Netflix has detailed an upgrade to its Android app which should reduce buffering and make audio sound better and easier to hear over background noise. It’s been made possible thanks to the adoption of the xHE-AAC codec, which a Netflix blog post says should “improve intelligibility in noisy environments, adapt to variable cellular connections, and scale to studio-quality.” Netflix’s use of the codec was announced earlier this month, and is available on devices running Android 9 and above.
xHE-AAC uses metadata to solve a few different audio problems people have when watching shows on mobile devices. Netflix explains this is often a problem of loud background noise making content hard to hear, combined with weak and tinny phone speakers that sound bad when you try to put up the volume. Inconsistent dialogue levels also mean you have to constantly turn your volume up and down between shows.
Netflix says xHE-AAC offers better Dynamic Range Control, a technology that reduces the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of a show. Quiet content is made louder so you can hear it over background noise, and the volume of loud content is brought down to prevent clipping, all in theory without sacrificing audio quality. Netflix also says that the volume of dialogue is kept consistent between shows.
Finally, the codec also supports “seamless bitrate switching,” which means it should work better in environments with inconsistent internet speeds. Netflix added similar adaptive bitrate functionality to its TV apps back in 2019.
Netflix says that user testing has demonstrated the benefits of the codec. Volume changes between content are “noticeably down” and viewers switch away from using their phone’s built-in speakers 7 percent less often with the new codec. Netflix says it hopes to bring the codec to other platforms that support it. For those keeping track, iPhones have supported xHE-AAC since the release of iOS 13 in 2019.
Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell talks about Valve’s exploration of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for gaming and beyond, in an interview with New Zealand’s 1 News. Although Newell admits that the idea of having your brain interface directly with a computer sounds “indistinguishable from science fiction,” he says developers would be making a “silly mistake” if they ignore the area.
Newell says that Valve is currently working with OpenBCI headsets to develop open-source software with the aim of making it easier for developers to understand the signals coming from people’s brains. At its most basic, this could allow software to understand whether a player is enjoying a game, and adjust the experience accordingly. For example, games could turn up the difficulty if they sense a player is getting bored. But Newell’s more ambitious ideas involve actually writing signals to people’s brains, rather than just reading them.
Newell suggests our ability to experience existing games is limited by our physical body — or “meat peripherals” as he puts it. But interfacing directly with a player’s brain could open up a lot more possibilities. “The real world will seem flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you’ll be able to create in people’s brains,” Newell says.
Valve has spoken publicly about its work on brain-computer interfaces before. Back at 2019’s Game Developers Conference, Valve’s principal experimental psychologist, Mike Ambinder gave a talk on the company’s work in the area, VentureBeat reported at the time, covering many of the same possibilities and use cases that Newell outlines in his recent interview.
Beyond their use in gaming, Newell says that BCIs could help with other areas of human life like sleep. “One of the early applications I expect we’ll see is improved sleep — sleep will become an app that you run where you say, ‘Oh, I need this much sleep, I need this much REM,’” he says.
Despite the possibilities, Newell admits that brain-computer interfaces carry their risks. He says that the idea of a BCI making someone feel pain is a “complicated topic,” and adds that the interfaces will be susceptible to viruses like other technologies, suggesting that they’ll need similar safeguards in place.
“Nobody wants to say, ‘Oh, remember Bob? Remember when Bob got hacked by the Russian malware? That sucked — is he still running naked through the forests?’” Newell quips. “People are going to have to have a lot of confidence that these are secure systems that don’t have long-term health risks.”
Regardless, it sounds like Valve doesn’t have any plans to commercialize its research just yet. Newell says that they’re making such rapid progress that any device risks being outdated once it’s gone through the slow process commercialization. “The rate at which we’re learning stuff is so fast,” Newell says.
Other high-profile companies currently exploring brain-computer interfaces include Facebook, which is working on a way to allow users to type with their brains, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is attempting to develop a less-invasive way of connecting a computer to the human brain.
You can check out more of Newell’s thoughts on the potential for brain-computer interfaces in the full write up from 1 News, who he also recently spoke with about Valve’s future game development plans.
ESPN Plus says it will issue partial refunds to customers who paid for a UFC pay-per-view event Saturday only to run into technical problems.
Conor McGregor vs Dustin Poirier was the headline match of the UFC 257 main card, which was set to get underway at about 10PM ET Saturday. To watch, ESPN Plus subscribers, who pay $59.99 per year for the streaming service, also paid $69.99 for Saturday’s event. But users in the US began reporting a blackout on the ESPN Plus app Saturday evening that lasted through some of the earlier fights on the main card.
A spokesperson for Disney, which owns ESPN, said in an email to The Verge on Sunday that the company was “aware that a technical issue prevented a portion of users from accessing the early part of the ESPN+ pay-per-view event, and we apologize for that experience. We worked as quickly as possible to identify and resolve the issue.”
The spokesperson didn’t say what the specific issue was, but it affected some users in the western US and was resolved by 11PM ET, according to the company, in time to see the signature fights. Users were affected between a few minutes to more than an hour.
The company says it will provide partial refunds to users affected by the outage. Customers who paid for the fight through a third-party platform like Apple, Roku, Google, or Amazon, will need to seek refunds from the platform, but Disney/ESPN says it will work with those companies on the refund process.
Q Acoustics bravely enters uncharted waters, but out-of-character sonic shortfalls let down an otherwise decent first effort
For
Thoughtfully designed
Vast hub connectivity
Punchy, room-filling sound
Against
Lacks dynamic and rhythmic expression
No dedicated control app
Stands are expensive extras
It’s a simple fact of life that the more there is to do, the more there is to prioritise. For Q Acoustics’ first all-in-one streaming speaker system, the Q Active 200, the British speaker specialist could have focused most of its attention on the streaming side of things – that is the unchartered territory here, after all. While the brand has some degree of experience in powered speaker design, this is its first proper active streaming proposition.
But the Q Acoustics Q Active 200 appear to be a speaker-first design, given the ambitious acoustic engineering on show here. Get the speaker part right, as you’d hope a firm with such plaudits in the field would, and you’re halfway there.
Build
(Image credit: Q Acoustics)
If you were expecting an active set of speakers resembling Q Acoustics’ current range of standmounters, then the Q Active 200’s design may raise a few eyebrows.
