Ayre DX-5 bluray player - Page 24

Thanks for the review.

Did you have your CX-7e upgraded with the MP filter, or was this the first time you listened to an Ayre with the MP filter?

I noticed many of the improvements you did (more analog-like, less fatiguing) when I upgaded my CX-7e to the MP filter. I'm just wondering if the improvements you are hearing are due to the MP filter, or if the DX-5 is significantly better for redbook CD's than a CX-7eMP?

Tom

My previous CD deck was the Levinson No. 31. The CX-7e was a loaner from Ayre as courtesy until the DX-5 I ordered came in. It was not one with the MP upgrade. I did host the Meridian 808 or whatever it was several months back. It was a little bit of an improvement to most but not all CD's. The age of the CD did not predict the improvement.

This unit is a marked improvement, in all aspects, not just an improvement in one area or another. We are talking about a clear, major league, at every level improvement. Many upgrades in the last decade were marginal. They were an improvement in my system but limited in scope.

I can say that this level of improvement was at the level where everything I can think of, all aspects of the experience, every thing that I value, was improved.

I write this because it is not a trivial change. It is a new level to strive for. The others have to do what they can to just catch up at this point in time. Sure, at some time in the future, at my experience, new and better things will arise. But for now, a new mark is set.

And yes, we are that critical here at this location.


aehaas

aehaas,
Thank you for your response.
Athough your system is much better than mine, I have been able to hear the improvements (or degradation) of sound reproduction with the addition of different components.
That is why, after trying 5 or 6 different cdp's, I chose the CX-7e. It was the best I had heard. Then came the MP upgrade. I was pleasantly surprised by how much the MP filter improved the sound. By far the best $250 I have spent on my system.
If I read your review page correctly you are a 2 channel, music only guy. I am a 50/50 music/movie guy. But that 50% of the time I play cd's I want to enjoy them to the max. The fact that the DX-5 also does the HT stuff right makes it all the more desirable.
If it can make a marked improvement in my modest HT system, then the DX-5will be added to my dream list.
My Ayre dealer expects to get a DX-5 in the next month or so, and has promised to let me know when he gets it so that I can judge for myself.
Of course, as people replace their C-5xeMP's with the DX-5, a used Ayre C-5xeMP may be a more realistic upgrade for me. Time will tell.
As we all know, this hobby is an ongoing search for the musical holy grail, and it never ends as long as we can still draw a breath.
Tom

I have the C-5xeMP and find it to be an excellent player and by far the best that I had in my dedicated 2 channel music system. Dare I say very analog-like sound in comparison to any other player that I've owned. I've never heard the non-MP version of the C-5 so can't comment on the improvements that the MP filter makes for that product.

I have a separate more modest Home Theater system in anther room where I use an OPPO 83 BluRay player with a 60" Pioneer Kuro 151 Elite Plasma TV, and Denon 4308 receiver. If I had a combination all-in-one music and Home Theater system, the DX-5 would be a no brainer for me since it does everything including having a built in DAC for a computer based music system.

I like Ayre's philosophy of only providing upgrades when necessary and usually at a modest price such the MP filter unlike many other companies that are constantly coming out with expensive new models almost every year.

"The other bug I've found was when I changed the remote code to another than default (1). Because I'm using Oppo 83 in my system, so have to change anyway. I tried #3 on remote and changed in the menu too. After that, my remote (now on code #3) couldn't be used well. With BD disc, it worked well, but when I changed to CD or SACD, my remote didn't work at all. I had to use only the buttons on the player, not on the remote.
However, when I changed back to code #1 (set on the remote and the menu), everything was back to normal, can use all buttons for all BD, CD, and SACD discs."

Same here.

aehaas

Hello -

You guys are busy during the weekends, but that is our time off. I don't have a DX-5 at home to check, but we will look into it Monday. Can you do me a favor and check the firmware version of the players you are using?

Thanks!

Main Version: AYDX5-50-0424
Loader Version: BT0410 85750410
Sub Version: MCUD5-27-0326
Chip Version: 0B.00.01.00

aehaas

Thanks for the firmware versions, guys. Sorry we can't check it Monday -- I forgot that was a holiday. So it will be Tuesday before we can look at it. I have a good idea what it is, though. We intercept all of the commands so that we can "filter" some out and also respond to some custom commands. The common thread with the problem is that they all require a long button press. My guess is that our "filtering" routine is interfering with the long button presses. But I'm not a programmer, so don't listen to me....

