watchnerd
Grand Contributor
But why do you think this particular DAC sounds "right"?
Just because a reviewer, with all the usual conflicts of interest, on a 3rd tier publication, said he liked it?
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The most important parameter of all: overall system integrity
- Thread starter fas42
- Start date
But why do you think this particular DAC sounds "right"?
Just because a reviewer, with all the usual conflicts of interest, on a 3rd tier publication, said he liked it?
- Thread Starter
- #262
I look at the language used to describe the quality he hears in the sound - digital sound can often come across as bland, lacking the impact and verve of live, acoustic music making; this is because there is often a subtle distortion associated with this type of playback, which "drains the life out of the music". When you hear a system which lacks these artifacts it hits you, fair square in the face, with how different it sounds - and the expressions one wants to use to describe the sensation are very different too.
watchnerd
Grand Contributor
a) Anybody can write nice sounding words
b) If you think low distortion is of critical importance, then you should check out something like the affordable El DAC from JDS Labs, which has THD and IMD specs in the 3 zeros range.
- Thread Starter
- #264
When the words convey that he hears a quality in the reproduction which is markedly like how "real" sounds come across he is either lying, or that is what he hears - as I have said many times, the measure is how well someone can be "fooled"; a blindfolded person can't be certain, "Is it live or is it Memorex?", 
- IOW, are the giveaways that one's listening to hifi obvious?
Affordable gear can do the job, that is what all my experiments over the years have been about. But the spec's issued with the unit tell one almost nothing useful as to whether it can ...
- IOW, are the giveaways that one's listening to hifi obvious?Affordable gear can do the job, that is what all my experiments over the years have been about. But the spec's issued with the unit tell one almost nothing useful as to whether it can ...
watchnerd
Grand Contributor
When the words convey that he hears a quality in the reproduction which is markedly like how "real" sounds come across he is either lying, or that is what he hears - as I have said many times, the measure is how well someone can be "fooled"; a blindfolded person can't be certain, "Is it live or is it Memorex?",
I wouldn't go so far as to say lying, but IMHO audio reviewers have a vested interest in writing evocative, escapist fantasy in much the same way as wine reviewers. It's akin to being non-sexual pornography.
watchnerd
Grand Contributor
When the words convey that he hears a quality in the reproduction which is markedly like how "real" sounds come across he is either lying, or that is what he hears - as I have said many times, the measure is how well someone can be "fooled"; a blindfolded person can't be certain, "Is it live or is it Memorex?",
I'm curious why you think a DAC would need such a massively over-built analog section.
On the analog side, a DAC needs to put out a measly 2V, with noise and distortion below audible thresholds. When DACs were built into CD players, audio reviewers didn't demand Class A CD players have such huge analog output sections.
Other than market conditions, what has changed in the science of audio to demand such a change?
Kinda, it's like food photography but with words. There is a 'creative' aspect to most people's subjective impressions and creativity can be linked to sexual energy. That's one of the reasons people enjoy indulging in the expressions of their subjective expirences of audio equipment. It's also why it can't really be relied on, it's a inherently comprised ( from a accuracy POV) by this artful expression and indulgence that rides rough shot over any ambition to truly communicate what's being heard, ironic really.
- Thread Starter
- #268
I would suggest that a "massively over-built analog section" was found to achieve the goal of sufficiently high quality sound for this unit, and that the designers didn't go the next step of determining what was crucial, and what was largely window dressing. Plus, having such OTT bits justifies the extreme price tag - refining the design would cost more time and money, and reduce the complexity and part count - the former means that the retail price should be yet higher, the latter means that there is less "meat" in the hand for the end buyer!
Market conditions have changed - over the last several years there has been a growing acceptance by people who are willing to pay silly money for audio gear that digital playback "can be as good" as analogue in the areas that they care about. But if they try a DAC that most on ASR would consider adequate these people won't be impressed - for decades they have tried CD, etc, sources and rank the performances mostly in the MP3 class, so to speak - OK for background listening, but not to be taken seriously. The to's and fro's of this has gone on for years - and in the meantime various designers have determined that if they throw everything and the kitchen sink at the situation that they can produce units which please these people.
From my POV what's happened is that steadily better ways of reducing interference, noise effects has been developed, accidentally or intentionally - and these so far are mainly found in the really expensive units.
What is it about a dac design that makes it able to produce 'convincing' sound? You seem to be making vague distinctions between dac' that are capable and those that are not but without giving any meaningful reasons why...When the words convey that he hears a quality in the reproduction which is markedly like how "real" sounds come across he is either lying, or that is what he hears - as I have said many times, the measure is how well someone can be "fooled"; a blindfolded person can't be certain, "Is it live or is it Memorex?",
Affordable gear can do the job, that is what all my experiments over the years have been about. But the spec's issued with the unit tell one almost nothing useful as to whether it can ...