The boxes are narrow, deep and in a beautifully finished matte white – so far, so Q Acoustics. But instead of the usual tweeter and mid/bass woofer decorating each façade, there is a rectangular grille in the top corner that hides two round, 58mm BMR (balanced mode radiator) drive units.
Q Acoustics Q Active 200 tech specs
(Image credit: Q Acoustics)
Transmission 24-bit/96kHz
Spotify Connect Yes
AirPlay 2 Yes
UPnP Yes
Bluetooth Yes
Inputs Line-level/phono, optical, HDMI
Drivers 114mm woofer, 2x 58mm BMR
Voice control Google Chromecast, Amazon Alexa
Power 100W per channel
It gives the classy cabinets a unique, neatly minimalist look that might sit well in contemporary designed living spaces – but the design is likely to divide opinion.
Q Acoustics has chosen to use a pair of BMR drivers in each cabinet in preference to conventional cone units. BMRs have two big advantages: they deliver both midrange and treble (and a bit of bass) from their modestly sized forms, so avoiding the need for a separate tweeter and mid/bass combination and the distortion generating crossover that goes along with it. And they also radiate sound uniformly across a 180-degree plane, reducing the usual tendency for speakers to create a listening ‘sweet spot’.
The drivers’ diminutive size, extended frequency response and wide-dispersion talents make it a practical choice for a product such as the Q Active 200.
Their positioning on the speaker – the dual BMR configuration can sit either on the inside top corner or outside top corner, depending on which way round the speakers are placed – brings some benefits too. According to Q Acoustics, the asymmetry in the acoustic path lengths from the BMRs to the baffle edges improves diffraction characteristics. It also offers flexibility in positioning: for far-field listening (further away or to the sides) they should be positioned to the inside, or for near-field listening, on the outside.
Of course, there’s only so much quantity and depth of bass a 58mm driver can dig up, which is why Q Acoustics has integrated a ported 11.4cm woofer into the rear of each cabinet. This brings driver cooperation and crossovers back into the mix, but Q Acoustics has carefully considered that.
The upper BMR (each BMR has its own DSP and amplification channel) operates the full frequency band from the crossover point with the woofer to 20kHz, whereas the lower BMR is designed to only work up to 5kHz. The woofer fires onto a rear baffle, its output guided through vents at the side of the cabinet, with sophisticated DSP keeping the sound from all the drive units time aligned.
Whereas the floorstanders in the Q Active range, the Q Active 400, use the P2P bracing as primarily engineered for the company’s Concept 300, these standmounts adopt a ‘dart bracing’ technique, which fixes the rear-firing woofer directly to the front of the cabinet to provide it with mechanical stability.
Q Acoustics has designed a pair of dedicated stands for the Q Active 200, the Q FS75, more modest evolutions of the innovative stands designed for the Concept 300. For an extra £350 ($499) per pair, they feature a skeletal, highly rigid ‘space’ frame made up of rods in compression, stabilised by cables in tension, and have fixings that enable them to be bolted to the standmounters.
Features
(Image credit: Q Acoustics)
Q Acoustics has taken the decision not to house the streaming architecture and connectivity inside the speakers, but instead in a separate connectivity hub. There are two hub options to choose from, depending on where your voice control loyalties lie. The Google Home box (which we have on test) offers Google Assistant voice control, plus built-in Google Chromecast, while the Amazon Alexa box variant works with Alexa.
It’s a shame one box doesn’t cover both bases – there must be plenty of people who use Alexa, for example, but also stream music via Chromecast. And what if your allegiance changes down the line? Q Acoustics says it’s looking into making each hub individually available, though hasn’t yet confirmed its plans.
Whichever hub you choose, you get the same physical inputs – HDMI (ARC), optical, and an analogue input that is switchable between line level and moving magnet. Essentially, that means everything from a CD player to a TV to a turntable can be connected to the hub and streamed to the speakers. Digital signals from the HDMI and optical inputs are all converted to 24-bit/96kHz, as are analogue signals through the 24-bit analogue to digital converter (ADC).
Rather than the hub streaming these converted signals to a master speaker that passes the other audio channel to the slave speaker, it sends the two channels of audio directly to the speakers over a 5GHz wireless connection, helping ensure accurate syncing between them.
The hub is also a streaming gateway to AirPlay 2 for iOS users, Spotify Connect for Spotify Premium and Family subscribers, and Bluetooth. Support for the Roon music platform is on the way via a future firmware update, too.
If you own a NAS drive with music, UPnP support is onboard for playing networked music files up to 32-bit/192kHz (which subsequently gets down-sampled to 24-bit/96kHz for the transmission to the speakers). Q Acoustics will soon release its dedicated Q Active app for helping owners with registration and set-up, control hub customisation, software updates and basic controls, however it won’t be an all-encompassing music control app from which to browse networked or local music libraries and access streaming services.
That’s a shame, but third-party UPnP control apps aren’t hard to come by, and those using Tidal (via Chromecast) or Spotify (via Connect) may well choose to use the native apps anyway. For accessing our NAS device, we use the free MConnect and BubbleUPnP apps on an Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy S20 phone during our testing and both work fine.
Alternatively, there’s the compact RF remote control for adjusting volume, pause/play, skipping tracks and changing inputs. A strip of touch buttons across the rear of each speaker’s top panel more or less mirrors remote control, too. They’re nicely responsive – sometimes more so than the UPnP apps we use – although as there’s a short delay in the call and action, we would have liked visual confirmation of the communication from, say, a visible LED. There is an LED by the controls on the top panel that flashes to signify this, but unless you’re standing you won’t be able to see it.
Sound
(Image credit: Q Acoustics)
Q Acoustics has successfully built a reputation for excellent passive speakers in its 15-year history – especially in the budget market. Its products have consistently included class-leading clarity and entertaining punch, and those talents have predictably found their way into the Q Active 200 too.
We play Radical Face’s The Missing Road from Tidal via Chromecast, and the melodic acoustic strums, cello and vocal humming come through with an eager lucidity, the presentation startlingly clear and direct, not to mention room-filling. You shouldn’t necessarily expect Q Acoustics’ typical richness and warmth here, but the active speakers’ leaner, more forward tonal stance gives them a likeable sense of snappiness.
We stream over Bluetooth and, though we expect the usual drop in quality, the Q Active 200 keep things surprisingly tight, losing a bit of solidity and space compared with UPnP and Google Chromecast playback, but largely proving a worthwhile method of playback.
