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Streaming alternatives to pricey kaleidoscope?

I've looked at the kaleidoscope system  and found it compelling but also it's inconvenient and very pricey, regardless of your income level the pricing is very annoying.

Netflix, HBO, Amazon Apple, and the other lesser streaming services offer good sound along with the video but they have limited the ability to improve the sound Quality which is very sad.

Is there any service out there that is aspiring toward what kaleidoscope has done? Where is surprising and disappointing is that sound quality is so poor these days for the streaming services. It's a modern day tragedy in my opinion.

jumia

Showing 3 responses by xymox

xymox
3 posts
 
kota1, Apple uses Dolby MAT to decode the Atmos and produce M.LPCM with Atmost meta data. Most modern surround processors display this correctly as Atmos. Some older units show M.LPCM even tho it is Atmos. Because most of the decoding is done in the ATV and sent over in PCM this allows all the tweaks to the AppleTV X CPU to do the decoding in a very dejittered way. But that is not the main source of improvement. The audio data on the HDMI is radically dejittered VS all other HDMI devices I have measured. So the Atmos that comes from the AppleTV sound remarkable VS other gear simply because the HDMI is extremely dejittered. Suddenly you gain a 3D soundstage, depth, delinatition of instruments, nuance, emotion, subtly. Its like going from a cheap Walmart stereo to a high end DAC. The musical scores of movies are so good they distract from the movie for me. I got lost just a few days ago listening to the orchesrta behind nearly every minute of the TV series Picard. There is a french horn or a flute or something in nearly every scene. The performance of each of these instruments was captivating. It defies my understanding how these wonderfully recorded soundtracks have been lost this whole time covered over by terrible HDMI. Blurred into a flat lifeless loss of all detail.

 

I have clients using local UPnP music servers. I have one guy who took the AppleTV X and put it into the Oppo input and used his modded Oppo to pick off the SPDIF and fed that to a WADEX. He set the appleTV to 2 channel. He said the sound was stunning. He also flipped to the stock AppleTV and said it was terrible.

Its wonderful for sound. The sound improvements are the biggest part of the improvements.

AppleTV does top out at 48/24 uncompressed. It can do 32 channels of that. While its not DSD or 192/24, 48/24 is still really good for most things.

jumia, "the added power supply to me is an ad on that maybe redundant/unnecessary "

 

The power supply is key. The power supply inside the appleTV is TERRIBLE. Also I use a sensing power supply that does noise cancleation. Note its 4 pin, not 2 pin. It also uses a R-Core transformer and is matched impeadance with the AppleTV board.

My goals were to improve sound. My main system i used to develop the ATVX was very high end audio.

Streaming is compressed. No way around this. However it turns out that the compression is not the main issue with sound quality, it was the terrible HDMI. Of course a Taiko and Wadex using USB will produce a much better result for music. But for audio material delivered via HDMI, I think I may make the best device. Reviewers think so.

 

xymox
3 posts
 
jumia :AppleTV X: "it’s very deficient as to what is done"

 

I replace the clocks with lab grade low phase noise clocks. I clean up the HDMI in jitter and overall noise. I dejitter the CPU buss between the ethernet, HDMI, CPU, SSD and ram. I address the PWM voltage regulators. I use a noise canceling remote regulation power supply design. I tune the impedance of the power supply to the current spectra of the AppleTV which has components as low as a rumble down at 8hz as the CPU thinks and all the way up to harmonics from the PWM regulators around 1-5Mhz.

I also do a BUNCH of other things I wont discuss in public.

I have 108 units in customer homes as of last week shipments. A lot of my clients have k-scape and modded oppos and can A/B/C easily. They have ALL said the ATVX is the winner. HOW CAN THIS BE ? That sure scrambled my brain too. It turns out HDMI is JUST HORRENDOUS and everyone making HDMI gear just uses the chip makers suggested circuits and feeds the HDMI chip with terrible power. I feed the HDMI chip with power with less then 30uV of noise. A careful low impedance supply SWR tuned to the current spectra required. I also feed it a power supply that is WAY more regultaed then any HDMI system I know of in any device.

I do this same thing to the CPU/Ethernet chip/SSD/Ram and some other systems.

The ENTIRE platform is dejittered and stunningly free of RF noise and the voltages at the chips are PPM stable with short term drift.

