NekoAudio

Are you sure you just don't have a bad rip? Do the problems appear in the same place on a track, every time? You said you didn't hear it with the Squeezebox, but maybe that was transcoding (depending on your setup) and so things got masked/removed.

What's your wireless speed? I noticed some issues with my AirPort Express playback while on 802.11b but nothing really after moving to 802.11n. Interference from competing networks or other sources might be increasing packet loss.

As grawk said, you can't have something higher than 0dBFS in the digital signal and if that portion is perfectly reproduced you'll get that splat. What I was talking about, I suspect is a function of the DAC chip's reproduction capabilities and the following analog circuit adding distortion because it is being pushed into its worst-case scenario. It's possible the analog circuit could end up pushing a signal above the analog reference 0dBFS in such a case, due to constructive interference, but it could also be that the additional distortion is clipping and adding more nasty splats?

FWIW, I've heard and measured this phenomenon, if I'm understanding your question correctly. (Admittedly, this was while measuring and listening to a super-cheapo DVD player.) Obviously music that is highly compressed close to 0dBFS is not a 100% block on a waveform graph. But a poor DAC can introduce additional distortion as a result of that music sitting around 0dBFS. Rather than (or more accurately in addition to) the distortion it may already be introducing when music is not sitting near 0dBFS. This is why I include Groove Armada's Lovebox in my test track list. I found some of those tracks useful for audibly detecting poor handling of highly compressed music audible. (Side note: I've noticed some publications have started performing their measurements with test signals that are -3dBFS or even lower. You'll get better measurements, usually, than if you take measurements at 0dBFS. I've been wondering why, since that might be fine for highly dynamic music but don't you want to know how things will perform in the worst-case, which also happens to be a somewhat common-case with a lot of music?)

It was a pretty awesome meet, and CEE TEE did an excellent job organizing.

No plans for either of those right now. Irrespective of the technical merits, I would like it if ESS published information about their algorithm for general public consumption. I'm afraid I don't have 2-tone IMD measurements, and did a multi-tone measurement instead since I was more interested in that one. Unfortunately I don't have the test gear handy to re-run any THD+N measurements. Sorry.

Sorry about the loose ferrite rings. I'll be the first to admit the safety labels aren't the greatest looking things. They are there for UL compliance. Since they are foil stickers you can peel them off without leaving any glue behind. If you're referring to the product label, I'm not sure if that needed to be on the side instead of the bottom for any reason. Probably not since that info is on the bottom of lots of other equipment. I'll take that under advisement for future builds. That's the first I'd heard about Manley price increases, but I've seen a few other companies announce price increases recently.

Thanks. Yeah. My manufacturing house and I tried to do what we could to keep the price down, but the cost increased by a significant amount.

Due to increased manufacturing costs, the D100 Mk2 will be seeing a price increase of $100 effective March 1. The new price, for both XLR and RCA configurations, will be $1495. We fab and assemble all our units at a manufacturing house in San Jose, California. The packaging and enclosures are sourced locally. Working with a local house allows us to ensure each unit is built to our own highest quality standards. (Someone on a different forum brought up manufacturing overseas to reduce costs, which is why I'm mentioning this. Overseas manufacturing wouldn't be a good idea for me.)

Awesome, livewire!

And then what happened?

Some people have reported lessening their LCD-2-induced head fatigue by switching to lighter cables. Others have accomplished the same by faking a neck injury to get one of those plastic neck braces.

I'm going to be at HF's Bay Area Meet on Saturday, Feb. 19 in Burlingame, California. Hope I'll see some of you there. The setup I'll have will be the D100 Mk2 with DNA Sonett headphone amp and Audez'e LCD-2 cans.

