MeloManiac

I'm not sure how to understand this correctly. It seems to me that the node 2i is redundant and the Topping D90 does have fabulous specs. So what does the node 2i do that the Topping D90 can't do?

I believe I read here in this forum that vents are indeed very complex machines that need constant tweaking and care. If not, lungs may get damaged. People normally are not kept on vents longer than 3 to 4 days. With covid 19, it is often required for more than seven days. If so, it takes many weeks to recover from that.

That may well be the case in the US: the news media are *owned* by one party or another and fabricate their own 'facts'. In Europe, there is a tradition of 'backroom politics': facts, contracts, trade deals are kept from the public, sometimes with a 'gag order' and it is up to the journalists to uncover the truth. We tend to call the press the fourth leg of democracy. Example: in 2018, the Belgian government decided to destroy a strategic stock of surgical masks, 24 million in total, 2 million of them coveted NP2, which were bought in 2009 after the mexican flu epidemic. For saving money, these strategic stocks were not replaced by new masks in 2018. The Belgian politicians were hiding this scandal from the public, of course, because they wanted to protect the responsible politicians. If it wasn't for the independent journalism, they would have succeeded. Politicians like to cash in big time, but when it comes to taking up responsibility, they like to point to the other guy...

Accurate up to a point. They added 241 deaths from care centers, but another official used a number above 600 in the Flemish parliament (yes, we have many parliaments in Belgium), and for now it is unclear if those 400 have been added to the official number or not. Apparently, counting the dead and registering them in the correct way is a complex matter, these days. They hope to bring the correct numbers in a couple of days. It is my theory that the Flemish and Belgian government are trying to 'sweep the number of deaths in care centers' under the carpet for two reasons: 1) to avoid a panic among the relatives and the care workers and 2) to not be held responsible politically for the tragedy that is happening right now in the care centers, which is: the old people are not tested, not treated, not given the care they deserve, while the health care workers are not given the proper protection (masks etc) Belgium has chosen, not for the 'herd/group immunity', but simply to not take care of the most vulnerable group (the 80+ group, with a 15% death rate). The local government (Wouter Beke) blames the federal government, and vice versa. While the people are dying...

These numbers are wrong. There is little or no testing in Belgium as we speak. We simply don't have the tests nor the capacity to test large numbers. Even people who have all the symptoms, but in a mild form, or not tested. The Belgium government made 12,000 test available for old people living in resting homes, but there are 70,000 people like that, and it is unclear if these tests will the used on the elderly or on the personnel looking after them. According to the Belgian official corona expert, Dr. Van Ranst, the only reliable number for Belgium is the number of patients diagnosed with covid 19 that are in Intensive Care. This is a graph showing those number up to April 6th (and you can see that the we have managed to flatten the curve):

Nope, they can't be trusted.... Compare https://towardsdatascience.com/dont-believe-any-numbers-on-coronavirus-9c5d6a971bef The numbers are 10x higher than offical numbers We live in a disinformation society...

If this is considered *too political* please say so, and I'll refrain. There have been quite a few posts here about China's numbers being kept low by the Communist Party. Some other authoritarian states are doing the same. This is probably accurate. Time will tell... or not. However, can we rely on the numbers of so-called free, open, democratic countries, of which the US is the role-model? I'd say: be careful with that. 1) The people of the US seem to be blinded by the media mis-reporting the facts and by false narrative (see quote above) 2) In my country, Belgium, the government only counted the dead in hospitals. We've reached +2000 now. But yesterday, it became clear that the numbers of the dead in 'resting homes for the elderly' were not included. There, almost 700 deads occurred. These numbers were hidden from the public (they say they weren't reported) and the caretakers were not provided with masks and safety clothing, no testing was done up to yesterday. The government was forced to publish these numbers, only after numerous accounts by caretakers of horrible situations (in some homes up to 40% of the population was covid-positive) were published in the press. Belgian politicians would have preferred to 'hide these numbers under the carpet'. (Note: the average price for staying in a home like that is €1900 per month). 3) My government meekly follows the instructions and the norms of the WHO, whose official standpoint is that wearing a mask is useless. The WHO has been criticized here in this forum, and I would love to learn more about the arguments for that, because here in Belgium, we are unaware of this, and independent journalists don't report on this.

(There is a 8 hour time barrier between you and me, there were at least 8 new pages of messages in thread, when I woke.) President Trump advised on Chloroquine and two American seniors drank Chloroquinphosphate, which is an aquarium cleaning product, and soon died. Don't know if Trump is 'of note' in your book, but I thought it would be safe here to warn about experimenting with large quantities of (gin-)tonic. Two liters of tonic equals 1 tablet of quinine, btw. If you drink two liters of tonic, your heart rhythm may be seriously irregular. If you drinkt two liters of gin-tonic, you'll end up in ER or you'll die of that, rather than of covid19... ☠️

https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/burr-brown-dac-192khz-24-bit.73299/ They are comparable.

I agree, but are you not locking in to Sonos proprietary only? Can you add a klipsch wireless for instance? Wikipedia: Sonos system creates a proprietary AES-encrypted peer-to-peer mesh network

Good deal, new it is 399 euro!

I've just ordered an Advance Acoustic wtx microstreamer for 135 euros. Wolfson MW7840 dac chip. https://advance-acoustic.com/en/multimedia-and-wireless/wifi-network-player/130-wtx-microstreamer Note it is not Roon compatible.