To make up for it, there is some good news triggered by that beautiful photo of the DX-5 playing file from a computer via USB. 192 kHz is finally available (assuming that you even care!). First you have to set the DIP switch on the back of your DX-5 as explained in the manual. Move the first one from "Rsrv A" (up) to "Rsrv B" (down). This will change the DX-5 to Class Two Audio mode, which is required for 192 kHz operation.

(It's required to change this before you install the Windows driver (noted below). But don't be alarmed if the USB audio stops working. Once the DX-5 is operating in Class Two Audio, your computer won't recognize it until it is also capable of Class Two Audio.)

Next you will need to get your computer's operating system (OS) ready. If you have a Mac, then you have to have Snow Leopard (not Leopard). This was the $29 upgrade they released about six months ago. Then you have to install the latest software update via the internet. What you are looking for is OS X version 10.6.4.

If you a Windows guy, they don't care about audio and won't have 192 via USB available for years. So we had a custom USB driver written. It's been tested quite a bit, but not by thousands of users yet so it is slightly experimental. You can download it from:

www.ayre.com/Download/ThesyconUSBDVR1.11.0.exe

Make sure that the USB is not connected, run the program, and when it asks for the unit to be plugged in, plug it in then. Wait till it recognizes it in
Windows, then hit OK.

If you don't have any quad-rate files, you can download some free samples from:

http://www.2l.no/

Have fun!

Hi svirajsilp,

Unless your friend has Snow Leopard with the very latest OS update that was just released last week (in the US, at least), then he will need to leave the DIP switch in the "up" position for Class One Audio. Trying Class Two Audio with older versions of Snow Leopard will lead to drop-outs and more severe problems with Leopard (10.5.x).

Keep us posted on your progress.

I have one complaint. When you put in a DVD movie or BD disc you may have to stop for some reason and the disc can be started where one left off.

Unfortunately the same is true for CD's. You can press STOP twice slowly to reset the disc and then eject it but the basic tendency is to just eject the disc when you are ready to audition the next tract on another disc. I prefer all CD's to be discovered and to start at 00 on the first tract.

When you put in the previous CD it starts right where you left off, when you quit early the last time, in the middle of the tract you had ejected from. (Prepositions are not good to end sentences with).

Anybody else feel this way?

aehaas

I also find that it takes some getting used to, as a standard CD player doesn't work this way. When we sell 10,000 units we can probably get them to write some custom firmware that changes that behavior. So buy now and buy often!

There are a couple of mitigating factors:

a) The memory can only retain the position of five discs. So if you play five discs before playing the CD again, it won't be able to memorize the last position you stopped at.

b) If you have your video display turned on, when you play the CD there will be a warning message that it will play from the previous position unless you press "Stop" within two seconds. Of course, I would never turn on my video display to play a CD....

c) This behavior is tied to the "Stop" behavior. If you press "Stop" once, it is more like an extended "Pause" command. This is nice because, for example, if the telephone rings instead of putting the player in "Pause" where the laser is still on and the mechanism is spinning, you can press "Stop" and it will turn everything off except that the position is memorized. Then you can just press "Play" to resume from the place where you stopped the disc.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to the system used by Oppo. I haven't used it enough yet to say, but I think that once I get used to it I will like it better.

But maybe not! I still never got used to the difference in the way that Japanese and European CD players work. If you are playing a song on a European CD player and press "Previous", the player would go to the previous track (logical, yes?). On a Japanese player, pressing "Previous" once only takes you to the start of the *current* song. I don't like the Japanese system, but there are hundreds of millions of players out there that work this way. I just still miss my modified Magnavox that worked the other way....

Hi Charles,

Even though the SACD to PCM converter "came along for the ride" from the Oppo, since it is an available function of the DX-5 (I assume, anyway), I'm wondering if you've characterized its performance and made any determination that it would benefit from the MP filter or, if the performance < 20 kHz is sufficient as it stands. Or, more generally, is there some reliable SACD test disc that you use to verify DSD DAC performance, and what does that look like thru the PCM converter?

