The only review that matters is the one that happens in your head when listening to sound. I don't care about measurements. Everyone hears differently and everyone has their own preferences. "Cold" "clinical" "Neutral" "Warm" all subjective. And we all know $$$ does not directly correlate to what we like. I stopped reading Stereophile and the ABS many many years ago.
BS meter is pegged!
I was reading about a music streamer from a latest Stereophile review and what was posted in the review had my BS meters pegged. I'm from the high tech industry with friends that work at Intel labs and friends that work for ARM computers and they haven't heard of some of these things that were posted. Maybe we can get clarification on these items so they don't sound so far fetched and the specifics posted in the review tainted the reviewers judgement IMO.
1) The review states this piece uses "a cpu that's highly prioritized for audio playback only ensuring highly optimized sound quality". I asked around if somebody is making a specific CPU for audio playback only. You know the Intel/AMD fabs that make cpu's make millions of them at a time, not 10-1000 custom cpus. Even when you look at the ARM cpus, none of them are built specifically for audio. There are millions of servers in the world that do database work for example that no cpu maker is building a specific cpu for database only applications. If there is a small company that are creating this kind of cpu, what kind of OS will run on it? This piece runs Roon so it has to be a somewhat generic cpu with a generic Linux OS running on it.
2) the review states: this unit "it plays live with no other processes running in parallel. as far as we know, unlike any other streamer on the market, this streamers cpu plays directly and live from the kernel without any processing or lag." Meter is pegged now. NO OS will run only 1 process at a time without hundreds of other system processes running in parallel or in the background. Using Unix/Linux, the OS is always in a flux state moving data around in its caches, in and out of memory, doing read a head, swapping, paging, etc... And these system processes are a good thing to keep the system stable and running efficiently.
3) this piece uses "new and faster enhanced memory". Meter is pegged again. During the last 2 decades using Linux servers and over 2 decades before that using Sun and IBM UNIX servers, I have never had the option of buying enhanced memory. I made a couple of calls and asked if they had any enhanced memory that they could sell me and they had no clue what I was talking about. Everybody can get fast memory but "enhanced"?
4) "the whole device plays 1 song directly from RAM". All linux OSs do this, you cannot go from any cache or ssd/hdd directly out of the computer, the data has to be read into ram 1st.If the system is paging, this data might be deleted from RAM and then have to reread into RAM before sending to a dac. I used many large PCIE cache cards to hold large amounts of data (used it as a database cache) but that cached data had to be moved from this fast cache to ram before sending out to the dac.
Most of the time, audio reviewers get psyched up when they hear new acronyms or a magical cpu or enhanced memory that taints their judgement. For example, this reviewer at the end stated "never before have I reviewed a stand-alone streamer/server so accomplished in the hardware department".
Maybe somebody could clarify some of this up for me/us in the audiophile community.
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Ultimately, this appears to be just another "objectivist vs subjectivist" thread. While the OP has carefully parsed the reviewer's words based on their own understanding, the real intent is to shed doubt upon the conclusions reached. I have no interest in the product and its position in any imaginary performance pecking order. However, I do believe that the words of someone that actually used the product are more meaningful than those of someone that merely read the words of someone else that had done so. Neither "market speak" nor "reviewer speak" nor "engineer speak" has any correlation with device sound quality. |
@carlsbad2 We did that little 'game' in grade school, when it was called: ...really *ah* 'reassuring*, that.🤨 @philhyun has made the point of the final arbiter at the end of the digital dance of data is all the process to discern the 'differences', +/-/=/meh the reviewer observes. The equipment, the space, the particular reviewer felt right for task is most likely different than even 'hard core 'philes' wouldn't find something brow-raising, so it's back to the middle of the maze. I could consider a multi-core processor being assigned one and only process to handle linked to the fastest memories possible...duplicate that board and stitch those together, although I've noticed boards with 2 cpu mounts... Whatever...*chuckle* Anyone that has the pocket change to buy one should still insist on a all day demo...even if it's someone else's change. ;) Fun read. 👍 And any ad copy through a 3d holographic imagery is just to make you buy/lease/rent/steal IT....and we used to use hollow logs....😏 |
“and in direct comparison w an insane $ WADAX stack… it held ground” The 3 box design at $80K retail, I would expect few to be impressed and others to simply shake their heads in disbelief. For a product at this price, the market is niche, catering to enthusiasts with the means to prioritize audio performance above all else. While it’s easy to critique a product based on its design, parts and the cost, the true measure lies in whether it delivers something extraordinary. If the 3-box design offers innovation or performance that redefines expectations, it might find its audience though likely a very small one. Ultimately, the value of such a product depends on the listener’s priorities, resources, and willingness to pay for the perceived gains in sound quality. |
Some of it may be BS, some of it just may be out of context, or an exaggeration. 1. It might have more than one CPU, or a multicore CPU, they dedicate a CPU for audio. It has a "dedicated" CPU for Audio. 2. Goes along with #1. With multi-core processing, you can dedicate cores for task in software. 3. There are so many different types of memory, you can call ECC ram "enhanced" or some of the faster MHZ stuff enhanced. Really think they are saying, it uses premium ram, or the fastest out there. 4. This one I feel is mostly BS. It takes a bit to cache an entire song,. With SSD drives, some are just as fast at RAM now. Some devices do not really cache anything anymore. Again, this would be something you put in software, how much cache to provide. Most likely they are trying to cache as much as possible as soon as possible. On all these type of devices, they use some kind of common OS as a base, mostly just the kernel. Add their software on top of it. Really you do not have a full OS, just the kernel, with the app. It's super stripped down, usually just there to control all the "computer" devices. Sometimes these OS's also run in their own memory space, and are isolated (sandboxed) from the app. That goes back to point 1 & 2. They are kind of telling the truth, or at least part of the truth. As usually it's misleading marketing. That is rampant in all advertising. |
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