Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent? Are that many confused?

[Beave]

I'm trying really hard not to reuse my tired old joke about there being test equipment that measures soundstage, the infamous Lirpa Labs Analyzer of SoundStages (Lirpa Labs ASS).

Oops, there it is again.

 

[Beave]

I use a cheap sound meter to level match and listen to musical passages I am very familiar with, switching gear in and out multiple times to make sure any differences are repeatable.

You have to match levels more precisely by measuring electrical levels out of the DACs and ensuring they are within a tenth of a dB or so. With level matching done the way you did it (acoustically with a cheap sound meter), you could easily be off by a full dB or two.

Also, you must do the comparison blinded, so that you don't know which you are listening to.

Do these things and you will probably find all differences in soundstage vanish, because they are actually complex recreations in your head done by your brain.

 

[dlaloum]

You have to match levels more precisely by measuring electrical levels out of the DACs and ensuring they are within a tenth of a dB or so. With level matching done the way you did it (acoustically with a cheap sound meter), you could easily be off by a full dB or two.

Also, you must do the comparison blinded, so that you don't know which you are listening to.

Do these things and you will probably find all differences in soundstage vanish, because they are actually complex recreations in your head done by your brain.

The assumption here being that levels are the differentiators - but what if the differentiator is midrange frequency distortion?

Most of the soundstage information is midrange oriented - and a moderate level of distortion in the right spectrum range, can totally disturb our hearing systems ability to discern (or have the impression of) soundstage....(along with imaging).

There are a bunch of things that can affect distortion - and unless you measure for it - you won't know its there.

 

[Keith_W]

Let me clarify what I am suggesting as a testable hypothesis here, and then we can discuss together if “logical fallacy” applies.

The original question for the Thread is “Why isn’t sounds stage from a DAC measurable?” A search on the Internet of links where “soundstage” and “DAC” appear in the same post results in hundreds if not thousands of unique posts.

You can prove anything you like with an internet search, for example that the Earth is flat. Thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people agreeing on something is not evidence that it is true. There might be 400 million adherents of Religion A, and another 400 million of Religion B - they both can't be correct if they are making contradictory claims. In audio, it is not uncommon for people to willingly fool themselves, especially if they can not bring themselves to admit that they have just dropped a few hundred grand on a DAC that performs no better than an iPhone dongle.

This is known as "argumentum ad populum", and it is a well-known logical fallacy. To prove a claim, evidence is required. An anecdote is not evidence, and even 1000 anecdotes saying the same thing is not evidence. For it to be evidence, it needs to be double blinded and controlled to statistical significance.

Having said that, soundstage is not a property of the sound, it is a construct of our brain. I am not saying that it does not exist, because it most definitely does. It is constructed from ITD, ILD, direction of reflections, delay of reflections, phase differences, amplitude response, and other cues INCLUDING visual cues and expectation bias. There exists no such thing as "soundstage" in physical reality, it's just sound bouncing around in different directions with different timing. It is our brain that puts all this together and creates a soundstage.

It is possible to pre-emptively design hardware or software that manipulates the signal to create the illusion of a wider soundstage, examples are BACCH and QSound. If you look at the measurements of DAC output, what you will see is crosstalk cancellation, phase manipulation, and some frequency amplitude manipulation - so it is measurable. Output from an ordinary DAC which some reviewer said has "wide soundstage" but measures the same as an iPhone dongle will perform exactly the same.

 

[Beave]

The assumption here being that levels are the differentiators - but what if the differentiator is midrange frequency distortion?

Most of the soundstage information is midrange oriented - and a moderate level of distortion in the right spectrum range, can totally disturb our hearing systems ability to discern (or have the impression of) soundstage....(along with imaging).

There are a bunch of things that can affect distortion - and unless you measure for it - you won't know its there.

Distortion in DACs is usually well below audible levels. And it's usually swamped by the distortion produced by the transducers (speakers or headphones).

 

[Killingbeans]

Many of these contain comments by people with thousands of hours of listening experience to music and stereo equipment who report hearing differences in soundstage reproduction by different DACs.

Same thing can be said about nonsense products like these:

It is possible that every single one of the many anecdotal reports are false positives.

It's by far the most likely explanation.

It is possible that they are not,

And it's possible to win the lottery ten times in a row.

and since there is no currently available measure to determine how accurately soundstage or localization of sounds are reproduced by an stereo audio system,

There is. But it all takes place in your listening room. Acoustics is what gives you the illusion of a sound stage combined with your brain's willingness to fill in the blanks.