The BMR drivers keep their end up, spreading sound generously and evenly around our test room and ensuring the speakers produce an impressively big presence for their compact footprint. They have the volume and punch to make easy work of John Williams’s climactic compositions, and while that rear-firing woofer is limited in terms of absolute bass depth, it proves taut and terse as the bassline in SBTRKT’s Wildfire (played over UPnP) comes into play. Bass blends in nicely with the rest of the frequencies, too, proving Q Acoustics has done a good job with the crossover between the BMRs and low-frequency driver.
To help optimise positioning, each Q Active 200 has three settings selected by a manual switch at its rear. There is ‘Positioned close to a corner’, ‘Positioned close to a wall’, and our preferred ‘Free-space’, which we find works best not only when the speakers were out in the room, but also near the back wall – possibly because the speakers’ bass output isn’t overbearing and the midrange is a little forward. As always, we’d recommend experimenting to see which setting works best in your listening room.
We switch from Q Acoustics’ dedicated stands to a pair of Custom Design FS104 Signatures and the presentation sheds some clarity – from both a sonic and aesthetic point of view, we’d recommend the custom-built accessory. But, while the Q FS75 extracts more from the speakers, the overall differences aren’t huge. Just note that due to the rubber strips beneath the speaker, secure placement on a third-party pair of stands may be a little fiddly.
(Image credit: Q Acoustics)
There’s a bit of harshness in the upper mids, which remains audible even after a week of use. It’s not the end of the world, but it does mean higher-pitched voices can start to grate after a while. It does nothing for a dense, cymbal-heavy track like Touché Amore’s I’ll Be Your Host either.
But our biggest issue with the Q Active 200 is their combined lack of dynamic and rhythmic expression. With Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Galleon Ship, the piano and vocal pairing comes through clear and solid, yet is bereft of real feel.
Everything seems to ride along one audio plane, lacking forward momentum and dynamic tiers. It doesn’t help that the sound staging isn’t particularly well layered either. Together, these things mean the track isn’t all that interesting or emotionally grabbing.
Whether trying to grasp the grooves that underpin Thundercat’s Them Changes, or nail the rhythmic logistics integral to the SBTRKT track, the Q Active 200 don’t quite tie the musical strands together with the coordination necessary for them to thoroughly entertain. They conduct themselves in a startlingly clear and upfront manner, but beyond that they fail to captivate.
Offering an entire audio system inside such a compact and convenient concept is no easy task, but those such as the KEF LSX and KEF LS50 Wireless II, which sandwich the Q Acoustics in price, show it can be done. The Q Active 200 ultimately fall well below those standards, delivering a cruder listen than we’d expect at this not-insignificant price.
Verdict
It’s rare, if ever, that we publish sentences featuring both ‘Q Acoustics’ and ‘disappointing’, but here the Q Active 200 cannot hide behind their thoughtfully considered spec sheet and speaker engineering. It’s a shame because the brand has done a lot right – there’s vast connectivity on offer, a whole lot of speaker engineering, and dedicated stands for those who want them. But performance-wise, they simply aren’t entertaining enough to recommend.
It’s often the case that first efforts are followed by better second ones, and we very much hope that turns out to be the case here.
SCORES
Sound 3
Features 4
Build 5
MORE:
Read our guide to the best all-in-one streaming systems
Italy’s data privacy authority has ordered video sharing app TikTok to temporarily block the accounts of any users whose ages can’t be confirmed, Reuters reported. The order comes after the death of a 10-year-old girl in Palermo, whose parents told authorities their daughter was participating in a “blackout challenge” she saw on the app. The child died of asphyxiation, and authorities are investigating whether anyone invited her to try the challenge.
The Italian Data Protection Authority ordered TikTok to block unverified users in Italy until at least February 15th. The company told The Guardian it had not found content on its platform which would have encouraged the child to participate in the challenge, but said it was cooperating with the investigation.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday but a spokesperson told Reuters: “Privacy and safety are absolute priorities for TikTok and we are constantly working to strengthen our policies, our processes and our technologies to protect our community and younger users in particular.”
Under its terms of service, users must be at least 13 years old to sign up for an account on TikTok, but Italian authorities said it’s easy to get around that rule. TikTok has a version of its app in the US for children under 13— TikTok for Younger Users— which is meant to limit the content and interaction available to those users.
As it skyrocketed in popularity, TikTok spent much of the past year adding more privacy controls for younger users’ accounts. It introduced remote parental controls and allowed parents to change kids’ privacy settings on the app. Earlier this month, TikTok updated the default privacy settings for users between 13 and 15 years old, putting limits on who can see and comment on their videos.
But children’s privacy advocates have argued that TikTok does not do enough to protect children on its platform. Its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance paid a $5.7 million fine to the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for an earlier version of TikTok called Musical.ly, over allegations it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) in allowing users under 13 to sign up for the app without their parents’ consent.
The temporary suspension of unverified accounts in Italy bans TikTok from “further processing user data for which there is no absolute certainty of age and, consequently, of compliance with the provisions related to the age requirement.”
Facebook says some users were logged out of their accounts unexpectedly Friday due to a “configuration change,” and the issue has been fixed as of Saturday morning.
“On January 22, a configuration change caused some people to be logged out of their Facebook accounts. We investigated the issue and fixed it for everyone earlier today. We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” a Facebook company spokesperson said in an email to The Verge.
So Facebook, heard it was a “configuration change”.
to the engineers who fixed the issue and patiently tried to explain the cause to us to no avail. https://t.co/AUARhCZ7W2
— Facebook App (@facebookapp) January 23, 2021
The problems began late Friday ET, with users on the r/Facebook Reddit board reporting they were receiving “sign in” prompts from their Facebook apps, but they had not signed out.
Engadget found that iPhone users appeared most affected by the log-out issue, noting that users of Facebook’s iOS app were having difficulty logging back into their accounts when using two-factor authentication. Most were able to log back in, but the authentication codes needed were taking a long time to reach users.
An intelligence agency has just confirmed that the US government does indeed buy location data collected by its citizens’ smartphones. In a memo sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and obtained by TheNew York Times, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted that it buys location data from brokers — and that the data isn’t separated by whether a person lives in the US or outside of it.
Data brokers are companies that, as the name implies, collect and sell people’s information. The companies collect people’s location information (and much more) by paying app makers and websites for it. Once the broker has the information, they can aggregate it and sell it to whoever’s willing to pay for it — including the US government.
