Krell introduces its first streaming device, the £2500 Connect

[astral]

Given the increasing popularity of music streaming, it's no surprise that high-end US hi-fi

brand Krell has introduced its first music streaming component.

The aptly-named Krell Connect comes in two versions:

£2500 buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter),

and is available this month, while in August there'll be a second model with an onboard DAC for £3500

.

Krell says both models are "engineered to deliver the best quality wireless streaming solution for high-performance audio systems".

They can play a whole string of music formats as well as thousands of internet radio stations.

More here

[AngelsLariat]

In the case of "the £2500 model that buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter", I'm left wondering what it does that a £250 Logitech Squeezebox Touch does not.

Edited June 13, 2013 by AngelsLariat

[IMHO]

In the case of "the £2500 model that buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter", I'm left wondering what it does that a £250 Logitech Squeezebox Touch does not.

Yep, or any phone/tablet with your pick of free streaming app, or any of the various $100-$200 HD media players/streamers on the market....

The fact that all it's doing is playing back pre-compressed streams of varying quality makes any sound quality claims (express or implied) by this device completely, 100% moot.

The 2500 quid is much better spent on higher quality speakers, or even just CD's

[AngelsLariat]

In the case of "the £2500 model that buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter", I'm left wondering what it does that a £250 Logitech Squeezebox Touch does not.

Yep, or any phone/tablet with your pick of free streaming app, or any of the various $100-$200 HD media players/streamers on the market....

The fact that all it's doing is playing back pre-compressed streams of varying quality makes any sound quality claims (express or implied) by this device completely, 100% moot.

The 2500 quid is much better spent on higher quality speakers, or even just CD's

I'm guessing that the typical customer of product like this would already have speakers costing well in excess of £2500. Just for a streamer it seems nutty, but truth be told it's not the nuttiest highend digital product on the market. That honor I would give to this product from Bryston, which is essentially a audio-only media player without a built-in DAC and without streaming capability: http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BYBDP2. Some of the multi-hundred dollar digital cables in Audio Advisor's catalog would get honorable mention. Edited June 15, 2013 by AngelsLariat

[IMHO]

In the case of "the £2500 model that buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter", I'm left wondering what it does that a £250 Logitech Squeezebox Touch does not.

Yep, or any phone/tablet with your pick of free streaming app, or any of the various $100-$200 HD media players/streamers on the market....

The fact that all it's doing is playing back pre-compressed streams of varying quality makes any sound quality claims (express or implied) by this device completely, 100% moot.

The 2500 quid is much better spent on higher quality speakers, or even just CD's

I'm guessing that the typical customer of product like this would already have speakers costing well in excess of £2500. Just for a streamer it seems nutty, but truth be told it's not the nuttiest highend digital product on the market. That honor I would give to this product from Bryston, which is essentially a audio-only media player without a built-in DAC and without streaming capability: http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BYBDP2. Some of the multi-hundred dollar digital cables in Audio Advisor's catalog would get honorable mention.

Sure, but do they have 2500 quid speakers in their closet yet? That'd still be a better way to spend the money

The home audio industry certainly attracts some fools with money, and a fair share of vendors willing to take it. Pro audio guys and recording studio engineers have a constant 'stream' of humor from the 'audiophile' crowd

Edited June 16, 2013 by IMHO

[AngelsLariat]

In the case of "the £2500 model that buys you the model without an onboard DAC (digital-to-analogue converter", I'm left wondering what it does that a £250 Logitech Squeezebox Touch does not.

Yep, or any phone/tablet with your pick of free streaming app, or any of the various $100-$200 HD media players/streamers on the market....

The fact that all it's doing is playing back pre-compressed streams of varying quality makes any sound quality claims (express or implied) by this device completely, 100% moot.

