April 14, 2025 • 46 mins
Ken and Tom Vaughan of Chord Electronics discuss the importance of headphone and speaker amplification, what to look for, and how DAC technology has evolved. Ken inquires about what makes Chord's new DAC technology so transparent, and how it will influence decision making in the pro audio market.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Metal
Mastermind Podcast. I am your host, Ken Cadellis.
And today we have a very specialguest from Cordy Electronics,
His name is Tom Vaughn. Tom, why don't you say hello?
Hi, Ken, how you doing? I'm good.
It's really, really cool to havecordy electronics here today.
(00:35):
I have so many questions when itcomes to headphones and
amplifiers and all this kind of stuff in the match between all
this. And it actually at a really
interesting time because as you guys know on Metal Mastermind
here I am a professor of audio engineering and audio technology
is such a passion of mine. And actually this week I was
(00:57):
just going over electromagnetismand microphone technology and
how all of this stuff plays intothe quality of sound that we
have. And Cordy Electronics
specializes in headphone amps and also speaker amp fire
technology, which I thought would be a very interesting
(01:17):
conversation to have here. So, Tom, why don't you just give
a little back story about what Cord Electronics does and maybe
your own personal experience getting into it?
Absolutely. Sounds sounds good.
So here at Cord Electronics, we were founded in 1989 by John
(01:38):
Franks, the owner of the companyand still our analog designer in
obviously small company classic in the garage kind of starting
out. So the first generation of power
amplifiers built by us were all built in John's garage.
And there are a few workers herestill to this day that remember
working in that garage and and winding Transformers and all
(01:59):
this. Sort of.
Wow, amazing. Yeah, John actually comes from
an aviation background. He used to work for Marconi,
who's a military manufacturing plant just up the road from us
here designing power supplies and he specialized in switch
mode power supply designs and thought, well, you know what
industry really is lacking in efficiency.
(02:21):
This is in 1989 was the audio industry and he keen interest in
in listening to audio equipment and all that sort of stuff.
So he decided to build an amplifier and that amplifier
that he then got working and tested and and was all well and
good. He took to the BBC and he went
to the BBC and said just try this amplifier through a friend
(02:45):
who lived locally who also happened to design speakers for
the BBC. He said you need to take this to
the BBC. So he took the power amplifier
along to the BBC and to this dayit's the fastest authorised
piece of technology the BBC haveallowed because they were so
blown away with the quality theywent, oh, this is amazing.
So instead of completely, completely gutting one of the
(03:07):
studios up in London, they decided to just replace the
power amplifiers and it was likenight and day in that studio.
So that's that's how we started out providing power amplifiers
for the professional industry. Now again, back in the late 80s,
early 90's, the BBC dictated essentially what the studios
(03:27):
were to have installed as a mainsystem.
So places across the world from there on with the BBC started
outgoing. OK, so how do we upgrade our
studios? And then it went to Abbey Road,
it went to Ayr, it went to British Grove, excuse me,
Metropolis, which are the biggest studios now in London.
(03:48):
And then from there it went international because what Abbey
Road had Skywalker Sound needed over in LA, sorry, over in San
Francisco. So Skywalker Sound took it on.
Then all of a sudden Sony took it on and it just grew and grew
and grew and grew and grew. So us as a business, that's how
we were, that's how we started out.
We were always a supplier of professional amplifiers and
(04:10):
installations within recording studios, mastering studios, all
that sort of stuff. So that's, that was how we
started out as a company. From there we looked and went,
Oh no, all of the studios have got power amplifiers, what do we
do now? So we've sort of saturated the
market a little bit with power amplifiers and went, well,
(04:31):
there's a hi-fi industry over there.
So should we go and see if we can make some money over there
as well, of which we have been doing ever since.
Now my job here at Cord Electronics is a sort of like a
two-part role. And I've, I mean, I've been
working here since I was 15, making cables, counting bits.
Wow. Yeah, little bits from here and
(04:52):
there during during the school holidays.
It was like, OK, Tom, are you free?
I'm like, yeah, I'll come and work.
I mean, of course. So yeah, it was, I mean,
they've, they've treated me so, so fantastically well.
But I also did a sound engineering degree, so
specializing in mastering and audio electronics were my 2 sort
(05:12):
of roots within. Fascinating.
So I mean like art has really been like a a big family to you
for. Oh yeah, yes, very much.
Of your life. Very.
Much so that is so cool. And yeah, you know, it's
interesting because I came in tocord understanding it as a hi-fi
brand, not necessarily in the professional market, but its
(05:34):
roots really were in the professional.
So it shows how much influence you guys have had in other
markets to the point where, you know, newcomers think it's it
it, it started in Hi-fi. So that's really fascinating.
Exactly that I mean so I mean tothis to this day.
So 1/2 of my drugs, so it's because because we're again,
we're already a small company, so quite a lot of us have got
(05:56):
multiple different roles. 1/2 ofmy job is here in the office in
the pump house manufacturing andbuilding and repairing some of
the older power amplifiers and new power amplifiers for current
customers helping. I also help John Franks design
various other bits and bobs around.
But it's, but it's pretty much specifically just John.
He sort of goes, yeah, this is good, this works.
(06:16):
And then I sort of tweak it a little bit maybe for the
professional market and then of which leads me into the
second-half of my job, which is actually looking after our
professional clients around the world.
You might call it a sales role, but it's more like Technical
Support. I just go along and say, try
this and they listen to it and go, I want one.
I'm like, hey. Well, yeah, certainly I could
(06:38):
see the appeal and for, for contacts for anybody here.
Tom and I, we met at Mexico in the Soundcheck Expo and the Pan
American Audio Educators Conference, ex, you know,
exhibit where we were basically just in passing.
I was I was already an artist with Odyssey and you guys are
(07:00):
very close friends with Odyssey.You.
I was actually told that you andChris are are quite good
friends. We certainly are, indeed.
And that's, and that I feel likeit's just such a beautiful thing
to see manufacturers, you know, sort of partnering up in this
way to provide just a quality solution for anybody who's
(07:22):
looking to do professional audio.
And all of our discussions during that time were
fascinating to me. And I'm always curious to know
more about this kind of stuff asa, as a very big nerd myself.
And I've been on, I guess you could say a bit of a quest for,
(07:43):
of course, finding what's the best solution for my studio.
And you know, I had actually a very a simple problem here that
needed some fixing, which is that I bought the wrong
headphone app. And for anybody who is working
with or has tried different types of headphone brands and
(08:04):
different types of impedances for headphones, you'll also have
discovered that headphone amps do matter and how they drive the
headphone. So I want to just start off here
with this conversation about theimportance of headphone
selection for headphone amps. And you know, maybe can you
(08:25):
share some of your thoughts on your experience with that, Tom?
Of course, absolutely. Yeah.
So obviously headphones, I mean,again operating in sort of the
headphi industry and then looking at it from the
professional industry as well, different impedances have a huge
impact on the electronics and how the electronics goes about
(08:45):
driving those particular designs.
So these ones, these orders, theheadphones that we are both
using, they're magnetic planer, which is a very thin foil with a
trace on it, which is very, verydifferent to your standard
headphone design, which is your classic dynamic driver, bit like
a speaker, but on a much, much smaller scale.
(09:06):
You know, magnetic coil and then, sorry, a coil of wire in a
magnetic field. And then you change the coil and
then change the current in the coil in it and it drives the
headphone again, very, very different.
But saying that they have very different impedances across the
board. It depends on which sort of
headphone manufacturer you choose.
(09:26):
Depends on kind of the, the sound quality of it and also how
easy or how difficult it is to drive.
Some say the harder the headphone to drive, the better
the sound quality, but that's not necessarily true because my
some of my favorite headphones are actually really easy to
drive. Specifically not I think it
(09:49):
might be even this set that I'm wearing at the moment.
This is work set. I have another one at home.
So, but we have, you know, various, various other bits and
bobs. So the higher the impedance, the
hard generally tends to be, sorry, the easier to drive ish.
It's sort of like a fine balanceto be honest with you, but the
lower the impedance, the harder it is.
(10:11):
Like if you start dropping 20 ohms, 15 ohms, 10 ohms, all of a
sudden you're starting to look into speaker realm and you need
a whole bunch more current, a whole bunch more power available
to be actually to drive those cones in their entirety.
Interesting because it's like it's sort of like a seesaw,
right? Yeah.
So you know, and for for for those of you who are not quite
(10:33):
familiar with electronic terms, impedance is resistance, right.
So if you were to picture it like like a highway, think of it
like a toll booth right in the middle of the highway.
So exactly it's, it's very, it'svery similar in that way.
So if you have a low impedance, more more current is really kind
of desirable so that you can have all that flow reach your
(10:56):
headphones and drive them properly versus the opposite,
right? Which would take, you know,
maybe only a little bit of powerin order to really drive it,
which is so fascinating to me because this balance, you know,
it's, it's a proportional balance.
You know, anybody who studies Ohm's law has this sort of
understanding, but you know, going into now a headphone amp
(11:20):
technology and how that actuallypowers this.
It's it's so interesting becauseI remember we were talking about
this and how you mentioned that the the the cord headphone amp
can actually change according towhat it's plugged into.
Is, is this. Correct.
So, so essentially it doesn't sort of send a signal to the
(11:42):
headphones and engage the impedance.
