DAC audio anomalies help!

[Megaman3300]

Hello! I've been lurking for a little while now, and this is my first post. This site is awesome, I bought a FiiO BTR7 because of you guys

But! I have a question regarding DAC function. One of the reasons I bought the BTR7 is because with my previous DAC, I could swear I heard some strange artifacts, specifically in higher frequencies. Specifically, with cymbals and other sibilant sounds (t's and s's, that sort of thing). The best way I can describe it is like the cymbal's sounds were misordered? It's like it started ringing, and *then* the stick hit. It sounded uncanny!

Now, obviously, I know hearing is subjective. Not too long ago, I shoved a sound probe into my headphones to confirm I was listening at safe levels (56 dB average, as per the probe). So, my question is this: was it all in my head, or is there a phenomenon in audio decoding that could cause this? Neither would surprise me; it's fairly obviously a timing issue if the latter is the case, and psychosomatic perception shifts are one of the beautiful things about being an audiophile!

I'd love to get peoples' thoughts on this. Thanks!

 

[anphex]

Hello! I've been lurking for a little while now, and this is my first post. This site is awesome, I bought a FiiO BTR7 because of you guys

But! I have a question regarding DAC function. One of the reasons I bought the BTR7 is because with my previous DAC, I could swear I heard some strange artifacts, specifically in higher frequencies. Specifically, with cymbals and other sibilant sounds (t's and s's, that sort of thing). The best way I can describe it is like the cymbal's sounds were misordered? It's like it started ringing, and *then* the stick hit. It sounded uncanny!

Now, obviously, I know hearing is subjective. Not too long ago, I shoved a sound probe into my headphones to confirm I was listening at safe levels (56 dB average, as per the probe). So, my question is this: was it all in my head, or is there a phenomenon in audio decoding that could cause this? Neither would surprise me; it's fairly obviously a timing issue if the latter is the case, and psychosomatic perception shifts are one of the beautiful things about being an audiophile!

I'd love to get peoples' thoughts on this. Thanks!

What is your playback device, what is your system sample rate and what kind of audio file quality are you usually using?
Try setting your system to 44,1Hz/24 Bit and if your DAC allows it choose the roll off filter that has the most attenuation, preferrably already at 22 Khz.

Background: this sounds like an issue I had back then in the day where I thought I need to keep sample rates on system as high as possible and use the slowest roll off filter for fastest transient response. These were strong misconceptions of mine a few years ago and there even is a big thread about this. What happens when you use high sample rate paired with a bad or slow rolloff filter? You get distorted highs, intermodulation and you audio basically get's turned into a square wave due to all the unfiltered sample steps.

 

[DSJR]

Some recordings can also be awful, no matter whther analogue or digital... I still refer back to many 1950s recordings as back then, they couldn't fix it in the mix or mastering, so tried to get it right in the recorded final take and this goes for the 'sound' as well as the music itself...

 

[Blockader]

Hello! I've been lurking for a little while now, and this is my first post. This site is awesome, I bought a FiiO BTR7 because of you guys

But! I have a question regarding DAC function. One of the reasons I bought the BTR7 is because with my previous DAC, I could swear I heard some strange artifacts, specifically in higher frequencies. Specifically, with cymbals and other sibilant sounds (t's and s's, that sort of thing). The best way I can describe it is like the cymbal's sounds were misordered? It's like it started ringing, and *then* the stick hit. It sounded uncanny!

Now, obviously, I know hearing is subjective. Not too long ago, I shoved a sound probe into my headphones to confirm I was listening at safe levels (56 dB average, as per the probe). So, my question is this: was it all in my head, or is there a phenomenon in audio decoding that could cause this? Neither would surprise me; it's fairly obviously a timing issue if the latter is the case, and psychosomatic perception shifts are one of the beautiful things about being an audiophile!

I'd love to get peoples' thoughts on this. Thanks!

This is a common mistake made by almost all audio enthusiasts. When a recording doesn't sound good, they often blame their system and look for ways to improve it. A sound system that sounds amazing with one recording can sound terrible with another. The difference can be even more pronounced than two speakers playing the same recording in the same room. This is something that audio buyers almost never consider.

Most recordings are mastered/mixed in poor-quality rooms where their in room response is far from how our rooms sound and how average or high-end headphones sound. Their recordings can only sound good if you listen to their music in their mastering room, or if you have a similarly poor-sounding system in your room. For recordings from another mastering studio, unless your speakers match their room's sound response, their recordings should also sound bad.

Here is the in-room response of 164 professional control rooms, all using well measuring Genelec speakers:

You can see that the responses can differ up to 20db! This is a bigger difference than cheap headphones to well performing headphones have nowadays. There is no audio system in the world that can sound good with the music all 164 studios produced.
Well designed speakers/headphones do not sound always better with every recording, they statistically sound better than inaccurate systems.

Also, consider that due to the shape and anatomy of your ear canal, the response of headphones above 10 kHz can sound dramatically different for everyone compared to how they measure on a measurement rig.