The 2500 quid is much better spent on higher quality speakers, or even just CD's

I'm guessing that the typical customer of product like this would already have speakers costing well in excess of £2500. Just for a streamer it seems nutty, but truth be told it's not the nuttiest highend digital product on the market. That honor I would give to this product from Bryston, which is essentially a audio-only media player without a built-in DAC and without streaming capability: http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BYBDP2. Some of the multi-hundred dollar digital cables in Audio Advisor's catalog would get honorable mention.

Sure, but do they have 2500 quid speakers in their closet yet? That'd still be a better way to spend the money

The home audio industry certainly attracts some fools with money, and a fair share of vendors willing to take it. Pro audio guys and recording studio engineers have a constant 'stream' of humor from the 'audiophile' crowd

Over the years I've met quite a number of people from companies who sell things like that. Though it would be natural to assume that the whole thing is a willful scam, what I've found is that most of those guys are true believers. In many ways the ultra-high-end audio business reminds of the alternative medicine industry.

[IMHO]

Over the years I've met quite a number of people from companies who sell things like that. Though it would be natural to assume that the whole thing is a willful scam, what I've found is that most of those guys are true believers. In many ways the ultra-high-end audio business reminds of the alternative medicine industry.

Yep, kinda like religious fanatics - forget the facts, it's all about faith :D

[AngelsLariat]

Over the years I've met quite a number of people from companies who sell things like that. Though it would be natural to assume that the whole thing is a willful scam, what I've found is that most of those guys are true believers. In many ways the ultra-high-end audio business reminds of the alternative medicine industry.

Yep, kinda like religious fanatics - forget the facts, it's all about faith :D

Though there are sections of the audiophile world that go too far in the other direction too. On the HydrogenAudio forums, for instance, if you post a statement to the effect of “The Beatles were different than The Stones”, people will jump down your throat saying that it’s a violation of forum rules to make a subjective claim that you can’t back up with double-blind testing results. Edited June 16, 2013 by AngelsLariat

[IMHO]

Over the years I've met quite a number of people from companies who sell things like that. Though it would be natural to assume that the whole thing is a willful scam, what I've found is that most of those guys are true believers. In many ways the ultra-high-end audio business reminds of the alternative medicine industry.

Yep, kinda like religious fanatics - forget the facts, it's all about faith

Though there are sections of the audiophile world that go too far in the other direction too. On the HydrogenAudio forums, for instance, if you post a statement to the effect of “The Beatles were different than The Stones”, people will jump down your throat saying that it’s a violation of forum rules to make a subjective claim that you can’t back up with double-blind testing results.

They're a funny lot for sure - they spend all this time money and effort trying to achieve 'playback as the musician intended', yet mostly completely ignore the studio monitors used to set the benchmark in the first place..Then they buy or build speakers with wide dispersion angles, and spend the next 10 years trying to fix problems with room reflections

Edited June 17, 2013 by IMHO

[AngelsLariat]

I think that mostly what the on Hydrogen Audio tend to forget is that the purpose of the hobby is to enjoy music, not to look a sine waves on a 'scope and not to challenge any and all visitors to your house to an ABX test before you allow them to say "that sounds good". Of the online forums, only the Steve Hoffman forum do I seem to get anything useful out of. That one is a bit of a fan club for Hoffman (who is a renowned mastering engineer), and people post a lot of things there that are pretty childish (such as threads with titles such as "Does Radiohead Rule?", but its virtue is that they discuss various masterings of popular and/or classic albums and that often entourages me to rediscover music from my collection that otherwise I might never had revisited again.

Edited June 17, 2013 by AngelsLariat

[IMHO]

I think that mostly what the on Hydrogen Audio tend to forget is that the purpose of the hobby is to enjoy music, not to look a sine waves on a 'scope and not to challenge any and all visitors to your house to an ABX test before you allow them to say "that sounds good". Of the online forums, only the Steve Hoffman forum do I seem to get anything useful out of. That one is a bit of a fan club for Hoffman (who is a renowned mastering engineer), and people post a lot of things there that are pretty childish (such as threads with titles such as "Does Radiohead Rule?", but its virtue is that they discuss various masterings of popular and/or classic albums and that often entourages me to rediscover music from my collection that otherwise I might never had revisited again.

