Monday 27 June 2016

The Vancouver Audio Show 2016 (June 25): Pictorial & Comments (the MQA Demo, and Show Musings)


As I mentioned a few weeks back, the folks at the Chester Group have put on the Vancouver Audio Show again this year at the Hilton Metrotown (in Burnaby). I must admit, it's not the ideal weekend for an audio show. Summer holidays starting, weather getting better, this is also the opening weekend for the Vancouver International Jazz Festival... I guess the "music lovers" can enjoy the great outdoors while "audiophiles" can hang out indoors checking out the gear :-). Last year, they had it in May which probably makes more sense.

I spent most of Saturday at the show. It was a blast meeting up with Mitch (aka Mitchco on Computer Audiophile, recent eBook on the use of DSP in the listening environment) and wandering the hallways through the various showrooms with my buddy Phil and catching up with my dad who was there as well. As I mentioned before, I think Vancouver has the luxury of a decent selection of "high end audio" stores already but it's certainly nice to be able to come to one place to check out the gear and listen to what's new.

Saturday 18 June 2016

MEASUREMENTS: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 (Creative Recon3Di) - Motherboard DAC / Audio Output

A number of months back, I rebuilt my HTPC set-up to run the new Skylake i5 processor. I thought it might be interesting to measure the motherboard audio output of the Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 to have a peek at what a typical modern "gaming" motherboard's audio output performs like. Here's the back panel and a picture of the MoBo:
Rear panel - note the blue TosLink cable, beside it the analogue phono plug for stereo out...
As I described in that article, the Gigabyte motherboard forms the foundation for the the new build. Technologies built into the new "consumer performance" Intel Z170 chipset includes compatibility with the new Skylake processors of course, more PCI-E lanes, up to 10 USB3.0 ports, up to 3 M.2 interfaces for SSD storage, etc. As I mentioned previously, this motherboard also has HDMI 2.0 + HDCP 2.2 capability (firmware upgrade available now and ready to go), plus there's Thunderbolt 3 out from that little USB 3.1-Type C port - very cool.

If you look at the Gigabyte literature on the website, you see that they're also hyping up the audio output somewhat. Upgradable opamp, Creative Sound Core3D quad-core processor (for 3D positional sound), high-end capacitors (Nichicon MUSE MW "Acoustic Series"). After installation, the audio device is identified as the "Sound Blaster Recon3Di" [presumably the 'i' indicates "integrated"].

How good is the analogue output from a modern computer motherboard like this?

Saturday 11 June 2016

MISCELLANY: Vancouver Audio Show, Focusrite Forte Ahead, HEVC, Surround Audio CODECs...



Hey there guys, life and work is busy so I thought the post this week would be to cover a few miscellaneous thoughts from the last few weeks.

First, as you can see in the picture above, it's coming again this year! I guess the Vancouver Audio Show went well enough last year that we're going to see a repeat performance with the Show this year... Nice. I remember that there was no mention of the Show at the usual audiophile websites so I figure I'd let everyone know it's coming. Thankfully here in Vancouver we do have a few audiophile stores with good showrooms. Plus with the city (as well as much of the West Coast of North America) being a place where rich Asian investors like to park their cash (just look at the housing market!), it's a nice place to show off the goods... Of course, it also doesn't hurt given the relative strength of the US dollar to attract a few Americans up from nearby Seattle.

Saturday 4 June 2016

MUSINGS / ANALYSIS: Is there any value to 176.4 and 192kHz Hi-Res audio files? A practical evaluation...



Check out this article from 1998 written by the founder of Earthworks, David E. Blackmer (1927-2002).

 
Although I believe some of the contents in the article above are debatable, in the years since 1998, high-resolution, high samplerate audio has of course become common-day reality for audiophiles. As I expressed years ago, I do like the 2xCD samplerates like 88 and 96kHz. But as a result of realizing that 176.4 and 192kHz songs were not being streamed properly with my Logitech Media Server with BrutefirDRC set-up described a few months back, I started asking myself, what is it we would be missing if these albums were downsampled to 88.2 and 96kHz?

Put another way, we could ask "Is there something musical about the highest octave in these 4x samplerate files?" This highest octave for 176.4kHz files would be audio containing 44kHz to 88kHz, and in 192kHz files from 48kHz to 96kHz.