Searching for an "accurate" sound stage in playback equipment is a dead end. Different speakers + rooms give different illusions of sound stages, but calling any of them accurate would be foolish. It's all about compromises and personal taste.

A "DAC" that changes the source information enough to alter the illusion of a sound stage is called a DAW. That's a completely different animal.

I am suggesting a method that could be applied equally to DACs, phono cartridges, preamps, amps, speakers, and even cables.

I provided some basic information here on how human hearing processes localization information for sound. I provided references to a laboratory at MIT who have developed a measurement system and set of algorithms that can approximate human hearing abilities to decipher a combination of time, loudness and frequency parameters to localize sounds in space. I am suggesting this system could be applied to measure the effect of different electronics on soundstage by keeping the speakers and 3D space constant relative to the measuring equipment, and just rotating different electronics.

Well... I'm not stopping you.

My personal prediction would be that it'll be a colossal waste of time, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

[BDWoody]

The original question for the Thread is “Why isn’t sounds stage from a DAC measurable?”

I merged that thread with this catch-all covering the general subject.

Let's keep this discussion here moving forward.

 

[SIY]

You have the same equipment, algorithms and “listening” setup as the researchers at MIT? That’s cool. And only $200/hr. What a steal.

Mine is considerably better. You get the ASR discount.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

But that wasn’t the subject of this thread, was it

Yes, you are right. I thought it was a different thread.

 

[knownothing]

You have to match levels more precisely by measuring electrical levels out of the DACs and ensuring they are within a tenth of a dB or so. With level matching done the way you did it (acoustically with a cheap sound meter), you could easily be off by a full dB or two.

Also, you must do the comparison blinded, so that you don't know which you are listening to.

Do these things and you will probably find all differences in soundstage vanish, because they are actually complex recreations in your head done by your brain.

Thanks for the suggestion on better level matching. Agreed, that would be superior.

I’d like to clarify one thing. I know this thread is about measuring soundstage related to DACs, but I was referring to the overall sound of different DACs, as the post I was responding to seemed to indicate all electronics sound the same to human hearing. That said, the soundstage of my digital front end did seem to change when I switched from an Arcam irDAC to a Chord QuteHD, with more apparent spatial detail (both with MCRU power supply). I did not notice a detectable difference in spatial information going from the QuteHD to a Chord Qutest (using the stock switching supply).

I have done blind testing with others on different gear, and what I learned was that some people have much better hearing and fidelity in their ability to repeatedly detect differences in gear swaps than others. I am about average in my cohort, but know enough about my skills to trust what sounds good (to me) and what does not. Your comment in effective level matching is noted.

kn

 

[knownothing]

Mine is considerably better. You get the ASR discount.

Thanks.

 

[voodooless]

Your comment in effective level matching is noted.

By completely disregarding it in the next sentence and spouting another worthless anecdote about your golden ear prowess. It's not just superiors, it is essential, like air vs vacuum as a living condition for humans.

 

[knownothing]

Same thing can be said about nonsense products like these:
View attachment 351494



It's by far the most likely explanation.



And it's possible to win the lottery ten times in a row.



There is. But it all takes place in your listening room. Acoustics is what gives you the illusion of a sound stage combined with your brain's willingness to fill in the blanks.

Searching for an "accurate" sound stage in playback equipment is a dead end. Different speakers + rooms give different illusions of sound stages, but calling any of them accurate would be foolish. It's all about compromises and personal taste.

A "DAC" that changes the source information enough to alter the illusion of a sound stage is called a DAW. That's a completely different animal.



Well... I'm not stopping you.

My personal prediction would be that it'll be a colossal waste of time, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Thanks for taking time to respond and thanks for the reference to the Akitvator 2D Chip. I think I’ll pass for now.

“It all takes place in your listening room”. Exactly. Why I am suggesting a method to hold the drivers and the room variables constant and evaluate individual links in the reproduction chain upstream of the speakers, including DACs, for any possible contribution to a facsimile of how humans actually hear and localize reproduced sound at our ears.

In the old days of brick and mortar hifi shops, potential customers would go to different retailers and listen to gear to get an idea of what they liked within their budget. They’d buy it and take it home where it may sound better, worse, or nearly the same as in the store. “Soundstage” was part of the vocabulary in the 1970s, but pretty much entirely applied to radically different speaker designs. Engineers among us shopped based on spec sheets as much as sound demos.

