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Messages - Tranquility Bass

#1
From their latest facebook post the king of spin is at it again. But it was all flawed right from the start but that is not going to stop them. Like P.T.Barnum said there is a sucker born every minute :(

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#2
For those fake review websites and infuencers that keep promoting "audio-file" network switches please get your facts straight and stop spreading mistruths and propaganda just because it is profitable for you to do so. That is no excuse to do it.

Unlike these fake reviewers and as someone that has actually designed DAC and DSP hardware all I can say is that once those 'ones' and 'zeros' are re-assembled inside a buffer within a DAC or DSP, the electronics does not care where they came from. Whether it's an S/PDIF, Toslink, USB or ethernet connection via streamer and network switch etc it makes no difference to the DAC hardware how they got there as long as there are no errors in the data then each source will produce an identical result and this can be measured as well !

And there in lies the rub. These fake review websites rarely measure anything if at all. Instead they will come up with a whole lot of lame excuses as to why they should not measure anything which is contrary to the people who design the hardware and/or the silicon used in most modern electronic devices. None of their lame excuses stands up to any scrutiny which should be a red flag to anyone reading it. What these people are doing is sending the industry back to the dark-ages and promoting a whole new industry of snake-oil merchants, snake-oil products, scam artists and spivs.

The only caveat here is that different devices may use different levels of isolation with the possibility of passing noise into the connecting device. However this all should be clearly measurable but of course if you don't measure anything then how would you know ? Of course this aspect which is usually the focus of most of these fake reviews has no bearing on the end sound quality. And changes in someones subjective interpretation of sound-stage is certainly not a reliable performance metric !!






#3
And from DEQX's own white paper !!

QuoteIn consumer speakers where crossover slopes of typically 12dB/octave are used, the same sound is coming from both drivers, typically for an octave above and below the crossover frequency. Unless these sources are perfectly timed to meet in phase with each other (time aligned), the resulting mix of sound will produce 'comb filtering', which can sound 'nasal' or 'flanged'.

Another problem has also been introduced by using multiple drivers to reproduce sound – a single instrument may now sound like it is coming from different places. This results in poor off-axis performance because varying degrees of summation and cancellation occur depending on the relative distance between each driver - a phenomenon known as 'lobing'. Because the woofer is often physically placed further back than the tweeter, this lobing is also non-symmetrical in the vertical plane. The loudspeaker's off-axis performance is important because although this is not necessarily what is heard directly, it is ultimately heard because of its coupling into the room.

QuoteTHE DEQX SOLUTION
The active DEQX crossover and correction processors provide help to resolve the problems mentioned above at a number of levels. Although impractical even in 'active' analogue crossovers, DEQX provides true linear phase very high-order crossovers that provide absolutely precise time alignment and phase coherence between drivers, while limiting the 'bleed' of similar frequencies over the crossover region so that lobbing effects occur only at the imperceptibly narrow crossover region, and dispersion patterns remain similar between drivers.

Yes Mr DEQX, the off-axis response is very important especially when trying to deploy steep slope linear-phase crossovers. Well and truly busted Mr DEQX ;)
#4
The Dark Room / Re: ASR links disabled in stereonet
March 14, 2024, 12:27:02 PM
Not just ASR links but links to https://www.aussieaudiomart.com/ now. Seriously marc !!

But it's a Hifi community !! :D LOL

That Hifi community that buys you a nice big house doesn't it ;)

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#5
Here is a blast from the past from my thread on diyaudio where I was trying to mind my own business on diyaudio but the tentacles from stereonet weren't very far away :( A DEQX fanboy coming out of the woodwork desperately trying to sway people away from buying my preamp at the time of the pre-order for the UP2 and UPP around late 2019  which is about the same time DEQX decided to offer a discount to celebrate an odd 21 year anniversary. Hmmm, funny about that ;)

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/hi-end-dsp-based-multi-channel-integrated-preamp-crossover-dac-project.264743/page-67#post-5934654

QuoteSecond, what I really like about my DEQX crossover at the moment is the implementation of linear-phase crossovers (FIR). The software treats it just the same as Linkwitz or Butterworth crossovers. Just choose it from the list, that simple. All other DSP solutions so far expect you to be a DSP expert to be able to implement linear phase crossovers. I was looking for this in audioweaver but so far have not found it yet. Maybe I'm missing something. Now before anyone likes to discuss the downsides of linear phase crossovers and why I would want them but there is only one simple answer: Because it sounds better in my system and except from linear phase crossover I can't think of anything why I would need the amount of DSP power that is on offer in the Ultimate Preamp

Well I have got bad news for you. I have three good reasons why you should AVOID using a linear phase crossover. This should change your mind ;)

https://analog-precision.com/forum/news-updates/why-we-would-never-use-a-deqx-to-build-a-loudspeaker-!/
#6
And of course the elephant in the room ;) Why nobody has ever called them out over this ??