When something sounds off, it's usually your playback system(headphones/speakers), your room, lack of sound treatment in your room and VERY rarely dacs or amps. And on top of that, when you hear a problem, how can you know that it's the DAC messing up with the sound? How can you distinguish the influence of the dac from other components in your audio stack?

 

[Megaman3300]

What is your playback device, what is your system sample rate and what kind of audio file quality are you usually using?
Try setting your system to 44,1Hz/24 Bit and if your DAC allows it choose the roll off filter that has the most attenuation, preferrably already at 22 Khz.

Background: this sounds like an issue I had back then in the day where I thought I need to keep sample rates on system as high as possible and use the slowest roll off filter for fastest transient response. These were strong misconceptions of mine a few years ago and there even is a big thread about this. What happens when you use high sample rate paired with a bad or slow rolloff filter? You get distorted highs, intermodulation and you audio basically get's turned into a square wave due to all the unfiltered sample steps.

I was using a BTR15 on hybrid, running everything from YouTube to 96Khz/24bit flacs. The issue was consitent across any medium or recording, and I never bothered testing it in the other available setting (fast).

 

[Megaman3300]

I've definitely had the "pleasure" of listening to some bad recordings, but it was happening between multiple pairs of headphones, and in multiple different recordings! Both my Beyerdynamic DT770s and my Etymotic ER2SEs exhibited the flaw.

It's certainly possible that it's my ears, but since I changed DACs I no longer have the issue. *Could* the issue be caused by the DAC, is it a possibility from the design/filters/magic smoke contained within? The question at this point is academic; I'm quite happy with my BTR7! I'm just curious about the possibilities.

Thanks!

This is a common mistake made by almost all audio enthusiasts. When a recording doesn't sound good, they often blame their system and look for ways to improve it. A sound system that sounds amazing with one recording can sound terrible with another. The difference can be even more pronounced than two speakers playing the same recording in the same room. This is something that audio buyers almost never consider.

Most recordings are mastered/mixed in poor-quality rooms where their in room response is far from how our rooms sound and how average or high-end headphones sound. Their recordings can only sound good if you listen to their music in their mastering room, or if you have a similarly poor-sounding system in your room. For recordings from another mastering studio, unless your speakers match their room's sound response, their recordings should also sound bad.

Here is the in-room response of 164 professional control rooms, all using well measuring Genelec speakers:

You can see that the responses can differ up to 20db! This is a bigger difference than cheap headphones to well performing headphones have nowadays. There is no audio system in the world that can sound good with the music all 164 studios produced.
Well designed speakers/headphones do not sound always better with every recording, they statistically sound better than inaccurate systems.

Also, consider that due to the shape and anatomy of your ear canal, the response of headphones above 10 kHz can sound dramatically different for everyone compared to how they measure on a measurement rig.

When something sounds off, it's usually your playback system(headphones/speakers), your room, lack of sound treatment in your room and VERY rarely dacs or amps. And on top of that, when you hear a problem, how can you know that it's the DAC messing up with the sound? How can you distinguish the influence of the dac from other components in your audio stack?

 

[Blockader]

I've definitely had the "pleasure" of listening to some bad recordings, but it was happening between multiple pairs of headphones, and in multiple different recordings! Both my Beyerdynamic DT770s and my Etymotic ER2SEs exhibited the flaw.

It's certainly possible that it's my ears, but since I changed DACs I no longer have the issue. *Could* the issue be caused by the DAC, is it a possibility from the design/filters/magic smoke contained within? The question at this point is academic; I'm quite happy with my BTR7! I'm just curious about the possibilities.

Thanks!

There are 3 possibilities:

1- Placebo. Because both DT770 and ER2SE have problems above 5000hz.
2- Your ears can pick the pre ringing of linear phase filters and your prev dac had a very bad filter implementation.
3- Your previous dac had a very slow filter and it was causing intermodular distortion across the audible range.

 

[Ravitester]

I am having a problem with my Fiio BTR7. The firmware is 2.02, the Fiio control app on android is 3.21 and Tidal android version is 2.114.0.

I connect the DAC to my phone via usb cable (rather than bluetooth) and use the tidal app on my phone. The headphone output is plugged into the aux input of the amplifier and speakers in the car.

To play MQA files I have turned off the normalise volume in the app and have been playing MQA tracks fine, with MQA showing as the replay mode.

The problem arises when the tidal playlist contains music encoded as flac (showing as PCM on the Fiio) then the music replay stops! If I try another MQA track in the same playlist it will play, but I have to restart the BTR7 to get it to play PCM files.

It seems it is struggling to switch between files formats, via usb and keep playing the tracks. Is this a know problem or better is there a solution?

A reddit post says
this a well known issue that has been going on for some time with the native tidal app. It's been this way for at least 6 months.

It's a 'bit-perfect' bug. As far as i know, it affects most (if not all) DACs