search

[21] Home Theater Reference & Demagnetizing Tone (DDD) 0:23
1kHz at -20dBFS in both channels

The first 10 seconds of this track consist of a steady tone with a frequency of 1kHz. During the subsequent 15 seconds, it decays in level to silence. Its level of -20dBFS—20dB below the maximum peak level of a CD or laserdisc player—corresponds in a THX-specified system to an acoustic level of 85dB spl. To determine the maximum output level of your CD player, feed its output into an AC voltmeter—Fluke, Beckmann, and Radio Shack all…

Stereophile Test CD 3 STPH006-2
Total Playing Time: 76:08

[1] Home Theater & Stereo Channel Identification 2:05
(Left, Right, Center, Subwoofer, Surround)

[2] Stereo Channel Phasing 0:34
(Stereo channels in-phase, out-of-phase)

[3] Empire Brass Quintet: "Sibley Sanctus Lydian" 3:59
(from Passage 138 B.C.- A.D.1611, Telarc CD-80355, Surround-encoded)

[4] Dick Hyman: "Topsy" (HDCD-encoded) 6:11
(from From the Age of Swing, Reference Recordings RR-59CD)

[5] Sara K.: "History Repeats Itself" 5:54
(from…

Even after years of intensive Small Business Therapy, it appears my audemporiphobia will remain a destructive, debilitating syndrome (after all, I make my living selling to these places).

For maximum therapeutic effect I shall not presume with this article merely to perpetuate a manufacturer's biases; I confess to having owned a hi-fi store at one time, and working years as a salesperson in another; this message is directed at the music-loving consumer rather than at the few sincere and knowledgeable audio merchants, or the (regrettably larger) quantity of…

"J-10, you won't believe this component!"

For sure.

"It'll redefine the listening experience and blow away everything else you've ever heard!"

Yadda yadda yadda. We'll see.

I try not to become blasé about things. Really, I do. Fortunately, Kathleen is such an earthy person that somehow she keeps me from floating completely away.

But the buzz around the Nagra/dCS room at HI-FI '98 was sizzling hot. Steve Lee (footnote 1) was preaching to the converted by upsampling commercial 16-bit/44.1kHz recordings to a…

And mostly it did. But I learned to lower the volume when changing from CD to DVD or back again. Sometimes the Elgar would…

Description: Digital to digital converter with bit activity, error, and level meters and digital control of polarity, level, and balance. Input frequencies: 192kHz, 176.4kHz, 96kHz, 88.2kHz, 48kHz, 44.1kHz, 32kHz, 24kHz, 22.05kHz, 16kHz, 12kHz, 11.025kHz. Output frequencies: 192kHz, 176.4kHz, 96kHz, 88.2kHz, 48kHz, 44.1kHz, 32kHz, 24kHz, 22.05kHz, 16kHz, 12kHz, 11.025kHz. Syncs to word clock on both input and output. Input data formats: AES/EBU (XLR), Dual AES (XLR), S/PDIF (Phono, BNC, TosLink), SDIF-2 (BNC). Output data formats: AES/EBU (XLR), Dual AES (XLR),…

Source transport was the Theta DaViD, a 24/96-capable machine.. It sat atop a trio of Black Diamond Racing Cones screwed into Those Things carbon-fiber squares atop a Signal Guard II anti-resonance platform. The Signal Guard was itself suspended on four PolyCrystal-coated brass footers and set up on the top shelf of a PolyCrystal Rack. This effectively decoupled the DaViD from the environment at large. For whatever reason, the DaViD sounded better with its display left on.

I used a number of digital datalinks between the DaViD and the 972. For 16/44.1…

It must be clearly understood that upsampling from 44.1kHz to 96kHz or 192kHz doesn't add high-frequency information that was above the Nyquist Frequency—22.05kHz—of the first, lower sample rate.

This is graphically shown in fig.1, which shows the the dCS 972/Elgar's frequency response of the digital signal for three different input conditions. In all three cases, the 972 was set to output a 192kHz datastream to the dCS Elgar, and the Audio Precision System One output an analog sinewave (swept from 20Hz to 100kHz) to a dCS 904 24-bit A/D converter. The…