Interview with Chord Electronics' Rob Watts - Part 2: Unbelievable Measurements & Filter Design

Рет қаралды 6,805

4 жыл бұрын

Sound Decisions episodes are all about providing information and advice to help you choose the right gear for your audio enjoyment.
This is Part 2 (be sure to watch Part 1 first) of a lengthy interview with Chord Electronics' DAC designer, Rob Watts, a legend in the audio industry and a leader in DAC design theory.
In this episode, Rob speaks about his experience creating noise shapers (and explaining how they work) and his discovery of just how accurate our ears can be.If you enjoyed this and would like to see more, don't forget to subscribe and please consider supporting the channel on Patreon: / passionforsound
FFT graph: DaveSGage [CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)]
PASSION FOR SOUND GEAR LIST
Desktop Sources
Playback software: Roon roonlabs.com/
Primary DAC: Chord Qutest amzn.to/303FAL7
Secondary DAC for active speakers: Topping D50s massdrop.7eer.net/AVbG1 or amzn.to/2T2GExr upgraded with Muses02 op-amp amzn.to/2FtPmNj
USB cables: AudioQuest Diamond amzn.to/35AX4Qf and AudioQuest Coffee amzn.to/3059qiA
Active Speakers
Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 3 Speakers
Amps
Massdrop x THX AAA 789 Amplifier massdrop.7eer.net/J0xWa
Bottlehead Mainline DIY kit tube amplifier bottlehead.com/product/mainli...
Headphones
Open: Meze Audio Empyrean (may or may not be available at this link) amzn.to/2tDs19h
Open: Focal Clear amzn.to/37Ihgky
Closed: AudioQuest NightOwl Carbon (these may have been discontinued)
Closed: Meze Audio 99 Neo amzn.to/2FxOHKQ
Portable
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S10+ amzn.to/37MzTUA
DAC for phone: Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt amzn.to/36AzpAB
Digital audio player: Pioneer XDP-300R amzn.to/2FwGnL5
Earphones
Noble Kaiser 10 custom IEM (discontinued) - universal version available via Drop massdrop.7eer.net/vkaWy
Campfire Audio Andromeda (may or may not be available at this link) amzn.to/39WFxpd
FitEar ToGo! 334
SIMGOT EN700 PRO amzn.to/304xO3R

Пікірлер: 33

@Jacknjellify531. 4 жыл бұрын

Love the way your breaking up this interview, its so much easier & better to digest all this information.. 👍

@PassionforSound 4 жыл бұрын

Thanks Sanjay. Glad it's helpful

@giogrig6574 4 жыл бұрын

look forward to see part 3 :) thx mate

@karolykoteles1964 Жыл бұрын

Köszönjük!

@keithbertschin1213 3 жыл бұрын

I keep doing the international sign for being over my head!

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

I don't get it?

@keithbertschin1213 3 жыл бұрын

@@PassionforSound where we pass the hand over the head to indicate the subject is too complex for us, in effect, being in over our head. Despite this I still enjoyed it. It makes me respect people in the industry even more

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

Ah, I understand. I actually felt much the same for a lot of that interview - it was like drinking from a fire hose!

@keithbertschin1213 3 жыл бұрын

@@PassionforSound it’s still very valuable to get an insight into that world. We’re lucky to live in a time where talent meets the technology. Hopefully look forward to more of these on your channel. Good luck, apart from when The Ashes come round! ...and that’s just confused 75% of your viewers 😀

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

Haha. Yep, lots of head-scratching at that one! My next interview will be an IEM and headphone manufacturer to discuss tuning, different driver types, etc.

@TheMM360 Жыл бұрын

Those 24bit dacs sound like an incredibly overcomplicated technology. I've never figured out if the adavantages are actually worth the trouble.

@PassionforSound Жыл бұрын

Yes, it's questionable at what point things become inaudible, but the Chord DACs definitely sound fantastic IMO

@Coneman3 3 жыл бұрын

In the last video he said he's not interested in how R2r DACs sound. That's a an odd way to develop hifi. I guess a lot of technical guys get wrapped up in the technolgoy too much.

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I don't know that it's how is approach it, particularly given the subjective benefits of R2R sound, but he's got very sound logic for his decisions and the results do speak for themselves.

@Coneman3 3 жыл бұрын

@@PassionforSound He says about the difficulties of getting precision rersistors but very hi-end developers like Holo Audio and Aries Cerat do that, they go for the ultra precision no matter how hard it is. I think in hiend hi-fi, it's a mistake to stop because something seems too hard. Obvs he is successful, but the whole point of hi end is to push boundaries and solve problems. That is why often the breakthroughs come form new hungry companies who have a need to do things that haven't been done before, or do them better. Established companies become complacent.

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

Agree. My understanding is that Denafrips work this way too. These companies apparently by huge batches of resistors and then test them and match them, discarding any that don't measure up. That's a huge commitment, but might be worth it based on the Ares II's liquid sound.

@LarryActionGlass 3 жыл бұрын

What exactly is her saying he can hear over and over? He's not talking R2R vs DS is he?

@PassionforSound 3 жыл бұрын

Sorry Daniel - I don't understand the reference to hearing over and over. Roughly when in the video is this?

@stoicar Жыл бұрын

So dave is -350db on the paper and in the measuring world is -110?

@PassionforSound Жыл бұрын

No, it's -350dB in the digital domain filtering process. Analog measurement devices can't measure that low so the discrepancy is between the digital and analog measurements

@tomislavgasparic8100 4 жыл бұрын

I do not like when any system rely on strong feedback. It can be source of timing issues an instability. The war for grater S/N dB difference in Delta-sigma is just number that tells you what is level of time smearing in that feedback system.

@PassionforSound 4 жыл бұрын

The original sampling process in the analog-to-digital stage of a recording creates timing issues due to the high speed transients. As I understand it from speaking to Rob, the reconstruction process in the DAC must be complex and use feedback in order to properly rebuild the signal. That's true for any DAC design, not just Chord DACs so this is occurring in R2R DACs as well.

@sc0or 2 жыл бұрын

'cmon!... A noise shaping is moving noise up to not audible frequencies. It makes no sense to add a resulting noise to an input, because these are different by origin noises. This is trade off for originally a low bits resolution. A math converts resolution to noise.

@PassionforSound 2 жыл бұрын

I don't understand what you're saying about adding resulting noise to an input

@sc0or 2 жыл бұрын

@@PassionforSound This wasn't me. That was in the video. So, that's why I wrote the comment. May be I didn't listen carefully.

@PassionforSound 2 жыл бұрын

I think you've misheard as noise isn't added to anything that I'm aware of

@hqsound5582 2 жыл бұрын

Great interview. But that loud intro is the worst i have seen. Never put a loud intro/outro together with low talking.

@PassionforSound 2 жыл бұрын

Glad you liked the interview. Sorry about the levels. I was still learning back then 🙂

@hqsound5582 2 жыл бұрын

@@PassionforSound My point is: i turned the volume up when i was listening to the low talk, then that outro came & hurt my ears. I understand, we all learn everyday.