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The problem with audio design is that the performance is assessed by listening to the unit. In this example, we see the first occurrence here of those troubling words that keep coming up in audio design: believe and audible.Ĭontrolled vs. This digital approach results in symmetrical ringing of the square waves, which consumers have been informed is insignificant. As a result, interpolating digital FIR filters placed before the DAC are used for the reconstruction function. Consumers have been told by dealers, sales literature, and audiophile magazines to believe that the asymmetric ringing on square waves associated with such a filter has a detrimental effect on the audible quality. Some of the design challenges may not relate to measured performance but instead to consumer expectations and beliefs.įor example, it is not possible to sell an audio product with a sharp-cutoff analog reconstruction filter.
#Boulder 500ae professional#
The professional perspective, on the other hand, is one of the benefits the audiophile can derive from this material.ĭegreed electrical engineers tend to regard the design of audio electronics to be trivial compared to other design challenges of consumer electronics, yet it is more complex than appearances would suggest. We ask our readers’ indulgence for the few audiophile commonplaces that have been left in these are not always obvious to professional engineers who don’t read the consumer magazines. Technical details left out here can be found in the AES paper. What follows here is a digest of these two professional papers, revised and edited for the audiophile consumer. The first was an advanced tutorial at the DSPx ‘95 conference in San Jose, CA, addressing the question: 'Are there any design considerations in audio that go beyond standard measurements?' The second, coauthored by your Editor, was presented at the 99th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society (October 1995, New York) under the title 'Topological Analysis of Consumer Audio Electronics: Another Approach to Show that Modern Audio Electronics Are Acoustically Transparent' (Preprint 4053).
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We look at high-end audio circuitry not from the testing point of view but as an engineering discipline-and find no consistency.Įditor’s Note: This article is based on two engineering papers delivered by David Rich in 1995 before two different professional societies. Rich, Ph.D., Contributing Technical Editor Consumer and Designer Prejudices in High-End Audio:īy David A.