There are bits of technology that do that.
But again, so this this actuallyharks to a lot of our designs
specifically is if you build them right the first time from
the ground up, you don't need todesign compromises into the
final design. So, so bear with me for a second
because because it does get, I'll try to keep it as simple as
(12:06):
possible. But like our digital to analogue
converters, I'm sure we'll touchon this a little bit later on as
well. With regards to the FPGA versus
the standard DAC chip, our poweramplifier designs, including our
digital to analogue converter driving circuits as it were,
they don't send a signal to be able to read the impedance.
(12:28):
Now there are other manufacturers that do that.
And by doing that, what they do is then change the output
impedance according to what the headphones read at.
Now output impedance is is. This is now getting really
difficult with regards to power amplifier designs.
Output impedance is is it is directly tied to damping factor,
(12:50):
which is how well an amplifier can actually control a speaker
cone across the frequency band. Now the lower the output
impedance, technically the better the power amplifier
design. This gives us the ability to
essentially control any cone at all across the board, no matter
(13:13):
whether it's a speaker cone coming down at one ohm, or
whether it's a speaker cone or atransmission line, or whether
it's a set headphones coming in at 600 ohms.
The lower the output means the more ability to control a wider
band of overall driver impedances.
Now what other manufacturers do is they try to read what the
(13:34):
headphones are and then change, potentially change the op amp,
change the output impedance accordingly because they've got
different gain settings. Now that's a that's a convenient
way of doing things, but they are limited to what that op amp
or what that amplifier design circuitry can do.
Then swap the gain out and go, OK, well, maybe we need this
(13:55):
gain for this level of impedancefor this headphone.
Great idea. Not to mention that like every
single piece of electronic is affecting the signal in some
way, shape or form. Exactly that, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep, a spot on, of course. But by doing that, what they're
doing is they've gone OK. So it's this, how can we build a
(14:16):
compromise to counter the fact that we have a circuit that
can't necessarily drive the headphones properly?
So they've gone OK, We're going to up the game for this side
kind of headphone. We're going to up the game for
this kind of headphone, whereas what we do here at Cord
Electronics is because we designthe amplifier from the ground
up, we don't use other people's manufacturing designs or
concepts or anything like that. We have a ridiculously low
(14:38):
output impedance to be able to control any impedance of
headphone or speaker or anythinglike that across the board
without any hesitation. So it's literally a case of just
plugging it in and the amp will go, OK, yeah, cool, this is it.
And just turn the volume up. If it's harder to drive, just
keep on going. It basically it's like because
you guys have so much current that's going through that port
(15:01):
that basically your volume is the impedance.
Essentially, yes, yeah. So I mean we, we, we, we control
the the actual small signal going into the power amplifier.
But yes, fundamentally that is that is what we're doing we're.
That's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's just a more
simpler, even I would say even more pure approach to, to just
(15:24):
giving as much power as possibleand then gauging it yourself,
what feels right in your headphones.
That makes a lot of sense to me because like, how could you
build, you know, one for all? I mean, it's, it's really just
going to have to be let's just open the floodgates and you
become the dam essentially to control.
That that's exactly it. It's spot on.
(15:45):
So certainly with, you know, with regards to Alto, I have one
here. So the headphone amp that we
were just talking about this one, I mean, it's, it's a, it's
a power amplifier as well. It, you know, it can do 50 watts
into four ohms. It's, it's unbelievably
powerful. So we've had to attenuate the
headphone output to about half the amount of power that the
actual amplifier can offer. But by actually having that much
(16:09):
power available, it can drive any headphone on the market with
regards to any level of impedance, but also have an
unbelievable amount of headroom available as well.
So it's kind of nice it's not working very hard when you've
got headphones plugged in and that's what gives it the ability
to give you the most accurate and and unbelievably high
controlled. That's not English, but that
(16:31):
kind of, you know what I'm trying to say, like the timing
is everything so. You know, one, one quality that
I certainly felt with cord electronics is it's an
effortlessness to reproduce the electrical signal.
So it, it just sounded more natural to me, which I think is
(16:51):
very hard to replicate. So kudos to you guys.
I mean, you guys have been doingit already for a long time.
But man, it's definitely always amazing to hear 'cause you know,
I've been, I've been in mastering rooms, I've been in,
you know, recording studios and broadcasts and live sound and
all these different applicationsof audio and this kind of tech
(17:12):
with headphones always intriguedme.
And, and, and also of course with speaker amplifiers as well,
it's just a fascinating part of the side of audio of, you know,
sound reproduction that I think gets a little bit understated
sometimes or in other, in other markets when it comes to
audiophile. Sometimes I believe it's even
(17:33):
overemphasized in some ways thatsome product manufacturers might
even blow smoke in in their clients.
Yeah, you know, so. So to speak.
Of course. Yeah, that's a nice way of
putting it. It's it's one of those it's it's
being the guy that builds the amplifiers, services the
(17:54):
amplifiers, helps John develop the amplifiers, all this sort of
stuff. And and being so engrossed in
the amplifier technology, I knowquite a lot of various bits of
what's going on now. Lots, so many people in the not
just the professional industry, but the hifi industry, the audio
industry, full stop. They see a power amplifier go,
it's a power amplifier. What do you want it to do?
(18:16):
So they go, you want me to spendhow much on a power amplifier?
I can get one for a couple of 100 bucks down the road, which
is 4 times the amount of power. And it's the way that that power
is delivered so accurately and with with a ridiculously high
damping factor. So that again, I come back to
that, that ability to control the be it headphones or a
(18:37):
speaker driver timing is everything with our ears.
That's, you know, that's how we can tell anything.
It's how we tell 3D orientation with regards to sound.
It's it's the micro nanoseconds between our two ears and the way
that our brain interprets it is,is all down to that accuracy.
And that's what we strive for here at Chord electronics is
(18:57):
just speed. I.
Have a question, so of course damping factor because I've I've
I've heard the term before but could you equate damping factor
to like the brakes in a vehicle?Yes, I'm just trying, yes,
essentially if, if you really want to look at it, it's a bit
more like suspension to be honest with you, because it's,
(19:20):
yeah, it's, it's how quickly a damping factor can be in
multiple things. There's there's damping factor
in electrical terms, there's damping factor in a physical
term with regards to speaker currents, for example, the
rubber, the tension that holds the, the, the cone in place has
a damping factor it has. And essentially it results in
(19:43):
the ability to either stop and start the cone or give way to
the cone stopping and starting. So it's the same as sort of like
suspension, whether you have really hard suspension like a
BMW or whether you have really soft suspension in like a
Bentley or something like that. You know, you're driving over
potholes and it just feels like you're going, you let this,
whereas in a, in a BMW. But that speed that that is
(20:09):
actually for a, for a speaker cone will deliver you more
accurate timing between the two speaker cones and and our ears.
So actually the lower the damping factor, the more wishy
washy it becomes, the more Bentley and the more comfortable
more loose. Yeah, the, the more artificial
bloom in the low end the speaker's going to represent and
(20:31):
it's going to feel like it's, it's honestly, it's a thing.
People love people. Absolutely.
So valve amplifiers, for example, I have a lot of respect
for them. Glowing light bulbs look pretty,
feel great, sound wonderful for probably about half an hour.
It feels like you're sitting, sitting in a chair with a
(20:51):
whiskey and a cigar and you're just, you know, big high backed
chair. And it's all like, Oh yeah, this
is this is lovely. But it's only for our for us as
humans, as a perception, a maximum of sort of half an hour
of listening 45 minutes before the ears go, you know what?
Something ain't quite right though.
It's like having an audio cuddle, but you can only have it
for so long. Whereas the higher the accurate
(21:14):
transient response of a power amplifier to be able to then
control a speaker cone, the morenatural it becomes listening.
Now it might be harder to experience.
It might be like, oh, it's harsh, or it's all, there's too
much information, all this sort of stuff.
Well, actually that's not true. What you're hearing is what is
(21:35):
meant to be happening within themusic.
And by giving you all of that timing information, it gives you
a better 3D perspective of the depth of field, not just your
stereo field, but the depth of field.
And a strange one, I know. And it sounds a bit hi-fi, to be
honest with you. But like how tall the sound can
get and how all of a sudden you're looking at listening to
an orchestra, for example, and you can pick out the second desk
(21:58):
of the second violins. You can pick out the third
trumpet or trombone coming from over here rather than just it
sort of sounding like a big orchestra.
And then that leads to longevityof listening experience.
So you can sit down for an hour and a half, you can sit down for
two hours listening to this kindof stuff and you don't get
fatigue because it's more natural rather than.
(22:19):
Fascinating. That that wishy washy effect.
I mean, it, it, it makes a a tonof sense with, with transient
information, that's where most of the information that we
recognize with instruments, placement, spatiality, it all
exists in the transient. That's like our audio info
bubble, right? It's at the head.
All that, you know, sustain and all that good stuff, which, you
(22:43):
know, I, I, it's not a problem for speakers to reproduce that
information. But for, for, for the transient,
yeah, that's, it's all about timing and speed, right.
So those that are a lot more LAXand have a more quote, UN quote,
romantic feeling, they are, yeah.
They're not designed for critical listening.
(23:04):
They're designed for easy listening, which is a very
different experience. It's so, you know, knowledge of,
of choosing your speakers reallycomes down to cause I've, it's
always, it's always about preference in many ways.
