Author Topic: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card  (Read 51997 times)

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Offline PinheadBE

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #25 on: March 01, 2015, 10:26:55 am »
Is it April 1 already again?

This is hard to believe.  This should be far beneath the dignity of Sony.  This kills the credibility of their entire product line for me doing something like this.  I'm angry.


I totally agree.
Some brands are known for doing a living from that sort of crap, but hey.. Sony !   :wtf:
I always owned a walkman, a discman and even a MiniDisc.  Sony is, indeed, at least for me, a synonym of real innovation in audio and video, affordable to the common people and quality driven.

But now....  I don't know if I ever would trust them again....

Are they in such a catastrophic situation that they really need to risk their credibility by selling THIS  ???
And to whom ?
A real "audiophile" will not buy a Sony "audiophile" product, because, well, as I said above, Sony is affordable to common people. 
An audiophile will never consider himself as a common people, will he ?

At least, I had a good laugh by seeing Dave's whiteboard in that episode.  :-DD :clap:
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Offline andtfoot

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #26 on: March 01, 2015, 10:33:31 am »
I'm not a fan of their displays/TVs, but the Sony professional projectors and PTZ cameras I work with are still up there in my view. I reckon the laser projectors (VPL-FHZ55 and VPL-FHZ700L) are the best that I've seen in their class .
 

Offline TheEPROM9

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #27 on: March 01, 2015, 10:55:41 am »
It is very sad and peripatetic, SONY use to be the bast.  :-+

Then in the 2000s whoever innovated was dematerialized for generic crap that all the other company's produce.  :--

Now there's this crap.  |O



Why the hell reputable company's spread this bull.  :bullshit: Guess SONY cannot be considered reputable anymore. Even Panasonic has spread this shit in the past.

Just like there are plenty of people calling out religion on it's bull, we need more people calling out company's on this sort of bull.

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Offline TheEPROM9

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #28 on: March 01, 2015, 11:04:58 am »
all this reminds me of just how motherboard factories market their boards.

the design could be likely a 1% improvement , but marketing just have to make it look like  .... 5x MORE ....or ...  216% ... or ... no LAG ... font size is important :P

if they are so adament about noise, why dont they put in a LM399 specifically to regulate the voltage of that SD card? while at it ... a 1ppm tempco SD card HAHAHA  :-DD.

It is all dependent on the network speed. If you have it hooked to a crap network, it is lag city for you. Amazes me that people fall for this crap. I did not know that the mobo company's spread this crap.
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Offline PGrant

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #29 on: March 01, 2015, 11:24:21 am »
 :wtf: That's crazy.

Still I (somehow) don't think it's as bad as those who will pay $3000 for a 1 meter "low noise" power cable.  :palm:
 

Offline GoldSrc

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #30 on: March 01, 2015, 12:31:01 pm »
Poor Sony.
But either way idiots will buy this crap, after all, if it costs more it should "sound better"  :-DD.
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Offline namek

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #31 on: March 01, 2015, 12:42:17 pm »
This one made my day. I guess it's a month early.
 

Offline daro-1

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #32 on: March 01, 2015, 12:59:04 pm »
 So Sony has entered the electronic snake oil market now with this & the Audiophool punters will buy it.

The old saying is so true that there is a sucker born every minute. LMFAO  :-DD
 

Offline namek

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #33 on: March 01, 2015, 01:12:31 pm »
#facepalm

The other thread has detailed why this card has a measurable effect. Let's wait for some double blind tests to prove our disprove it. It's it on 5/3.

I'm really disappointed that you didn't bother to do some actual calculations or investigation. If you had you would have noticed the difficulty of filtering small amounts of noise in 24 bit DACs. More over, toy didn't consider that the nose from an SD card changes over time due to the access pattern. Again, of you had researched this you would have found that Sony discussed it extensively in the Japanese media.

Because Google knows that I can read Japanese it gives me Japanese search results along side English ones. I also read a lot of Japanese news sites. All the western coverage has been like yours - reactionary and uniformed. 24 bit audio isn't even really a thing in the west yet.

And yes, I can reliably ABX 24 bit audio. It really is not difficult, and my hearing isn't that good either.

