Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 1 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Guillaume's post quoted on DAR
#1
Not exactly Devialet news but DevialetChat news; John Darko wrote a piece on the ZENith Statement Streamer launched at the High End in Munich and decided to quote our Gouverneur @GuillaumeB.

https://darko.audio/2018/07/the-sunset-m...he-forest/

He linked to Guillaume's post here: https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Innuos-Z...mer?page=9

The man is getting famous! Tongue
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
Reply
#2
(31-Jul-2018, 10:17)Pim Wrote: Not exactly Devialet news but DevialetChat news; John Darko wrote a piece on the ZENith Statement Streamer launched at the High End in Munich and decided to quote our Gouverneur @GuillaumeB.

https://darko.audio/2018/07/the-sunset-m...he-forest/

He linked to Guillaume's post here: https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Innuos-Z...mer?page=9

The man is getting famous! Tongue

WOW!!!  Big Grin Big Grin Big Grin

Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
Reply
#3
(31-Jul-2018, 10:17)Pim Wrote: Not exactly Devialet news but DevialetChat news; John Darko wrote a piece on the ZENith Statement Streamer launched at the High End in Munich and decided to quote our Gouverneur @GuillaumeB.

https://darko.audio/2018/07/the-sunset-m...he-forest/

He linked to Guillaume's post here: https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Innuos-Z...mer?page=9

The man is getting famous! Tongue

Hi, there is not the beautiful report does not help me! The device is already sold out according to the dealer !!!!! Angry Angry
I would like to have bought myself !!
Aavik U-280 / Audio Physic Cardeas / Melco N1ZS + D100 / Melco Switch S100 / KECES P8 Dual / Transparent Audio PowerWave X / Cable: Audioquest, Shunyata, Transparent, Ansuz Digitalz A2 Ethernet, USB
Remote: iPad-Pro
Roon Nucleus+(B), Lifetime / Qobuz Studio Sublime                                                                                                          
Germany / Bavaria
Reply
#4
I've just taken a look at the Darko article, two thoughts occur to me.

Firstly, just how rude is Darko to Guillaume? Referring to him as "Devialet Chat administrator?", the correct title is of course "Le Gouverneur de Devialet Chat", an entirely different thing. That's like referring to Her Majesty the Queen as Teresa May's secretary.

The second point is a little more technical. The main thrust of the article is comparisons between the ZENith SE versus the ZENith Statement, which is fair enough. These comparisons are using USB for both items. Guillaume - I am assuming that the comparison you heard on the day was with the ZENiths feeding the Kii's via USB?

OK - The above is straightforward stuff. The article then goes on to state that similar differences can be heard between the ZENith SE and ZENith Statement when feeding the Kii's via Ethernet. This is interesting. Interesting because I know that many people would argue that any sound quality differences via Ethernet would be technically impossible, considering you have packet data being buffered in memory in the Kii's. For example, I am quite sure the Kii's would keep playing for a while even if you pulled the Ethernet cable out. Of course, there are many that will argue that this is possible, or maybe possible due to reasons not yet fully understood. In which case, all of this has implications for users of Devialet AIR, maybe AIR would perform better if you use a ZENith or whatever, rather than a stock PC or Mac? By the way, I am not proposing a view one way or the other here, I just thought it was interesting that Darko mentions this rather controversial topic at the end of the article.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
Reply
#5
(01-Aug-2018, 21:46)Confused Wrote:

OK - The above is straightforward stuff. The article then goes on to state that similar differences can be heard between the ZENith SE and ZENith Statement when feeding the Kii's via Ethernet. This is interesting. Interesting because I know that many people would argue that any sound quality differences via Ethernet would be technically impossible, considering you have packet data being buffered in memory in the Kii's. For example, I am quite sure the Kii's would keep playing for a while even if you pulled the Ethernet cable out. Of course, there are many that will argue that this is possible, or maybe possible due to reasons not yet fully understood. In which case, all of this has implications for users of Devialet AIR, maybe AIR would perform better if you use a ZENith or whatever, rather than a stock PC or Mac? By the way, I am not proposing a view one way or the other here, I just thought it was interesting that Darko mentions this rather controversial topic at the end of the article.

OK, I'll be controversial :-)

If you believe that ethernet cables can make a difference (I do) then why shouldn't things like ethernet sockets and the internal ethernet circuitry of different servers/streamers make a difference? For example some devices add noise to the power lines in our system and while the noise isn't added to the signal it can get passed from the source device to the receiving device over signal connections so it can end up affecting the sound. Antipodes, for example, claim that using the second ethernet port on their current range of servers to feed the rendering device, in our case the Devialet, avoids adding noise from things like ethernet switches and noise present in the network to which the Antipodes is connected by providing a direct link between the Antipodes, in which a lot of attention has been paid to noise avoidance, to the Devialet.

My understanding is that all Innuos servers have a second ethernet port for the same reason as Antipodes have introduced one. If Antipodes is correct in their view, isn't it possible that Innuos paid more attention to noise elimination in their Statement server than they did in the ZENith SE? If they did and that is the reason for the reported difference then it would also make sense that an Innuos or other dedicated music server designed for high quality audio performance might perform better than a stock PC or Mac which aren't designed for high quality audio performance because the dedicated server has had more attention paid to its ethernet circuitry than the PC or Mac has?