What DAC chip is in the node 2i? I can't find it anywhere.

Before I start my rant, read this: I have the greatest respect for old people, and especially those who fought in the Great War. Now, last Sunday, I visited my 81 year old mother who lives in a 'service flat' housing block, where elderly people live, who are still in good enough physicial condition to live on their own, with some degree of support (like nurses coming in the morning and evening to help them dress and administer medication). Belgium is in 'lockdown', so I hadn't seen my mother in 3 weeks. We went there to talk to her through the window, keeping a distance of several meters. I was shocked to see the scene at the entrance: SIX 80-plus inhabitants were sitting on a bench in the sun, chatting a way. It was very clear that the were breaching social distancing rules and they DIDN'T GIVE A F****! Oh yeah, they were laughing and friendly to us and the weather was sooooo nice! In these times, with the world in lockdown, millions of us losing their job, with unseen economic impact for so many years to come, and with my three children unable to go to school, these 'grandfathers and grandmothers' are either being completely stupid or they couldn't care less and are selfish bast******. On Monday, I made a phonecall to the town's responsible and I won't hesitate to call the police, if I have to.

Quinine is in Schweppes. Now before we all start drinking large quantities of it because it *might* help fight covid-19, be warned: quinine is known to interact with other (live saving) medication. So please think twice! https://www.cardiosmart.org/Healthwise/d003/66/d00366 https://fever-tree.com/en_US/article/quinine-and-coronavirus Who should avoid quinine? If you’ve had a bad reaction to tonic water or quinine in the past, you should not try it again. You may also be advised against taking quinine or drinking tonic water if you: have an abnormal heart rhythm, especially a prolonged QT interval have low blood sugar (because quinine can cause your blood sugar to drop) are pregnant have kidney or liver disease are taking medications, such as blood thinners, antidepressants, antibiotics, antacids, and statins (these medications may not preclude you from taking quinine or drinking tonic water, but you should tell your doctor about these and any other medications you take if you’re prescribed quinine)

... time to upgrade your editing skills while sitting this through? Two years ago I migrated from Photoshop to Affinity Photo myself, which I'm currently enjoying a lot. Affinity is getting better all the time...

This seems to be the common experience for DACs of the past 10 years. The SQ and user appreciation is determined not so much by the DAC chip and the apparatus it is mounted in, but rather the peripherals: the app, the cables, the psu, the network stability, amp and speakers, etc. Don't be fooled by marketing babble and expensive 'words'.

I think Audiogate 4 can do this. Explained all the way down this page: https://www.korg.com/nl/products/audio/audiogate4/ A full complement of editing functionality, with support for editing in the DSD domain In the past, editing data that was recorded in DSD format required extremely expensive pro audio equipment, and this acted as a significant impediment to DSD recording. AudioGate is able to carry out all of the basic editing operations needed for a stereo recorder --- splitting and joining songs, fade processing, volume adjustments, L/R balance adjustments, normalization, cutting DC components, editing marks --- all while staying within the domain of each supported format, including 1-bit DSD. The DSD editing engine within AudioGate rivals those of professional DSD workstations. Since all DSD-based editing calculations are done while maintaining the sample rate, all the way up to 64 times (2.8224 MHz) or 128 times (5.6448 MHz), you don't need to worry about audio quality being impaired by the decimation filter that accompanies PCM conversion. "Direct output mode" allows unnecessary recalculations to be automatically bypassed, ensuring that the purity of the original audio source is completely retained in the output file. A rich array of editing functionality for metadata such as song title, artist name, and attached graphics etc. is also a benefit provided by AudioGate.

Take a look at the note of caution in the screenshot below. Ever seen something like that? I'm happily playing it on both my Heresy and RP160M speaker sets.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

More like 3 to 4 hours on paper and cardboard. Up to 4 days on hard surfaces. So a shopping trolley must be decontaminated for each customer! And don't lick doorknobs and elevator buttons like youngsters do in tiktok! Research paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

I 've heard from a friend who works in Japan that the situation there is terrible. Japan's officials have been downplaying the numbers because they wanted to Olympic Games to happen this summer. To no avail, they are postponed to 2021. But now their numbers are rising exponentially, esp. among the elderly. These numbers (see below) do NOT represent reality at all: These are 'just' official numbers: This 2 April article seems to reflect the urgency of a lockdown: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/31/national/calls-grow-for-japan-state-of-emergency-over-coronavirus/

I'm reading a column that states that the US has evolved from being the greatest producer to being the greatest consumer... Hopefully, this corona crisis may be an eye-opener for the global community.

The Russians, the Chinese and the Americans 'give' not to help the population and healthcare workers, but at a cost (of life) of their own healthcare workers. There is a global power struggle going on right now, and these 'humane actions' are part of that and nothing more. The Russians are 'helping' Italy with military sanitation trucks, mostly to destabilize the European Community. The Chinese are 'helping' the UK and some African countries (where they protect their own investments, mostly). The Americans are 'helping' because they want to stay the 'greatest' (whatever that means).

This rating shows Westvleteren on position 3 and Rochefort on postition 15, two 'Trappistes' (brewed by monks). There is a proverb in Dutch, saying pregnant women should drink a trappist every day. Nowadays, of course, this is no-go. But I firmly belief it can help battle covid-19, if not physically, then mentally!