It's not the track. I have the vinyl version which is fine. Also when playing the CD on a CD player (not through Young) it's also fine. I'm getting the same issue with v2 as with v1 on this track. Simon from Purite has given the track to Marco to try. Uglymusic - feel free to post the link and password for the track on here. I'll leave the link open for 2 more days for anyone interested.
It's not the track. I have the vinyl version which is fine. Also when playing the CD on a CD player (not through Young) it's also fine. I'm getting the same issue with v2 as with v1 on this track. Simon from Purite has given the track to Marco to try. Uglymusic - feel free to post the link and password for the track on here. I'll leave the link open for 2 more days for anyone interested.
I don't hear anything through my young that i don't also hear through the headphone out on the side of my macbook, and also via optical into my Ibasso D10. So there's no fault with my young at least.
To put it frankly that file is f-ed. intentionally i'm sure for artistic reasons. If you take it into audacity and look at the frequency response you'll see Audacity shows a shaped response with predicted peaks around 86hz of +10db, Audacity does this funky thing where it looks at rate of change to predict what the cropped peaks were.
I'm not sure i'm hearing what others are, but the file is a clipped piece of junk, so artefacts could manifest in many ways. Im definitely not getting what i was previously with Back in Black and I'd be loathe to use this as a reference piece due to it's almost totally random tonality.
I'll be interested to see what Marco comes back with.
I'll play it on the office system, which is a great deal less revealing, but still no slouch.
OK - I've re-ripped with XLD and here's my thoughts. Granted, the album is probably mixed to sound 'compressed' particularly the vocal track.
Outcome of test:
1) Exactly the same clipping occurs playing at full volume in Amarra and iTunes
2) Reducing the volume in Amarra by at least 1dB cures the problem
3) Clipping at full volume (0dB) is very evident. It was not meant to sound this way !
4) The same track played on a CD player does not clip at all.
My conclusions / questions:
1) This track is pushing the Youngs digital processing to the limits ? Could a firmware update fix the issue ?
2) The CD is not the problem as it plays fine on a standard CD player
3) Computer struggles to rip this particular CD properly?
4) Computer (my case Mac) struggles to process the file of this particular track / album?
5) The Youngs analogue outputs do seem 'loud'. Could the analogue outputs be overloaded?
6) Could my pre-amp inputs be overloaded ?
I won't loose any sleep over this as this track is so far the worst I've come across and I've only encountered a very small % of my ripped CD's clip at all. Reducing the volume in Amarra solves the problem so there's a work around, however it would be interesting to hear what Marco makes of it !
The Young sounding great is a good thing but no device should choose which CDs you can listen to and which not...
You're right, and the V1 definitely had an issue that needed to be sorted. 'Needed' because I wanted to keep the Young.
The files I hear 'clipping' on are so marginal now, even the worse cases, that I can overlook the issue. I haven't played the Roison Murphy track yet, but from what I have experienced in my system it is very possible the mastering of these records are at fault. As to why that might not show through a CD transport I can't say, save that the limitations of disc spinners may be manifesting themselves in a new way.
Roison Murphy's 'Overpowered' album, the (more commercial, and frankly - better) follow up to 'Ruby Blue' is a full range, well mastered riot of a disco record (from memory - I haven't played it through the Young yet).
Sure, I listen to my mini system all the time for example, especially waiting for the next device to show up I fell in love with Floyd on a mono Hitachi many moons ago and the first Massive attack hit on a Sanyo two deck, music is what matters and nothing can prevent us from enjoying. But if there is a way to make it perfect let Marco work on it, hopefully it will be something easy to fix. IF there is a problem at all.
I played the cut on my desktop (Audioengine 5's) and it does not clip; it's electronic pop and is obviously compressed and hot and wild (but I like it ) but has enough dynamics range that I can deal with it.
