

However, having heard world class CD playback systems like the Naim CD555+2X552PS, I realize that a high end, money-no-object CD playback system is a hard act to beat.

But when I see the heroic effort that Naim has put into isolation of the CD media from the outside world, which with CAS is not needed in the first place, I cannot help but wonder is that money is put into a similar money-no-object CAS system, the result would not be even better.

So in a certain sense, post CAS the high end CD technologies are solutions looking for problems. But this hobby being a pursuant of the high end audio, most of us are willing to pay for gee-whiz technology for what is a crazy amount of money to the uninitiated. Even if it is a solution looking for a problem.

Of course not being able to afford the former, I can only revert to a civilian CAS system, and could never know if my system is as good as the big boys.

#41 - f-u-n-g :

Actually, whar is the lucky draw result ??

#43 - dominique :

Dear all,

This is Dominique from Hifitrack.com.

Seems we have not draw the $100 coupon on Sunday....:-o

Will meet with Kent later this week and draw the lucky winner.

Will have the result publish on Hifitrack.com.

Again, thanks for your support on this workshop.

p.s. Sorry for our late response to this thread as we are all occupied meetings and new projects in the last two days.

#45 - DWS :

Sorry for the very late reply here. Right after the seminar I already kicked started an important end of year recording project.....spy shot on attachment.

First of all thank you everyone who came to the seminar and we had lots of fun. I do hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I do. Thank you HiFiTrack.com / My-HiEnd.com / Review33.com for the supports.

I know 5 hours are not gonna give us enough time to answer everyone questions, but I hope at least we gone through things which are more important. We also had moments that played both sides of the coin, but I personally would not go very deep into audio myth.

＞For the next seminar, I will like to see an actually installation procedure from setup the hardwares (PC and MAC) to the software or config the OS. The sound comparsion between PC and MAC based syetem. This is my 2 cents.

Next seminar we will split it into 2 sections. First day is entry level, we will install a brand new PC / MAC and gone through the whole setup with advices. The winner may actually take that computer digital library home as 1st prize. Second day will be advanced level that we will demonstrates high level analogue to digital conversion, basic home editing, LP to digital library and some mastering/mixing skills. (parallel compression, MS EQ, spectrum editing etc).

＞Upsampling procedure do not actually increase resolution of the digital format, but done correctly, it provides a good platform for the engineer to design a better digital filter, which is one of the most important issues affecting the sound quality.

Right. This is a very good idea of oversampling & upsampling. dCS actually is going to have a new features with custom filtering. They may schedule after new year to run such demo.

＞ 1. It is not deep enough to explain technical details. for example dynamic range, jitter ... but I understand it will take few more hours to explain in details.

Yes ff4300. Please bring it on. I am more than happy to discuss these topics here online. What area would you like to know more on dynamic range and jitter?

＞ 2. The demonstration is a little bit long and like a sales demo. I suggest shortening the demo and spending more time on experience sharing.

Right. I originally thought to have one of each type of computer as source in different price range is a good idea. However I cannot just play 30 sec. of cambridge audio because I expect everyone would like to listen more on the dCS. So each system at least has a chance for 1 song demo. That's added up too much time. However I can tell there is no such thing as sales demo. Each system has its own points to use as references.

For examples:
Camgridge Audio Dac Magic - Good quality DAC, USB is limited to 16/44.1kHz
PS Audio - First and only HRx high res DVD rom direct playback, but cannot playback AIFF file format. Ram Buffer and I2S connection.
dCS - Async connection on USB. The master clock control by the DAC rather than computer.
Naim HDX - one off hard disk player without computer and capable to hook up on NAS network
Linn - Ethernet NAS server connection. Great for multi-room system.
Weiss - Firewire "Peer to Peer" connection. High Bandwidth & Professional media connection. Uses internal clock without affected by computer.

1. Did the person claim that when equalization is turned off, Amarra sounds different/better than iTunes?

Yes, some people agree, some don't.

2. Did the person claim bit perfection when equalization is turned off?

Yes, I can confirmed as I tested it for a long time. That is what makes me feel the worst when I can hear differences.

3.If the above two were affirmative, did the person explain why and how that is accomplished?

Yes he does in public and privately for an hours talking with me before the seminar. He believes that the way he designed Amarra to grab the data from hard disk makes a different. The buffering of the Amarra are long in computer world. He prefers to take the data one sample at a time when he can take a big chuck of data to process.

4. Did the person demonstrate convincingly the benefit of Amarra “before and after”?

Everyone draws different conclusion. But quite many people do ordered the Amarra.

＞ how to use the test tone and the graph?

Ah! Yes. You import those tones to your computer software, print out the graph. Playback the tone one by one and measure with a SPL meter (iPhone, Radio Shack - C weighting Slow). It identify your room performances and then you can further work on it.