In the memo, the DIA says that its “personnel can only query the US location database when authorized through a specific process” that requires approval from senior leadership, the Office of Oversight and Compliance, and the Office of General Counsel. The DIA also says that in the past two and a half years, it’s been given permission to look through US device location data five times. You can read the full memo below.
here’s the defense intelligence agency memo confirming that the government is buying commercially available smartphone location data w/o a warrant pic.twitter.com/DXGH24PRph
— chris mills rodrigo (@chrisismills) January 22, 2021
The Fourth Amendment requires government agencies to get a warrant before they can compel data from a third party like a phone company — a rule most recently upheld by the Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision. But the DIA argues that the ruling doesn’t apply to getting that same data from brokers because the agency isn’t invoking the power of law. In the memo it states that the agency “does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes.”
The American Civil Liberties Union disagrees. In a statement provided to The Verge, senior staff attorney Ashley Gorski said that “the government cannot simply buy our private data in order to bypass bedrock constitutional protections,” and called on Congress to “end this lawless practice and require the government to get a warrant for our location data, regardless of its source.”
We’ve been aware for a while that government agencies have been using data brokerages to get around having to obtain a warrant for location information, but some legislators are working to close the loophole. Sen. Wyden, who requested the memo be made, has a bill called “The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale,” which aims to “ban the government from buying information that would otherwise require a court order or a warrant.”
YouTube is finally enabling HDR support on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. The HDR support works across existing Xbox One S / X devices and new consoles like the Xbox Series X and Series S. As long as you have a TV or monitor capable of displaying HDR videos, the YouTube app will now automatically switch to output HDR content.
The YouTube app on Xbox has never supported HDR previously, despite HDR being available on the PlayStation 4 since 2019. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X launched in November without YouTube HDR support, and it’s still not available on the PS5 yet — a step back from what was available on PS4.
The YouTube app on Xbox Series S.
Engadget notes you can confirm that HDR is outputting correctly from the YouTube app on Xbox by enabling the “stats for nerds” panel (see above). A lot of TVs will also display a HDR prompt or switch to a HDR mode when content is played.
Now we just need more HDR content to become available on YouTube. Some of the best HDR content on YouTube is still test videos that were uploaded years ago. We’re starting to see more trailers and videos come with HDR options, but the vast majority of creators don’t upload content with HDR.
Is Apple’s investment in its own streaming offering worthwhile? If you look at the bare numbers, you can clearly say: no. The iPhone company is said to have taken at least one billion US dollars so far for Apple TV + in order to have series and films produced or to buy them exclusively. Probably the sum is even higher if you look at the announcement about planned film projects. So far, there is almost no income. The group recently extended its free phase for buyers of various Apple products – you can get a maximum of 19 free months this way. Apple TV + is significantly cheaper than the competition at 5 euros a month.
Even a newcomer is ahead of Apple The first figures are now available as to what percentage of the market share Apple has achieved so far. Despite the free phase and the bargain price, this should only be three percent in the important home market of the USA, according to a survey by the analysis company Just Watch. The information comes from the fourth quarter 2020. This would put Apple significantly behind Netflix, Disney + and even the NBC streaming service Peacock, which has just started. The latter, half a year old, is said to have landed at six percent. Apple TV +, however, has been running since November 2019.
Apple TV + is actually everywhere It’s not because of the distribution channels. Apple now offers its TV app on countless devices – from televisions (also from the competition Samsung) to streaming boxes and sticks to Playstation and Xbox. Apple is surprisingly open to the system, which is a novelty for the company. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to help TV + at the moment – not even the fact that the service is being practically imposed on the many millions of Apple customers. According to Just Watch, Netflix was unbeaten ahead with 31 percent market share in the USA, Amazon Prime Video followed with 22 percent. Hulu held 14 percent and Disney + – thanks to numerous popular franchises of the chart toppers – came up 13 percent. This is followed by HBO Max with nine percent. Both HBO Max and Disney + and, as mentioned, Peacock started after Apple TV +, so Apple could not use its lead.
Apple has a special strategy Why the service is so bad cannot be seen from the figures. However, Apple took its own approach from the start. The iPhone manufacturer only uses original content, which has to be produced in a complex manner. The repertoire on offer is extremely small and the pure exception. Accordingly, customers have to be convinced by the content offered – and it is by no means for everyone. It is unlikely that Apple will give up. The group is apparently relying on the long-term effect that TV + can achieve. This strategy would not be new – and Cupertino has deep pockets.
Apple is apparently about to publish excellent quarterly figures. At least that’s what most analysts on Wall Street assume. The consensus forecasts indicate that the iPhone company has managed to break the 2020 mark in the last three months of the year to skip billions of US dollars in sales – more precisely, it should even 102, 5 billion. That would be higher revenues in a quarter than ever before. The old record was 91, 8 billion and was set the year before.
Target price on 152 Dollar increases Some observers even go beyond the already decent consensus forecast. The well-known Apple analyst Katy Huberty of the bank Morgan Stanley believes that Apple will deliver at least 20, 2 billion dollars in sales. It therefore raised its target price to 152 dollars. The rate is currently at over 136 dollars after it had risen by almost 3.7 percent on Thursday.
High profit expected The reason for the positive forecasts is primarily the business with iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Per. It is said to be going great, as many users had previously postponed the upgrade because they had been waiting for the first 5G devices from Apple. Analyst Huberty also expects a profit per share of USD 1.00 50. That would also be a record. Wall Street’s consensus forecast here is also a very decent $ 1 41 Dollar.
Best launch in half a decade According to Huberty, the iPhone was 12 “Apple’s most successful product launch in the last five years”. That manifested itself in a successful Christmas quarter “and beyond”. In addition, there is an apparently fantastic business in China. The country claims to have overcome the Corona crisis and is already showing economic growth. There the iPhone 12 should meanwhile have a market share of 20 percent have more than any other iPhone in years. In addition, there are surveys according to which Apple was able to take away a lot of customers from the market-dominant Huawei – so many users have never been “switched” as in the past 15 months, so Huberty.
