I am guessing you are from Britain, despite your affectations! (If I am wrong please disclose where you are from.)
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If only I could say that, but afraid Iām not that lucky. Many thanks for the compliment though kind sir.
Please note it is inappropriate to call me āSirā as I have not been knighted In fact I prefer the anonymity of being title-less, as befits my status of being the innocent bystander. Whilst I canāt disclose the title I held over much of my working like, if you insist on using titles the one I always liked, but could never have as I lived in real life not academia, was Professor.
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My apologies.
Its one of those pieces of kit that just works, makes everything aound better and then you forget its there. An absolute bargain
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Dave is in a different league and in9r2fer it without mscaler. Phoenix usb though is an absolute bargain for what it does in a good syatem, wouldnāt have a usb source without it
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The RED is great if you want to play with HQPlayer on a Spring3. I tried that for a while but if you source with non-oversampled data and want to leave the bits as they are then other devices like MagnumHiFi Mano Ultra Mk3 or the Metrum Ambre will make a NOS-DAC happier.
Which is strange since all those three devices use the pi compute module (just the CPU part, not the full Raspberry pi) and you can even run the same software on all three. So the difference between them is the io/clocking and driver software. And the Power of course.
The Ambre I think do I2S best. But if the file server runs Roon the other two brought a fuller less edgy tone with a relatively cheap DH Labs 110-Ohm AES/EBU cable. With HQPlayer you can tune it to a degree but I never liked what upsampling did to the stream.
The MagnaHiFi use a Farad Super3 as PS and is more expensive @ EUR 1500-2000 with all options. The other two around EUR 1000 so not going overboard with DSP not only lower cost - it improved the sound.
Oh, and regarding speakers it was the streamers that brought the difference. I own both LS3/5a and Magnepan LRS+ and they only sound different in this case. Both is fine with the music despite being wildly different.
But if your source sucks, so will any speaker throw at it. So how can you decide if it is a good speaker? You got to fix the source the best you can - or you are wasting your budget.
Some people have problems not with actual speaker products - they simply buy to big speakers for their room. Sure my Magnepan LRS could be called big but my defence is they dont activate the sidewalls and the ceiling as much as boxed speakers. The LRS are cheap because the designer pushed lot of work/cost up the chain. And my LS3/5a play in any room - they completely rely on the quality of the source.
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It depends what you mean by this. Speakers too large to position properly is definitely a problem. If you have a small room and the speakers need to be a metre out from the wall but are wedged into a corner, or a metre out but practically in your lap, then they were the wrong speaker.
But a common trope repeated by audiophiles that āa speaker is too much for the roomā or āover energizes the roomā is, according to many speaker manufacturers and designers, absolute nonsense. Assuming you can position a speaker properly and match it to a suitable amp, then the speaker size to room ratio matters not. Thatās what the volume control is for. I admit, I also used to beleive in the too much speaker for the room philosophy but Iāve since become convinced it simply isnāt true at all. When someone feels it is an issue in their system, invariably it is other problems misidentified.
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Not entirely sure ā¦ the ideal speaker should be a point sourceā¦ which is clearly at the moment impossible to provide. One can approximate that by having the angle of acceptance at the listening position as small as possible. A large speaker with several spaced out drivers will likely mean in many circumstances one will need to sit further away to get a more integrated and seamless performance (yes room size doesnāt have to relate to listening position but I suspect itās a good general guide) ā¦ so you could have a speaker too big for the listening position. (Yes some speakers use a driver phase delay crossoverā¦ but that requires more componentry that ultimately can distort the signalā¦ no free lunch)
In my wanderings I hear speakers sometimes mismatched for roomsā¦ where there is not enough or too much band pass energy for the room and damping or lack of dampingā¦ as well as reflections and resonances. Now some professional active monitors that are expected to work in non ideal environmentsā¦ yes not all pro environments are ideal eitherā¦ will have eq controls on the active speaker to help roughly approximate for the room or listening environment. In consumer hifi we tend to poo-poo tone controls of any sort other than interconnects! But I do think they could help if they were on some speakers moreā¦ yes they might rob the last word in signal quality, but I would have thought the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks, just like with some professional active monitors.
This is true, if we are talking about a very low quality source, that is perhaps not much more than a toy. But an item that is sold as a hifi product is unlikely to totally suckā¦
But I think much of the commentary here has spoken about balanceā¦ start with the speaker that suites (as I guess most canāt build the listening room specifically which would be the ideal in my books) then look at sourceā¦. Rather than a speaker will magically transform a source, just like a source canāt magically transform a speaker with poorly matched in room response.
