Official Pioneer SC-05 and SC-07 Owners Thread - Page 69

I think that's what Pioneer is rating the power supply. It maps dead on to the SC 05 being rated 10W less across the board vs the SC 07. For all we know, they could sport the same exact power supplies, too.

Until some publication puts both these units on a test bench and compares them, no one is really going to know for sure if or what these AVRs are capable of.

have there been any pictures posted of the inside of the SC-05 ?

While I think your post contains some good information, I think there are some basic inaccuracies.


How can you say it's not proprietary? It's a two way HDMI communication that only works with four products in the Pioneer line up. PQLS is a proprietary Pioneer trade name for it's tech, and doesn't describe any kind of industry standard.

You can't use the PQLS feature with non-Pioneer equipment... which makes it proprietary. It's not a standard like 1394.

The idea isn't unique (like Denon's D-Link, which was one of the first to market) but other manufacturers aren't just name branding it.. these are unique variants to get the same job done (eliminating jitter) using proprietary tech to accomplish it.


With the Denon and Pioneer implimentation, you sure are.

There are very few pieces of gear that allow for external clock inputs, which surprises me. That is the true audiophile solution.


I've never heard that the data is what is the cause of jitter... it is the lack of a common clock, not the audio.

And SPDIF has no clock. Biphase mark code is not a clock.

Jitter is a temporal error, not data degradation.

Most high end processors (Denon AVP and Anthem D2, for example) reclock digital inputs anyways.


The clock signal doesn't travel between the transport and and AVR/SSP in most cases... it is PCM, and that is what is susceptable to jitter, not a "clock signal."


It really isn't important where the clock is.. what is important is that all digital pieces of gear in a chain share the same clock...


It's not as important that it works for BR and DVD if you are bitstreaming (although PCM is susceptible to it)..

Jitter has nothing to do with AV syncronization... a frame of video contains 48,000 24 bit audio words per channel... jitter occurs at the thousands of a second level.

Bitstream codecs are immune to jitter...

Yeah, what FilmMixer said about PQLS. All these HDMI receivers buffer and reclock the PCM. As long as the buffer is big enough, PQLS isn't needed. In dr1394's testing, he played a whole CD with the older firewire Pioneer combo and never saw a single 'speed up' or 'slow down' command meaning the buffer never overflowed or underflowed and PQLS wasn't required with that combo. Until I see some actual jitter measurements, I'll remain skeptical that the 'improved sound' with PQLS is anything more than the placebo effect. Pioneer didn't think it was big enough a deal to include it on the flagship 09.

About the sound differences between the 05 and 07, I'd say it's in the digital audio board if anywhere. They are different part numbers and that's the only difference that can't be explained by differences in the number of outputs. Maybe that Burr Brown upsampling chip is the only difference or there may be more differences such as DACs, etc.

I think the ICE amp's switching power supply is built into the amp board except for the transformer. The 05 and 07 have the same amp boards and transformers so the amps should be the same unless Pioneer intentionally crippled the 05 somehow. Dave Vaughn is testing the 05 so we should know what it will do pretty soon.

The thing is the Pioneer players and receivers most likely use the same clock chip so the combo that provides PQLS capability is the one least likely to need it. It might be handy if the player's clock was ever so slightly different from the receiver's, say using different brands, but PQLS won't work with different brands. When the subject came up with the 09, the Pioneer rep said the receiver had adequate jitter prevention (read big buffer) and it wasn't needed. It may be the best thing since sliced bread but I'm skeptical that it's much more than marketing given how it never actually kicked in and did anything in bench testing of its firewire incarnation.

are the GUIs the same on the 05 and 07 please ?

I really like the simple but smart look of these GUIs - certainly beats white text

CHP_VR - stonking thanks

looks really nice

ps would still love to know what DACs either of these use ... (I know its not the major factor towards SQ - but is a factor) - just interested if they've keep the 1791s like the Denons etc, or gone with the Wolfsons from their BD range ...

would be nice if the latter but I guess not

my Arcam uses Wolfson DACs and I do like the sound of them

thanks will try that no harm

I contacted Pioneer on last range of models before people on here looked inside - and they would not tell me I can understand company secrets regarding some areas of the design - but what DACs they use are obvious if anyone opens the top - unless they are hidden underneath a heatsink which I've never seen

Having been one of those who experienced Pioneer's short lived firewire implementation (I-Line) with the 59 series of Elite AVR and DVD multiformat player, I noticed little (if any) SQ difference between analog connections vs I-Link.