All too esoteric for me I'm afraid. While I'll happily call myself and audiophile, and admit that I did get quite caught up in it all in my early 20's, I've since had much more exposure to professional audio (studio, installed and road gear), and it's shown me a completely different universe.

These days, as soon as I see anything in the source signal chain using unbalanced connections I just have to have a chuckle (especially when it's using 100K Baht unobtainium RCA leads,) Same goes for when I see things like compressed audio players making SQ claims (ref this thread), or indeed people bestowing all sort of virtues to $10000 CD players that use the same chips as $30 Chinese cheapies, or claiming they can hear the difference between a class-A amplifier and a class-D achieving the same THD, noise floor, damping factor, slew rate and power....

But if you really want to hear me laugh so hard you'll feel uncomfortable with it, tell me all about the virtues of your new 10K Baht IEC power cord :D

The fact of the matter is, signal chain and amplification has now well and truly past the point where there are actual SQ gains to be had. The only area where gains in SQ can be had are with speakers - and even the drivers+cabinets themselves are only half of the battle - placement and DSP are the main challenge.

Oh that's right, DSP is a dirty word to these guys.. but funnily enough , the recording studio engineers that make the discs these guys all use in their battle for perfection used it everywhere throughout the recording, and indeed again in the signal chain for the studio monitors they used when mastering

[AngelsLariat]

I think that mostly what the on Hydrogen Audio tend to forget is that the purpose of the hobby is to enjoy music, not to look a sine waves on a 'scope and not to challenge any and all visitors to your house to an ABX test before you allow them to say "that sounds good". Of the online forums, only the Steve Hoffman forum do I seem to get anything useful out of. That one is a bit of a fan club for Hoffman (who is a renowned mastering engineer), and people post a lot of things there that are pretty childish (such as threads with titles such as "Does Radiohead Rule?", but its virtue is that they discuss various masterings of popular and/or classic albums and that often entourages me to rediscover music from my collection that otherwise I might never had revisited again.

I think that mostly what the on Hydrogen Audio tend to forget is that the purpose of the hobby is to enjoy music, not to look a sine waves on a 'scope and not to challenge any and all visitors to your house to an ABX test before you allow them to say "that sounds good". Of the online forums, only the Steve Hoffman forum do I seem to get anything useful out of. That one is a bit of a fan club for Hoffman (who is a renowned mastering engineer), and people post a lot of things there that are pretty childish (such as threads with titles such as "Does Radiohead Rule?", but its virtue is that they discuss various masterings of popular and/or classic albums and that often entourages me to rediscover music from my collection that otherwise I might never had revisited again.

All too esoteric for me I'm afraid. While I'll happily call myself and audiophile, and admit that I did get quite caught up in it all in my early 20's, I've since had much more exposure to professional audio (studio, installed and road gear), and it's shown me a completely different universe.

These days, as soon as I see anything in the source signal chain using unbalanced connections I just have to have a chuckle (especially when it's using 100K Baht unobtainium RCA leads,) Same goes for when I see things like compressed audio players making SQ claims (ref this thread), or indeed people bestowing all sort of virtues to $10000 CD players that use the same chips as $30 Chinese cheapies, or claiming they can hear the difference between a class-A amplifier and a class-D achieving the same THD, noise floor, damping factor, slew rate and power....

But if you really want to hear me laugh so hard you'll feel uncomfortable with it, tell me all about the virtues of your new 10K Baht IEC power cord

The fact of the matter is, signal chain and amplification has now well and truly past the point where there are actual SQ gains to be had. The only area where gains in SQ can be had are with speakers - and even the drivers+cabinets themselves are only half of the battle - placement and DSP are the main challenge.

