Newsletter Archive

Laminar Streamer update

Hello everyone,

The latest SD card technology from Japan

We were fortunate enough to secure the latest, fastest SD cards on the market, currently only available in Japan. These are made by Toshiba and boast 2.7x faster read speeds than the ones currently available on the world market (which are 95 MB/s). These are still quite pricey but as all things mass-produced, it is a matter of time before they will be readily available in all local shops (when it comes to technology, is there still such a thing as local?).

A while back we mentioned that the 95 MB/sec cards sound a little more focussed than slower cards. So, it was only natural that we try the latest on the market. And indeed, we can officially announce that best results with the Laminar Streamer are to be had when using one of these fast SD cards from Toshiba.

SD card

Note, these read speeds are unnecessary for full 192 kHz / 24 bit audio streams at two channels for stereo playback, and it is unlikely that the audible reduction in Jitter has to do directly with the speed availability, which is not even tapped in our quality real-time application. Nor does this have to do with any fragmentation of data, for this is after all a RAM technology (Random Access Memory) which contains constant intrinsic self-rewriting and allocation processes which have nothing to do with de-fragmentation of magnetic local storage of old (disc technology had true local allocation). Here, data is put into any random order and is constantly moved around such that there is no locality as such to speak of.

We believe, though, that the audible reduction of Jitter (it is slight but yet meaningful to us audiophiles) has more to do with the new power efficiency of these high speed capable SD cards. Less power requirement per operation means less power contamination of the highly revealing logic board of the Laminar Streamer, whose quality of operation is laid completely naked to the ear due to the lack of complication in its own operating system, which was purpose written from the ground up for the very real-time reading application of the highest quality audio stream.

Further developments with Panzerholz dye

We've been working with dyes and believe the Laminar Streamer might wind up looking somewhat better this way.

Laminar Streamer

The warmth of the darker dye lends a little bit more richness to the overall impression. And we tend to prefer darker cigars and darker beers. It's an aesthetic thing. We like it.

Laminar Streamer

Regards,

Louis Motek  |  LessLoss.com