What it did do, however, was to take 7 wires from AVR to DVD player (analog connections) down to 1 wire (I-Link). Now, there could have been sonic differences with another set up different than mine. But, it was more of a convenience factor (and, taking away any associated issues of using more wires) than a sonic one for me.

How this relates to PQLS with the SC and BD hookup is unknown to me. I'll defer to FilmMixer's and catapult's posts for that.

From my admittedly less than technical knowledge (at least less than FilmMixer's), I've yet to hear a piece of gear in the last 5 years where "jitter" truly affected SQ. That said, I've not auditioned nearly the amount of equipment that FilmMixer has.

didn't one website - can't remember which one do a test for jitter effecting waveform output - and couldnt' see any difference at all ..

in fact I think they even tried "dropping" the CD player whillst playing and it made no difference ...

Wow, you guys are really good. I appreciate the answers and debate but on my basic level is PQLS a function that I must set or is it automatically on when required? Thanks again.

Too bad there isn't a discrete code for turning PQLS on and off so we could do a better comparison. Have somebody switch it and see if you can tell which is which with your eyes closed.

Hmmm, where to start?
FilmMixer, I think it was your posts more than anything that convinced me that I should get an SC-05, and my understanding of PQLS that I should pair it with a BDP-51. I was trying to explain why, but the post was long enough for most folks, and I missed out quite a bit of information. Let me explain...

I repeat, PQLS is not proprietary, its not restricted to Pioneer, and it's not even limited to HDMI. Its just Pioneers name for an industry-standard digital audio interface protocol that has actually been in use for several years.

For those with short memories, PQLS was Pioneers name for the Audio & Music protocol on firewire that was called i-link. To their credit, Pioneer was first out the blocks with i-link, but all the other majors followed soon after. They could only do this because it was an industry standard. It was called IEC 61883-6 IIRC.

Sony produced players and amps with i-link, but they called it HATS. They didn't guarantee interoperability with other makers i-links, but everyone quickly found that they all worked together. I have a Pio DV79 with PQLS and a Sony AVR with HATS, and they work perfectly.

Denon did support i-link, but went their own way with Denon Link. There's less information about that, and I understand it works in the same way as i-link, but using ethernet instead of firewire as the physical bearer channel. There were some audio advantages with this, but denon link WAS a proprietary interface, and nobody else used it.

PQLS is now being used on HDMI, and its defined in the HDMI V1.3a spec. See p111 section 7.11:
This is the same way that PQLS and HATS etc worked on i-link, only now its applied to HDMI and its called Audio Rate Control. Pioneer actually mentions ARC in some of its promotional literature. I was the person that first flagged up the opportunities for ARC back in July last year, and predicted that manaufacturers could use it to minimise jitter in the same way that i-link did.