Wearables and services business Other Apple product categories are also doing well. These include in particular iPads and Macs, which developed a surge in demand during the pandemic due to the home office regulation. There is also the wearables category with Apple Watch and headphones. The service business strongly promoted by Apple is also expected to grow – although Huberty is more cautious here than her colleagues. Still, the App Store is said to have had a strong quarter. Apple will release its quarterly figures on 27. January present. (bsc)
One service with 15 messaging applications. It is not a dream but the new platform of the former CEO of Pebble. It’s called Feeber and gathers all messaging services (even iMessage) in one place. The price? 10 $ per month.
by Bruno Mucciarelli published 22 January 2021 , at 10: 41 in the web channel Whatsapp Telegram Facebook Slack Skype Instagram
Eric Migicovsky, is the former CEO and founder of Pebble, the company born a few decades ago and which gave birth to successful smartwatches with e-Paper display. The developer announced on Twitter the launch of Beeper or its new “ jewel ”: a universal messaging app that allows you to merge up to 15 different services , including iMessage, thanks to the open source protocol Matrix and not only. A solution that many are looking for to simplify the use of messages and that Beeper seems to do well even if paying well 10 $ per month.
Beeper: how the system works ” unifier ”?
Beeper meanwhile it is not a real news if not its name. In this case, in fact, before today, the platform was called NovaChat . From today, however, it is available as a Beeper and can be downloaded on request for both Windows and for macOS, Linux, iOS and Android . As mentioned, however, at least at the moment, one needs to fill out a form to receive an invitation, as it is still an almost Beta phase of the system.
But Beeper’s potential looks interesting. From the official website it is possible to observe how the application is capable of supporting up to 15 messaging systems such as: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Android Messages ( SMS), Telegram, Twitter, Slack, Hangouts, Instagram, Skype, IRC, Matrix, Discord, Signal and Beeper network. Yes, that iMessage is also among the services that can be replicated on Beeper, and this is perhaps the most striking novelty of the new service because so far no one had ever made such a thing possible since iMessage is a proprietary service of Apple but above all because it works only and exclusively on the ecosystem Apple.
How does it work? There is a little trick devised by the former CEO of Pebble. Migicovsky in fact allows iMessage to work also on Windows, Linux and Android if the user has a Mac that is always connected to the Internet so that it can function as a bridge. Alternatively, the software house already has recycled “jailbroken” iPhones ready , on which the Beeper app is installed, which it will send to users and which will allow access to the service. In all this Beeper costs 10 dollars per month although it is not clear if an iPhone is also included in the price.
Finally, you should know that all the various bridges needed to unify the various messaging services through the Matrix network are distributed for free on GitHub. This way the developers can host the backend on their servers. But be careful because the Beeper app is not open source, but it is possible to use Element, the Matrix open source client.
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The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor has presented its first smartphone after separating from Huawei. The View 40 has so far only been announced for the Chinese market, but could also come onto the market in Europe at a later date.
Huawei had deported its former subsidiary brand Honor last November. The Chinese tech giant justified this step with the shortage of technical components for the mobile business: Due to the trade embargo in the USA, it is difficult for Huawei to get parts for mobile phone production.
Among other things, it is difficult for Huawei to get access to mobile processors. Manufacturers such as TSMC no longer supply Huawei with parts, which is why the production of its own Kirin chips is difficult.
Honor concludes contracts with manufacturers As a company that is independent of Huawei, Honor does not meet these restrictions directly. Honor says it has already signed contracts with producers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung and Sony. The View 40 is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1000 +.
Thanks to further partnerships with AMD, Intel and Microsoft, Honor could also develop notebooks. The US government recently banned Intel from working with Huawei.
It is also likely that Honor will get a Google license. That would mean that Honor phones can use the Play services in full – including the Google Play Store. This is not the case with Huawei: Because the tech giant can only offer smartphones with an alternative and far inferior app store, smartphone sales are collapsing in the western market. Huawei can only compensate for this because sales figures in China – where Google services are already blocked – are developing strongly.
Last week we learned Realme is gearing up to launch the Watch 2 and Watch 2 Pro soon as the smartwatches were mentioned in the source code of Realme Link app. While Realme hasn’t divulged anything about these wearables yet, the Watch 2 has bagged FCC certification, revealing its design and specs in the process.
The Realme Watch 2 bearing model code RMW2008 has the power button on its right side and features a 1.4″ 320×320-pixel resolution TFT color touchscreen like the first-gen Watch. But the detachable silicon straps now come with Realme’s “Dare To Leap” slogan that we’ve already seen on the rear panels of a few of its smartphones.
Like its predecessor, the Realme Watch 2 has heart rate and SpO2 sensors onboard and is IP68 dust and water-resistant. However, it now packs a significantly larger battery – 305 mAh up from 160 mAh.
The Realme Watch 2 has Bluetooth 5.0 BLE onboard for connectivity, but it’s only compatible with Android 5.0 and above. Although we might see the smartwatch gain iOS support by the time it arrives in the market.
The Realme Watch 2 measures 257.6 x 35.7 x 12.2mm and will come with workout modes, automatic step counter, sleep tracking, and message and incoming call notifications. It will also feature meditation mode and music and camera controls.
Considering the information revealed by FCC, the Realme Watch 2 doesn’t appear to be that big an upgrade over its predecessor, but we’ll reserve our final judgment until the smartwatch goes official. In the meantime, you can read our Realme Watch review.
The Munich philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin has underpinned his appeal to collect user location data via the Corona Warning App (CWA). Such tracking on smartphones would be the easiest way to be able to trace infection chains more easily in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, he said on Thursday in an online debate in the authorities mirror . It is important to learn from the example of South Korea. There a tracking app is used for quarantine monitoring, not for tracking sources of infection.
According to Nida- Rümelins should make the location data collected via the CWA available to the health authorities in the event of a positive corona test. The person concerned put his smartphone there on the table and “they read it out”. This could also be made “pseudonymized, appropriately encrypted,” said the former Federal Government Commissioner for Culture. But it would be important to provide “traceability of identities”, “since there are also false-positive tests” and nobody should be sent into quarantine for free.
Acceptance will remain That the acceptance of the Corona app, which was previously based purely on tracing, with such a tracking process is falling , the vice chairman of the German Ethics Council does not believe. “Our user data, which we leave behind on various platforms, are used by tech giants almost at will for economic purposes and are controlled by the NSA,” he said. Many people knew this after the Snowden revelations, but did not change their behavior despite the associated dangers to privacy.
Most people kept the location services activated on their smartphones because it was convenient , explained Nida-Rümelin. For health protection purposes it would only have to be legitimate “that we give a few harmless incentives” for users to feed an upgraded CWA with their location data. He is sure that people will join in when they go to the hairdresser or restaurant or want to order an espresso on the ICE: “I’m not worried here at all.”