It's digital, so media for audio shouldn't matter. All filtering must be done just before signal enters dac and or leaves it. Digital interface is used to overcome analog signal flaws. So this design tries to fix flaws which aren't there. Or they purposely flaws their player design to filter signal there, where it shouldn't be filtered.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 01:30:20 pm by namek »
 

Offline moogli

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #34 on: March 01, 2015, 01:21:27 pm »
Many "audiophile" products make improvements to an aspect that doesn't effect the endresult that much. A SD Card that produces less digital noise (on its supply rails, or via its emitted electromagnetic fields) is - of course - an improvement by itself. Can it possibly affect the audio of a player? It could, but its not very likely that its really a significant effect. We shouldn't hear digital noise at all if the player has been designed carefully. Its of course possible to keep away digital noise from analog circuits, of course, but its not super-easy, I designed mixed-signal stuff myself and struggled with that, too. My Laptop (not a cheap one) for example doesn't filter it 100%, its outputs has clearly audible digital noise, and my middle-class MP3 Player as well. A Sony branded one, by the way :D And I don't consider myself beeing an "audiophile" or heaving golden ears.

So what do I think here... I guess that the rest of the digital circuit, the processor, its memory and display probably plays a bigger role in producing possibly audible digital noise, but who knows? I think its at least possible to find measurable improvements in digital noise at the outputs of (some) MP3 players of an electrically more "silent" SD card.

Filtering something does never mean that something is totally "gone", its always just attenuation. So double filtering, or components that are more silent in the first place, might improve things. The only question is, if it makes sense. For example if the effect of the digital noise produced by the SD card already sits way below the noise floor of the DAC. But thats very tough to answer without taking real-world measurements. Why not do this? I suggest that for a video :-) Take a middle class MP3 Player and compare a super-cheap SD Card with the audiophile card. Playback a silent MP3 and a silent WAV (higher data rate = more memory accesses) and measure the outputs with a scope & spectrum analyzer. In my opinion thats the only way to really say: Ok, this doesnt do anything.
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #35 on: March 01, 2015, 01:27:32 pm »
Anyone want to buy one & send it to me for x-raying?
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Offline alter Ratz

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #36 on: March 01, 2015, 01:34:28 pm »
shall i buy a $1K, diamond HDMI cable and $10K ethernet cable to go with that aswell?

I have I premium HQ WIFI cable, which I only use occasionally. Its signal to noise ratio is 3.14 dB better than the best competitor brand and the cable shielding is made of pure 24k gold. I could let you have it for a good price. (~$12k) ;)

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Offline alter Ratz

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #37 on: March 01, 2015, 01:42:44 pm »
FYI: Sony did not invet the walkman but rather steal the invention from a german inventor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Pavel

However, they did not pay him any royalties until 2003 when he was almost bankrupted by the legal battle against Sony. This is how the patent system is supposed to work: If manufacture something similar like a big company you are sued for patent infringement and f***ed quite good, the other way around ... not so much.

Best Regards,
Bernhard
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 01:44:32 pm by alter Ratz »
 

Offline nitro2k01

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #38 on: March 01, 2015, 03:30:36 pm »
As pointed out in previous threads, what the card is likely trying to solve is conducted noise that causes ripple in the supply rails.

Are you shitting me?  I don't buy that for a second.  But assuming it's a problem, where do you solve it - in every SD card with caps that need to fit into an ultra-small device and need to be on EVERY SD card made, or on the SD card slot within the actual player, requiring only one set of caps?  If it's a problem, the designer of the player has already solved this.  I find it hard to believe its a problem, though.
Well, I've had this very problem in some devices taking SD cards. For fun I've written programs exploiting this effect on a CPU by making it go in and out of sleep mode periodically to create a very faint tone that plays a melody by interfering with the audio amplfier. (That time, the effect was created by the CPU, not an SD card.) Is this a problem to be solved by an SD card? No. Is this a $150 problem? Absolutely not! Whatever noises can be created by this effect are between "barely perceptible" and "easily outpowered by your breathing" in strength. From a marketing standpoint, this is bullshit. I'm simply drawing a line between "there's plausibly something there" and "there's absolutely nothing there" where the latter category includes shakti stones and oxygen free copper cables.

There are also two ironies in this. First, if their player is audiophile grade as they claim it is, this is exactly where they should be able to afford to design away this problem in the player and NOT need this card. And secondly, this card likely has properties that would otherwise be considered undesirable in an SD card. For example, slower write speeds (to consume less power and interfere less with the power rail).
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 03:49:59 pm by nitro2k01 »
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Offline R_Gtx

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #39 on: March 01, 2015, 03:45:32 pm »
Anybody who has worked in an anechoic chamber will know that silence is a myth. You hear the constant sound of the pumping and flow of your own blood. So really, this truly, is aimed at the brain dead.
 

Offline vlad777

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #40 on: March 01, 2015, 04:40:41 pm »
Every computer I ever had makes so much noise on analog audio TRS jack.
Very much correlated with video rendering.