But then there are some cases where it's specifically about,
you know, clinical detail that depending what you're do using
(23:25):
the speaker for, it does matter,which is where we start to
separate the pro market from thehi-fi market in some ways.
So and so that's fascinating. And I mean, behind all of that,
I mean, you know, let's get intosome of the digital to audio
conversion that you guys are doing because this was something
new to me too that I didn't understand before we started
(23:48):
actually speaking on this subject.
And what DAC chips are doing differently than what you've
mentioned, which is an FPGA? What?
Well, let's just start there. What is an FPGA First off?
And then what is a DAC chip and how do they different?
OK. So yeah, diving down into the
digital route with regards to called electronics and the and
(24:11):
the way that we do things. So an FPGA is a field
programmable gate array. It's essentially a electronic
blank canvas. It's a processor that's got
millions of transistors in it that are programmable rather
than. So in a standard PC, when you
look at a processor, it's a, it's a million billions of of
(24:34):
transistors operating at billions of times a second.
But it's, it's only will do whatit's told to do, input in and
input out. Whereas a, an FPGA, it's
essentially a processor, but youprogram those transistors to sit
in a certain way and then that'sit.
They're set. You can reprogram them if you
wanted to, but rather than information in information out,
(24:57):
they sort of go information in and it's like, what do I need to
do with this? Oh, I know what I need to do
with this. Then process it.
So it's like a static chip rather than a dynamic.
Exactly that, yeah. So that that's what an FBGA
does. Now, an FBGA can be used for
anything at all. There's a really pretty high
demand for them at the moment inthe world, shall we say, for
(25:19):
certain military applications over in Europe, for example.
So there's, there's a pretty high demand for Fpgas for that
reason, you know, flying helicopters, you can drive a
crane, you can operate a remote satellite with it or something,
anything, literally anything. And what we've done is we've
(25:41):
dedicated all of that power for the sole purpose of converting
digital music to analogue music just for our own experience.
So that is, that's an FPGA, Zach.
We are one of, I would say two companies, maybe three, that use
(26:01):
an FPGA for the sole purpose of actually converting digital
through to analogue signals. Now lots of other manufacturers
declare themselves as all, we'rean FPGA DAC and it's sort of
like, are you though, or are youjust using the FPGA as a control
point, which is another. It's a very sort of, it's a
keyword. It's a hot word that people were
(26:22):
starting to clock onto and go, Oh yeah, we're an FPGA DAC
company. I'm like, are you though?
So it's, it could be a bit, you know, a bit risky out there, but
so, so anyway, so we, we do use it for the digital to analogue
filtering and processing and allthis sort of stuff.
Whereas every other manufacturerin the world, they are subject
(26:45):
to the big guns and their designs where they go.
I've designed a DAC chip, say for example, Texas Instruments.
I'm not going to, I'm, I'm not afraid of naming names because
it's one of the biggest manufacturers in the world of
electronic components. Texas Instruments will turn
around and say, I've designed a DAC chip and it's amazing by the
way. And these are the statistics and
(27:07):
you go, OK, that's pretty good, but it's not as good as one of
ours. But the other manufacturers will
go, well, this is the best in the world that we can buy
because that's, that's it. That's so every high end
manufacturer will buy one of these DAC chips And the only way
to improve or change the sound quality is to change the
electronics around it. But the fundamental part of it,
(27:31):
the actual digital to analogue conversion is still limited
across all other manufacturers to this one design, which this
one manufacturer has come up with, whereas we've gone down
the other route and gone. That's not what we want.
We don't want to use these guys because we know how to do it
better. The the the actual digital to
analogue converter. Our our digital programmer here,
(27:56):
Robert Watts, There's loads and loads of information out about
how he does his designs and and all this sort of stuff.
You can find it online that dives into the real technical
insurance and outs because we have No Fear about explaining
how we do things, why we do things and the way that we do
things. Rob's like this is it.
(28:17):
The only thing that is protectedis the code.
So that's, you know, it's 256 bit encoded.
It's good luck to whoever wants to try and get into that.
So, yeah, so that's, so that's every other manufacturer is
subject to these standard DAC chips.
Now they are designed to a pricepoint, which is why they are
(28:39):
limited. Their timing is OK, their
distortion is pretty good, but still OK.
And other bits and bobs that arefiltering is just OK.
There's nothing really that stands out about those fun,
those, those designs which they then produce mass produce for,
for the market. Whereas what we do again coming
(29:00):
down to the FPGA thing, because we have absolute control over
everything. We have better timing, we have
better distortion, we have better accuracy when it comes to
noise floor modulation is a is ahuge thing that we are the only
manufacturer that is eliminated noise floor modulation.
So just to dive into that reallyquickly, because that's that's
(29:23):
actually a pretty fundamental part about what makes.
Very curious, what is? What is noise much like?
So noise floor modulation. So if we if we were in a room
talking together and or somebody, or we were sitting
down listening to somebody playing the guitar, or we were
listening to classical music andorchestra, a small, small 10
(29:43):
piece band or anything like that, the noise floor stays
where it is. OK, So we can have a
conversation. The noise floor does this and it
goes, I'm the noise floor and I'm flat, I'm down here.
Noise floor ventilation. When it comes to digital, to
analogue conversion, what happens when you can start
converting the digital signal into the analogue one?
The noise floor starts pumping like this.
(30:06):
For every digital signal, every pulse, the noise floor starts
pumping like this. And like every sample.
You get pretty much yes. So for us as human beings, we
can't, we, you can't go, Oh, I can hear the noise floor
modulation. It's, it's bumping, it's, it's
moving up and down. But what we suffer from when
(30:27):
listening to noise floor modulation, when the noise floor
is pumping up and down like thisis listening fatigue.
And it happens quickly. You'd be surprised at how not OK
it is to listen to music througha really bad DAC because you can
only, you'll only be able to listen to it sort of like 1520
minutes and go, OK, this sounds and all of a sudden your ears
(30:50):
will go, everything will start becoming really flat.
Everything will start coming like it's really shallow.
The noise, the stereo field starts coming in and you just
sort of, you don't realise, but it's a subconscious thing to do
with noise form modulation. And this is what happens.
Whereas if you eliminate that noise form modulation, so you
move it from doing this to down here, it becomes natural.
(31:12):
And for us as human beings, all of a sudden we're listening to
music. So that removes that problem
psycho acoustically out of the equation entirely.
And that's a proven thing. That's that's that's something
which is. So let me ask you a question
about this, because this is, this is a different kind of
noise that I that, that you're talking about.
As far as what I'm perceiving here.
(31:34):
It's, it's the noise that rides the wave rather than let's say
ground home that we're talking about here, right, 'cause noise
in that sense, that's, that's from your power supply, it's
coming from the wall, right? It's circulating the entire
building versus what is actuallyin the voltage of the signal.
Yes, yes. Interesting.
(31:55):
Spot on, spot on. Yeah.
So it's not your standard. So, so, so for example, if we're
in a loud room, I'm not talking about the noise floor, that
would then just the noise floor's gone up.
But that noise floor, it also that noise floor, it's so it's
an electrical noise floor essentially.
It's the the one that I'm talking about, not a noise
floor. But also you've got to remember
that noise floor, even if it is loud, it won't start unnaturally
(32:18):
doing this. It's loud and then it's quiet,
and then it's loud, and then it might go quiet again.
So us as human beings overall, we're not used to the whole
pumping situation, the whole noise floor modulation
experience. It's so unnatural for us.
And it's a pretty fundamental flaw in pretty much all designs
(32:39):
of Dax. That's amazing.
Holy crap. So the FPGA, I'm, I'm assuming
because is it, is it because it's just it's a simpler chip.
It it's, it's got it's. It's it's about 5000 times more
powerful than a standard DAC chip.
Wow. So, OK, so because there's
actually an increase in power, you have more headroom and
(33:01):
because there isn't more complicated integrated chip
design work happening, it's literally it's like it's already
got its instructions. So it just does the thing very
quickly, very simply. That's that's, that's quite,
quite amazing. So I mean, that comes down as to
(33:21):
why lots of people say like, oh,why don't you make these?
So, so this product's mojo Mojo 2 is our, is our little, our
portable one. People would ask, oh, it's
battery bad. They think, oh, cool, it is
battery powered, which means it doesn't set power from your
phone or your laptop or whateverthe case may be if you are
portable. But the FPGA requires so much
power that if you plug this, if you plug your phone into it, I
(33:44):
think it would probably drain itin about an hour tops if you
were using it at the same time. So there's, you know, there's,
there's a lot of power going on in this, which is why it is the
size they are, the size they are.
We could get them smaller the size they are because we're
limited to battery technology got.
It so that's, does that mean that because of a lack of power,
because I, I had this experiencewhen I was listening to the Mojo
(34:06):
versus the Hugo versus the Alto,I said, wow, well, I mean like
it, it gets better definitely. And is it because of how much
power you give the FPGA? It's, it's not just that it is
actually the size of the FPGA aswell.
So each FPGA is has its own memory cache, it has its own
quantity of transistors within it that we can then program and
(34:28):
of which requires more heat sinking as well.
So the bigger the processor, themore heat sinking it requires,
which is why we jump up in size.So from Mojo, which is our
portable one, we jump to the huge go to that I'm actually
using as my digital to analog converter to talk to you at the.