Already in one The draft bill from March for a reform of the Infection Protection Act was intended to allow the health authorities to track location data, argued the ethicist. A “legal consideration” has already taken place at least in the Federal Ministry of Health. This approach could therefore be used to identify contact persons for infected people. Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) quickly deleted the passage from the cabinet after protests.
Attendees the online debate of the authorities mirror.
(Image: Stefan Krempl (screenshot))
Accelerate contact tracking Nida-Rümelin is nevertheless certain that everything must now be done to ensure that the offices are in place set to be able to digitally trace infection chains. Otherwise, there is a risk of a third or fourth lockdown in a few weeks if the numbers with contagions rise again. According to him, such tough measures are likely to cause many millions of deaths worldwide, for example through hunger. Data protection is very important, “but we also have to weigh this fundamental right with others”.
Overall, Nida-Rümelin was extremely concerned “that we in Europe are responding to the epidemic challenge with such helplessness to have”. If there wasn’t a vaccination, there would only be one shutdown after the next. South Korea, on the other hand, initially had the second highest infection rate after China, but “thanks to a very clever containment strategy in the end” it was just under 1000 Dead landed, “we at over 40. 000” in to 50 million inhabitants.
There is no tracking app in South Korea of infection chains that locate their users. The local health authorities proceed largely manually, but also rely on credit card data and videos from surveillance cameras. The quarantine app is mandatory, but will be deleted afterwards. She had a massive data leak at the end of July.
No question of data protection Anyone who says data protection prevents health is “talking nonsense”, countered the Thuringian data protection officer Lutz Hasse Nida-Rümelin. If the CWA were to be compulsory, this would not only have practical consequences, for example in terms of controllability. There would also be “an outcry across the country,” says the lawyer. A tracking app with GPS, the current location and other metadata is also likely to “run out of steam in our digital Middle Ages” because health authorities still work with paper and there is a lack of staff. In view of only “theoretical added value”, such a measure would be “currently meaningless”.
The chairman of the professional association of German laboratory doctors, Andreas Bobrowski, also warned against excessive zeal. The CWA is quite successful with millions of users and thousands of patients who shared positive infections almost daily. In principle, however, it is an “add-on to normal medical business”. On the basis of hundreds of phone calls with those who tested positive, it was found that “a lot of people know exactly where they got infected”, especially in their families or in old people’s and nursing homes. You could also pass this information on to the office.
No mandatory use “In spite of all its expressiveness, we do not want to ignore the relationship of trust and the need for data protection,” said Bobrowski in favor of maintaining a voluntary reporting system via the app. A few screws can still be turned, but there shouldn’t be any compulsory use.
At least in Schleswig-Holstein, by far the largest number of health authorities can now also communicate digitally with the laboratories, reported the Lübeck. There is also a dedicated laboratory app that can also be used to send the test result to the smartphone. The crucial time between the smear and the notification has become significantly shorter. The Sormas system for fast digital tracing did not fail either: Originally, all health authorities should be connected to 2023, now this is to create “a year earlier”. The federal and state governments have a more ambitious schedule: according to them, the program should now be installed nationwide by the end of February.
The Arche is well-built and beautifully designed in its simplicity, and is a great choice if you’re after a high quality DAC for your headphones, but if you’re using the Arche in your main setup, stick with the XLR outputs, as the RCA alternatives are sporadically noisy.
For
Beautiful, solid design
Exceptional isolation from USB noise
Can tune headphone output impedance
Against
Inconsistent RCA noise levels
No fixed line output level setting
Aus Hi-Fi mag review
(Image credit: Future)
This review and test originally appeared in Australian Hi-Fi magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s sister titles from Down Under. Click here for more information about Australian Hi-Fi, including links to buy individual digital editions and details on how to subscribe.
French company Focal makes loudspeakers and headphones. Some of its headphones are pretty high-end. As are some of its loudspeakers. So the company has lately taken to producing high-end electronics to drive them.
For example, the Focal Astral 16 A/V processor and amplifier runs to more than AU$30,000. Here we’re spending some time with the more modestly priced Focal Arche DAC and headphone amplifier.
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Equipment
In one way the Focal Arche looks very different. It comes with a curved section of metal. The straighter end has a home amongst the heat sink slots on top of the unit. Install it there and it forms a stylish headphone stand for your Focal (or other) headphones.
Apart from that, the layout of the unit is fairly conventional for this kind of product: deeper than it is wide, a flat well-built (over 4kg) slab of electronics.
On the front is a blue-on-black display screen. To its left is a 6.35mm stereo headphone socket. And to the left of that is a 4-pin XLR socket for balanced headphones. To the right of the display is a combination rotary control/press button. The principal use of that is for output level and switching the unit in and out of standby. But it also invokes the main menu, in which turning the wheel takes you through the options.
(Image credit: Focal)
On the back panel are the line outputs: a pair of unbalanced RCA sockets and a pair of balanced XLR sockets. The inputs are also at the back. There’s a USB Type-B for plugging into your computer, an optical digital audio input, a coaxial digital audio input and a pair of RCA sockets for analogue inputs.
The USB Type-A socket is only there for upgrading the firmware of the unit. As we write, the Focal Arche is on its original factory-installed firmware and no newer version is available for download. The regular digital audio inputs support PCM up to 192kHz sampling with 24-bits of resolution.
With a connection to a computer via USB, the unit supports PCM with up to 384kHz sampling and 24-bits of resolution and Direct Stream Digital in regular, double and quad speed versions (i.e. DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256). The driver objected to 32-bit audio. For Windows, it’s best to choose the ASIO driver rather than WASAPI. The latter worked with everything except for DSD256.
Every time I tried DSD256 with the WASAPI driver, not only did no sound come through, but it broke something in the driver, requiring a reboot of my computer before the DAC would produce any sound at all (with any format).
The Focal Arche employs dual AK4490 DAC chips for digital to analogue decoding. These are specified to support sampling rates up to 768kHz, use up to 32x oversampling, use 32-bits of resolution, offer five filter curves and run with a THD+Noise figure of 112dB.
The Class-A headphone amplifier is dual-mono and is rated at 2x one watt at 1kHz for impedances less than 32Ω. The frequency response is specified at 10Hz to 100kHz, S/N ratio at 116dB and THD at less than 0.001%. No additional criteria are provided for those numbers. I guess that these specs are for the amplifier alone. (16-bit PCM is going to bottom-out at a signal-to-noise ratio of around 97dBA for example.)
