Sony RSX G9 Hires Head Unit Review

Courtesy of Sony

In my humble opinion hires is the ideal format to listen to the music. The versatility, high quality and ability to play them in car audio or home audio make the format getting more and more popular in music lover. Also thank to the large memory card or usb, as reliable storage for Hires format.

Sony as one of most company which is really serious into hires format in 2015 released their first head unit named Sony RSX G9. Now after a year waiting for my unit. Finally I can have it on my personal sound labs.

The specification are as follow:

General DAC (Digital Audio Converter) device: ES9018S by ESS Technology, Inc. Outputs: Audio outputs terminal (FRONT, REAR, SUB) Power antenna (aerial)/Power amplifier control terminal (REM OUT) Optical output terminal Inputs: High level input terminal (3 V – 12 V) Remote controller input terminal Antenna (aerial) input terminal MIC input terminal AUX input jack (stereo mini jack) USB type-A port (front, rear) USB micro-B port

MP3 (.mp3): 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/48 kHz, 16 – 320 kbps (CBR/VBR) AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .3gp): 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/48/88.2/96 kHz, 16 – 320 kbps (CBR/VBR) WMA (.wma): 32/44.1/48 kHz, 16 – 320 kbps (CBR/VBR) WAV (.wav): 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/ 192 kHz (16/24 bit) AIFF (.aiff, .aif): 32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192 kHz (16/24 bit) FLAC (.flac): 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/ 192 kHz (16/24 bit) ALAC (.m4a): 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/ 192 kHz (16/24 bit) DSD (DSF/DSDIFF)* (.dsf, .dff): 2.8 MHz (1 bit)  

Power requirements: 12 V DC car battery (negative ground (earth)) 

Rated current consumption: 10 A 

Dimensions: Approx. 178 mm × 50 mm × 167 mm (7 1/8 in × 2 in × 6 5/8 in) (w/h/d)

Note:

It has Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE) to improve sound compressed music files

The Sound Quality of ESS Sabre DAC can improve the internal DAC from iPhone or android (with proper connection)

The Package

The Hires

   

Full Spec

The Black Beauty

The Beast Installed
Courtesy of  Gatra and Audioworkshop

The Hires Album

1. Three Blind Mice - Tatsuyoshi Yamashita Misty 24 Bit PCM 192Khz

    This Japanese recording is one of the best in term of dynamic and ambience.

2. Beethoven Monlight Sonata DSD 1 Bit 5.6 Mhz

    An example how the good music on the good recording can make goosebumps!

3. Lucky Sing Broery WAV 16 Bit 44.1 Khz

    Indonesian singer that really has great voice and great interpretation of the music

I must tell you that in order to play the music properly you must make folder named music and put all the Hires files into it.

The Review

1. Misty feels like...ah that song with clean and detailed presentation, very dynamic and palpable imaging.

2. The Moonlight Sonata track is one of the best classical composition from Beethoven to make our soul energizing. On the Hires format this song is closer to perfection.

3. Warm and tender sound of Lucky make me want to listen to his voice more and more. Liquid, sweet and soulful. What a sound! 

Courtesy of Google

The Result

Pro:

1. Clean and detailed sound

2. Somehow the high is very extended 

3. Smooth tonal balance and great imaging

Cons:

1. Relatively high price tag (but worth the money)

2. Can not play DSD higher than 5.6 Mhz sampling

Now I can enjoy listening to the Hires music in my car. I'm so happy to have this as part of my audio gears. Thumbs up to Sony!

Asawendo, December 2016

Indonesian High End Audio Club Show 2016 17-20 November 2016

Some photographs during 5th IHEAC Show at Menara Peninsula Jakarta, Indonesia. Interesting show in sight and sound! 

Viva DIY!

At Main Lobby

Audio Note Stand!

All DIY Stuff!

The Estelon

Harberth and McIntosh

Genetic Loudspeaker

Anda Blameless 100 Amplifier

Xavian Speaker

In Harmony

Amazing Venture!

From DIY With love

All the smiles all the heard for the music!

DCS Stuff

Add caption

Interesting new line of of Scanspeak

With SB Acoustic Team

The Genetic Booth

Thank you and cheers...

Asawendo

All rights reserved, 

November 2016

DIY Stereo Loudspeaker

How to make a good do it yourself loudspeaker? This simple question have been haunting DIY'ers like me for years. Luckily I have good relationship with several friends whom willing to help by sharing their precious advice as follow.

