DSD512 May Fest in Munich 2016

EuroDriver

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Sep 16, 2015
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The excitement is building for the DSD 512 Fest on Friday May 6th at BMW World.

We are absolutely delighted that Jussi Laako, the author of HQ Player is going be there, as well as Eno Vandemeer and Rob Darling of Roon

The industry attendee list (alphabetical) also includes
- Cristiano Bastianelli – Albedo Loudspeakers
- Mark Coles – Sablon Audio
- Lawrence Dickie - Vivid Audio
- Gary Koh – Genesis Loudspeakers
- Robb Niemann and Norm Steinkie – Rutherford Audio
- Jarred and Jonas Sacks – Channel Classics & NativeDSD.com

The journalist list includes
- Michael Lavorgna – Audiostream
- Jason Serenus – Stereophile
- Marja and Henk – 6moons
- Matej Isak – Mono and Stereo
- Dirk Sommer – HiFi Statement & Positive Feedback
- Brad Morrical – Positive Feedback

Also attending are about 10 What’s Best Forum and Computer Audiophile members, plus the people who have been instrumental in the Sound Galleries Music Server project

The equipment is as follows
- Roon and HQ Player doing realtime upconversion of Redbook, Hi Res and DSD 64 & 128 all to DSD 512
- Sound Galleries SGM 2015 Music Server feeding DSD 512 to : -
- T+A PDP-3000HV SACD Player DAC and T+A DAC 8 DSD
- “debut” electronics
- Vivid Giya G1 speakers
- All of the interconnects and speaker cabling is from Sablon Audio’s portfolio of highly praised cables

The debut electronics are mono blocks from Taiko Audio, a new Dutch start up electronics manufacturer who also did the lion’s share of the engineering and design of the SGM 2015.

Coming very soon are photos of all of this exciting new gear

The event is actually overbooked, but if you would like to come, send me an e-mail to eurodriversoundtest@gmail.com

There is also a public viewing time from 2pm to 6pm on Friday May 6th
 

EuroDriver

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Sep 16, 2015
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I'm looking forward to it. Really hope that you'll have a couple of days to set up the system and warm it up before people start arriving.

Hi Gary,

Unfortunately we only access to the space the day before, but we are doing the following to get the system run in as much as possible
- we received all of the cabling pre-cooked from Sablon Audio a week ago. This week we are going to hook up the event system, but without the Giyas

- today we assemble the servers for event
image.jpg
- on April 30, we take our electronics and cabling to the Vivid's German distributor in Paderborn to hook them up to the Giya G1 which already have hundreds of hours on them. Here we will have the full system running.

At BMW World we will have our well run in power distribution boxes, so no "new" power cabling in the system

The big news is the leap in sound quality Roon 1.2 brings to delivering content to HQ Player. We had to do a new OS build, but OMG, we now have ultimate browsing and discovery of music combined with ultimate sound quality playback at DSD512
 
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Elberoth

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Are you gonna put fan in there ?
 

EuroDriver

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Sep 16, 2015
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Are you gonna put fan in there ?

Hi Adam,

Great question ! The case you see in the photos is actually our second from the ground up design. The first design looked gorgeous, but did not have the cooling capacity we needed for the CPU loads we wanted to use. We did a new design with custom CNC milled copper heatsinks. According to the calculations, the cooling capacity should have be sufficient, but we did not want to take a chance of the CPU getting too warm and throttling the performance, so we provided a space and mounting points for a fan.

Well we just ran the heat and load tests, and the cooling performance is very very good, even better than a Noctua 12 cooler with fan ! We have never seen such low and in particular stable CPU core temperatures, and this is running a prime number computation torture test.

A big thumbs up to our supplier who fits this CPU block to PC's in sealed cases that are fitted to battle tanks, are our heat sink supplier who did the CNC machining. Each CPU heat pipe has its own adjustable pressure pad :b

See you in 2 weeks

Edward
 

spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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Fresh from the "is cd better than vinyl" thread, this is the demo that may shake my pre existing preference for analog.
I'm fully aware of vinyl's shortcomings wrt digital, but I always come back to lp, since how it balances it's compromises I deem more palatable. Digital may well have better specs, performance parameters etc, but analog gets the holistic balance more right TO MY EARS.
I will know if my worldview is being shattered if I melt into the music and get taken by the moment. If I do, the other attributes of digital that are on paper superior like dynamic range, lowwer noise floor etc, will become a whole lot more relevant/impressive.