Hi Roger,

Yes, the DSD to PCM converter did come along for the ride. We really haven't paid it much attention. When we made our first universal player we tried several ways to convert DSD to PCM and none of them sounded as good as DSD. Basically something is lost with every conversion. I can't prove it, but I would imagine that it's not possible for a DSD to PCM converter to improve the sound of a DSD music file.

I suppose that it would be possible to minimize the losses, but there really isn't any point for us to try and do so with the DX-5. With our analog stage, the DAC chips can accept the DSD data in their native format so there is nothing to be gained there. The same would be true of an A/V receiver that could accept DSD over HDMI. Presumably there would be some way to listen to the music without requiring a conversion to PCM.

So that leaves two cases. One is an older A/V receiver that can't accept DSD over HDMI. That is a can of worms. For example Oppo has elected to convert to 88.2/24. I have no doubt that 176.4/24 would sound better, but maybe the AVR wouldn't accept 176.4 kHz and you would be no better off. The other case is if you want to do bass management and so forth in the AVR. Clearly a conversion to PCM has to occur and it can happen either in the player or in the AVR. If the AVR did a poor job then you *might* be able to improve on it, but then you are back in the position of wondering just how high quality of of conversion would accepted by all of the AVR's out there.

There is an SACD test disc that we have. It was made by Sony and we received it as part of an evaluation package back at the dawn of SACD. It's basically irreplaceable, so we only pull it out for special occasions. I suppose that we could pull it out and look at the frequency response of the DSD to PCM conversion. But it would only matter if people could compare it to the conversion that is done in AVR's. Obviously we can't test more than a handful of AVR's. So I would assume that if it were important the magazines would be doing it. In which case they would also have tested the Oppo by now. Does anybody know if there are any magazines that perform this kind of testing?

For the record. None of the newer high end SSP / Receivers accepts DSD and never will (the "highest end" SSP that does is the Denon A1). SACD is a legacy format.

My personal experience is that any time you convert DSD to PCM (either in the SACD player or in an SSP), you have very significant losses. Short of going the very expensive proprietary digital route (e.g. EMM labs 2 box), the ONLY way to get very good SACD is to use analog outs. The Ayre universal will be stellar on 2 channel SACD analog, but multi channel DSD converted to PCM send to a SSP over HDMI is inherently a big compromise.

Of course, to overcome this and build a universal player with SOTA multi channel analog outs would have made the player price prohibitive. The addressable market would be of a handful MC SACD affictionados with top notch multi channel analog preamps...

Hi Charles,

There is no doubt that conversion brings its compromises. Certainly I'd not expect improved sound to be the result.

You may also be quite right that the DX5's raison d'être is its analog outputs, followed by the DSD, and the distant cousin being PCM if at all. But as edorr points out, there are few HDMI-equipped processors that accept DSD, and fewer still that convert it.

The PS3 does convert to 176.4 kHz, but I have no idea if that causes stress or not to AVRs. The Oppo outputs 88.2 and some Denon/Marantz players convert to 44.1.

Oppo's approach may be a good balance between "stress" (or forcing the AVR to apply its own downsampling just to cope) and the challenges of 44.1 filtering. Regardless, it is the one in the DX-5.


I had not seen anyone attempt to make any qualitative judgments of the Oppo conversion, and that's why I turned to you--being someone who might actually have the tools and knowledge to make a proper assessment of its performance.

While it may indeed fall short of your standards, it is a secondary feature of the DX-5, and knowing how it performs may be of use owners who, on certain occasions, wish to activate their room EQ, bass management, or whatnot when listening to SACDs, so knowing what they are giving up in exchange for that could be of value. Maybe applying such DSP processing in itself is onerous enough to the end quality to make the issue of DSD conversion moot, or maybe not.

Onerous is one way to put it. Another possibility is that such processes may contribute more to the end quality than any loss due to the DSD conversion.

When Blu-ray and HD-DVD were announced, sales of our DVD player instantly stopped. At that time I put our investment into video players on hold, waiting until the format wars were over. So I have not been following the scene very closely.

That being said, I must admit that I am completely shocked that the makers of SSP's have given up on DSD. It makes it sound as if nobody is developing their own decoding engine, but instead they must be buying an off-the-shelf solution.