https://analog-precision.com/forum/news-updates/why-we-would-never-use-a-deqx-to-build-a-loudspeaker-!/
#7
Why a single amplifier driving a passive speaker is such a bad idea but nobody is talking about the elephant in the room !! Maybe if your amplifier is carved out of a solid block of aluminium billet, or you buy some uber expensive speaker cables, or use some cable lifters or even use a grounding box it may solve these fundamental issues but wishful thinking never solved any technical problems ;)

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#8
Has anyone noticed how stereonet starts flogging tickets to their show right at the time Australia Hifi hosts their show even though stereonet's show is 31 weeks away ?? That's what they do :(

And see what they have this year that is definitely worth going to see ;)

https://analog-precision.com/forum/news-updates/duntech-sovereigns-to-feature-at-this-years-austalia-hifi-show/
#9
Mikey is right. Check this out. Recently I caught one of them out on ASR bagging my product. This dude has got sour grapes because I wouldn't sell him a DSP board at minidsp prices. Now he is interested in paying top dollar for the new DEQX, and Audioweaver running on Danville hardware is not a problem but is only a problem  when it's running on my hardware apparently. LOL ;D  Their opinions change depending on which forum they are on. You just can't make this shit up but like Mikey says that's exactly what goes on in this industry !!

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Note the people liking this post. The one who started the thread appears to have an agenda. On another forum says it's all about the software but on this forum it's all about the hardware when spruiking DEQX ;) These are the armchair critics like Bjorn who can't build their own hardware or write the code for it but will whinge and whine when someone like myself spends countless UNPAID hours on a superior product but fails to offer it at a price-point lower than minidsp. You could never satisfy people like this no matter what you built and how much effort you put into it nor would they offer you the funds needed to build a product according to their requirements. They just think that you can magically come up with a product that suits their exact needs without them risking a single penny on it. It seems to be a common theme with some people in this industry. Anyway I have one word of advice for people like Bjorn. Build your own DSP hardware and write your own custom DSP code the way you want it and then sell it to all of your mates for 2 dollars and then nobody can complain can they ?? Rather than cop more abuse from the likes of Bjorn etal I decided to do what he is doing and build my own SOTA active speaker system using my own hardware and custom DSP code. Badluck Bjorn, looks like your options just got a whole lot narrower. Be careful what you wish for mate ;)


#10
Some people spend a fortune on speaker cables thinking it is the most purist form of signal delivery from amplifier to their loudspeakers !!

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But unbeknownst to them the signal has to pass through a complex passive crossover full of an array of many lossy and imperfect passive components before it reaches their loudspeaker drivers which is kind of defeating the purpose of having this ultra-pure interconnect cable in the first place !! Passing large amounts of current through capacitors, inductors and resistors was never a good idea. If a passive component was ever going to show its flaws was in a hostile environment like this and yet people continue to seek out the law of diminishing returns by throwing good money after bad on interconnect cables whilst ignoring the elephant in the room ! Hell, there are some speaker vendors who even go to great lengths to hide their passive crossovers by potting the components so people can't scrutinize their design choices !

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With our active speaker, each driver is connected directly to its own amplifier channel with the shortest possible cable length, and even like speaker drivers do not share an amplifier. Every speaker driver has its own associated amplifier channel with its own active crossover network implemented in the most purest form inside a DSP in the form of a mathematical algorithm that more accurately mimics a passive crossover without any of its disadvantages. The advantage of doing it inside a DSP is that there are no issues with power dissipation, component tolerances and drift in values over time, component non-linearities, capacitor dielectric absorption, inductor iron losses and of course cost !! Not only that we can accurately match levels between drivers without using padding resistors that dissipate a lot of power and can drift in value over time. You might think this is overkill but when you consider that the cost of this whole speaker is less than the cost of these speaker cables alone you'd have to agree that the Ultimate Active Speaker has a hell of a lot more to offer than a traditional passive speaker system !

#11
Worth going just for that. See how this old timeless classic stacks up against the new !

https://www.whathifi.com/news/australian-hi-fi-show-sydney-2024-dates-venue-and-ticket-info

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QuoteLEVEL 1: FARM COVE ROOM

Halcro & Duntech & Döhmann

The best of Australian – maybe the best in the world!

This unmissable audio suite will host Duntech's flagship Sovereign loudspeakers – acknowledged by experts as the finest in the world, certainly the most accurate, a seven driver system with the drivers symmetrically arranged on a vertical axis and time aligned.

The power comes from Halcro's very latest reference amplification, a triumph of form and function, unique in its imagination of what an amplifier is and how to puh the boundaries of technology.

The third Aussie legend is analogue playback courtesy of a Döhmann Helix turntable, engineered to deliver unparalleled performance in analogue playback and is the result of many years of research, development, collaboration and listening by internationally acclaimed analogue designer Mark Döhmann and his team.

It's an Australian supersystem not to be missed!


#13
No doubt happens here in Australia too. No doubt about that at all !!