Realize that the Young has 2.65V rms as output, and that many preamps don't like anything over 2 V rms. So, in my case my Concert Fidelity's vc chip definitely does not like anything over 2V (warning in user manual) so I fix it easily by reducing Pure Music to -1.0db (dithered). Voila. I'd play the Roison Murphy track but my Young is ill right now (phasey whooshing in right channel) and is out of the loop. It sounds it's normal somewhat compressed pop electronica on my Weiss DAC2 for whatever that's worth, and doesn't clip the pre.
@coops ; Please be sure to convey our commendation for an excellent piece of kit - he has achieved something pretty significant I think. I don't want him to think we're all moaning over here, especially as this thread is turning into quite a large collective of Young owners.
@coops ; Please be sure to convey our commendation for an excellent piece of kit - he has achieved something pretty significant I think. I don't want him to think we're all moaning over here, especially as this thread is turning into quite a large collective of Young owners.
Monty hi, I am sorry you are experiencing this problem we can swop the unit over, and let Marco have a look at it , I am still waiting for his thoughts on the file , and new software! Keith.
Thanks Keith, I'm happy to wait until we hear Marco's view on the file. I'll give you a shout direct if we need to swap over. There does seem to be a difference of opinion here re this particular recording and the problem I'm encountering is on a very small number of albums/tracks. If Marco comes back with no issue then it must be a problem with my unit. Cheers, Adrian.
Adrian Hi, it's important for me and for the product ( and M2Techs reputation) that we sort this out for you, I will order the CD and make some rips and play it through some different dacs here, I can only apologise for the inconvenience, you definitely have a Mark II unit, serial number should be 170ish? Kind regards Keith.
I have an email into Marco and Pietro about my mucked up Young V2. The swwoshing/phasey sound (anyone ever hear that, not just with this DAC I mean...just wondering if anyone knows what i mean by swooshing phasey sound) is quite distratcing and one cannot listen through it. I've given the DAC 24 hours to settle (unplugged) and will try again tonight (8 hrs from now).
PS. I don't own this DAC yet so I'm not about to remove the feet and try to see the mobo; seems the feet are on quite tight and worried the glue will not reset/reseal.
of course! Just don't want to harm anyones reputation or spoil what is so far great press for an excellent sounding DAC (99% of the time in my case)......
What a decent attitude Adrian - indeed keep us posted. I'll download Kanye West as well. In fact I'm surprised I don't already have it, as I am very 'down with da kidz' you know. It's just the way I roll, innit....
The drum on the Kanye track is clipped, and the choir vocal from 2:00, and there are several mute clips all the way through, that's on my dell using quicktime for playback. I'll check on the hifi.
Perhaps computers exaggerate the clipping when the disc is ripped. You can't hear clipping when playing the CD on a standard CD player. I used a Naim CDX2.
Perhaps computers exaggerate the clipping when the disc is ripped. You can't hear clipping when playing the CD on a standard CD player. I used a Naim CDX2.
Depends what you mean by 'exaggerate'. I think most people agree that a moderately well-sorted computer front end is a much better source than a CD player.
If you open the window wide enough, you never know what will fly in ;-)
To me 'exaggerate' in this scenario is making the music unlistenable on these few albums when played on a computer regardless of DAC or audio player used. They sounded great on my naim cd player..... Not a clip, crackle or pop....
It sounds OK, compressed and messed about with on the office system, but the multitracked backing 'choir' sounds really nasty on my main system.
I'm at a loss because I don't buy this kind of music and therefore don't know what to expect.
Again, it's a production that involves processing sound for effect. Are we just hearing what's there under the microscope of systems that the production was never designed to sound good on? Or is it upsetting the Young in some way?
OK me too. This clips like nothing I've ever heard. Even a 1db reduction in PM doesn't not remove the clipping, i have to drop several db to get there. It's unlistenable.Clip Clip Clip. I don't get this at all. I switched back to Yello (Touch) which is pretty beefy and no clipping...mind you on the KW track, the red indicators were lit all the time which indicates just how damed hot this was produced. Never the less, shouldn't the Young be able to handle this crap CD?