@edy

Digital is resistant to noise IF you are not talking about the clock signal or other edge signals.
24 bit is good. If you ever listened to classical music (which I don't).
Dynamic range is a big thing in classical music, they go very silent and then boom. (You need to have resolution for the silent stuff.)
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 04:43:35 pm by vlad777 »
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Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #41 on: March 01, 2015, 05:20:06 pm »
Well, this is Sony, so probably the Sony new generation Walkman will only work with the specified Sony media, and with other media will be programmed to reduce the audio quality to 8 bit. Probably will result in some fake cards being programmed to report that they are genuine Phony cards to fool this.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #42 on: March 01, 2015, 05:34:38 pm »
Someone at Sony sees this as an easy way to make money (duh, no kidding!). 

In our household, Sony "jumped the shark" already in 2006 with the rootkit scandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal   :wtf:

You really know deep down that a company has lost the plot when they do something like that.

Ever since then, all Sony products have been avoided like the plague here.

 

Offline Razor512

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #43 on: March 01, 2015, 05:44:10 pm »
Sony's zero's are better than any one else's,They are more zero, rounder with less distortion. The 1's are straighter with less bend and wobble. That's Patently obvious and no doubt their lawyers will take you to the cleaners if you try to infringe.  :-DD

Agreed, I bought one and while listening to my 128kbit MP3's, I could clearly hear the differences, the 1's were more 1, and the 0's were more 0. :)

----------------------------------

Anyway, I also wanted to add, most FLAC audio files are created by ripping the audio CD, thus you are not getting  24-bit/192kHz. You are at best getting the quality of the CD that you can purchase.

 

Offline PinheadBE

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #44 on: March 01, 2015, 05:51:59 pm »
In our household, Sony "jumped the shark" (...)

Sorry for this slightly off topic question, but I am french-speaking and I do not understand this "jumping the shark" expression Dave used in his vid, as you did here.
What does this mean ? 
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Offline jpenn

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #45 on: March 01, 2015, 05:54:09 pm »
Is it really about the 1's and 0's? Smells more like number 2 !

BTW I wonder how it would work with video. Maybe it will make my 1080P look like 4K!! :-DD
 

Offline Razor512

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #46 on: March 01, 2015, 06:03:33 pm »
Quote
It is all dependent on the network speed. If you have it hooked to a crap network, it is lag city for you. Amazes me that people fall for this crap. I did not know that the mobo company's spread this crap.

From my experience there are some areas where a better NIC helps with ping times.

When doing a large number of connections between 2 computers connected directly via Ethernet, if you use a program such as ixchariot, At full saturation of a gigabit connection the intel server NIC's tend to have slightly better response times (in both the cheap stuff and the quality adapters, you are with ping times that are a tiny fraction of a millisecond, but the server NIC's tend to be a little better (e.g., sometimes up to 3% better. Though the main benefit is with the lower CPU usage, where the more common onboard NIC's will pull like 15-20% CPU usage while handling a simulated enterprise database load at full saturation, but the server NIC's will only be pulling like 5%

At low loads you can't really tell any difference (I tried and unless you are really close to saturating the gigabit connection, the high end and low end NIC's perform pretty much the same (the low end stuff just use more CPU usage while performing the same)

The main benefit of the "killer" NIC is simply the QOS software. it allows you to set up QOS rules so that your gaming traffic can have a higher priority, and thus have lower latency. The issue is the results are not as good as when you set up the QOS rules on your router (which then take into account the network traffic for your entire network (thus preventing a torrent download on another PC from hurting your gaming experience.

If you want something better than the killer NIC for less money, then go with the intel NIC's, you get the benefit of their hardware acceleration so when you fully saturate your gigabit connection, you can be sure that you will be getting slightly better response times as compared to if you were using the onboard realtek stuff.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2015, 06:23:53 pm by Razor512 »
 

Offline Richard Crowley

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #47 on: March 01, 2015, 06:07:45 pm »
In our household, Sony "jumped the shark" (...)

Sorry for this slightly off topic question, but I am french-speaking and I do not understand this "jumping the shark" expression Dave used in his vid, as you did here.
What does this mean ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #48 on: March 01, 2015, 06:10:16 pm »
In our household, Sony "jumped the shark" (...)

Sorry for this slightly off topic question, but I am french-speaking and I do not understand this "jumping the shark" expression Dave used in his vid, as you did here.
What does this mean ?

LMGIFY........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

Hope this helps.
 

Offline PinheadBE

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Re: EEVblog #719 - Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
« Reply #49 on: March 01, 2015, 06:34:02 pm »
Thanks.
Got it  :-+

(Sorry again ....)
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