Oh that's right, DSP is a dirty word to these guys.. but funnily enough , the recording studio engineers that make the discs these guys all use in their battle for perfection used it everywhere throughout the recording, and indeed again in the signal chain for the studio monitors they used when mastering

All too esoteric for me I'm afraid. While I'll happily call myself and audiophile, and admit that I did get quite caught up in it all in my early 20's, I've since had much more exposure to professional audio (studio, installed and road gear), and it's shown me a completely different universe.

These days, as soon as I see anything in the source signal chain using unbalanced connections I just have to have a chuckle (especially when it's using 100K Baht unobtainium RCA leads,) Same goes for when I see things like compressed audio players making SQ claims (ref this thread), or indeed people bestowing all sort of virtues to $10000 CD players that use the same chips as $30 Chinese cheapies, or claiming they can hear the difference between a class-A amplifier and a class-D achieving the same THD, noise floor, damping factor, slew rate and power....

But if you really want to hear me laugh so hard you'll feel uncomfortable with it, tell me all about the virtues of your new 10K Baht IEC power cord

The fact of the matter is, signal chain and amplification has now well and truly past the point where there are actual SQ gains to be had. The only area where gains in SQ can be had are with speakers - and even the drivers+cabinets themselves are only half of the battle - placement and DSP are the main challenge.

Oh that's right, DSP is a dirty word to these guys.. but funnily enough , the recording studio engineers that make the discs these guys all use in their battle for perfection used it everywhere throughout the recording, and indeed again in the signal chain for the studio monitors they used when mastering

When you say "compressed audio stream", what do you mean? As far as I can tell, my Squeezebox Touch delivers the same xxBit yyKHz data to my DAC as what is in the original files.

And what's esoteric about different masterings of old albums sounding different?

Edited June 17, 2013 by AngelsLariat

[IMHO]

When you say "compressed audio stream", what do you mean? As far as I can tell, my Squeezebox Touch delivers the same xxBit yyKHz data to my DAC as what is in the original files. And what's esoteric about different masterings of old albums sounding different?

Think you're reading my post the wrong way - it wasn't directed at you, rather the poor lost souls who think they can hear a 0.1% difference in THD, or think that there's much more to cables than capacitance, inductance and resistance, etc etc

As for compressed audio - my reference there is to the internet radio functionality of the streamer in the OP. I'll admit that high bitrate MP3's can actually sound good on some types of music (like EDM), but internet radio uses the kind of bitrates and compression algs that MP3's used back in the 90's and gave it it's bad reputation for SQ.

Nothing esoteric or uncool about remastering old recordings with new DSP tech BTW

[IMHO]

Looks like Google Adwords doesn't know much about sentiment - now when I come here I'm seeing ads for $xxxx audio cables LOL

[astral]

The latest edition of HiFi News shows the differences between HDMI cables

It is all digital so what can be different, I hear you shout

Well digital is pulses, little square waves.

If the cable distorts those pulses so they are no longer square

then that can be heard in the final signal.

Just like Jitter between a CD player and the associated DAC

The more you pay for your equipment, generally the less distortion you get.

Yes there are exceptions, crap sounding expensive boxes

and sweet, but cheap ones

You pays your money and takes your choice.

[AngelsLariat]

When you say "compressed audio stream", what do you mean? As far as I can tell, my Squeezebox Touch delivers the same xxBit yyKHz data to my DAC as what is in the original files. And what's esoteric about different masterings of old albums sounding different?

Think you're reading my post the wrong way - it wasn't directed at you, rather the poor lost souls who think they can hear a 0.1% difference in THD, or think that there's much more to cables than capacitance, inductance and resistance, etc etc

As for compressed audio - my reference there is to the internet radio functionality of the streamer in the OP. I'll admit that high bitrate MP3's can actually sound good on some types of music (like EDM), but internet radio uses the kind of bitrates and compression algs that MP3's used back in the 90's and gave it it's bad reputation for SQ.