I donāt think that contradicts anything I said though. The first paragraph deals with positioning which I also mentioned the problem of having a large speaker in your lap.
The second with more generalised speaker to room matching, which I think we all understand isnāt purely a matter of size. A small speaker can fail to work in a small room too. And a large speaker can be marked for nearfield monitoring.
Speaker to room interaction is critical. I just donāt think matching room volume to speaker size is a meaningful indicator or looking looking at a picture of a large speaker in a room and commenting, āyou wanna consider different speakers mate. Those monsters are over energizing your room for sure,ā has any validity. Any more than looking at a picture of a cake and saying, āyouāve put too much vanilla in that.ā is valid. You canāt possibly know from looking at either. Even if familiar with the speaker the room has multiple variable other than boundary size. I think both Dynaudio and PS Audio have stated they donāt believe thereās any reason why a large speaker shouldnāt be used in a small room provided you can position them and yourself correctly.
The issue of point sources is interesting though. There are of course single driver point source speakers around. But for large multi driver designs, some lend themselves better than other for nearfield scenarious. A lot of giant JBLs and PMCs, ATCs and others with a strong pro audio heritage tend to confine tweeters and midrange drivers to a compact area that is similar on their big and small boxes alike.
Hi 
ā¦
I agree with you,.thatās mine you see in the picture 
, I was just curious how anyone else perceived this USB- reclocker.
What USB-cables are you usingā¦?
I personally use Verteres Redline.
I agree, I guess the point I was making was that consumer hifi speaker manufacturers, or at least some of them, do consider in room responses in their designs which I suspect is more about placement and proximity to boundaries rather than absolute volume.
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Iām using tellurium q black usb, previously had Chord shawline
Absolutely that is true. The same manufacturers I referenced both state that they make somestic speakers a bit hot on the top end because if they donāt, and make the response flat like a monitor design, it doesnāt sufficiently compensate for all the soft furnishings. But itās a guess. They have to model average rooms from samples they take. I doubt any two manufacturers work off the same data. In other words, they aim for a flat response in the room, not in a test chamber. Ultimately, barring room correcting (which I donāt use) I suppose youāre never gonna get spot on.
Itās a compromise Iām happy with. The imperfections between the speaker and room are what give you the live in the room illusion. When aiming for perfection I think people need to be careful what they wish for.
Get this balance right, and a source that at the very least, doesnāt hold the speakers back, and the result is very enjoyable over long sessions.
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Totally agree, though Simonās observation about wide spacing of drivers also makes sense likely limiting some of speakers like perhaps some Focals and Wilsons though their physical presence may well limit the likelihood of consideration foruse in smaller rooms. (Interestingly even 55 years ago IMF with their transmission line speakers grouped the four drivers (they had supertweeters) tightly together, and apparently the arrangement was designed to slew the horizontal dispersio the correct wasy for L&R speakers.
Well exactly, audio replay is a significant compromiseā¦ despite what some would have believe.
There was in interesting article in the AES library I remember reading that I felt poignant that illustrated all the compromises in the high end recording, production and replay chain, so, in my own words, the end result is a distorted but aesthetically pleasing facsimile of the originalā¦
It also illustrated that true hidef sound replay would be indistinguishable from the originalā¦ and necessarily with current technology we are a long way from getting to thatā¦ but our brains do a lot of the filling in for us including with our imaginationsā¦ we just need to give them a helping handā¦ which is where modern audio technology and quality hifi fits inā¦
@Simon-in-Suffolk @feeling_zen @Innocent_Bystander @jan @frenchrooster
In respect of speakers and rooms, itās not the size of the speakers thatās relevant, but the bass extension and alignment, combined with the size / shape of the room and the position of the speakers and listening position in the room
If a speaker has significant output (say more than -10dB in an average room and about -18dB in a square room), then unless the speaker is near the centre of the room, it WILL energise the main room resonance modes more than other frequencies.
This is simple physics.
LF damping in the room (i.e. LOTS of bass traps) can ameliorate the effect, but still canāt entirely eliminate it.
Good pointsā¦ I can recommend bass trapsā¦ but use quality traps, and now some can look relatively attractiveā¦ I use GIK Acoustic panels and their turbo traps (which are more efficient than my previous traditional bass corner traps). You can have them provided with a wide range of finishings to suit your decor.
The turbo traps have transformed the mid bass response in my music room and dominant resonances have massively been mitigated without having to go over the top with absorbers. The acoustic panels behind the speakers have helped dampen lower mid band reflections at the frequencies before they come more directional. This helps clarity and insightā¦ great for vocals.