I can't provide any proof either way. I do know that some people claim to hear differences and I also know that some manufacturers have given reasons for those differences. Whether the reasons given are right or wrong is actually irrelevant to whether there is a difference or not. After all a lot of devices depend on gravity for their function and for millennia before Newton gave us our currently accepted explanation of gravity there were a lot of erroneous and what we know consider very bizarre reasons given for why those devices worked. Things can work even though the explanations given for why they work are wrong, and we can know how something works and still make devices which should work but don't because we stuff up the implementation of what we know. Things don't work because the "laws of science" are correct, the laws of science are explanatory and to some degree predictive but if something genuinely works in defiance of what we currently understand the "laws of science" to be then we're either not taking into account all of the relevant laws or we haven't yet developed the knowledge and understanding to define the relevant "law" correctly. The "laws of science" are simply the current formulation of our best knowledge and understanding, not something immutable and guaranteed so if observation and explanation aren't compatible, then a better explanation needs to be found.

The big issue for us, of course, is whether the observations under discussion are correct because observations are subject to error. That means the real question for us is whether we believe the observations when they conflict with our current state of knowledge and understanding. This isn't a new issue in audio. I can remember back in the 60's there was dispute over whether amps with the same THD performance could sound different. Some said yes, some said no but no one at the time was testing for IMD or providing an analysis of the spectrum of the harmonic distortion and without taking those factors into account there was no explanation for why amps with the same THD (total % measurement) could sound different. Those arguments stopped when IMD and the spectrum of harmonic distortion started to be taken into account. Again, in the early days of CD there were disputes over whether players with the same distortion performance could sound different but jitter wasn't being considered or measured. Those disputes stopped when jitter measurements started being provided. If everything that is being measured and considered is identical we have no reason for explaining any observed difference but that does not mean that a difference cannot exist, it just means that if there really is a difference we are yet to identify a reason for it and we've discovered reasons for more than a few disputed differences over the history of audio. There's no reason to believe that more differences and more reasons for differences to exist aren't yet to be discovered.

That doesn't mean that every observation of a difference is correct but it does mean that simply saying that no one can point to a test result that provides a reason for there to be a difference therefore no difference can possibly exist is not a valid, or scientific, way of refuting the claim that there is an observable difference. Too many people make that mistake.

It is often asserted by those who are denying the existence of a difference that those claiming to hear it are "hearing it" because their belief that the difference exists is influencing their judgement. That can certainly happen, belief can and does influence our judgement at times and it can be a source of error, but the way in which belief influences our judgement doesn't take sides when it comes to the nature of our belief so it's equally possible that people who claim not to hear a difference are not hearing one because their belief that there isn't a difference is influencing their judgement.

We report what we perceive and we can report our perceptions honestly. When different people have opposing perceptions it is often not a trivial matter to work out whose perceptions are right and the history of science is littered with cases of those whose perceptions accorded with the current state of knowledge and of those whose perceptions did not accord with the current state of knowledge being mistaken. One of the reasons we know more know than we did in the past is because more investigation proved that some of those who claimed that something couldn't be true were wrong, and in the process of doing that changed the state of current scientific knowledge. If current scientific knowledge explained everything we wouldn't be trying to improve on it and one of the ways we improve on it is by rigorous research into the areas where observations don't accord with the current state. Some of those disputed observations will be wrong, possibly/probably most of them, but some will be right and we don't know which ones are right until we investigate.

I don't find the fact that Darko mentioned "this rather controversial topic" interesting because science has been dealing with this issue right from its earliest origins. It's one of the sources of improvements in scientific knowledge and one of the benefits of that has been improvements in our audio gear. I say bring on the disputes because some of those disputes are going to result in improvements we all come to accept and when I say "we all" I mean both those who claimed there was a difference and those who claimed there wasn't. Both sides get it wrong some of the time but both sides contribute to progress.

In the meantime our biggest practical problem is working out whether when we're considering whether or not to buy or upgrade some piece of equipment, we're really getting value for our money when we choose a more expensive component over a less expensive one. Not all measured differences are audible and not all differences we perceive are real is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is whether we think the improvement offered by a more expensive component is worth the increase in cost over the less expensive ones. Life is so much easier when you can simply reject the more expensive one because you can't afford it or simply aren't prepared to spend that much.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
Reply
#6
(01-Aug-2018, 21:46)Confused Wrote: Guillaume - I am assuming that the comparison you heard on the day was with the ZENiths feeding the Kii's via USB?

Correct. I hadn't thought about the ethernet links further downstream, but I it makes complete sense given the way the Kii speakers work..

Having said that people report good results when connecting a Melco via direct mode ethernet to the Devialet.

The mind boggles at all the possibilities. Is the Statement shaping the data in any way through upsampling etc?

Having said that I'd still like to test a Statement in my own system and see if it outperforms my d1 server.

Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)