- Thread Starter
- #270
I was fortunate that I got a burst of the "invisible speaker" thing right at the beginning of this journey - this gave me extremely well defined goalposts, and has been consistent as a "measuring" tool all the way through. I could chuck in all the poetry stuff as well, because it "fits" as far as the subjective impression goes - but relying on robust auditory illusions makes it easy to pick the progress to date, status, etc.
- Thread Starter
- #271
Quality of implementation, probably more than anything else. Solid, in depth engineering of everything - this means that the number of technical weaknesses are far less, and will automatically improve the signal integrity overall. My original Yamaha CD player had enough "audiophile goodies" thrown in to make it good enough; things like large, separate transformers for digital, and analogue areas, a really thick, heavy steel chassis to reduce vibration, and so on.
Iv never understood the ' speakers disappearing ' thing, Iv setup various systems at various price points and every time once it's right the speakers 'disappear '.
However though they might 'disappear ' if they are adding box colourations or have been voiced to highlight certain areas of the frequency spectrum then they are not really disappearing at all.. all cheap box speakers I know do this, at least subjectively speaking.
What do you mean by technical weaknesses? Do you really know anything about dac design? If so walk us through a 'competent ' dac from a design POV in your opinion at least.
- Thread Starter
- #274
Yes, speakers disappear at the central "sweet spot" - but do they everywhere? That is, walking around the room are they always invisible? That's what I got 30 years ago, and it blew me away ...
DAC design, if you're using a D/A chip from a standard manufacturer, is pretty straightforward in the normal sense - just follow the maker's data sheet, evaluation module in terms of the basic schematic. What then counts is how carefully the signals feeding the chip, and especially the power supply pins are controlled - and how the output, analogue signal is processed. What the chip does itself is a black box, but it is not robust with regard to its external environment, that is, all the circuitry immediately surrounding it, connected to it - noise injected into one of its pins will not be a good thing! So, the process is do everything one can think of to improve the integrity of all those signals.
Like what?
- Thread Starter
- #277
Primary would be power supply, and reference voltage pins - every pin which is nominally, theoretically fixed in level is stabilised, so that in fact it is! The standard procedure, in everyday DACs, is to use an ordinary quality capacitor to decouple at the pin, and the level is set by a simple feed from a voltage rail that runs through the circuit board; the steps taken to improve would be: make the voltage rail feed as stable as one can, back at the actual power supply parts - this would mean improving the quality of input to that PS, by improving the decoupling in the regulator areas, and adding further filtering against high frequency noise; possibly doing a more direct feed to the pins of the D/A chip; and improving the decoupling at the pins themselves, by increasing the value and quality of the parts, this would include checking that the grounding pathways present the least impedance to decoupling currents - every little bit helps.
- Thread Starter
- #278
Just noted this comment by a member at diyAudio, http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/304823-one-reasons-we-hear-differently.html#post5010838:
Exactly ...
- Thread Starter
- #279
Further to my thoughts in the CAD grounding box thread, where real world behaviour needs to be considered: some years ago I was investigating power supplies using Spice modelling, where the parts, especially the transformer, matched real world units - hallo, what's this? A nasty ringing waveform, at very high frequencies, appeared - was this a fault in the modelling? No, every variation done in the modelling told me this was real - high frequency interference artifacts were being produced, in the heart of the component!!
Long story short, I investigated this thoroughly in Spice, worked out a solution, and then applied it to several pieces of audio equipment - yes, the sound was improved by doing this, for each one; I had "discovered" something new, I thought ...
But, some years later I read in the diyAudio forum how this had been "found out", already - nothing new under the sun, really ! I was just reminded of this because there is very active discussion of this circuit "naughtiness", right now, in the Blowtorch thread there, http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/146693-john-curls-blowtorch-preamplifier-part-ii-9115.html.
Long story short, I investigated this thoroughly in Spice, worked out a solution, and then applied it to several pieces of audio equipment - yes, the sound was improved by doing this, for each one; I had "discovered" something new, I thought ...
But, some years later I read in the diyAudio forum how this had been "found out", already - nothing new under the sun, really
! I was just reminded of this because there is very active discussion of this circuit "naughtiness", right now, in the Blowtorch thread there, http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/146693-john-curls-blowtorch-preamplifier-part-ii-9115.html.
Ray Girard
Member
A good read, guys. Just another case of human vs. robot? Biological vs. mechanical. Mood is the spoiler of repeatability.
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