Moment you're spoiled. To be honest with you, you're
incredibly high definition, so it's great, fascinating.
(34:52):
Oh my God. So I mean like so everything
that cord has been putting out now has been integrating this
type of technology even in your your top tier like products as
well. It's the same technology.
Yeah, absolutely. Size.
It's exactly that, exactly that.So with regards to the we do, we
do have, we sort of have like 2 branches that we specialize in.
(35:14):
I mean, every company has an analog and a digital side.
It just happens that we're the best in the world for the
digital side and one of the bestin the world for the analog side
as well. So the digital side, we have
Mojo 2, Hugo two. We jump up to Hugo TT 2, which
is the the DAC that you tried out when we're at sound check,
that's square one. And then we have our reference
(35:36):
one. Dave, it's about this big.
I don't can't can't display one at the moment, unfortunately.
And then we go sort of go down the analogue route side of
things where we have our power amplifier designs.
So that's where the Alto comes into it.
So we have Alto, we have variousvarious degrees of of power with
regards to monoblocks or stereo units, 500 watts per channel,
(36:00):
750 watts per channel, thousand Watt monoblocks.
And then we jump up to the to the biggest power amplifiers we
make, which are about two and a half 1000 watts per channel, but
they require, they require a lotof fare, a lot of a lot of
aluminium, shall we say so. Yeah, absolutely.
Well now does does cord also offer like full on just
(36:22):
converters and stuff like that for multi channel pro audio
tracking and stuff like that? Not yet.
So at the moment everything is everything is stereo.
Everything we do is stereo. So Rob's been working on various
projects, all this sort of stuff.
(36:43):
We operate a digital, we, we create or manufacture a what I
like to call a digital to digital converter.
So it's called the M scaler which takes the this FPGA
technology that you find in hereand uses it in the digital
realm. So we take a 44.1 kHz file 16
bit and it's a sounds a bit likeup sampling, but it's not
(37:05):
because it uses out what it is, but it uses our technology to
interpret which is what digital to analog conversion is to
interpret what the next set of samples should be.
And it takes that 4444 one 16 bit and it converts it up to
705.6 kHz, 56 bits. So the dynamic range goes
through the roof as well, as well as the sample rate, which
(37:26):
of which any of our converters can cope with.
You can Chuck it into this one. It will go all the way up to 768
kHz. So super, super advanced
technology. I can't remember where I was
going that that train. Oh, that train of thought.
So Rob's, Rob's, we have that product.
We've had that product for a fewyears.
Rob's now working on I another product.
(37:47):
We kind of launched it last yearin Munich, high end that also
has an analogue to digital converter on as well.
Now that's something which we'venever really touched before.
But as we are exploring that route, it gives us the
opportunity to then start thinking about, OK, so if we
have a two in two out, maybe then we could do a four in, four
out. And then maybe we can Daisy
(38:09):
chain them up. And then all of a sudden you
have a 16 in out and it's all like, oh, OK, well, this all
starts making sense. We've explored down the route of
with regards to studios and all this sort of stuff.
You know, from the from the historical background that that
we have, I've got a lot of friends in the industry, a lot
of high end studios that are using various different methods
(38:29):
to transport their digital signals right back to the old
days of AES through to Dante andMaddie and all this sort of
stuff. So we're exploring down the
Dante route at the moment as well, of which the learning
curve for us because it's not something we've ever explored
before, but it's it's going verywell.
And we have a working prototype product that uses currently 2
(38:50):
channels of Dante. But saying that it's so easy to
convert that into a multi channel 80 and eight out, for
example. So yes, there's there's stuff on
the books, there's stuff which we are working towards and the
whole point, the whole part of being a manufacturer isn't just
to keep on reproducing the same stuff, it's it's thinking about
what the next step is and where the.
(39:11):
Technology yeah, that's fabulousbecause I I, you know, this is
probably one of those things that is a surprise out of a
company that I misunderstood, but what it really was about.
And I think it's just such a really cool piece of technology
to push this kind of tech, you know, tech forward that others
(39:33):
haven't really quite caught on yet.
Because you know, this has been a question of mine for a while
is like, you know, how can DAX improve beyond going into
something like DSD, which I knowyou've actually talked about to
me as there are some flaws in DSD and I think it has something
to do with this noise floor modulation.
(39:55):
Am I correct in? Assuming that, yeah, yeah,
absolutely. So, I mean, it's a fascinating
thing, DSD. It was originally designed as a
storage format. For studios to go, OK, cool,
we're just going to convert thisto DSD and we can store it away.
Large file sizes, but what was perceived at the time as the the
(40:18):
highest quality available. But it turns out it's there is
there is some question marks over it again.
Rob actually has a whole presentation, an hour long
presentation about DSD, which isvery interesting if you really
want to dive into the depths of the, the technical side of
things. But but the biggest problem, I
(40:41):
mean, obviously we as a manufacturer, we have to make
products that are DSD compatible.
All of our products are DSD 512 compatible.
So you know, right up to ridiculous sample rates.
But we as a manufacturer generally, I said we, I stand
corrected me as a Thomas Vaughan, prefer PCM for some
(41:03):
technical reasons, shall we say?It's certainly more practical.
It's Oh yes, unbelievably more practical.
Yeah. I mean, I mean, imagine trying
to record a session in DSD, like, no, that take wasn't any
good and I can't edit it do it again.
So it's it's great for a classical set, for example, or
if you're recording an orchestra, which is like a live
recording. OK, there are there are
(41:25):
applications for it, but there there are some bits like the the
the bit depth is a is a big flawand the very, very high
frequency spike shall we say they can alias down into the
audio spectrum can can be a bit of a problem when it comes to
(41:45):
listening and converting digitalto analogue signal.
So your standard DAC chip comingback to those other
manufacturers, if you Chuck DSD through them, then there's a
good chance that that DS, DS probably got something going on
in the audio spectrum which it shouldn't be doing.
So which is why we have various different filters and all of our
(42:06):
products for listening to DSD. So it's, so is it fair to assume
that Cord and yourself Tom believe that it's not
necessarily the format of eitherPCM or DSD that's really the
issue? It's it's the the way that it's,
(42:28):
it's being converted to that format that really lies in its
problems, right? Fundamentally, yes.
Interesting the. Design concept behind DSD is,
is, is brilliant. It's certainly one way of of
going. OK, so how can we get this at
the best sample rate we possiblycan?
And it is an unbelievably high sample rate.
You know DSD 64 is 2.8 megahertz, right?
(42:50):
But it's a bit depth of one, butit's 2.8 megahertz.
So you got a lot of samples for one second, whereas obviously
PCM coming in at 44.1, which is why there is a good argument for
DSD, but there's also a good argument for having a decent
deck if you listen to the SD. So now, so then my final
question on this DSD topic, Do you think this FPGA technology
(43:14):
is something that's missing fromDSD or is it something that is a
bigger tackle or big bigger, bigger obstacle to tack?
I think it's, it's not, so it's not just FBI mean it's a, it's a
difficult one because obviously I'm going to say, you know that
our FPGA DAX are going to be thebest at converting DSD because
(43:35):
of the way that the Rob has the filters available for DSD
listening. But it's not just that, it's
it's the any, any manufacturer could implement the filters that
we use within our designs for listening to DSD.
They're just pretty simple high frequency roll off filters.
Other manufacturers might do it.There might be some out there
(43:56):
that I'm unaware of. So I confess, you know, I don't
go through every single manufacturer and say this one
hasn't got this, this one hasn'tgot this because we all make
great gear and we wouldn't be where we are without other
manufacturers making equivalently good gear.
It's all about preference. So yes and no is the answer to
your question with regards to isit an FPGA that makes a
(44:17):
difference to DSD conversion. It helps, but there are the
people that could do the same thing if they knew what was
going on within the conversion of the DSD.
Got it. Wow.
Well, you know, Tom, this has been such an enlightening
conversation. I certainly learned more about
headphones and headphone amp andspeaker amp technology today,
(44:39):
and I'm sure that whoever's listening on the Metal
Mastermind podcast has learned the same.
You know, here at Metal Mastermind, we are all about
education for the modern musician.
So without further ado, this is at a point in our conversation
where I just want to tell the audience here on Metal
Mastermind you'll find resourcesfor audio education, music
(45:02):
education, music business. There's a lot of exciting things
happening at Metal Mastermind, so stay tuned for all the things
that are coming up, but do checkout our
onlinecourses@metalmastermind.com.And again, Tom, thank you so
much for your time today from Cordy Electronics.
I would love to keep this conversation going, so maybe
sometime in the future we can have you invited back to the
(45:24):
show. I can talk a little bit more
about this kind of stuff. I think it's fascinating.
Of course, there's a fair amountwe haven't touched on, so yes,
let's return. You know 111 final question and
you could either say yes or no, but do cables matter in an
audio? File you.
(45:45):
You had some keywords there at the end of your sentence, so the
answer is yes. So you know.
That. Maybe, maybe that could be
another subject for another day and.
I would be again, happy to talk about that because that's that's
something that's something whichwe as a couple of the thing.
OK, so very, very quickly we're Am I allowed to swear?
(46:07):
Yes, that's OK. We're in no bullshit company, so
there's your answer. Amazing.