In the settings menu the unit can be set to ‘Low’ or ‘High’ gain and an amplifier mode can be selected for each of the current model Focal headphones, plus there are non-Focal settings labelled ‘Voltage’ and ‘Hybrid’. There was a definite mechanical click from within the unit when switching from some settings to others, suggesting to me that there’s a relay doing something in there.
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Installation
I did the great majority of listening and testing using my computer as the source.
For full use that required that I install USB Audio Class 2.0 drivers from Focal’s website.
Keeping one’s web presence in alignment with slower-moving formal documentation can be tricky, nonetheless it’s a good idea to take some effort. So when reading the ‘Firmware Update’ section of the manual, in which the first step is to ‘Go to http://www.focal.com/arche’, one really should not be confronted with a ‘403 Forbidden’ message.
Oh, you can navigate your way there through the usual links (here you go) but why put it in the manual if it’s going to be wrong? And why not put a redirection on the now-defunct page to send new owners to the correct page?
That wobble aside, there were no problems installing the drivers, and no problems with any of my Windows player software in using them. Windows reported supported PCM resolutions of 16- and 24-bits from 44.1kHz up to 384kHz.
Levels
I found I had to be a little careful using the line outputs. There wasn’t a ‘fixed’ line level output. It was controlled by the front-panel level control, just as the headphones were.
I initially made the assumption that, like some other DACs which lack a fixed line-level output, the appropriate thing to do was simply to advance the gain to the maximum position – an indicated ‘99’ on the front panel – and then use my amplifier’s volume control for level.
When I later checked the manual, that is indeed what Focal suggests. Note, also, that there is only one system-wide level. The unit does not maintain separate levels for headphones and line output. Indeed, inserting headphones does not stop the line output. If you have it on 99 for your main system and then decide to listen with headphones, do make sure you turn down the level.
But as the unit always switches on with the volume level set to ‘20’, which is way too low both for headphones and the line output, I’d recommend you never switch the unit off at all. This will also mean that you will also need to go into the settings menu to switch the Arche’s automatic standby function off.
Also, I would further suggest that you don’t use the ‘High’ gain setting. I tried it at one point while the RCA outputs were connected to my audio system. It did seem rather louder than usual for a given system output level setting. But as I played the bonus Yes cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s America from Fragile, there was this weird crackle on the right channel.
Well, not precisely a crackle, but rather a ‘crack’ on certain very loud notes. For a few moments I revelled in this: a little something previously unheard! But then I started to worry. Was there something wrong with the right-hand KEF LS50 speaker I was using (supplemented by a Krix subwoofer, but that’s not relevant here).
So I started fiddling with levels. I turned the Focal Arche down to ‘80’ output instead of ‘99’, and turned up the amplifier to restore the speaker output to the same volume level as previously. There were no more ‘cracks’… which I found a bit odd, because it was presumably input overload distortion, but input overload distortion doesn’t normally sound like that.
(Image credit: Focal)
Listening sessions
I should note that the unit does not decode MQA. If you use TIDAL, the TIDAL app will unfold any MQA high-resolution content and the Arche will indicate on its front panel display the higher sampling rate… or at least it will if you press the front panel control button or rotate the knob.
The default state of the display is a large pair of digits indicating the output level, with the selected input source in smaller type above it. To see sample rate and digital audio format you have to manipulate the control. After a few seconds it reverts to the previous state. There’s no option for changing the display mode permanently.
It’s good that the format and rate can be seen, but I’d prefer to have them showing by default. This was brought home when I discovered at one point that 192kHz tracks were coming out at 96kHz. I was using JRiver Media Centre and had previously set it to convert anything above 96kHz sampling to 88.2kHz or 96kHz as appropriate because it had previously been used in conjunction with my review of an AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt DAC.
As I keep saying in all my reviews, it’s very easy to accidentally use the wrong output settings, but, of course, most normal people are not hi-fi reviewers and will therefore be setting up their computers for just the one DAC, not darting around between different ones.
I didn’t have an amplifier with XLR inputs available, so for loudspeaker listening used the RCA outputs. Generally the unit sounded excellent, just as I’d expected. But every so often there was just a little background noise, sounding somewhat like random electrical noise. Which of course had me suspecting some breakthrough of the noise from my home computer network, delivered by the USB connection.
I therefore unplugged the computer from the network as well as from mains power, but it made no difference. I only heard it in one listening session, so after a while I started to doubt that I’d heard it at all. There was certainly no such noise when using headphones. And, of course, it’s with headphones that one is most likely to hear such untoward things.
I used a pair of Focal Elear dynamic headphones – Focal’s ‘entry level’ model, priced at AU$1,599 – as well as Oppo PM3 planar magnetic headphones (the brand has now ceased to operate in this space), a pair of ancient Sennheiser HD-535 open-back models and a set of Final Audio B3 in-ear monitors (AU$729). The Arche’s output was set to ‘Elear’ for those headphones, of course, and to ‘Hybrid’ for the others.
The first thing to note was that with none of the headphones was there any chance of the output limits of the Focal Arche being approached. ‘Ample’ is not the word to describe the output on tap. It could be destructive if one wanted. You need not worry about your headphones being supplied insufficient power.
And that translated into a real authority in performance. At this point I’ll pause to slightly regret the order in which I did things. As is my usual practice, the measurements were made after the listening sessions had been completed. I do that intentionally because I’m fearful that my listening impressions may be coloured by knowledge of the unit’s objective performance.
But in this case I was later to discover that the one thing done by the named amplifier output settings was switch between three different output impedances. That means that to the extent that a set of headphones has an uneven impedance curve, its tonal balance will vary according to the setting of the amplifier.
That seemed to have an affect upon the performance of the Final Audio B3 in-ear monitors. These use dual balanced-armature drivers (sans crossover) and delivered a fuller, richer, more balanced performance with the Focal Arche than they did with the DragonFly Cobalt mini-DAC. It turns out that the ‘Hybrid’ setting of the Arche implements a 10Ω inline output impedance, and I’m thinking that this provided a fortuitous adjustment of tonal balance.
The effect was subtle, and the B3 buds sounded excellent anyway with the Cobalt, but they sounded even better with the Arche. I would have liked to experiment more with listening using the different modes, but the loaner review unit was by then already overdue for return.