OK me too. This clips like nothing I've ever heard. Even a 1db reduction in PM doesn't not remove the clipping, i have to drop several db to get there. It's unlistenable.Clip Clip Clip. I don't get this at all. I switched back to Yello (Touch) which is pretty beefy and no clipping...mind you on the KW track, the red indicators were lit all the time which indicates just how damed hot this was produced. Never the less, shouldn't the Young be able to handle this crap CD?
The Kanye track is just shit, even on my dell through headphones I would class it as unlistenable junk.
Andy when you say it clips do you mean you can hear the clipping that was recorded in the studio, or you can hear the young inserting it's own noise like the v1 did at 0db?
I think we need some standardisation of terms here so we don't get confused. Let's call being able to hear bad production and studio compression up to 0db 'studio-clipping' and let's call the Young 0db bug 'v1-clipping', then we all know what we are talking about.
I can hear terrible studio-clipping on the Kanye track but not v1-clipping, it's just a crap recording heavily processed, even burnt to cd and played on my micromega its still crap.
Simon. I agree with you that we need to be clear about terms.
I'd like to take the definitions a bit further. I need to be clear what happens when we run into digital overload. Is this the same as 'v1 clipping'? Will it always sound like that? Or could digital overload manifest itself differently in a v2 Young or another DAC entirely, for that matter?
Ahhh, but of course I have mine set to 384khz all the time...
I've just played the Kanye track at 44.1 and sure enough it's doing v1-clipping again. Interesting its not apparent at 384khz, or not obviously so, I actually think I can hear it on 384 now I know what i'm listening for again.
The fact that it's apparent on 44.1 kinda implies that it's related to the upsampling. Sounds to me like there's an error in the code, and the more times the signal has to be upsampled to reach 384khz the more the clipping error is multiplied along with the sample rate.
Whatever Marcos fix was it sounds like it worked be reducing the signal level, maybe averaging the level over a few samples to remove the clipping, and the Kanye track just shows this up as the clipping is almost continuous in some parts of the track so it sneaks through.
Try replaying it at different multiples of 44.1 sampling rate and see if the clipping appears to be reduced more on the higher sample rates.
I'm pretty confident that Marco hasn't just reduced the output level using a simple function that gives us -1db on everything we play, that would be an ugly hack. I think he's tried something more clever based on adjacent sample values and weighting the values
Surely running at 384 would make it worse if "the more times the signal has to be upsampled to reach 384khz the more the clipping error is multiplied along with the sample rate."
Comments
files.me.com/adrian.robson/
The files I hear 'clipping' on are so marginal now, even the worse cases, that I can overlook the issue. I haven't played the Roison Murphy track yet, but from what I have experienced in my system it is very possible the mastering of these records are at fault. As to why that might not show through a CD transport I can't say, save that the limitations of disc spinners may be manifesting themselves in a new way.
Roison Murphy's 'Overpowered' album, the (more commercial, and frankly - better) follow up to 'Ruby Blue' is a full range, well mastered riot of a disco record (from memory - I haven't played it through the Young yet).
Realize that the Young has 2.65V rms as output, and that many preamps don't like anything over 2 V rms. So, in my case my Concert Fidelity's vc chip definitely does not like anything over 2V (warning in user manual) so I fix it easily by reducing Pure Music to -1.0db (dithered). Voila. I'd play the Roison Murphy track but my Young is ill right now (phasey whooshing in right channel) and is out of the loop. It sounds it's normal somewhat compressed pop electronica on my Weiss DAC2 for whatever that's worth, and doesn't clip the pre.
Keith.
Keith.
Kind regards Keith.
PS. I don't own this DAC yet so I'm not about to remove the feet and try to see the mobo; seems the feet are on quite tight and worried the glue will not reset/reseal.