DSD MK2 Latest Mountaintop update! - Mount Blue Sky!

Audio Components
141

Happy late cake day, somehow I missed yoursšŸ·

On the third night, MK2 continued to improve, and I have not even listened to Qobuz weekly new release yet.

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142

Happy cake day @Philip_Gan

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143

The FPGA sound quality improvements were simple in principle, tho more work in practice:

Add precision and accuracy to the DSD antialiasing filter.

Add accuracy to the PCM antialiasing filter.

I widened the coefficients of the DSD antialiasing filter from 25 bits to 33 bits (and some other rearrangement of the math to keep more accuracy.)

The PCM antialiasing filter had enough precision and already used 38 bit wide coefficients, but by increasing the length of the antialiasing filter I could raise the signal to noise ratio from 160dB to 181dB.

Both lowered the background noise which has many benefits.

There was some beta testing of the initial work on the DSD filter. But in general, no beta testing was required because the changes were simply mathematic - I could verify the exact expected bits in the output for the given tests and I know that lowering the background noise always makes things sound more realistic.

[Iā€™ll answer selected questions for a while, but then Iā€™ll need to get back to work.]

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144

And that is exactly my first impressionā€¦the noise is less resulting in immediate improvements in resolution, separation of instruments in the soundstage and tonality is more musical and yet focused. This is pretty noticeable on my system! Thanks. My question is how can software burn in? My neighbor is a computer guy for a living and he scoffed at the idea.

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145

Great to see back on the forum @tedsmith

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146

Happy cake day @lonson

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147

Thank you, Ted!

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148

Thanks for the wonderful holiday present, Ted.

Your work never ceases to amaze me. Just when I thought what I heard from my system was amazing, you go and make it even more amazing.

Iā€™m looking forward to spending some quality time listening to selections from my library as the year winds down.

Happy holidays to you, sir!

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The FPGA has many resources: PLLā€™s, connections, clock connections, multipliers, memory blocks and a sea of flip-flops and small combinatorial logic blocks. Each new release of software uses resources that previous releases didnā€™t use and they need to break in. Since the timing in the FPGA is a matter of picoseconds, the changes in, say the clock lines that hadnā€™t been used yet is non-trivial - the same bits will result from the same inputs, but the timing will vary and the noise from many signals switching at once will vary. This release uses many more previously fallow memory blocks and also uses different PLLā€™s than the previous releases.

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150

Blue Sky sounds terrific. I am playing song after song, now about 30 hours in.

Spectacularā€¦

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151

Thanks Ted and Paul
With Massive i thought it couldnā€™t get better than this, and here comes the Blue Sky. Indeed, it is as clear and beautiful as a blue sky
By the way havenā€™t had a chance to thank you for the larger letters on Dk 2. Easier on an old manā€™s eyes

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152

finally got checked DAC settings after fw upgrade and found two which i canā€™t remember i would enable

  1. WiFi Power was enabled
  2. I2S1 had L/R channel setting set as swapped (iā€™m only using I2S2 so I did not noticed it before)
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153

I figured that mightā€™ve been what you did :joy:
But hey - it worked !!

Thank you so much, Ted! We are all in awe of you.

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154

Thanks for this wonderful comment and yes, weā€™re in agreement. This is a big win for everyone. Hats off to Ted for coming through with this work.

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Currently sitting at 73 hours since I installed Blue Sky. My first report was at 18 hours. Quite blatantly, Blue Sky is a revelation - with a sound so pure, so distinct and therefore so instantly identifiable. I thought Mount Massive was special, and it was, but jeez this Blue Sky is colossal.

Well done, Ted.

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156

Nice to hear from you, Ted.

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Scott

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157

That is exactly what i felt when listening to the Blue Sky versionā€¦

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158

Does anyone on this thread know if the current US sale price on the DSD MK2 allows one to also trade in kit for a credit of up to $1,600.00?

If so, the MK2 is one heck of a bargain at the moment.

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I think yes. The US website lets you apply a trade-in up to the $1600 and deducts in from the sales price, then add to your shopping g cart. I tried it :grin:

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I tried it but it looked like the price was still $5995.

Curiousā€¦

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