The answer is hinted in the quotes I shared… he already employs extensive RF filtering… but it’s because of the non-zero coupling capacitance of digital isolators… if you spend enough time on the Dave threads you will see people with 2 or 3 jitterbugs. Also people with loads of ferrites on their USB cable to help with the same thing… Because of the non-zero coupling capacitance, there will always be ways to reduce RF a bit more.
MSB have an interesting optical USB converter/connection but that’s for their DACs only. There might be a compromise somewhere in that solution but I don’t know enough about it to be guessing. But still, incoming conducted RF would be a non-issue with the fibre optic connection. Playback Designs have had a USB-to-fibre converter for years now too.
A high speed optical interface would be cool. When I had Dave, my ears agreed with Rob that optical sounded best but not everyone that has Dave or TT2 or Qutest agrees with Rob and that’s fine of course. There’s a lot of personal preference in this hobby.
The key message I get from Rob is that different is not always technically better… even if you think it subjectively sounds ‘better’, you might be enjoying something technically worse… it’s impossible to guess, you would need to measure to be sure.
Maybe Rob Watts will produce his own Chord version of the jitterbug in that case, specifically design for the Dave? Don’t think he has already?
I agree there are lots of placebo effects, and technically worse sound that actually sounds better to some people; I am probably a victim of this effect myself (LOL).
As long as USB is still a popular input, he’ll do like everyone else and chip away at improving RF filtering… And maybe better digital isolators come along… Of course other high speed inputs/interfaces may come to his DACs in future where this is less of a technical issue. Who knows. Just gotta wait and see and enjoy the music along the way.
Ha yeh anyone that says they haven’t fallen victim to this is lying.
Hi Sean, i am happy with my Qutest, the choice was also based on the openess of Rob Watts.
Audioquest should give measurements to support their claim with jitterbug. This ought to be irrespective of whatever device is fed via the USB link.
From searching tru the internet i do not get a positive impression.
Definitely doesn’t ‘need’ a Jitterbug. If you read the quote carefully (which is 3 years old by the way, on the Chord Dave thread on Head-Fi… definitely not breaking news…) he’s talking about Jitterbug making a difference with his most powerful i7 Windows development laptop (which he uses for design and simulations) as USB source…
From personal experience, if using Roon’s recommended method of network separating Core and Endpoint, Dave sounds incredible just fed with just a low power consumption microRendu feeding it…
But my ears agreed with the designer that Toslink sounded ‘best’ with his DACs. But even then there are people arguing with him the last 3 years on the Dave thread that he’s wrong and USB sounds best
As usual, ‘sounds better’ and ‘sounds best’ means different things to different people and that’s 100% fine of course.
Nothing but the high level of resistance to the thread’s request of Roon Labs meant it devolved into an argument of the validity of requesting action of the devs based on subjective audio assessments alone. Now’s it’s morphed into this discussion of science vs sound in the digital chain.
Even if brian were to nail double blind testing and correctly identify that Roon and LMS+squeezeplayer with memory playback sound different… then different is automatically better and so he should proceed with making it happen in Roon?
No further analysis required?
Or he/somebody should do noise/RF measurements to further investigate?
You ask questions that either already have answers, can’t be answered, or won’t be answered.
It quite obvious that different is not necessarily better or worse.
No one has has made a solid case that playing from memory is actually superior to what Roon is doing now. So Roon has zero reason to pursue this.
Loading tracks into memory before playing would negatively impact the Roon user experience by causing large delays. To get the alleged benefit, Roon would need to load entire albums or playlists into memory so no I/O disk/network would take place while tracks were playing. Either that, or Roon would have to pause in between tracks to let them load.
Basically, someone would need to prove that memory playback in the Roon environment would actually inprove sound quality. That would be both with the Roon Core acting as an endpoint and with a separate endpoint. Then, if they did that, they would have to figure how to not ruin the user experience.
If that is so obvious to you, why do you persist in asking the same questions over and over and over and over and over?
After 350+ posts in this thread, it all boils down to what I wrote in the penultimate paragraph of my previous post.
Of course, the definitive post on this was written almost three years ago:
Yet here we are still pounding away on our keyboards with no one coming even close to making a strong case for this feature. What’s worse, no one has floated any plausible idea on how to make this work well in the Roon environment.
So go ahead and call me “Captain Obvious”. Based on your posts in this thread I could call you a lot worse…but will refrain.
The reason I keep (politely and respectfully by the way) bringing up some points is because it’s not so obvious to some that objectively different and subjectively better, can be objectively worse… People automatically assume that if 100 people say it sounds ‘better’ that it must technically better and can’t be technically worse… That general idea would mean nothing coming from me or you because we don’t have any qualification on the topic, which is why I share a quote from one of the better DAC designers on the planet, to hopefully give people a different angle to consider… to consider means I’m not making a claim either way… you may have noticed that this is something that hadn’t been done until I shared that quote and started that discussion on this thread…
Nobody really cares what Rob Watts thinks about what sounds better. His opinion on what sounds “better” is no more valuable than any one else’s. If you think name dropping Rob Watts is going to add credibility to your ideas and opinions, well, good luck with that.
Again, to get Roon to move forward with this “enhancement” request, two things must happen:
Someone would need to prove that memory playback in the Roon environment would actually inprove sound quality. That would be both with the Roon Core acting as an endpoint and with a separate endpoint.
Someone would have to figure how to not ruin the Roon user experience.
Even if this were done, the work involved would be prioritized. I somehow expect that it would not be a top priority as it would require a lot of work for what is likely, at best, a small gain.
It may be obvious, but it’s very relevant.
‘Playing from RAM/memory’ is completely at odds with the user experience that Roon has worked so hard to build, and achieve. I want instant access to my music, and when I change tracks. I don’t want to wait, like when operating a twenty-year-old CD player. NO thanks!
If they made it an ‘option’, then this would be OK. But the point has already been raised - does it make that much difference to SQ? Unlikely.
Not true. Many people with Innuos devices have reported that Roon sounds better with the new experimental SqueezeLite RAM memory playback settings on ZENith and ZEN. Including myself. Here and in other forums.
Whether these observations qualify with your “solid case” remark, that’s another story. Merely sharing experiences.
