chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org (07/27/90)
Apologies for getting this to you in dribs and drabs but I didn't take notes. About 1 bit: Moffat sees this as a price/performance technology rather than an advance the state of the art technology. In his view, 1 bit will bring better sound to the mass market but he's not planning to use 1 bit any time soon. The major advantage is better linearity at low levels. He's spent a lot of time listening to a 1 bit player (model unspecified) and found that at lower levels, the sound was quite good. The problem came at higher volume levels when the sound became hard and suffered from classical digital attack. (at this point assumes posture of pouncing tiger) He mentioned some technical stuff about the 1 bit stressing capacitor technology. At some point in the 1 bit chain, you need a capacitor and he thought it would have to operate beyond the range of current technology. About Moffat himself: This is the first time I've met a high-end designer. So this is for you other folks who might be interested in the man behind the machine. He's about 6' with a tousled mop of white hair. Must be one for every assembler bug he had to track down. Dressed very casually in jeans and t shirt. During the demo he sat way off to one side at the other end of the room. He came off as a modest techy sort of guy who was a little uncomfortable with public speaking. He seemed to have really researched his subject (though I didn't get a chance to ask about his DSP background). He started out building modified maganavoxes and graduated to standalone converters. Our club president met him at some hi-fi show and traded him a pair of home-brew speakers for one of the modified magnavoxes. -- ray