Well, now Pioneer and Sony are doing this, and others like Marantz, Yamaha, Onkyo and Integra etc are bound to follow. ARC has a better chance of becoming well established as HDMI is the way forwards (for better or for worse) in a way that i-link would never be. Coincidentally, Sony are calling their ARC implemention HATS, just as they did with i-link. As before, no-one will say they are compatible as they weren't developed side by side, but any day now someone will connect a Sony player with HATS to a Pioneer amp with PQLS, and my money says it will work because they are working to the same standard. maybe its not been done yet, but remember where you heard it first!
Thats a very effective solution, but it seems to be confined to high end stuff like dCs. Although a synchronous digital audio architecture is probably the ideal, its not an external clock in itself that is desirable, simply that the clock should be close to the DAC, and that it should avoid a compromised interface like spdif or hdmi. External clocks aren't mainstream though, and i-link, denon-link and PQLS are pragmatic solutions that everyone can use.
Jitter is caused by everything as far as I can tell, and audio data is just one thing. There's an important thing to explain. Digital audio has two information streams - ampitude info (data) and timing info (clock). Both these streams are necessary to reproduce the audio. The amplitude info comes from the disc (or whatever) and the timing info comes from the master audio clock. Jitter is indeed a temporal error, but it only affects the tiing info. Jitter is not carried by the data at all. Its the quality of the chain from the clock to the DAC that affects jitter, the data is generally robust and doesn't enter into it. Stereo and MC equipment can re-clock digital audio, so there is a slave audio clock as well as the master, but these don't work as well in practice as they do in theory (or in marketing stuff). The real solution is to keep the clock next to the DAC and keep everything else out of the way.
In general it does. Spdif, toslink, I2S and HDMI can all carry a clock, though they do it in different ways. Sure, compressed audio can't carry a clock, but where there's LPCM theres a clock, even if it doesn't have it's own channel. In spdif the clock is embedded into the data, and travels from the player to the AVR. With DD or DTS, the clock is only generated by the decoder in the AVR, and doesn't travel over the link. HDMI is different, as the audio timing info is carried over the video clock and CEC channels, but thats another matter.
The whole point of i-link or PQLS is that the clock is indeed where the DAC is - otherwise there would be no point or benefit. Yes, you have to share the clock , but the quality of the clock must be preserved or proritised for the DAC, and can be relaxed for the transport. It really doesn't matter if the clock suffers degradation going from the AVR to the player - the data will still come out just fine.
This is a huge subject, and probably beyond this thread. It depends on the architecture of the AVR, and how it regenerates the audio clock. When HDMI is used to carry DTHD & DTS MA to the AVR, the audio clock may be generated from the video clock, so it will still be prone to jitter, but the HDMI spec doesn't lay down the law here, and receivers may do things differently.
All this is irrelevant. 1394 i-link doesn't carry jitter from a player to the AVR, because it doesn't carry the timing info in that direction. Its a simple as that. The data can have pretty much all the jitter it likes, but the clock won't suffer from ANY of it.
Yes they did - that has i-link inputs!

BR, Nick

Au contraire. If the receiver's buffer is big enough that it doesn't overflow or underflow, and it's using its own clock, it doesn't need to tell the player to speed up or slow down and could care less what the player is doing.

I suspect this is one place where the 07 may be better than the 05. They appear to have moved the HDMI audio buffer from the HDMI board to the digital audio board where they are converting everything to 192K and using the receiver's master clock. Just reading between the lines -- the 07 HDMI board is cheaper than the 05 HDMI board even though it has an extra output; the 07 digital audio board costs more and includes the BB chip.

Edit: the advantage of the 07 way is it should buffer the data from any source, coax, optical, whatever. It's just like the big buck DACs used to work back in the day -- big buffer and reclock the signal -- but the Pioneer is doing it before the CPU so you can still process the signal.

I think they both upsample to 24/192, the SC-07 uses the BB SRC chip and the SC-05 uses an unamed chip or can that be done on the main ADC/DAC. At least thats the assumption I've come to in trying to figure this out.

CHP is right, this has been my one nagging issue between the two, the wording from Pioneer is cryptic at best. I've been over the OM again and again, and it doesn't offer much in this area.

I have tried out this HIBITSMP mode and have not noticed a difference at all. Has anyone else with an SC-05 tried it out yet? If not, please do and post back with your findings.

Thanks

I'm setting up a new SC-07 and have it connected to my DVI Panny plasma via a HDMI-DVI cable. I also have an HDMI source, a DirecTV HR20 high def DVR outputting 1080i, and it displays perfectly on the plasma. However, I am unable to get the SC-07 OSD setup screens to display.

I may be off in the weeds here, but I'm wondering if the SC-07 is outputting these screens at 480i over HDMI, which my plasma will not accept via DVI. If so, is there a way to configure the resolution at which the OSD screens are output?

Any ideas?

Mike

Strange. I connected the component monitor out of the SC-07 to the component in on my display, and I was able to get the OSD screens. Went back to the HDMI-DVI and no joy. It appears to be some sort of resolution or timing problem because the NO INPUT signal indicator on the display blinks on and off, the screen flickers occasionally, and occasionally I can see flashes of the OSD screen. Bummer.

Any other ideas?

Mike