Anything has got to be better than the awful 80s time warp that was the worst digital I've heard in a LOOONG time, the Metronome 2 box cdp at the UK launch of ML neoliths.
 

microstrip

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May 30, 2010
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My apologies for my ignorance about DSD512, but what type of converters are used in the T+A DAC 8 DSD? The DSD data is transmitted in the standard DOP way between the HQplayer server and the DAC?
 

EuroDriver

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My apologies for my ignorance about DSD512, but what type of converters are used in the T+A DAC 8 DSD? The DSD data is transmitted in the standard DOP way between the HQplayer server and the DAC?

The T+A DAC 8 DSD has separate PCM and DSD converters.

The PCM conversion is handled by 4 TI/BB PCM 1795 DAC chips, is a similar configuration as was in the DAC 8

The DSD conversion is T+A's own in-house design which first appeared in T+A's PDP-3000HV. They took a similar group of mostly discrete components and made space for it on the PCB which was used in the DAC 8

The 1-bit DSD converter is supposed to be a "moving average" design. T+A have implemented two selectable Low Pass filters. For DSD 64, there is no choice, the lower frequency filter is used. For DSD 128, DSD 256 and DSD 512, there is a choice and the higher frequency filter sounds much better.

For DSD 512, the only driver which is available is a Windows ASIO driver which allows the transmission of native DSD format stream, so no DOP
 

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
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The T+A DAC 8 DSD has separate PCM and DSD converters.

The PCM conversion is handled by 4 TI/BB PCM 1795 DAC chips, is a similar configuration as was in the DAC 8

The DSD conversion is T+A's own in-house design which first appeared in T+A's PDP-3000HV. They took a similar group of mostly discrete components and made space for it on the PCB which was used in the DAC 8

The 1-bit DSD converter is supposed to be a "moving average" design. T+A have implemented two selectable Low Pass filters. For DSD 64, there is no choice, the lower frequency filter is used. For DSD 128, DSD 256 and DSD 512, there is a choice and the higher frequency filter sounds much better.

For DSD 512, the only driver which is available is a Windows ASIO driver which allows the transmission of native DSD format stream, so no DOP

Thanks. Does this mean we have to use a specific version of Windows to listen in DSD512?
 

EuroDriver

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The T+A ASIO driver is definitely compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, and I suspect it's compatible with Windows 7 and 8 as well. Don't know if the driver would be compatible with WS 2012

However we are finding Windows 10 sounds better
 

EuroDriver

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Sep 16, 2015
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BMW World is a 10 minute taxi ride from the MOC exhibition center

Public demo time is from 2pm to 6pm on Friday May 6th

Here is a floor plan showing how to get to the demo room at BMW World (Click on the picture for a bigger view)

Go to the stairs opposite the Cooper S Bar, and walk up to the first floor

Walk to the end of the foyer and turn right and then left in to the room

BMW Welt_Floorplan_EG.JPG
 

wisnon

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I know exactly where that is as I hung out at the COOPERS Bar last Summer for a couple hours.

BTW, I hear that Lukasz will be at your soiree as well.
 

Ric Schultz

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Jun 21, 2013
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So, what happened? Any news?

I see Jason of Stereophile thought the sound was "grey, lifeless and unmusical".....he did not stay for the A/B of 16/44 with 16/44 upsampled to dsd512 via HQplayer....too bad. Was there an amp problem? Did you try other amps? Had you heard the whole setup before coming to the show? Did you know what the amps sounded like? Ncores usually don't have much color.....but his description sounds like there was no color.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/ups-and-downs-munich-high-end#4JYzYK697gSqVCmM.97
 
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EuroDriver

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Sep 16, 2015
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So, what happened? Any news?

I see Jason of Stereophile thought the sound was "grey, lifeless and unmusical".....he did not stay for the A/B of 16/44 with 16/44 upsampled to dsd512 via HQplayer....too bad. Was there an amp problem? Did you try other amps? Had you heard the whole setup before coming to the show? Did you know what the amps sounded like? Ncores usually don't have much color.....but his description sounds like there was no color.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/ups-and-downs-munich-high-end#4JYzYK697gSqVCmM.97

Hi Ric,

Whilst the majority of attendees had a good experience at the event, Jason clearly did not enjoy the sound that he heard. He hated the play list, and had strong opinions about all class D amps not sounding good. Also not helpful was the fact that he was sitting in the first row, where the sound was not as good as the third row where the sweet spot was.

