ASR and the rise of the intelligent idiots

[r3xj0hn570n]

The trick is to determine which filters are necessary and which are not.

True, but another trick is to suppress the noise at it's source. An example i've been playing with on and off other the years is switching noise in diodes. I've seen all sorts of tricks, pF caps across each diode, RC snubbers across the transformer secondaries, but my favourite is an old valve topology, choke input PSU filtering. My main amp has adjustable chokes and truly enormous (Siemens, bigger than a softdrink can) electolytic caps bypassed with paper/oil caps. It's dead quiet, i can just hear jonson noise with my ear next to a 98dB/w driver.

[Wonfor14]

Hey Guys, I was toying with the idea for a remote which was IR but using tone burst like the old telephone system, base most likely around simply band pass filters, then no digital nasty bugs.
Long time ago there was a PLL device from Signetics designed for this purpose was it a NE565/7 ? no not the old NE555.
I dig out old data books and find the beasty.

[CN211276]

After slagging it off since it came out ASR has finally reviewed the Mscaler. It is no surprise that the review reflects the comments which have been made over the years. Inevitably there has been a lot of reaction on the forums including from designer Rob Watts who has highlighted the flaws in the review process, which to an extent echos points made by Paul in the OP to this thread.

Should someone submit an item of NVA kit to ASR I am fairly certain, based on how they measures, the review would be less than favourable.

[savvypaul]

After slagging it off since it came out ASR has finally reviewed the Mscaler. It is no surprise that the review reflects the comments which have been made over the years. Inevitably there has been a lot of reaction on the forums including from designer Rob Watts who has highlighted the flaws in the review process, which to an extent echos points made by Paul in the OP to this thread.

Should someone submit an item of NVA kit to ASR I am fairly certain, based on how they measures, the review would be less than favourable.

ASR wouldn't understand the NVA design aims.

We are deliberately not trying to make an unconditionally stable amplifier - ASR would damn it for not being unconditionally stable.

[antonio66]

Post copied from the Wam:

Rob Watts has posted a response elsewhere which goes some way to explain his stance.

“The Hugo M scaler does not have technical issues that IMO need fixing. The added quantisation noise is there simply because with 2x and 4x upsampling I use Gaussian dither set to a high level - and this is done simply because it sounds much better, closer to the noise shaped outputs at 16x. Of course using it in the intended mode, 16x, the noise and distortion level is identical to the input noise due to the aggressive noise shaping. So noise is higher, but so what? You still won't hear it, but you will hear the benefits of Gaussian against the usual triangular dither. That is, you will hear better depth and detail resolution, unless you are deaf, or not blessed with good hearing, or not interested in the SQ and musical performance, in which case why on earth would you be interested in an expensive up-sampler?

As to the jitter being higher, well so what? It's not sold as a jitter reduction device, but sold to go with Chord DACs, where jitter on the dual coax inputs is eliminated by the Chord DAC.”

[CN211276]

Do I detect that Rob Watts was biting his lip. I can imagine what RD's response would have been had ASR got their hands on any NVA kit during his time.

[CN211276]

I think this thread might have been more appropriately titled "ASR and the rise of the intelligent cult" as that what it seems to be. The Mscaler hatchet job has now reached 28 pages and at least one dissenting voice, who has actually heard the Mscaler, has been banned. I was not previously unaware that objectivism had such a fanatical following, but had not visited ASR very often.

[karatestu]

I think it is a waste of time arguing with these people. We all like what we like and everybody should be happy with that rather than trying to look superior. This hobby tends to bring out the undesirable personality traits in so many mature men who should really be spending their time worrying about important things.

Listening to music probably takes up a twelfth of my time at most over all. My time spent arguing about hifi, building a guru reputation, putting others down and generally being unpleasant should reflect this. But some seem to spend an awful amount of time arguing on the Internet. We can't we all be happy and love one another ?

I feel liberated since I realised all I needed was a decent Bluetooth speaker, my tablet and a streaming account. Worrying about hifi and what I think my peers think of me is in the past. I am not going to even bother looking at ASR because it is a waste of my time. I know what I will find and it's not pretty. All the undesirable human traits concentrated in one place and written by ageing sad little old men who have to be right or have the last word. It's absolutely pathetic.

[SteveTheShadow]

Come on Stu. Say what you think.

[Lindsayt]

I think it is a waste of time arguing with these people. We all like what we like and everybody should be happy with that rather than trying to look superior. This hobby tends to bring out the undesirable personality traits in so many mature men who should really be spending their time worrying about important things.

Listening to music probably takes up a twelfth of my time at most over all. My time spent arguing about hifi, building a guru reputation, putting others down and generally being unpleasant should reflect this. But some seem to spend an awful amount of time arguing on the Internet. We can't we all be happy and love one another ?

I feel liberated since I realised all I needed was a decent Bluetooth speaker, my tablet and a streaming account. Worrying about hifi and what I think my peers think of me is in the past. I am not going to even bother looking at ASR because it is a waste of my time. I know what I will find and it's not pretty. All the undesirable human traits concentrated in one place and written by ageing sad little old men who have to be right or have the last word. It's absolutely pathetic.

Car crash TV is entertaining. It can be entertaining to watch 2 or more people arguing about audio equipment.

A reasonable proportion of the time you have someone that knows what they are talking about and you have an eeeeeedyiot (or however Richard used to spell it). This adds to the humour.

Some people are so predictable in their dogma that sharing forum space with them is like poking an ants nest and playing chess at the same time. You know that saying certain things will provoke a frenzied response from them and you can predict what they will say 3 moves ahead.