It's probably the lazy engineer in me, but I prefer to avoid potential problems completely so I don't have to worry about things. At home I am pretty much using computer-based streaming systems since that virtually guarantees no read errors (storage error detection and correction being more reliable than redbook) after a good rip. And optical for gear and S/PDIF circuit isolation. But that also depends on knowing that the DAC won't care about reasonable S/PDIF jitter. They're probably referring to the effect reflections can have. I guess it would be fair to call that jitter too, since the effect on the signal can be similar. But I'd hesitate to group it that way since that isn't how I think of things. Perhaps just a difference in background. Reflections was indeed one of the things I was thinking of, but even with a perfect reflection-free circuit there could be other yucky things being transmitted or picked up from the environment and those could also have an influence. For example, the test lab at my manufacturing house is full of all sorts of test equipment. To perform accurate tests with the DAC cover off, we had to test after hours with all the other stuff powered off. Likewise, during regular business hours the coaxial S/PDIF cable and measurement cables would pick up noise. UL testing is done in a shielded environment (even the transport is outside the "box" and attached with a long cable IIRC), since FCC Part 15 Subpart B only says gear can't emit radiation and doesn't care if gear will reject radiation. So you have to make sure of the latter yourself.

I would also say choice of transport can matter if you are using the coaxial connection with certain DACs. Since the receiving circuit becomes part of the S/PDIF communication circuit, the DAC implementation in conjunction with the transport implementation could influence the S/PDIF signal fidelity. Also, noise or strangeness on the shield or the signal could be a problem if a DAC wasn't using an isolation input transformer or the shield noise carried into other parts of the DAC. In other words, I'm saying transports could matter more with some DACs than with others for reasons besides jitter or a non-bit-perfect implementation.

I met Steve Guttenberg in the Can-Jam room this year, and he did use a good percentage of his words to cover headphones: High-end audio fest rocks Denver. Probably because he was impressed with some specific gear.

mayoski got around to posting his review. I really loved the story about his puppies. "I could go on, but suffice it to say that the D100 provides a window of clarity into it all.... ...close your eyes and you are in the studio with them. The sound stage on this recording is wider and deeper than I have previously heard in my digital system...." - mayoski (full review) Also, Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is almost here. Maybe I'll see some of you there, if you deign to venture outside the world of headphones.

I listened to the LCD-2 with my Donald North Audio Sonett at Can Jam. I recall he has a demo unit or a trial or something like that.

The new 3-D enabled PS3 firmware doesn't support both 3-D and lossless audio transport at the same time, according to Blu-ray.com, both PCM and bitstream. In case that makes a difference to any of you. Maybe this will be changed in a future firmware upgrade.

I think you'd be doing yourself a favor by taking a listen. You'll never know if you will really like how the Zodiac+ sounds until you give it a spin.

Just imagine everyone else listens to crap music and so obviously doesn't know what they're talking about. It's the audiophile equivalent of imagining everyone else in their underwear.

I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with foobar, but the Ayre page makes sense to me and I'm sure they know what they're doing. I believe their goal is to get an unmodified digital signal out to the DAC. foobar lets you perform some signal processing before outputting it, so disabling pretty much everything would match the goal stated on the Ayre page. It sounds to me like you have everything set correctly. Figure 3 is almost completely correct, except it's not clear to me from the picture if pin 1 is connected to anything except the cable shield. You should tie pin 3 and pin 1 together at the ground/shield portion of the RCA jack on the right-hand side of that figure, if using the cable with the D100.

Is there something in particular you are trying to set?

Hm. It's one thing for me to say what signal/information theory says, and another thing for me to get into (non-Neko) product design/marketing decisions. While wearing my Neko Audio hat at least. ;P In terms of measurements, feeding different sample rates into a DAC chip can result in a different output. I have measurements posted of 44.1kHz versus 96kHz. So technically what I said earlier isn't 100% true in reality. But it is true in terms of math. For all the DAC chip datasheets I've looked at, the measurements are better at lower sample rates. FWIW, I only listen to 16-bit / 44.1kHz content. I have a few DVD-A discs but they're inconvenient to play.

I don't really want to go into details, but basically yes to the part of your question I've quoted. I can't answer the remainder of your question, except I have not and do not expect to receive any direct financial benefit from Headphonista or the reviewer. I felt I needed to include this disclaimer because I want to avoid any potential controversy around the review if someone else posted this fact instead.