Amazing. Well, thanks so much, Tom.
I really appreciate your time today.
And without further ado, cheers everybody and we'll see you next
time.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Metal
Mastermind Podcast. I am your host, Ken Cadellis.
And today we have a very specialguest from Cordy Electronics,
His name is Tom Vaughn. Tom, why don't you say hello?
Hi, Ken, how you doing? I'm good.
It's really, really cool to havecordy electronics here today.
(00:35):
I have so many questions when itcomes to headphones and
amplifiers and all this kind of stuff in the match between all
this. And it actually at a really
interesting time because as you guys know on Metal Mastermind
here I am a professor of audio engineering and audio technology
is such a passion of mine. And actually this week I was
(00:57):
just going over electromagnetismand microphone technology and
how all of this stuff plays intothe quality of sound that we
have. And Cordy Electronics
specializes in headphone amps and also speaker amp fire
technology, which I thought would be a very interesting
(01:17):
conversation to have here. So, Tom, why don't you just give
a little back story about what Cord Electronics does and maybe
your own personal experience getting into it?
Absolutely. Sounds sounds good.
So here at Cord Electronics, we were founded in 1989 by John
(01:38):
Franks, the owner of the companyand still our analog designer in
obviously small company classic in the garage kind of starting
out. So the first generation of power
amplifiers built by us were all built in John's garage.
And there are a few workers herestill to this day that remember
working in that garage and and winding Transformers and all
(01:59):
this. Sort of.
Wow, amazing. Yeah, John actually comes from
an aviation background. He used to work for Marconi,
who's a military manufacturing plant just up the road from us
here designing power supplies and he specialized in switch
mode power supply designs and thought, well, you know what
industry really is lacking in efficiency.
(02:21):
This is in 1989 was the audio industry and he keen interest in
in listening to audio equipment and all that sort of stuff.
So he decided to build an amplifier and that amplifier
that he then got working and tested and and was all well and
good. He took to the BBC and he went
to the BBC and said just try this amplifier through a friend
(02:45):
who lived locally who also happened to design speakers for
the BBC. He said you need to take this to
the BBC. So he took the power amplifier
along to the BBC and to this dayit's the fastest authorised
piece of technology the BBC haveallowed because they were so
blown away with the quality theywent, oh, this is amazing.
So instead of completely, completely gutting one of the
(03:07):
studios up in London, they decided to just replace the
power amplifiers and it was likenight and day in that studio.
So that's that's how we started out providing power amplifiers
for the professional industry. Now again, back in the late 80s,
early 90's, the BBC dictated essentially what the studios
(03:27):
were to have installed as a mainsystem.
So places across the world from there on with the BBC started
outgoing. OK, so how do we upgrade our
studios? And then it went to Abbey Road,
it went to Ayr, it went to British Grove, excuse me,
Metropolis, which are the biggest studios now in London.
(03:48):
And then from there it went international because what Abbey
Road had Skywalker Sound needed over in LA, sorry, over in San
Francisco. So Skywalker Sound took it on.
Then all of a sudden Sony took it on and it just grew and grew
and grew and grew and grew. So us as a business, that's how
we were, that's how we started out.
We were always a supplier of professional amplifiers and
(04:10):
installations within recording studios, mastering studios, all
that sort of stuff. So that's, that was how we
started out as a company. From there we looked and went,
Oh no, all of the studios have got power amplifiers, what do we
do now? So we've sort of saturated the
market a little bit with power amplifiers and went, well,
(04:31):
there's a hi-fi industry over there.
So should we go and see if we can make some money over there
as well, of which we have been doing ever since.
Now my job here at Cord Electronics is a sort of like a
two-part role. And I've, I mean, I've been
working here since I was 15, making cables, counting bits.
Wow. Yeah, little bits from here and
(04:52):
there during during the school holidays.
It was like, OK, Tom, are you free?
I'm like, yeah, I'll come and work.
I mean, of course. So yeah, it was, I mean,
they've, they've treated me so, so fantastically well.
But I also did a sound engineering degree, so
specializing in mastering and audio electronics were my 2 sort
(05:12):
of roots within. Fascinating.
So I mean like art has really been like a a big family to you
for. Oh yeah, yes, very much.
Of your life. Very.
Much so that is so cool. And yeah, you know, it's
interesting because I came in tocord understanding it as a hi-fi
brand, not necessarily in the professional market, but its
(05:34):
roots really were in the professional.
So it shows how much influence you guys have had in other
markets to the point where, you know, newcomers think it's it
it, it started in Hi-fi. So that's really fascinating.
Exactly that I mean so I mean tothis to this day.
So 1/2 of my drugs, so it's because because we're again,
we're already a small company, so quite a lot of us have got
(05:56):
multiple different roles. 1/2 ofmy job is here in the office in
the pump house manufacturing andbuilding and repairing some of
the older power amplifiers and new power amplifiers for current
customers helping. I also help John Franks design
various other bits and bobs around.
But it's, but it's pretty much specifically just John.
He sort of goes, yeah, this is good, this works.
(06:16):
And then I sort of tweak it a little bit maybe for the
professional market and then of which leads me into the
second-half of my job, which is actually looking after our
professional clients around the world.
You might call it a sales role, but it's more like Technical
Support. I just go along and say, try
this and they listen to it and go, I want one.
I'm like, hey. Well, yeah, certainly I could
(06:38):
see the appeal and for, for contacts for anybody here.
Tom and I, we met at Mexico in the Soundcheck Expo and the Pan
American Audio Educators Conference, ex, you know,
exhibit where we were basically just in passing.
I was I was already an artist with Odyssey and you guys are
(07:00):
very close friends with Odyssey.You.
I was actually told that you andChris are are quite good
friends. We certainly are, indeed.
And that's, and that I feel likeit's just such a beautiful thing
to see manufacturers, you know, sort of partnering up in this
way to provide just a quality solution for anybody who's
(07:22):
looking to do professional audio.
And all of our discussions during that time were
fascinating to me. And I'm always curious to know
more about this kind of stuff asa, as a very big nerd myself.
And I've been on, I guess you could say a bit of a quest for,
(07:43):
of course, finding what's the best solution for my studio.
And you know, I had actually a very a simple problem here that
needed some fixing, which is that I bought the wrong
headphone app. And for anybody who is working
with or has tried different types of headphone brands and
(08:04):
different types of impedances for headphones, you'll also have
discovered that headphone amps do matter and how they drive the
headphone. So I want to just start off here
with this conversation about theimportance of headphone
selection for headphone amps. And you know, maybe can you
(08:25):
share some of your thoughts on your experience with that, Tom?
Of course, absolutely. Yeah.
So obviously headphones, I mean,again operating in sort of the
headphi industry and then looking at it from the
professional industry as well, different impedances have a huge
impact on the electronics and how the electronics goes about
(08:45):
driving those particular designs.
So these ones, these orders, theheadphones that we are both
using, they're magnetic planer, which is a very thin foil with a
trace on it, which is very, verydifferent to your standard
headphone design, which is your classic dynamic driver, bit like
a speaker, but on a much, much smaller scale.
(09:06):
You know, magnetic coil and then, sorry, a coil of wire in a
magnetic field. And then you change the coil and
then change the current in the coil in it and it drives the
headphone again, very, very different.
But saying that they have very different impedances across the
board. It depends on which sort of
headphone manufacturer you choose.
(09:26):
Depends on kind of the, the sound quality of it and also how
easy or how difficult it is to drive.
Some say the harder the headphone to drive, the better
the sound quality, but that's not necessarily true because my
some of my favorite headphones are actually really easy to
drive. Specifically not I think it
(09:49):
might be even this set that I'm wearing at the moment.
This is work set. I have another one at home.
So, but we have, you know, various, various other bits and
bobs. So the higher the impedance, the
hard generally tends to be, sorry, the easier to drive ish.
It's sort of like a fine balanceto be honest with you, but the
lower the impedance, the harder it is.
(10:11):
Like if you start dropping 20 ohms, 15 ohms, 10 ohms, all of a
sudden you're starting to look into speaker realm and you need
a whole bunch more current, a whole bunch more power available
to be actually to drive those cones in their entirety.
Interesting because it's like it's sort of like a seesaw,
right? Yeah.
So you know, and for for for those of you who are not quite
(10:33):
familiar with electronic terms, impedance is resistance, right.
So if you were to picture it like like a highway, think of it
like a toll booth right in the middle of the highway.
So exactly it's, it's very, it'svery similar in that way.
So if you have a low impedance, more more current is really kind
of desirable so that you can have all that flow reach your
(10:56):
headphones and drive them properly versus the opposite,
right? Which would take, you know,
maybe only a little bit of powerin order to really drive it,
which is so fascinating to me because this balance, you know,
it's, it's a proportional balance.
You know, anybody who studies Ohm's law has this sort of
understanding, but you know, going into now a headphone amp
(11:20):
technology and how that actuallypowers this.
It's it's so interesting becauseI remember we were talking about
this and how you mentioned that the the the cord headphone amp
can actually change according towhat it's plugged into.
Is, is this. Correct.
So, so essentially it doesn't sort of send a signal to the
(11:42):
headphones and engage the impedance.
There are bits of technology that do that.