We have looked at making an SSP several different times and have never done it for one reason or another. But I cannot imagine trying to build a world-class SSP and then leaving DSD capability out altogether. Why? How much money are they saving? Or do they just think that the player should have analog outputs? Because if they do, then they need to have state-of-the-art analog processing. No digitizing the signal, no cheap "chip" based volume controls....


That is the problem from our perspective. Why increase the price of the product 30% or more? Especially when there are almost no "top notch multi channel analog preamps". I suppose that one could slave together three Ayre KX-R's (trivial with the AyreLink system), but that would be almost $60,000 in the US and more overseas.

I have to admit I am just baffled that there aren't any SSP's that will accept DSD. If not, why did Oppo bother to include the DSD over HDMI option in the first place? I think the SSP makers are not doing their jobs as well as they could. They need to use a good volume control, they need to accept DSD, and they need to use Audio Rate Control.

We could test it and make an assessment, but until it is compared to something else it is almost meaningless. Is 100 watts a lot for an amp? Compared with a 10 watt amp, yes. Compared with a 1000 watt amp, no.

Since the magazines apparently don't test this in SSP's (or perhaps it doesn't even exist!), then there must not be a demand for this type of information.


Yes, but there is a much simpler solution to the question. Simply listen.

Try it both ways and see which way sounds better. There are only three possibilities. One way will sound better (and you should use that method) or the other way will sound better (and you should use that method. Or they will sound the same (in which case it doesn't matter which way you use).

Well, considering all of the above recent flurry of posts, what do those of you who output DSD over your HDMI connections do? If it must ultimately be converted to PCM, where does that occur, if the SSPs don't accept it in the first place.?

Since the high end SSP don't accept DSD you do not output DSD over HDMI. The player converts to PCM.

I was equally baffled to find this out. I was using a Sony XA5400 DSD direct into an Onkyo 885 and wanted to upgrade my SSP, only to find out that short of the Denon A1 there are no high end SSPs that process DSD. If Theta ever delivers HDMI on the CBIII it also will not support DSD.

May be the SSP manufacturers are thinking if you buy our processor you will want to use the Room EQ and Bass management, so why bother supporting DSD. Ironically some of the mid-fi manufacturers do support it (Pioneer, Denon, Sony, Onkyo).

"...Since the high end SSP don't accept DSD you do not output DSD over HDMI. The player converts to PCM..."

Right, that's what I thought. So why all the fuss over whether or not a player puts out DSD?

And, if the players with the better analog outputs convert DSD directly to analog, how is it better to convert DSD to PCM, and then to analog in the processor?

Or is it so you can apply DSP?

Maybe I should have said objective assessments instead of qualitative judgments. My error.

The comparison would be to known good practice--applying a decimation filter with good performance regarding passband ripple, phase, proper dither, all that, as you have found important in your work on PCM DACs and the MP filter.


I have also noticed the lack of coverage of these sorts of things in magazines insofar as they do not really explore the far reaches of a product, and I totally understand why that's the reality--it takes extensive time to delve into those areas. Really, there is no way to experience a product without living with it and doing those explorations for one's self. Even so, while magazine folks often have someone around with nice test equipment, consumers rarely do. The people most likely to use these features are the least able to measure them.


Can't. Comparing PCM thru HDMI against the analog out of the Oppo is a non starter.

I already know the PCM connections sounds best in my system. I already know that my SACDs sound great. What I was looking for was some insight into what degree of damage the Oppo imposes in its 88.2 kHz converter. Is it a lame implementation, a good one, somewhere between? I'm not sure that the Sony SACD test disc has the kinds of signals that would lead to any such conclusion. If not, it may forever remain an open question.

I appreciate the difficulties of properly decoding dsd to pcm Charles ; but I think Oppo are just catering for those [like my cary 11a and others like cambridge audio ] who have very similar dsd capable 'of the shelf' chipsets

I send dsd mainly because the cary doesnt have a room eq system worth utilising in any case and as you say its an extra conversion ..

I missed that one. So if the Cary and Cambridge are designated "high end" there are some high end SSPs that do native DSD. I had in mind Halcro, Classe, Anthem, Meridian and the likes.