Mini-Meet - Saturday 9/3/2016 Sherman Oaks 11 to 4

Been using AES/EBU since it came out in my project studios and acoustic lab. There is a reason for this. Those old guys (I'm one too) very much know what they are doing. I've been privileged to sit in on similar sessions. The greatest is setting mics for a session while listening to the musicians and their instruments, then going back to the control room to evaluate. Very much direct A/B comparison in play. Sounds like the fellows you experienced are at the top of their game.

 

Yeah, OJ what the f**k ? Everyone else has spoken up.

 

Thanks @Marvey for putting together this awesome meet up~ It was great to meet, listen & chat with such knowledgeable friendly & passionate people from here. Also just really cool to meet you guys in person =)

Biggest takeaway for me at this meet is how incredible things can sound with CD transports / avoiding USB, particularly with marv's Marantz setup. I was shocked from how good it sounded from such a elegant setup (marantz via spdif > Gungnir Multibit > jotunheim) & proceeded to wonder what could be responsible for such magic. In particular there was the LCD2 that didnt sound so great on the rednet setup but sounded amazingballz on this, which was super confusing. At one point we had tested the same setup but feeding it from a DX90 via spdif and realized that the magic was mostly from the marantz, leading some of us to start looking up on ebay to buy one of these things lol. But turns out marv had done extensive "magical" work to it so Its not as simple as buying one & listening to CDs and be happy lol. It's definitely got me thinking about how to further improve the source / circumvent USB entirely or at least find a better way to improve it. (@Bill-P 's modded wyrd sounds pretty damn good in this regard)

The Utopia was definitely a treat, on Marv's setup and also the Rednet / ZDS setup I can totally tell why people say its worth the money. Incredibly fast, resolving, almost glistening with sound without being bright or cold. Very good spatial imaging as well.

The Jotunheim is mindboggling good. Especially for the price. With the systems they were on, i felt that each of the jot's just powered & showed me clearly what the DAC / chain was doing, in a very engaging & musical way. I suspect though that when hooked up to a sub-optimal setup it would also sound sub-optimal, but at this meet everyone had incredible setups so it all sounded kinda magical~

 

Interested in yours and @Marvey impressions of Mutec MC-3+USB as a non-USB interface conversion and reclocking device. @atomicbob why do you use Mutec in that chain if you're already running the Live Clock to RD16? Isolation only?

EDIT: OK @RKML0007 filled me in offline. It seems the D16 uses the master clock as its PLL reference clock, and Mutec is (somehow?) improving the jitter with its reclocking algorithm. I actually contend that Mutec is probably only adding is own jitter rather than necessarily "improving" it ... but that's OK.

 

Holy balls. It looks like an awesome meet, great rigs and just a chilled looking vibe. I have much more desire to go to something like this than all the big shows/expos etc that I have read about. If only I didn't live on the arsehole of the earth. One day...

Is that a custom SBAF (Vali?) t-shirt Jason is wearing?

 

The MC-3+USB is running in re-clock mode. The hypothesis I believe to be each PLL in the chain reduces the jitter in the audio stream a bit. On my list to attempt some measurements when I can work it into the discretionary time queue.

 

In light of observations here (and @RKML0007 taking one after another for the team), how about this as a lower-cost USB avoidance scheme:

Sonicorbiter SE -> (Toslink out) -> Mutec MC-3+ USB (reclocked by Live Clock) -> (AES out) -> Yggdrasil -> Amp of choice.

Thoughts?

 

Any T3 vs Joti impressions?

 

Vali2Mimby it looks like.

Good lord. Where can I get one of those? Would buy in a heartbeat.

 

Yes that is a vali stack shirt that Jason had made outside the original shirt run that was done earlier in the year. I did remember that @Boops had put one of those graphics up on the thread as an alternate dog graphic different than the Eddie Current one that you see @Marvey wearing.

 

Actually, you can thank The Alchemist for the shirt. He thought I'd like the variation on the standard Changstar shirt--and I do!

It was great to see everyone!

 

Awesome meet. Thanks for all the impressions and pics too. Can't wait to meet all you guys in Nov.

 

I guess that rules me out...
But there were other HD800 and HD800S headphones at the meet. Someone must have compared them to the Utopias.

 

Yeah thanks for the impressions, what an awesome meet! I'm depressed for not being there and for USB audio. A rednet and mutec at roughly twice the price of a Gungnir Multibit (or similar to Yggdrasil) seems like an annoying and expensive way of getting to the magic. It's what we all want to attain, but I'd love there to be another way that involves either fewer boxes or less cash.

I'm also curious did anyone get a chance to compare T3 to ZDS with utopia?

 

That's still around $2400 worth of decrapifying going on so lower cost is a bit of a misnomer. My understanding is the rednet is the big change by getting away from usb and then the other steps - mutec for reclocking and the external word clock - are incremental improvements that people are using as a cost-is-no-object attempt to further improve their digital chain. So if you have an end game setup already with dac and amp and everything and wish to follow this path start with the rednet. If you don't mind having an even bigger red box you can save some money by getting a rednet 3 instead of the d16 but it needs a breakout cable for aes, has an earlier version of the aoip interface and possibly other tradeoffs.

There's another revolution happening on the low end like with raspberry pi or the sonic orbiter you mentioned, the idea is to get away from relatively noisy (electrically and rf) general purpose computers to simpler low power devices with fewer timing conflicts. There are a few r.pi threads in the dac section worth checking out.

 

Well there is no USB decrapifying going on in the chain I mentioned. It avoids USB entirely (theoretically less crappy right from the source), and only uses the Mutec MC-3+ USB for interface conversion and reclocking (with or without an external word clock - I think it *can* do that, right?). Maybe you understood that. But, further, one could arguably avoid the Antelope reclocker IMO. Would like to see @atomicbob do a little measuring there, but these kinds of jitter measurements can be tricky. Hell, I'd start with Sonicorbiter Toslink direct to Yggdrasil and go from there, maybe borrowing a Mutec or experimenting at a meet, etc. If that alone can't beat my MBP, I might be tempted to give up right there.

Sonicorbiter SE ($300).
Mutec MC-3+USB ($800 used).

 

In Palm Springs, away from desktop atm. Will drop the bomb tomorrow