But again, so this this actuallyharks to a lot of our designs
specifically is if you build them right the first time from
the ground up, you don't need todesign compromises into the
final design. So, so bear with me for a second
because because it does get, I'll try to keep it as simple as
(12:06):
possible. But like our digital to analogue
converters, I'm sure we'll touchon this a little bit later on as
well. With regards to the FPGA versus
the standard DAC chip, our poweramplifier designs, including our
digital to analogue converter driving circuits as it were,
they don't send a signal to be able to read the impedance.
(12:28):
Now there are other manufacturers that do that.
And by doing that, what they do is then change the output
impedance according to what the headphones read at.
Now output impedance is is. This is now getting really
difficult with regards to power amplifier designs.
Output impedance is is it is directly tied to damping factor,
(12:50):
which is how well an amplifier can actually control a speaker
cone across the frequency band. Now the lower the output
impedance, technically the better the power amplifier
design. This gives us the ability to
essentially control any cone at all across the board, no matter
(13:13):
whether it's a speaker cone coming down at one ohm, or
whether it's a speaker cone or atransmission line, or whether
it's a set headphones coming in at 600 ohms.
The lower the output means the more ability to control a wider
band of overall driver impedances.
Now what other manufacturers do is they try to read what the
(13:34):
headphones are and then change, potentially change the op amp,
change the output impedance accordingly because they've got
different gain settings. Now that's a that's a convenient
way of doing things, but they are limited to what that op amp
or what that amplifier design circuitry can do.
Then swap the gain out and go, OK, well, maybe we need this
(13:55):
gain for this level of impedancefor this headphone.
Great idea. Not to mention that like every
single piece of electronic is affecting the signal in some
way, shape or form. Exactly that, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep, a spot on, of course. But by doing that, what they're
doing is they've gone OK. So it's this, how can we build a
(14:16):
compromise to counter the fact that we have a circuit that
can't necessarily drive the headphones properly?
So they've gone OK, We're going to up the game for this side
kind of headphone. We're going to up the game for
this kind of headphone, whereas what we do here at Cord
Electronics is because we designthe amplifier from the ground
up, we don't use other people's manufacturing designs or
concepts or anything like that. We have a ridiculously low
(14:38):
output impedance to be able to control any impedance of
headphone or speaker or anythinglike that across the board
without any hesitation. So it's literally a case of just
plugging it in and the amp will go, OK, yeah, cool, this is it.
And just turn the volume up. If it's harder to drive, just
keep on going. It basically it's like because
you guys have so much current that's going through that port
(15:01):
that basically your volume is the impedance.
Essentially, yes, yeah. So I mean we, we, we, we control
the the actual small signal going into the power amplifier.
But yes, fundamentally that is that is what we're doing we're.
That's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's just a more
simpler, even I would say even more pure approach to, to just
(15:24):
giving as much power as possibleand then gauging it yourself,
what feels right in your headphones.
That makes a lot of sense to me because like, how could you
build, you know, one for all? I mean, it's, it's really just
going to have to be let's just open the floodgates and you
become the dam essentially to control.
That that's exactly it. It's spot on.
(15:45):
So certainly with, you know, with regards to Alto, I have one
here. So the headphone amp that we
were just talking about this one, I mean, it's, it's a, it's
a power amplifier as well. It, you know, it can do 50 watts
into four ohms. It's, it's unbelievably
powerful. So we've had to attenuate the
headphone output to about half the amount of power that the
actual amplifier can offer. But by actually having that much
(16:09):
power available, it can drive any headphone on the market with
regards to any level of impedance, but also have an
unbelievable amount of headroom available as well.
So it's kind of nice it's not working very hard when you've
got headphones plugged in and that's what gives it the ability
to give you the most accurate and and unbelievably high
controlled. That's not English, but that
(16:31):
kind of, you know what I'm trying to say, like the timing
is everything so. You know, one, one quality that
I certainly felt with cord electronics is it's an
effortlessness to reproduce the electrical signal.
So it, it just sounded more natural to me, which I think is
(16:51):
very hard to replicate. So kudos to you guys.
I mean, you guys have been doingit already for a long time.
But man, it's definitely always amazing to hear 'cause you know,
I've been, I've been in mastering rooms, I've been in,
you know, recording studios and broadcasts and live sound and
all these different applicationsof audio and this kind of tech
(17:12):
with headphones always intriguedme.
And, and, and also of course with speaker amplifiers as well,
it's just a fascinating part of the side of audio of, you know,
sound reproduction that I think gets a little bit understated
sometimes or in other, in other markets when it comes to
audiophile. Sometimes I believe it's even
(17:33):
overemphasized in some ways thatsome product manufacturers might
even blow smoke in in their clients.
Yeah, you know, so. So to speak.
Of course. Yeah, that's a nice way of
putting it. It's it's one of those it's it's
being the guy that builds the amplifiers, services the
(17:54):
amplifiers, helps John develop the amplifiers, all this sort of
stuff. And and being so engrossed in
the amplifier technology, I knowquite a lot of various bits of
what's going on now. Lots, so many people in the not
just the professional industry, but the hifi industry, the audio
industry, full stop. They see a power amplifier go,
it's a power amplifier. What do you want it to do?
(18:16):
So they go, you want me to spendhow much on a power amplifier?
I can get one for a couple of 100 bucks down the road, which
is 4 times the amount of power. And it's the way that that power
is delivered so accurately and with with a ridiculously high
damping factor. So that again, I come back to
that, that ability to control the be it headphones or a
(18:37):
speaker driver timing is everything with our ears.
That's, you know, that's how we can tell anything.
It's how we tell 3D orientation with regards to sound.
It's it's the micro nanoseconds between our two ears and the way
that our brain interprets it is,is all down to that accuracy.
And that's what we strive for here at Chord electronics is
(18:57):
just speed. I.
Have a question, so of course damping factor because I've I've
I've heard the term before but could you equate damping factor
to like the brakes in a vehicle?Yes, I'm just trying, yes,
essentially if, if you really want to look at it, it's a bit
more like suspension to be honest with you, because it's,
(19:20):
yeah, it's, it's how quickly a damping factor can be in
multiple things. There's there's damping factor
in electrical terms, there's damping factor in a physical
term with regards to speaker currents, for example, the
rubber, the tension that holds the, the, the cone in place has
a damping factor it has. And essentially it results in
(19:43):
the ability to either stop and start the cone or give way to
the cone stopping and starting. So it's the same as sort of like
suspension, whether you have really hard suspension like a
BMW or whether you have really soft suspension in like a
Bentley or something like that. You know, you're driving over
potholes and it just feels like you're going, you let this,
whereas in a, in a BMW. But that speed that that is
(20:09):
actually for a, for a speaker cone will deliver you more
accurate timing between the two speaker cones and and our ears.
So actually the lower the damping factor, the more wishy
washy it becomes, the more Bentley and the more comfortable
more loose. Yeah, the, the more artificial
bloom in the low end the speaker's going to represent and
(20:31):
it's going to feel like it's, it's honestly, it's a thing.
People love people. Absolutely.
So valve amplifiers, for example, I have a lot of respect
for them. Glowing light bulbs look pretty,
feel great, sound wonderful for probably about half an hour.
It feels like you're sitting, sitting in a chair with a
(20:51):
whiskey and a cigar and you're just, you know, big high backed
chair. And it's all like, Oh yeah, this
is this is lovely. But it's only for our for us as
humans, as a perception, a maximum of sort of half an hour
of listening 45 minutes before the ears go, you know what?
Something ain't quite right though.
It's like having an audio cuddle, but you can only have it
for so long. Whereas the higher the accurate
(21:14):
transient response of a power amplifier to be able to then
control a speaker cone, the morenatural it becomes listening.
Now it might be harder to experience.
It might be like, oh, it's harsh, or it's all, there's too
much information, all this sort of stuff.
Well, actually that's not true. What you're hearing is what is
(21:35):
meant to be happening within themusic.
And by giving you all of that timing information, it gives you
a better 3D perspective of the depth of field, not just your
stereo field, but the depth of field.
And a strange one, I know. And it sounds a bit hi-fi, to be
honest with you. But like how tall the sound can
get and how all of a sudden you're looking at listening to
an orchestra, for example, and you can pick out the second desk
(21:58):
of the second violins. You can pick out the third
trumpet or trombone coming from over here rather than just it
sort of sounding like a big orchestra.
And then that leads to longevityof listening experience.
So you can sit down for an hour and a half, you can sit down for
two hours listening to this kindof stuff and you don't get
fatigue because it's more natural rather than.
(22:19):
Fascinating. That that wishy washy effect.
I mean, it, it, it makes a a tonof sense with, with transient
information, that's where most of the information that we
recognize with instruments, placement, spatiality, it all
exists in the transient. That's like our audio info
bubble, right? It's at the head.
All that, you know, sustain and all that good stuff, which, you
(22:43):
know, I, I, it's not a problem for speakers to reproduce that
information. But for, for, for the transient,
yeah, that's, it's all about timing and speed, right.
So those that are a lot more LAXand have a more quote, UN quote,
romantic feeling, they are, yeah.
They're not designed for critical listening.
(23:04):
They're designed for easy listening, which is a very
different experience. It's so, you know, knowledge of,
of choosing your speakers reallycomes down to cause I've, it's
always, it's always about preference in many ways.