With the Oppo PM-3 headphones, the sound was more traditional (they are closed back). They have an even impedance across the audible frequency band so they don’t really care about (modest) output impedances. They delivered an extremely solid performance with the Focal Arche amplifier. I went back in time to the debut Black Sabbath album. The thunder at the opening of the first track was utterly clean and deep. When the first riff cuts in, the drums pierced through the mix to hover above it all, even the toms. They were surrounded by substantial air, filled with their natural reverb. The hi-hat bit appropriately.
Going back to the Final Audio B3 in-ears, there was enormous life and dynamic range across all the music genres I tried (including prog rock, jazz, female vocalist, baroque and classical). The best sound came from the open-backed Elear headphones. Focal knows what it’s doing by providing a first-class signal to drive its own products: The Elears were open and airy, limitlessly detailed and beautifully balanced.
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Final verdict
If you’re after a high quality DAC to drive your Focal headphones (or really, any brand or model of headphones at all), the Focal Arche is a fine unit.
My same enthusiastic recommendation will also be the case if you intend to use the Focal Arche in your main system… but only if you’re using the XLR outputs.
Laboratory tests
I calculated the internal impedance of the Focal Arche’s headphone output at 2.5Ω. It delivered 1.9VRMS into a 300Ω load, which is around 12mW or nearly 11dB above the sensitivity rating used by most headphones. Into a 16Ω ohm load, it delivered 1.65VRMS, or 170mW and more than 22dB above sensitivity rating.
I figured that was that… but a couple of days later I started to wonder about the different amplifier settings. The Voltage setting is supposed to be a voltage amplifier, in which the unit need not provide much current. The Hybrid setting is supposed to combine voltage and current amplifier functionality. And the other five settings feature outputs optimised for particular models of Focal headphones. Would they make a difference?
Indeed they would! To four significant figures at nine different measurement criteria, the Voltage output setting was unique, while the Hybrid and Elear settings were the same, and the Utopia, Clear, Elegia and Stellia settings were the same. It was with the Voltage setting that the internal impedance of the Focal Arche was around 2.5Ω. With the Hybrid and Elear settings, it was around 10Ω. With the Utopia et al setting it was around 17.5Ω.
I did not repeat the measurements on the ‘High’ gain setting, just did a quick check to see what effect that had on level: it boosted it by 12dB. Into high-impedance loads you can expect the maximum output from the headphone amp to be about 7.5VRMS. Clearly there’s never going to be a shortage of power even with high-impedance, low-sensitivity headphones.
The unit has fairly aggressive output protection. Everything went smoothly at low gain, but when I tried to measure maximum output at high gain into low impedance loads (16Ω), I kept tripping the protection. Oh, don’t worry that this may constitute some limitation on performance. Oh no… the last measured output voltage with a 1kHz test signal into that low impedance was around 5.2VRMS. That equates to 1.7 watts – not milliwatts, watts – output. Add 32dB to the sensitivity rating of your earphones or headphones, and that’s the maximum it will deliver with the high gain setting. Enough, in other words, to do major damage to you or your ear gear in very short order.
All that was in voltage mode, which you will recall has a low output impedance. In Hybrid mode, with an output impedance of around 10Ω, the unit could be wound up to the maximum level at which point it was producing a ‘mere’ 4.7VRMS output. Or 1.4-watts and 31dB above the sensitivity rating.
The unbalanced line level outputs were a bit lower in voltage than the norm, delivering around 0.95RMS in ‘Low’ gain mode and 3.8VRMS in ‘High’ gain mode. Of course, that’s with the level control set to maximum in both cases.
Speaking of the level control, it has 100 indicated levels. Down very low each numerical increment amounts to around 1.5dB. At higher levels that drops to 1dB per indicated number, then 0.5dB and then from level 60 and up, 0.5dB per two number increments.
Graph 1 (Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi magazine)
Graph 1 shows the frequency response of the Focal Arche with 44.1kHz signals and you can see that the frequency response is sensible: it rolls off a little above 8kHz to be down by around 0.35dB at 20kHz, then drops rapidly beyond that. There’s also a very slight roll-off in the bass, with output down by 0.4dB at 10Hz.
Graph 2 (Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi magazine)
Graph 2 shows the frequency response with 96kHz sampling, and you can see that the bass was the same while output was down by 0.3dB at 20kHz, 0.7dB at 30kHz and 1.2dB at 40kHz.
Graph 3 (Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi magazine)
Graph 3 shows the frequency response with 192kHz sampling, and you can see that the the 96kHz performance is simply continued: –1.8dB at 50kHz, –2.6dB at 60kHz, –3.4dB at 70kHz and –4.3dB at 80kHz.
Clearly Focal has chosen the DAC filter settings to return a flatter, more extended frequency response than many other DACs.
With 24-bit audio, tested with both 96kHz and 192kHz sampling, the noise performance I measured from the Focal Arche was simply weird. Let’s start with the easiest bit.
With the XLR outputs, the noise was at –108dBA consistently with repeated measurements. And that figure was maintained irrespective of whether my Surface Pro 2017 was plugged in or not. When it was plugged in, it was connected by wire to my home network, and that is one horribly noisy affair. The great majority of DACs let some of this noise out into the analogue output.
The Focal Arche did not. Measurements, plugged in or not, were identical… at least they were when I was using the XLR outputs. But when using the RCA outputs, things were very different. First, the results I gained were inconsistent. From measurement to measurement they ranged from –79dBA to –97.6dBA.
Again, it didn’t matter whether the computer was plugged in or not. To double-check that, I pulled out a network streamer and connected it to the Focal Arche by optical digital audio, just to ensure that there was no way any electrical interference could be carried. It resulted in a middling –89.8dBA noise level.
To double-check the test setup, I then switched in a different DAC which I knew to provide good performance. Its RCA outputs delivered a noise performance of –114.5dBA when using exactly the same rig I used for the Arche.
Graph 4 (Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi magazine)
Graph 4 illustrates the variance of the noise levels depending on the output used. I have included a couple of the RCA outputs with and without the connected computer plugged in, plus the optical connection. They are the five traces up relatively high.
The white and green traces near the bottom are via the XLR outputs. The purple trace right at the very bottom is the RCA output from the comparison DAC. The point of that is to demonstrate that the test arrangement wasn’t the problem.
Note, also, that all the output measurements – apart from the one for the comparison DAC – had a weird bump in the noise around 60–70kHz of varying levels. This would not, of course, be audible, but it is just a little bit strange.
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