A. Always plan your work and work your plan in detail

Building speakers is not an easy task because it takes a lot of knowledge, effort, time and money to do it right.  Please measure the size of the room (small, medium or large room) to determine the size of the speakers. You can not put small bookshelf loudspeaker in a large living room and expect them to sound optimal or the other way around. Please consider also the rest of the equipment for your references. If you have Single Ended Triode Vaccum Tube Amplifier with only 3-10 watts per channel you must look some highly efficient drivers (usually above 90db with 1 watts/2.83Volt). But if you want to build tower loudspeakers please use high power amplifier (recommended above 250 watts per channel)

Open Baffle Enclosures With AMT Mundorf  Tweeter and Monitor Audio Woofer

B. Choose the right drivers for your plan

The right but affordable drivers will be good to start. You can search about the review on reputable website, social media or specialty magazine so you can comparing one into another. If available try to find some friends who already have the drivers installed and listen to one. Look at the T/S (Thiele Small) Parameter and the recommended enclosure for your drivers.Please also consider to pick the drivers from reputable company since they are willing to back you up in case there is a problem with their products.

 

Bass Reflex enclosures with a/d/s/ drivers

C. Choose the right enclosure of your drivers

Whether they are open baffle, sealed, bass reflex, transmission line, band pass enclosures etc. You must consider the drivers specification, then your budget, woodworking skill, your tools and your time to do the project. Sealed is recommended for the most DIY'ers because of their simple design and also forgiving one. Transmission Line is one of the hardest and also unforgiving if the enclosure is not accurate.  Please consult with the drivers manufacturer before you pick up one which suitable for your DIY Project!

Bookshelf Enclosures with Phass Drivers

D. Be a die hard DIY'ers

Do not worry about failure in the making, there are always something to learn. Experiences is the best teacher. So be persistent and consistent is the best way to achieve great result at some point.   

Floorstanders with Scanspeak and Jantzen drivers

E. Your ears will be the final judge

If it sound good to your ears it is! So enjoy it and listen to you music truly, madly, deeply with your new DIY Loudspeakers!
 

Transmission Line Enclosures with Accuton Drivers

Enjoy!

Best Regards

Asawendo 

October, 2016

 

The Oldies But Goodies Sansui T-7 FM Tuner Review

I just bought got Sansui T7 FM Tuner from reliable source at flea market (for USD 40).  The reason I bought was nostalgic reason to listen the radio (where I spent the good old days of listening habit). 

So I set up the old school stereo equipment as follow:
Source                 : Sansui T7 FM Tuner
Antenna               : Dipole Quarter Wavelength (Tuned at 95.9 Mhz)
Equalizer             : Marantz EQ-20 (house curve room response)
Preamp                : DIY TVC (Passive Attenuator)
Power Amp         : McIntosh MC 2120 (120 watts x 2@ 8ohm)
Loudspeakers      : JPW Sonata (Vintage Monitor Speaker)

Sansui T-7 was middle up quality tuner in Vintage Sansui (not even the highest one), But this analog tuner, when equipped with good antenna will receiving all the station in my hometown in crystal clear FM Stereo quality! So solid reception you can go listen to any station but the quality is always rock solid without much of degradation.

When I first powered them up; I was blown away the warm and tender analog sound immediately filled the room. The articulated voices of the announcer hit me straight into my ears and into my heart.The human voice was so natural, with his or hers lush and fluid sound. As if someone talking and speaking with me directly, simply real human voices!. I could understand each words and each note with ease and without having ears fatigue. But what I found more interesting are their good tonal balance and solid imaging in musical session. Musical instruments have body and timbre and that sweet delicate vocal of the singer floating in my room. 

Whew...This is absolutely beyond my expectation for such a inexpensive FM Tuner!

All of the experiment and experiences makes me thinking hard; how on earth old school hifi equipment could sound like this?! Is it just pure match of any equipment involved?! or is it indication of build quality tuner from the past is that good? But before getting out of hand,  I must admit the resolution and the linearity were not their strength. Thus, they are more suitable only for news or background music reproduction not main music. However one thing for sure I will spend my listening time my radio again. And I'm very happy with that... Radio someone still loves you!

Best Regards

Asawendo, September, 2016


All Rights Reserved

The JPLAY 6.2 Media Player Review

A. The Background

In the world of recent audio trend where high resolution entering the market slowly but sure, you can use your PC or Laptop as your ultimate source.

Unfortunately we are all know that every computer is actually a bad source for audio. There  are unnecessary system processed and  signal interference that can ruined sound quality of our music. Turning off the other resources, in theory could gave us the most power of our computer solely for quality audio reproduction. 

B. The Software and The Hardware 
I have been searching for such  alternative media player and found interesting software to enhance musical fidelity of my Hires music. The software called JPLAY 6.2 (http://www.jplay.eu). There are paid and also free version of JPLAY 6.2 (with some limitation). I bought the official version for Euro 99 and installed on my trusty Asus Laptop with Windows 10 Operating System.

The equipment used for this mini review
1. Asus X series equipped with Windows 10 latest update
2. iFi Nano iDSD DAC 32/384, DSD 256
3. Seagate 1 TB Hardisk of Hires Songs
4. DIY Buffer Tube
5. Cayin A50T Vaccum Tube Amps
6. DIY Loudspeaker with a/d/s driver and Fostex Plannar driver

C. The System Processing 

Actually Windows 10 are equipped with Windows Media Player (and the new Groove Media Player). Both of them are using direct sound with existing audio mixer. Although Windows internal Media Player has been doing some improvement over the years, however both of them still heavily shared resources with other program.