But then there are some cases where it's specifically about,
you know, clinical detail that depending what you're do using
(23:25):
the speaker for, it does matter,which is where we start to
separate the pro market from thehi-fi market in some ways.
So and so that's fascinating. And I mean, behind all of that,
I mean, you know, let's get intosome of the digital to audio
conversion that you guys are doing because this was something
new to me too that I didn't understand before we started
(23:48):
actually speaking on this subject.
And what DAC chips are doing differently than what you've
mentioned, which is an FPGA? What?
Well, let's just start there. What is an FPGA First off?
And then what is a DAC chip and how do they different?
OK. So yeah, diving down into the
digital route with regards to called electronics and the and
(24:11):
the way that we do things. So an FPGA is a field
programmable gate array. It's essentially a electronic
blank canvas. It's a processor that's got
millions of transistors in it that are programmable rather
than. So in a standard PC, when you
look at a processor, it's a, it's a million billions of of
(24:34):
transistors operating at billions of times a second.
But it's, it's only will do whatit's told to do, input in and
input out. Whereas a, an FPGA, it's
essentially a processor, but youprogram those transistors to sit
in a certain way and then that'sit.
They're set. You can reprogram them if you
wanted to, but rather than information in information out,
(24:57):
they sort of go information in and it's like, what do I need to
do with this? Oh, I know what I need to do
with this. Then process it.
So it's like a static chip rather than a dynamic.
Exactly that, yeah. So that that's what an FBGA
does. Now, an FBGA can be used for
anything at all. There's a really pretty high
demand for them at the moment inthe world, shall we say, for
(25:19):
certain military applications over in Europe, for example.
So there's, there's a pretty high demand for Fpgas for that
reason, you know, flying helicopters, you can drive a
crane, you can operate a remote satellite with it or something,
anything, literally anything. And what we've done is we've
(25:41):
dedicated all of that power for the sole purpose of converting
digital music to analogue music just for our own experience.
So that is, that's an FPGA, Zach.
We are one of, I would say two companies, maybe three, that use
(26:01):
an FPGA for the sole purpose of actually converting digital
through to analogue signals. Now lots of other manufacturers
declare themselves as all, we'rean FPGA DAC and it's sort of
like, are you though, or are youjust using the FPGA as a control
point, which is another. It's a very sort of, it's a
keyword. It's a hot word that people were
(26:22):
starting to clock onto and go, Oh yeah, we're an FPGA DAC
company. I'm like, are you though?
So it's, it could be a bit, you know, a bit risky out there, but
so, so anyway, so we, we do use it for the digital to analogue
filtering and processing and allthis sort of stuff.
Whereas every other manufacturerin the world, they are subject
(26:45):
to the big guns and their designs where they go.
I've designed a DAC chip, say for example, Texas Instruments.
I'm not going to, I'm, I'm not afraid of naming names because
it's one of the biggest manufacturers in the world of
electronic components. Texas Instruments will turn
around and say, I've designed a DAC chip and it's amazing by the
way. And these are the statistics and
(27:07):
you go, OK, that's pretty good, but it's not as good as one of
ours. But the other manufacturers will
go, well, this is the best in the world that we can buy
because that's, that's it. That's so every high end
manufacturer will buy one of these DAC chips And the only way
to improve or change the sound quality is to change the
electronics around it. But the fundamental part of it,
(27:31):
the actual digital to analogue conversion is still limited
across all other manufacturers to this one design, which this
one manufacturer has come up with, whereas we've gone down
the other route and gone. That's not what we want.
We don't want to use these guys because we know how to do it
better. The the the actual digital to
analogue converter. Our our digital programmer here,
(27:56):
Robert Watts, There's loads and loads of information out about
how he does his designs and and all this sort of stuff.
You can find it online that dives into the real technical
insurance and outs because we have No Fear about explaining
how we do things, why we do things and the way that we do
things. Rob's like this is it.
(28:17):
The only thing that is protectedis the code.
So that's, you know, it's 256 bit encoded.
It's good luck to whoever wants to try and get into that.
So, yeah, so that's, so that's every other manufacturer is
subject to these standard DAC chips.
Now they are designed to a pricepoint, which is why they are
(28:39):
limited. Their timing is OK, their
distortion is pretty good, but still OK.
And other bits and bobs that arefiltering is just OK.
There's nothing really that stands out about those fun,
those, those designs which they then produce mass produce for,
for the market. Whereas what we do again coming
(29:00):
down to the FPGA thing, because we have absolute control over
everything. We have better timing, we have
better distortion, we have better accuracy when it comes to
noise floor modulation is a is ahuge thing that we are the only
manufacturer that is eliminated noise floor modulation.
So just to dive into that reallyquickly, because that's that's
(29:23):
actually a pretty fundamental part about what makes.
Very curious, what is? What is noise much like?
So noise floor modulation. So if we if we were in a room
talking together and or somebody, or we were sitting
down listening to somebody playing the guitar, or we were
listening to classical music andorchestra, a small, small 10
(29:43):
piece band or anything like that, the noise floor stays
where it is. OK, So we can have a
conversation. The noise floor does this and it
goes, I'm the noise floor and I'm flat, I'm down here.
Noise floor ventilation. When it comes to digital, to
analogue conversion, what happens when you can start
converting the digital signal into the analogue one?
The noise floor starts pumping like this.
(30:06):
For every digital signal, every pulse, the noise floor starts
pumping like this. And like every sample.
You get pretty much yes. So for us as human beings, we
can't, we, you can't go, Oh, I can hear the noise floor
modulation. It's, it's bumping, it's, it's
moving up and down. But what we suffer from when
(30:27):
listening to noise floor modulation, when the noise floor
is pumping up and down like thisis listening fatigue.
And it happens quickly. You'd be surprised at how not OK
it is to listen to music througha really bad DAC because you can
only, you'll only be able to listen to it sort of like 1520
minutes and go, OK, this sounds and all of a sudden your ears
(30:50):
will go, everything will start becoming really flat.
Everything will start coming like it's really shallow.
The noise, the stereo field starts coming in and you just
sort of, you don't realise, but it's a subconscious thing to do
with noise form modulation. And this is what happens.
Whereas if you eliminate that noise form modulation, so you
move it from doing this to down here, it becomes natural.
(31:12):
And for us as human beings, all of a sudden we're listening to
music. So that removes that problem
psycho acoustically out of the equation entirely.
And that's a proven thing. That's that's that's something
which is. So let me ask you a question
about this, because this is, this is a different kind of
noise that I that, that you're talking about.
As far as what I'm perceiving here.
(31:34):
It's, it's the noise that rides the wave rather than let's say
ground home that we're talking about here, right, 'cause noise
in that sense, that's, that's from your power supply, it's
coming from the wall, right? It's circulating the entire
building versus what is actuallyin the voltage of the signal.
Yes, yes. Interesting.
(31:55):
Spot on, spot on. Yeah.
So it's not your standard. So, so, so for example, if we're
in a loud room, I'm not talking about the noise floor, that
would then just the noise floor's gone up.
But that noise floor, it also that noise floor, it's so it's
an electrical noise floor essentially.
It's the the one that I'm talking about, not a noise
floor. But also you've got to remember
that noise floor, even if it is loud, it won't start unnaturally
(32:18):
doing this. It's loud and then it's quiet,
and then it's loud, and then it might go quiet again.
So us as human beings overall, we're not used to the whole
pumping situation, the whole noise floor modulation
experience. It's so unnatural for us.
And it's a pretty fundamental flaw in pretty much all designs
(32:39):
of Dax. That's amazing.
Holy crap. So the FPGA, I'm, I'm assuming
because is it, is it because it's just it's a simpler chip.
It it's, it's got it's. It's it's about 5000 times more
powerful than a standard DAC chip.
Wow. So, OK, so because there's
actually an increase in power, you have more headroom and
(33:01):
because there isn't more complicated integrated chip
design work happening, it's literally it's like it's already
got its instructions. So it just does the thing very
quickly, very simply. That's that's, that's quite,
quite amazing. So I mean, that comes down as to
(33:21):
why lots of people say like, oh,why don't you make these?
So, so this product's mojo Mojo 2 is our, is our little, our
portable one. People would ask, oh, it's
battery bad. They think, oh, cool, it is
battery powered, which means it doesn't set power from your
phone or your laptop or whateverthe case may be if you are
portable. But the FPGA requires so much
power that if you plug this, if you plug your phone into it, I
(33:44):
think it would probably drain itin about an hour tops if you
were using it at the same time. So there's, you know, there's,
there's a lot of power going on in this, which is why it is the
size they are, the size they are.
We could get them smaller the size they are because we're
limited to battery technology got.
It so that's, does that mean that because of a lack of power,
because I, I had this experiencewhen I was listening to the Mojo
(34:06):
versus the Hugo versus the Alto,I said, wow, well, I mean like
it, it gets better definitely. And is it because of how much
power you give the FPGA? It's, it's not just that it is
actually the size of the FPGA aswell.
So each FPGA is has its own memory cache, it has its own
quantity of transistors within it that we can then program and
(34:28):
of which requires more heat sinking as well.
So the bigger the processor, themore heat sinking it requires,
which is why we jump up in size.So from Mojo, which is our
portable one, we jump to the huge go to that I'm actually
using as my digital to analog converter to talk to you at the.
Moment you're spoiled. To be honest with you, you're
incredibly high definition, so it's great, fascinating.