Since then, several things have happened. First, there are very few local brick and mortar shops to demo gear. Second, the “source first” thinking has spread in audio circles, leading to much consideration and hand ringing (related to DAC ringing?) over phono front end and DAC selection. Third, DACs have become better at lower price points as design and as engineering skillls advance. Fourth, the Internet has made information like that available on this site much more readily available.

At this point in time I am more interested in joining rather than dividing objectivist and subjectivist camps in audio, and sorting out fact from fiction. We aren’t there yet, but we have increasingly sophisticated understanding and measurement methods, and I’m in favor of the more adventurous and curious members of the audio community tackling a question like the one posed in the original post and making their results available for qualified peer review. I am not qualified to either conduct the proposed analysis or review the results, and am stuck until you all enlighten me with just using my ears.

Thanks again,

kn

 

[knownothing]

By completely disregarding it in the next sentence and spouting another worthless anecdote about your golden ear prowess. It's not just superiors, it is essential, like air vs vacuum as a living condition for humans.

I have not provided you with empirical proof that I am right listening to my gear in my room. And you have not provided empirical proof that the hypothesis that DACs (or any combination of electronics in general comprising a “system”) cannot contribute to how humans perceive soundstage and localization, given speaker type, measuring equipment and room configuration are held constant, which is essentially the point of the initial post and question.

It’s very complicated and there are a lot of potential variables, I know. I hope someone who is qualified will bite on this challenge.

 

[voodooless]

And you have not provided empirical proof that the hypothesis that DACs (or any combination of electronics in general comprising a “system”) cannot contribute to how humans perceive soundstage and localization, given speaker type, measuring equipment and room configuration are held constant, which is essentially the point of the initial post and question.

You're asking to prove a negative here, that is pointless. Nor did anyone say that it "cannot contribute": It can very well be if the device in question is severely broken.

But if devices give the same output down more than -100 dB, no human can hear the difference. We can't test every human obviously, but there is plenty of evidence to support this claim. To put this into perspective: if a 200m (~650ft) skyscraper would be a 0 dBFS signal, 100 dB down, would be 2mm (~0.08 inch) high. That is how small the differences are we are talking about here.

 

[JustJones]

Russell's teapot

It's where these you can't prove everything matters in every situation fallacies end up.

Next up, why don't we measure how dacs affect the timbre of tubas?

 

[knownothing]

Having said that, soundstage is not a property of the sound, it is a construct of our brain. I am not saying that it does not exist, because it most definitely does. It is constructed from ITD, ILD, direction of reflections, delay of reflections, phase differences, amplitude response, and other cues INCLUDING visual cues and expectation bias. There exists no such thing as "soundstage" in physical reality, it's just sound bouncing around in different directions with different timing. It is our brain that puts all this together and creates a soundstage.

This is the whole point of stereo versus mono reproduction. Right? Music reproduction is a system, including the equipment, the room and the listener. Our perception of performance of that whole “system” is what matters in the end. Perhaps the top twenty DACs as measured by Amirm will sound exactly the same if swapped out in a specific system of other electronics and in the same room to the same listener. What I am suggesting is to run that analysis of DACs as part of a complete system to provide some objective measure of what many listeners, including myself, claim we are hearing.

Analyzing complete system versus single components adds significant complexity and is its own special form of investigation. Perhaps someone here is interested in taking this on.

in

 

[JustJones]

What I am suggesting is to run that analysis of DACs as part of a complete system to provide some objective measure of what many listeners, including myself, claim we are hearing.

It's your claim. Switch only a DAC in a controlled blind test will tell you if it's the DAC or you.

 

[DonR]

This is the whole point of stereo versus mono reproduction. Right? Music reproduction is a system, including the equipment, the room and the listener. Our perception of performance of that whole “system” is what matters in the end. Perhaps the top twenty DACs as measured by Amirm will sound exactly the same if swapped out in a specific system of other electronics and in the same room to the same listener. What I am suggesting is to run that analysis of DACs as part of a complete system to provide some objective measure of what many listeners, including myself, claim we are hearing.

Analyzing complete system versus single components adds significant complexity and is its own special form of investigation. Perhaps someone here is interested in taking this on.

in

Given the input and output impedances of electronic components, there is minimal interaction between these devices, broken or poorly designed components excepted.

 

[Petevid]

In the digital domain source first is a solved problem, cd players, streamers and dacs can perform their tasks bit perfectly. Amplifiers can amplify with distortion at levels way below what we can hear and uniformly across across the audio spectrum. It’s all about speakers and acoustics.