A More Useful Way of Measuring the Performance of DACs?

[Jimbob54]

This whole discussion started on the premise that the dCS sounds obviously different than the other two DACs. There is not an indication of this happening in the samples provided. There may be a difference my ears not detecting but clearly it's not as big as the OP may suggest. There was a similar discussion that went over 70 pages, many man-hours lost due to the OP neglecting to do a blind test, and in the end there was no clear answer anyway. Do a blind test, accept the reality, and move on.

Both DAC are transparent as measures by Amir, why one not as clean sounding as the other?

All, Before you start typing words like "brain", "imagination", please save your energy. I won't response to such replies. I have done multiple online blind tests, done multiple ABX tests, and a coupe of DAC vs DAC double blind tests. So, please save the lectures about voltage match...

www.audiosciencereview.com

RIP Wayne- as single minded an individual as you will encounter here or anywhere.

 

[manisandher]

Back to your OP, none of this matters unless you, as the only person hearing such a difference, demonstrates the same using ABX test. Until that is confirmed, it makes no sense to chase the "why" when the "what" is not established.

If someone wanted to analyse my sleep, and made me sleep in an 'unnatural' way to do so, clearly they'd get skewed results. Why can't people here see that ABX testing is exactly the same thing? It's a totally unnatural way to listen to music.

Enough of this insistence on ABX testing. I've had my fix of ABX, and am not doing it again.

 

[kemmler3D]

Has anyone other than OP just listened to the diff files to see if anything is audible yet?

 

[gvl]

I'm not going to do one, for the reasons I've cited a number of times now.

If this thread is therefore of no interest to you, just move along.

It's of interest to me, but without a subjective controlled test that would confirm the initial impulse that sent you on this crusade was real it just looks like an onset of audiophile nervosa complicated by science.

 

[kemmler3D]

"I can definitely hear the difference"

"Prove it?"

"No, stop asking."

^^ this thread

Sorry OP but that's how it looks from the bleachers. Totally understand that ABX is more like PITA and I don't blame you for not bothering. That said, if we went along with subjective claims without being annoying and insisting on ABX, we'd be posting on SBAF right now instead of ASR. I think this is an interesting result, but given PK's note about how the filter phase distortion might bump the diff numbers without having a major audible impact I'm not itching to run it down myself either.

Diff testing with music is really tricky from what I've seen, although I agree with your premise: I would LOVE to see a rigorous deltawave test as the main / gold standard for testing gear, (find all the differences at once, what's not to like?) but apparently it's very hard to do right.

 

[krabapple]

If someone wanted to analyse my sleep, and made me sleep in an 'unnatural' way to do so, clearly they'd get skewed results. Why can't people here see that ABX testing is exactly the same thing? It's a totally unnatural way to listen to music.

Enough of this insistence on ABX testing. I've had my fix of ABX, and am not doing it again.

And so the clown show continues.

 

[BDWoody]

Enough of this insistence on ABX testing. I've had my fix of ABX, and am not doing it again.

The end.