Nothing esoteric or uncool about remastering old recordings with new DSP tech BTW

I don't know about this Krell device, but most streamers aimed at the audiophile market handle not just mp3's but also wav, flac, apple lossless, and maybe some other file formats. I guess you can throw internet radio into the mix too, but I think that most people buying a product like that would primarily be interested in playing file based music, either ripped from CDs or downloaded from sources like hdtracks.com.

In the case of wav files, there would be no compression/decompression. In the case of flac & apple lossless formats, they are in fact compressed and they will need to be decompressed either on the server as it sends the stream or at the client as it receives the stream. That's not like mp3 compression though, it's more like zip compression and causes no degradation in sound quality.

I don't really have a dog in the DSP fight. I supposed that any equalization that is done in the digital domain would qulaify as being "DSP", right?

[joeaverage]

no video, no point

[AngelsLariat]

The latest edition of HiFi News shows the differences between HDMI cables

It is all digital so what can be different, I hear you shout

Well digital is pulses, little square waves.

If the cable distorts those pulses so they are no longer square

then that can be heard in the final signal.

Just like Jitter between a CD player and the associated DAC

The more you pay for your equipment, generally the less distortion you get.

Yes there are exceptions, crap sounding expensive boxes

and sweet, but cheap ones

You pays your money and takes your choice.

What was the methodology of their test?

[IMHO]

The latest edition of HiFi News shows the differences between HDMI cables

It is all digital so what can be different, I hear you shout

Well digital is pulses, little square waves.

If the cable distorts those pulses so they are no longer square

then that can be heard in the final signal.

Just like Jitter between a CD player and the associated DAC

The more you pay for your equipment, generally the less distortion you get.

Yes there are exceptions, crap sounding expensive boxes

and sweet, but cheap ones

You pays your money and takes your choice.

HDMI data can't be compared to SPDIF at all, because HDMI has proper error correction - anyone who thinks they can hear or see a difference either has a HDMI cable woefully under-spec'd for the run (so too much data lost on the way, and correction is just not possible), faulty equipment, or is just imagining it

SPDIF is different though - it contains a parity bit so the receiver can understand whether or not the data was corrupted in transit, but lacks any form of error correction. It's an incredibly reliable & robust protocol though so errors are very rare.. while jitter (the difference between the sender's clock and the receiver's clock) can be measured, it would take very bad quality or faulty gear to hear the difference - but that doesn't stop some people from claiming they can

[astral]

Well the HiFi News report is subjective to a degree, using the good old ears, (golden ears of experts?)

However the graphs of the signals do show a significant difference in the

way the signal arrives at the other end.

Just look at this mangled square wave from one of the cable

[IMHO]

Well the HiFi News report is subjective to a degree, using the good old ears, (golden ears of experts?)

However the graphs of the signals do show a significant difference in the

way the signal arrives at the other end.

Just look at this mangled square wave from one of the cable

Hdmi.jpg

Not saying that the analogue electrical signals (which is what the graphs shows) won't get distorted - we all know that cables introduce losses. The point I'm making is, the HDMI protocol includes error correction - so what you see in that graph has no effect on what you hear/see... until it gets so bad that the original data can no longer be reconstructed.

For a comparison, think about the TCP/IP protocol that runs the internet - it also has error correction, traverses everything from optical to copper to microwave and wireless, going from servers to firewalls and security appliances then through routers, bridges, repeaters, access points, dongles you name it. But what you see on your screen is very, very, very rarely corrupted - if just one bit in a byte changes A can become Z, red can become green etc etc.. OK, yes, the TCP/IP protocol also has the ability to re-request data packets the error correction can't fix, but hey it's a protocol that has a lot more points of potential failure than a HDMI cable in your house

BTW, HDMI v1.4 also supports TCP/IP - in the form of 100mbps ethernet

PS. Dont' get me started on folk who self-proclaim that they have golden ears - most of them are will into their 40's 50's 60's and beyond, so can't hear the far upper end of the spectrum anyway, and due to the amount of listening they've done, probably have a good case of tinnitus as well LOL.

Edited June 18, 2013 by IMHO