(34:52):
Oh my God. So I mean like so everything
that cord has been putting out now has been integrating this
type of technology even in your your top tier like products as
well. It's the same technology.
Yeah, absolutely. Size.
It's exactly that, exactly that.So with regards to the we do, we
do have, we sort of have like 2 branches that we specialize in.
(35:14):
I mean, every company has an analog and a digital side.
It just happens that we're the best in the world for the
digital side and one of the bestin the world for the analog side
as well. So the digital side, we have
Mojo 2, Hugo two. We jump up to Hugo TT 2, which
is the the DAC that you tried out when we're at sound check,
that's square one. And then we have our reference
(35:36):
one. Dave, it's about this big.
I don't can't can't display one at the moment, unfortunately.
And then we go sort of go down the analogue route side of
things where we have our power amplifier designs.
So that's where the Alto comes into it.
So we have Alto, we have variousvarious degrees of of power with
regards to monoblocks or stereo units, 500 watts per channel,
(36:00):
750 watts per channel, thousand Watt monoblocks.
And then we jump up to the to the biggest power amplifiers we
make, which are about two and a half 1000 watts per channel, but
they require, they require a lotof fare, a lot of a lot of
aluminium, shall we say so. Yeah, absolutely.
Well now does does cord also offer like full on just
(36:22):
converters and stuff like that for multi channel pro audio
tracking and stuff like that? Not yet.
So at the moment everything is everything is stereo.
Everything we do is stereo. So Rob's been working on various
projects, all this sort of stuff.
(36:43):
We operate a digital, we, we create or manufacture a what I
like to call a digital to digital converter.
So it's called the M scaler which takes the this FPGA
technology that you find in hereand uses it in the digital
realm. So we take a 44.1 kHz file 16
bit and it's a sounds a bit likeup sampling, but it's not
(37:05):
because it uses out what it is, but it uses our technology to
interpret which is what digital to analog conversion is to
interpret what the next set of samples should be.
And it takes that 4444 one 16 bit and it converts it up to
705.6 kHz, 56 bits. So the dynamic range goes
through the roof as well, as well as the sample rate, which
(37:26):
of which any of our converters can cope with.
You can Chuck it into this one. It will go all the way up to 768
kHz. So super, super advanced
technology. I can't remember where I was
going that that train. Oh, that train of thought.
So Rob's, Rob's, we have that product.
We've had that product for a fewyears.
Rob's now working on I another product.
(37:47):
We kind of launched it last yearin Munich, high end that also
has an analogue to digital converter on as well.
Now that's something which we'venever really touched before.
But as we are exploring that route, it gives us the
opportunity to then start thinking about, OK, so if we
have a two in two out, maybe then we could do a four in, four
out. And then maybe we can Daisy
(38:09):
chain them up. And then all of a sudden you
have a 16 in out and it's all like, oh, OK, well, this all
starts making sense. We've explored down the route of
with regards to studios and all this sort of stuff.
You know, from the from the historical background that that
we have, I've got a lot of friends in the industry, a lot
of high end studios that are using various different methods
(38:29):
to transport their digital signals right back to the old
days of AES through to Dante andMaddie and all this sort of
stuff. So we're exploring down the
Dante route at the moment as well, of which the learning
curve for us because it's not something we've ever explored
before, but it's it's going verywell.
And we have a working prototype product that uses currently 2
(38:50):
channels of Dante. But saying that it's so easy to
convert that into a multi channel 80 and eight out, for
example. So yes, there's there's stuff on
the books, there's stuff which we are working towards and the
whole point, the whole part of being a manufacturer isn't just
to keep on reproducing the same stuff, it's it's thinking about
what the next step is and where the.
(39:11):
Technology yeah, that's fabulousbecause I I, you know, this is
probably one of those things that is a surprise out of a
company that I misunderstood, but what it really was about.
And I think it's just such a really cool piece of technology
to push this kind of tech, you know, tech forward that others
(39:33):
haven't really quite caught on yet.
Because you know, this has been a question of mine for a while
is like, you know, how can DAX improve beyond going into
something like DSD, which I knowyou've actually talked about to
me as there are some flaws in DSD and I think it has something
to do with this noise floor modulation.
(39:55):
Am I correct in? Assuming that, yeah, yeah,
absolutely. So, I mean, it's a fascinating
thing, DSD. It was originally designed as a
storage format. For studios to go, OK, cool,
we're just going to convert thisto DSD and we can store it away.
Large file sizes, but what was perceived at the time as the the
(40:18):
highest quality available. But it turns out it's there is
there is some question marks over it again.
Rob actually has a whole presentation, an hour long
presentation about DSD, which isvery interesting if you really
want to dive into the depths of the, the technical side of
things. But but the biggest problem, I
(40:41):
mean, obviously we as a manufacturer, we have to make
products that are DSD compatible.
All of our products are DSD 512 compatible.
So you know, right up to ridiculous sample rates.
But we as a manufacturer generally, I said we, I stand
corrected me as a Thomas Vaughan, prefer PCM for some
(41:03):
technical reasons, shall we say?It's certainly more practical.
It's Oh yes, unbelievably more practical.
Yeah. I mean, I mean, imagine trying
to record a session in DSD, like, no, that take wasn't any
good and I can't edit it do it again.
So it's it's great for a classical set, for example, or
if you're recording an orchestra, which is like a live
recording. OK, there are there are
(41:25):
applications for it, but there there are some bits like the the
the bit depth is a is a big flawand the very, very high
frequency spike shall we say they can alias down into the
audio spectrum can can be a bit of a problem when it comes to
(41:45):
listening and converting digitalto analogue signal.
So your standard DAC chip comingback to those other
manufacturers, if you Chuck DSD through them, then there's a
good chance that that DS, DS probably got something going on
in the audio spectrum which it shouldn't be doing.
So which is why we have various different filters and all of our
(42:06):
products for listening to DSD. So it's, so is it fair to assume
that Cord and yourself Tom believe that it's not
necessarily the format of eitherPCM or DSD that's really the
issue? It's it's the the way that it's,
(42:28):
it's being converted to that format that really lies in its
problems, right? Fundamentally, yes.
Interesting the. Design concept behind DSD is,
is, is brilliant. It's certainly one way of of
going. OK, so how can we get this at
the best sample rate we possiblycan?
And it is an unbelievably high sample rate.
You know DSD 64 is 2.8 megahertz, right?
(42:50):
But it's a bit depth of one, butit's 2.8 megahertz.
So you got a lot of samples for one second, whereas obviously
PCM coming in at 44.1, which is why there is a good argument for
DSD, but there's also a good argument for having a decent
deck if you listen to the SD. So now, so then my final
question on this DSD topic, Do you think this FPGA technology
(43:14):
is something that's missing fromDSD or is it something that is a
bigger tackle or big bigger, bigger obstacle to tack?
I think it's, it's not, so it's not just FBI mean it's a, it's a
difficult one because obviously I'm going to say, you know that
our FPGA DAX are going to be thebest at converting DSD because
(43:35):
of the way that the Rob has the filters available for DSD
listening. But it's not just that, it's
it's the any, any manufacturer could implement the filters that
we use within our designs for listening to DSD.
They're just pretty simple high frequency roll off filters.
Other manufacturers might do it.There might be some out there
(43:56):
that I'm unaware of. So I confess, you know, I don't
go through every single manufacturer and say this one
hasn't got this, this one hasn'tgot this because we all make
great gear and we wouldn't be where we are without other
manufacturers making equivalently good gear.
It's all about preference. So yes and no is the answer to
your question with regards to isit an FPGA that makes a
(44:17):
difference to DSD conversion. It helps, but there are the
people that could do the same thing if they knew what was
going on within the conversion of the DSD.
Got it. Wow.
Well, you know, Tom, this has been such an enlightening
conversation. I certainly learned more about
headphones and headphone amp andspeaker amp technology today,
(44:39):
and I'm sure that whoever's listening on the Metal
Mastermind podcast has learned the same.
You know, here at Metal Mastermind, we are all about
education for the modern musician.
So without further ado, this is at a point in our conversation
where I just want to tell the audience here on Metal
Mastermind you'll find resourcesfor audio education, music
(45:02):
education, music business. There's a lot of exciting things
happening at Metal Mastermind, so stay tuned for all the things
that are coming up, but do checkout our
onlinecourses@metalmastermind.com.And again, Tom, thank you so
much for your time today from Cordy Electronics.
I would love to keep this conversation going, so maybe
sometime in the future we can have you invited back to the
(45:24):
show. I can talk a little bit more
about this kind of stuff. I think it's fascinating.
Of course, there's a fair amountwe haven't touched on, so yes,
let's return. You know 111 final question and
you could either say yes or no, but do cables matter in an
audio? File you.
(45:45):
You had some keywords there at the end of your sentence, so the
answer is yes. So you know.
That. Maybe, maybe that could be
another subject for another day and.
I would be again, happy to talk about that because that's that's
something that's something whichwe as a couple of the thing.
OK, so very, very quickly we're Am I allowed to swear?
(46:07):
Yes, that's OK. We're in no bullshit company, so
there's your answer. Amazing.
Amazing. Well, thanks so much, Tom.
I really appreciate your time today.
And without further ado, cheers everybody and we'll see you next
time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com