#14
Don't be fooled by the blurb on the DEQX website regarding group-delay correction or compensation of loudspeakers. It's a way oversimplification of reality and they have been pushing the same barrow for decades which is probably why they have never commercialized their own speaker systems using it, instead pushing the gimmicks onto other naive loudspeaker designers. Trying to fix up a loudspeaker on a single axis was never going to work. Loudspeakers are far more complex than this and radiate into free space in all directions and not just on one axis alone ! What would fix up a signal chain on an electrical connection simply won't work with a distributed device such as a loudspeaker. This is why no serious hi-end audio manufacturer would ever use a DEQX as well ! Yes, sure our own  UPP can do long-length high sample rate, ultra deep convolution and FIR filtering and do a much higher resolution correction than a DEQX could ever do but do you really want to go down this path ?  When it comes to loudspeakers there simply is no free lunch here and no easy fix and throwing lots of DSP at the problem can often make the problems a lot worse. It certainly is not a panacea for a bad speaker design to begin with !

Anyway don't take our word for it but we suggest you read these three important documents before outlaying your hard earned money on such a device or anything that is just a fancy inverse convolution filter ! These are documents written by other well established audio engineers and echo the same sentiment as us. This is what DEQX will never tell you and why they never sell loudspeaker systems themselves using their own DSP hardware and even if they did it was always going to be a band-aid solution to a complex problem !

https://www.grimmaudio.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/speakers.pdf

And the take-home message from this document is:-

QuoteDSP loudspeaker crossovers done right

From the above we've learned that:-

• Heavy-handed correction exacerbates acoustical problems
• Sharp, linear-phase filters cause pre-ringing
• Targeting an exact linear-phase sum can cause pre-echos.

In short, brute-force correction sounds grainy and smudgy. When you hear cymbals go "splash" instead of
"crash", it's naive DSP at work. So:-

• Do not shave off the hair, a nasty stubble will grow back.
• Do not correct beyond the very beginning of the impulse response.
• The gentler you correct, the wider the angle over which the correction still improves things.
• Target a minimum phase sum.

For the time being I would strongly recommend designing the correction manually. This rules out FIR as the
main workhorse. For each bump or dip one corrects, one should know exactly where it comes from, and make
sure that it isn't better corrected for acoustically. Unfortunately, designing DSP filters does not relieve one from having to know one's acoustics.

Also:-

https://linea-research.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/LR%20Download%20Assets/Tech%20Docs/CrossoverFilters%20White%20Paper%20-C.pdf

QuoteAlso shown in Figure 8 is the impulse responses for a complementary high-pass brick-wall FIR. If we construct a crossover filter bank with such a complementary pair of filters, the Gibbs ripples are also complementary (since we will expect the filters to sum to a flat response with linear phase, producing a perfect impulse). The summed result will thus be free of any Gibbs ripple, so what's the problem? The problem is off-axis. The complementary ripples will only cancel if the delay suffered by the signal from each driver is identical. Off-axis, where the path lengths differ, the ripples will not cancel, leading to the possibility that Gibbs ripple might become audible (just like a high-Q ringing filter).

Such summing errors will be more pronounced at higher crossover frequencies because the ripples are more closely spaced. Lower frequency
crossovers will have wider ripples which will more easily cancel in the presence of off-axis induced delays.

It is evident that steeper cut-off slopes give rise to Gibbs ripples of greater duration. It makes sense therefore to restrict the cut-off slope to be no more than is necessary for the application.

And from the Linkwitz Lab website pretty much the same cautionary tale ;)

https://www.linkwitzlab.com/frontiers.htm

QuoteI - Digital crossovers

Some people think that digital crossovers will replace analog ones, because digital filters can be designed with desirable characteristics that are impossible to realize with analog circuitry. In particular, lowpass and highpass filters with extremely steep slopes and linear phase shift are possible. Steep slopes reduce the overlap region between drivers. Linear phase shift eliminates waveform distortion and merely causes a delay of the signal.  Such characteristics can be obtained from the digital equivalent of tapped delay line filters, which have a finite impulse response (FIR) duration that depends upon the number of taps used. Digital FIR filters can have almost any desired frequency response, if the number of weighted taps is made sufficiently high. [1]

The linear phase shift comes at a price. The impulse response rings. The more so, the steeper the filter slopes. Both lowpass and highpass sections of the crossover ring, but when the outputs are combined, as for a crossover, then the two impulse responses add to a non-ringing, delayed pulse.

All would be fine, if we listened only in anechoic spaces or to speakers with coincident drivers. In reality we use speakers in rooms with reflections and reverberation and the the drivers are separated from each other due to their sizes. As a consequence the off-axis response of the speaker matters and contributes to what we hear. With the drivers non-coincident, the lowpass and highpass outputs are delayed different amounts at points off-axis, and the ringing is no longer canceled in the addition. In the best case the drivers might be coaxial, but this has another set of problems. Very steep crossovers can also cause a very abrupt change in the polar pattern of the speaker, when transitioning from a large diameter driver to a small one. Under reverberant conditions and/or listening off-axis this may have audible consequences.


#15
Cantata / Technical Information/Crossover Schematics
January 08, 2024, 10:54:53 AM
Please feel free to add any technical material you may have on these speakers.