The JPLAY 6.2 work with  unconventional approach. The software has been built with philosophy to create the computer environment as pure as possible for audio reproduction.  What is JPLAY 6.2 trying to do with your computer

First it will going put your Hires file directly into your RAM (Random Access Memory) which is faster access than any Hardisk access. 
Second it will shut down all the unnecessary process and leave the good one special for audio reproduction. 
Third it has very simple and minimalist interface for playing music  (which can be bad or good depend on people reference).
Fourth it has hibernate mode, but allow me to warn you, the laptop will completely unusable in hibernate mode except for playing music alone! All the control is not function the screen is black and what you hear is only reproduction of music. This can be scary!
Fifth it has an option to link two computers (control computers and source computer)

I set it up like the picture above, then after 100 hours of burn in,  I have selected Ultra Xtreme Engine and Hibernate mode,DAC Link 1 Hz, 10 second buffer, and native Bitstream as my final setting. 
 

D. The JPLAY 6.2 Mini Review

For this review I have played three Hires and CD songs using three Software (JPLAY 6.2, Windows Media Player and Groove Media Player just for comparison: 

1. Amanda McBroom Those Eyes (PCM)

The voice of Amanda McBroom and her musician sound clear but not clean in WMP and Groove. However when I listened to her being reproduced by JPLAY 6.2 I immediately noticed the great quality of her music and her quality recording as well. the instruments has more air and space than when reproduced in WMP or Groove. 

2. Titanic Soundtrack -Anniversary Edition (PCM)

The orchestral session from Titanic Soundtrack on JPLAY 6.2 takes it all when compared to WMP and Groove. The Groove and WMP already sound dynamic with fast transient but the JPLAY also sound like that but with more clear and clean sound reproduction. 

3. Immediately Blessed by Keith Greninger from Blue Coast Collection (DSD)

JPLAY 6.2 smoothly and tenderly reproduce this DSD track with ease and the ambience  is the best between the three.

E. The Resume
Great for playing Hires on your computer!

The Pro's
1. Clear and clean sound reproduction
2. Fast and dynamic transient reproduction
3. Very good ambience 

The Con's
1. Too minimalist, almost scary when in hibernate mode.
2. Maybe a little bit expensive for some people.



Best Regards

Asawendo 
August 2016

All Right Reserved

The Dawn of High Resolution Audio

The recent trend of sound quality enthusiasts are moving forward to high quality digital audio file called High Resolution Audio (Hires).

From Wikipedia:

There is no standard definition for what constitutes high-resolution audio,^[3] but it is generally used to describe audio signals with bandwidth and/or dynamic range greater than that of Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA).^[2] This includes pulse-code modulation (PCM) encoded audio with sampling rates greater than 44100 Hz and with bit-depths greater than 16,^[2] or their equivalents using other encoding techniques such as pulse-density modulation (PDM).^[3]

Although there is no firm definition, Sony describes high-resolution audio devices as those that deliver audio that’s clearer, sharper and more complex than other music sources and closer to the original.^[4]

High-resolution audio file formats include FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF and DSD, the format used by Super Audio Compact Discs(SACD).^[3] It should be noted, however, that audio encoded into one of these file formats is not necessarily high-resolution audio. For example, a WAV file could contain audio sampled at 11,025 Hz and quantized at eight bits, which is lower quality than CD-DA.

What kind of digital file categorize as Hires? 

1. Has higher sampling and or quality beyond usual CD sampling of 44.1 Khz

2. At least the same or much bigger data size than CD for the same song (LossLess Format) 

3. Need decent and modern DAC to play that can play various digital Lossless format (No Philips TDA 1541 could convert Hires files)

Hires has been evolving for about since 90's to Millenium era, but since the market at that moment were fulfilled with low quality lossy compressed mp3 (thanks to the iPod era) a lot of people ignored their existences. But after the dawn of some High Quality Digital Audio Portable and Network Access Storage. The Hires format immediately recognized as better solution to enhance the musical experiences of so called audiophile. Some highend manufacturer sees this as opportunity to provide gears for the purpose.

What makes the Hires format potentially becoming the future format?
1. Higher quality and smooth sound as long as the recording properly taken.
2. Easy to get (you can buy and download the file right into your personal file)
3. Portability (you can listen to it anywhere with the right device).

The very same album can download with various quality and various format

But on the contrary there are some arguments about that
1. Some people can not differentiate the quality with the same song between Hires vs CD
2. Some people prefer physical format (Vinyl Art Work for example)
3. Some copyright issue of file sharing or illegal copying.

So the decision is yours whether or not jump in to the wagon of Hires Audio, because I do...

Asawendo, July 2016