However the quote below was posted by Joel Alperson on Jason's ups and downs report

As much I respect Jason's reviews and comments, we had very different experiences of the system he heard. In fairness, I was at the public event which was not nearly as well attended as the evening event. As a result, I had a chance to hear some of the music I requested in a room which was not packed with attendees.

I stayed for about 2-1/2 hours for one simple reason . . . I didn't want to leave. Hearing redbook upsampled to DSD512 and comparing it to the same redbook file without upsampling was revelatory. I believe this was a comparison that Jason and many other attendees didn't hear that night unless they stayed a while after dinner (I understand some reviewers had other commitments to meet later that night).

Up until that day I had never heard upsampling I liked (either software or hardware generated). That all changed as I experienced this remarkable system.

The DSD512 upsampled presentation was so alive and three-dimensional that I couldn't get the sound out of my mind after I had left. And all of this from a system, the front of end of which was less expensive than single components being shown at the High-End show.

As a result, I'm now looking to try HQPlayer and other related components, and do a deep dive into the world of upsampled music.

For this audiophile, the event was nothing less than a gift and I thank the entire Sound Galleries team for the wonderful experience and the highly valuable information they gave me and many others.

Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/ups-and-downs-munich-high-end#ZSolxkpoXRL4Y4go.99

On Computer Audiophile, you can read comments and opinions from post 62 onwards.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/sound-galleries-music-server-25805/index3.html#post540141

A particularly relevant data point for WBF members are the comments from Elberoth who has both the Trinity DAC and a Golden Gate.


First of all, big thanks to Geoffrey, Edward and Emile for pulling off such a great and well attended event.

I've been a big proponent of DSD upsampling for the past 2 years (ever since I bought my first DSD only DAC from Lampi) so the sound quality you got should not come as surprise, but it was. It was easily my #2 sound of the show, after the Magico M-Project/Soulution demo (on Saturday only, when they were using the 701 monos). I didn't found it lacking in color saturation department - and that comes from Lampizator Golden Gate user.

What was astonishing to me, was that you managed to get the sound of this callibre from a relatively inexpensive set of electronics - $3000 DAC and $5000 amps ! Many exhibitors at the show, could not get sound nowhere near as good having $200k-$300k worth of electronics at their disposal. I'm pretty sure your Sound Galleries server, with seamless Roon/Tidal/HQ Player integration and DSD 512 upsampling, played a great role here.

Wow, just WOW.
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
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Since I was in Monaco anyway, I had the opportunity to visit Sound Galleries and get a private audition of the Sound Galleries Music Server and had time enough to chat with Geoffrey Armstrong.

I thought that the system that the server was used in (and the T+A DAC) was far more successful in the Sound Galleries studio - AvantGarde Duos with Basshorns driven by Audiopax power amps. With enough time, Geoffrey showed me how various options of filters and modulators (we did not play around with the different ditherers for PCM) could change the sound. This showed huge potential to tailor the sound to whomever would buy this server, and Geoffrey assured me that when a customer purchases said server, he would work with the customer to make sure that the sound was to his liking.

We did not have the time to explore everything, but one option gave me a huge soundstage, another a dynamic lively sound, another tonal color and "wetness". Other options can be explored to get to exactly the right combination for the audience. I can see how having such control over the presentation might drive some music lovers crazy, and why some listeners might call it "lifeless and dull" if that is not what they are used to. It would end up being the usual SET vs Class D debate and food-fight.

However, given the chance, I'm sure that the Sound Galleries folks would be able to tailor this product for almost anyone. Not cheap - but then great products and excellent service never comes cheap.


SG1.jpg

SG2.jpg
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Thanks Gary for those first impressions and photos.

I enjoy following your travels both here and on Facebook as you entrench everyone in the culture of where ever you are. All this plus great recipes as well. Kudos my friend
 

nc42acc

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Where may I ask is this DSD material available sampled at 512? Are there any music sites with downloads available? Highest rate I have seen is DSD256.
 

Elberoth

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Dec 15, 2012
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Where may I ask is this DSD material available sampled at 512? Are there any music sites with downloads available? Highest rate I have seen is DSD256.

Not sure you can. The music material during the event was upsampled to DSD512.
 

Audiophile Bill

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Mar 23, 2015
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Where may I ask is this DSD material available sampled at 512? Are there any music sites with downloads available? Highest rate I have seen is DSD256.

I haven't seen an octa dsd AD converter out there either. This dem was about PCM to 512 upsampling I believe.
 

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