＞ Did any Amarra representative attend the Sunday session?

Amarra designer and CEO Jon Reichbach attended the Sunday session. He also passed the luck draw Amarra Mini to the lucky owner.

＞ CAS replay system still cannot supersede a high quality CD transport for Redbook format. This has been confirmed from yesterday's demonstration as well as my own experience.

As same as all other audio topics, listening is subjective down to personal taste, although we also should line on the same direction. I am open minded and believe what I heard, but I also work on engineering level. You can hardly compare each playback chain. Some are balanced, some are single ended. Their output levels are all different. There is no point to compare them, although the dCS works pretty well on USB connections, plus good DSD sounds really well.

＞ I suggest when 8G of Flash Card is cheap enough,

I had that thought for AJP-III Hi-Res, to completely get rid of DISC. However since I included all resolution 16/44.1, 24/96 and 24/192. The data is larger than 8G. The cost of the 8G flash card is still too expansive by then.

＞ Will meet with Kent later this week and draw the lucky winner.

Right. I remember except the AMARRA MINI and one set of AJP-III Master A/B Sampler, all prizes go to Saturday seminar. However we did forget to draw the HiFiTrack.com $100 coupon. We will later post up all the winners in formal way.

＞ Today's announcement of Linn giving up on CD player production is a huge endorsement from a company that is the original proponent of "source first" with its LP12.

NO ONE is gonna sell a lot of CD players in High End industry anyway. Audiophile is almost always a niche market. Good luck to Linn.

And the spy shot.................don't tell anyone you saw it.....Expect another high quality signal path project on X'mas.

#47 - jack669 :

Which digital source player is better?

Linn, Naim or dCS?

#49 - DWS :

＞Welcome back, Kent!

He sings EXCELLENT! But I am in such a rush mode to finish everything by December 4th. I am already in mixing first 2 songs, however it will takes until November 27 to finish the whole recording session.

If I average use 7 hours to mix a song, I will take 70 hours in total, that is about 6 full days, not counting Mastering time.

＞ Which digital source player is better?
＞ Linn, Naim or dCS?

Ferrari / Lamborghini / Maserati which is the best car? I like G55.

#51 - jack669 :

It sounds strange that Sneaky DS and Klimax DS has no difference while using the same equipment for audition, as the price difference is so big for this 2 players.

The equipments of this seminar is sponsored by Rador, right?

#53 - jack669 :

Yeah ... you are right... Except the 2 DS players and it doesn't sound right on that day.

May be there are some problem in the setting?

#55 - DWS :

During the seminar we played back one song from Mimi Lo latest project, it has been released to the market and called "楓戀蜜語". The project is remastering from previously released catalogue plus few new songs by myself and replicated in Japan by Hiroshi Quality CD (HQCD).

My favorite track is 天天都相見. I didn't know anything regarding the music/recording of this project. Now the records is released and the musician/producer is Eugene Pao, no wonder..........very nice phrasing on the guitar solo.

Few of my picks:
天天都相見
柔情蜜意
相愛
長伴千世紀

And most important of all, this project is to celebrate Mimi Lo wedding with Mr. Chan Kwok Pong. Wonderful!小小的幸福，大大的喜悅! Congratulation!

#57 - khalilfan :

My favorite track is Track 6 赤子之心. I think it was released in the Chung Brothers CD "The Chimes." Nice sax solo. Good arrangement by Ted Lo!

#59 - jack669 :

DWS,

Thanks for your information.

If there is chance, I would like hear Naim, Linn and other DS components head to head because I am going to get one soon.

I read that there USB Dac released by Lindemann which only cost $6500 and it sounds great.

Best Regards

Jack

#61 - appleteapot :

Congratulations Kent Hing!

#63 - DWS :

hello cellalu, been there, done that one year ago. The Jazz Prologue 3 - Limited Edition includes 24/192, 24/96 and 16/44.1 all 3 different resolutions AIFF master files.

The HQCD version is for people who uses highend system without file playback capability.

You are right, high res. files are extremely well quality especially when you have the great playback chain. However CD is still the major market, but I expect this will change very soon if not already changed.

Bests,
Kent

#65 - DWS :

Hello cellalu, thanks for your support, there are more coming out and you are right that if we recorded in hi-res, CD is hard to compare, even though there are more people listening to CD in audiophile world.

More news to share with you in next few days.

#67 - DWS :

New Seminar targets on end of Feb or early Mar. since there are quite some more new information and technologies that can be discussed.

Some update reviews in Taiwan:
http://music.u-audio.com.tw/musicdetail.asp?musicid=212
http://www.audionet.com.tw/software/view/sn/28