I am sorry its expensive. It takes a whole day to make one. The PCB takes SMD rework and that costs money. The parts of expensive.

YES. I use good wire. But not "audiophile" wire. I use a teflon insulated pure silver fine strand wire. This wire was made for industry back in the 1980's before they changed the Teflon manufacturing process because of the Montreal protocol. I use this wire because of the teflon and its mil-spec rating and its established specs for silver purity and other materials and mfgr properties. Its also a VERY exact length, ga and dia. This is because its part of a SWR tuning for impedance match of the power supply to the ATVX board.

I have highly modded lots of other gear. But I prefer the ATVX. Also of course the AppleTV X does WAY WAY more then a disc player or a k-scape. It has every app, has every movie known, has all the current series, has sports, has music like Tidal, it can play local content off a uPnP server, it can plug inot the Apple eco system and has all your pics/vids.

The pic is stunning, but, its the sound that gets everybody. Its more like a good server/DAC then a HDMI based device.

I get tho that it seems what i am saying is impossible. It sure was mind bending to me. HDMI is simple not well understand in how jitter on it is interpreted by the human model. Plus dejittering things like the CPU dejitted frame decoding. So each frame of video has less jitter in timing of decode. I don't know what all happened. I know and can measure a few things, but, that does not fully explain the shock and awe everyone experiences.

xymox
3 posts
 

Jumia, "What are the implications of using an optical connection to alleviate issues arising from HDMI?   "

Ooooo.. Its a older ATV. But. With the same mods I do, it could be really awesome. Again you have limitations of Optical SPDIF, and I do not know what the audio limitations are on the older ATV,, but that sounds fun :)  I think those older ATV have limitations on what apps they will run tho. They are way out of apple support.

So what nearly everyone has found with a AppleTV X is that using a really good power cable from a clean power source is really important. My linear with the R-Core will really love a good power cable and I feed it from a Torus system. A reviewer I know is using $30k in cables feeding the ATVX.

Yes, its STUNNING the difference in shows, apps and commercials.

Tonight I was watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds on Paramount, the sound was STUNNING.. The imaging and depth on the ohcestra was remarkable. Keep in mind my reference for SQ for digital music is a Taiko and either a Wadex or CH Precision C1.2 dual mono with X1 + T1.. So when I say the soundtrack of Strange New Worlds was stunning, I am not kidding around.

I think dejittering the entire platform really mattered. The Ethernet, CPU. RAM all really matter to bitstream decoding. The board is 2" sq. ALl the traces are REALLY short. So that makes for very little loss between chips. The super low phase noise chock chips I swap out also really matter. The high precision low drift voltage regulators make for really precision decoding of Ethernet and really precise encoding of HDMI.

Even af ter using the ATVX for over a year now, it STILL stuns me. I just never get over it. Something comes along in picture or sound and my brain goes "Impossible, OMG".. I love it. Its a pain for me to make them. I make my money in other ways and there is not much profit in it for me. I make them because they really are doing something beyond anything I would have thought possible.

I am not alone. Reviewers have covered the crazy cool experence. Owners have done reviews and ABs over on the Whats Best forum thread.

I have users doing all sorts of cool things to get even more performance. Cables. vibration isolation. Mass loading. Its just loads of fun to tweak and get more out of it.

Kota1.. Yes Ethernet cables seem to somehow matter. Technically I can't imagine how, but I have hear/seen it in a blind AB. I do a lot of blind AB doing development. I made a switch, its currently with my distributor. He is doing evaul. I applied all that i learned with HDMI to Ethernet and a switch. I need to do more testing with others to see what they think. I know people with all the current high end switches. People are doing ABs now. If it works out I will sell the Switch X. Its modular and can do 10Gbps. You can configure it for ethernet or optical in any form or as many ports as you want. It also has a special way to use it where it will isolate all the packets on some ports to ONLY those ports making a clean audio section of ports. I also have a modded cable modem. Both the Switch X and the Modem X use the same linear and sensing noise cancellation.

So I might soon have 3 products. The AppleTV X, the Switch X and the Modem X. But the switch and modem still need to be vetted by a bunch of my beta test group of users. WHo knows. Maybe not worth the effort. A SoTM switch is pretty good. Not sure a modem will make any difference.

 

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