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

[antcollinet]

Why don't you all settle to the statement: Speakers and room (Treatment eq) and subs are the most important, then amplifiers and last is dac

We can.

However, this is a thread specifically about DACs. In the context of this thread, focussing on speakers/room would be a bit daft.

 

[ahofer]

Honestly, I'm unclear on @Miguelón's assertion and the conversation keeps moving around. Just for clarification:

1. Is it your contention that our knowledge of human audibility thresholds incomplete or based on poor testing? Most of it has been known for decades and is based on repeated tests in many forms.
2. Are we arguing about listener perception, or whether the DAC itself is the cause of the perception? The interest here is in the latter and most agree the former is unpredictable, individual, and..fine if you want to pursue it.
3. Is it your contention that there are insufficient blind tests of DACs/filters/sample rates and/or all their methodologies are bad (after reviewing the ones in the thread and those in the AES archives)?

My attempt at the ASR claim would be as follows:

Humans will not be able to distinguish DACs that have flat FR, low distortion and a high signal-to-noise ratio (all defined as difference below human auditory thresholds) in an unsighted and level-matched comparison. If they hear a difference unsighted, the source is not the signal.

I have seen exactly zero evidence rejecting that hypothesis, and synopses of blind tests, in many different forms, that fail to reject that hypothesis. which leads me to assert that if output signals measure the same within audible thresholds, it will sound the same. Even filter differences, if they measure similarly, will be undistinguishable.

 

[Miss_Sissy]

What is very surprising to me is given the fact that discrepancies exist between measurements and people perception,

It's not surprising to me. It's been experimentally proven over and over that people often imagine audible differences where none exist. If you tell a group of listeners that you changed some component in an audio chain before playing the same track a second time, most will be convinced that they "hear" an audible difference even if you did not actually change anything. I've proven this on several occasions, much to the chagrin of some of my now-former audiophile friends.

and also blind tests cannot be done with enough accuracy, nobody take the possibility of inconsistency of the method. Always attribution to psychological phenomena is not the unique way to explain.

It's easy to perform proper, single-subject, multiple-trial ABX tests. There's nothing difficult about level-matching the DACs or tabulating how many times the listener correctly and incorrectly identified which DAC was the 'X' DAC. The statistical analysis of the results is not difficult.

All that "your side" needs to do is produce just one listener who can reliably identify the unknown ('X') DAC in blind ABX tests. Do that, and you win the debate by proving that the differences are audible, even if not to every listener.

You can let the listener decide how long to listen to each DAC (A, B, and X) before registering their vote on each trial. You can supply the audio system or let the listener supply one of their choosing. If the listener believes that they will perform better while dressed as Ferdinand Magellan, let them wear that costume throughout the test. We just want some clear, no-excuses results.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Obviously Miguelon is either trolling or arguing in bad faith. He'll tell you science is never more than a probable theory and refuse anything that isn't 100% certain.

 

[rdenney]

You can't eliminate bias without a blind test, and your conscious expectations have no control over your subconscious ones.

A blind test is only non-essential when the reliability of the test results is equally non-essential.

Yes, but… one only needs the evidence of controlled testing to demonstrate the difference they hear is not the product of bias and chance. If they detect no difference, there’s nothing to prove.

When I imagine listening with the ears of an observer who really doesn’t care and is slightly annoyed by having to listen to Rick’s geeky system, differences I imagined before utterly vanish. That’s evidence enough for me that 1.) the difference is insignificant and 2.) I can’t trust the brain my ears are connected to.

Rick “never heard any difference between DACs” Denney

 

[ads_cft222]

We can.

However, this is a thread specifically about DACs. In the context of this thread, focussing on speakers/room would be a bit daft.

Now you pretend like you don’t understand what is the point…

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Different DACs do have different sound qualities. The quality of the capacitors and other components used after the chip to the outputs influence the sound.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Different DACs do have different sound qualities. The quality of the capacitors and other components used after the chip to the outputs influence the sound.

It can be so, but the overwhelming amount of the time is not so.

 

[DonR]

Different DACs do have different sound qualities. The quality of the capacitors and other components used after the chip to the outputs influence the sound.

That can be measured and frequently appears as audibly transparent i.e. so low as to be negligible.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

That can be measured and frequently appears as audibly transparent i.e. so low as to be negligible.

I just sold my Cambridge CXNV2 after I purchased the new CXN100. The improvement in sound quality was immediately apparent. Forgive my lack of understanding of "transparent." I just rely on what I hear.

 

[oleg87]

Also measuring biases exist. Tests that are used to measure dac are just send a signal and analyze the response. After that, you believe that the dac will behave consistently over a whole track of 5 minutes (as an example) and with quite superposition of waves. I guess they are other tests more complex as multitone.

But the only way to state that two different dacs are equal on a given track is to analyze the whole function of the output signal. The other are samples.

I suppose that the device is well known and wave superposition do not overcome the circuit with interferences, overheating or any other phenomenon and this idea can be very weak, but think that it will be a better measurement than single samples.

If you have evidence of a DAC that is known to perform reasonably well misbehaving in a manner that evaded Amir's (or whoever's) measurement suite, by all means, ASR would love to see it. Vague subjective impressions, for reasons explained ad nauseum, do not qualify and do not interest anyone here.

Audio DACs are really quite straightforward. They don't need to drive challenging loads, they're usually operating at levels that do not strain their dynamic range, they are simple to measure and characterize in a manner that mirrors real-world usage. The hard part's been done by ESS/AKM/TI/etc.

 

[Mr. Haelscheir]

Different DACs do have different sound qualities. The quality of the capacitors and other components used after the chip to the outputs influence the sound.

This may have already been said countless times in variation on this thread, but there is no point in speculating or assuming the physical causes of differences in the sound of gear, be it component quality or negative feedback, without first conducting a controlled listening that eliminates all biases that could cause anything but the actual sound signal itself from influencing one's perception of said sound. Let a + b = c where a is the audio signal, b is extra-sonic perceptual stimuli like knowledge or sight of the equipment being tested, and c is the perception of that sound. If c changes, that does not imply that it was a that had changed, and we have measurements such as null tests to demonstrate that a had not changed, yet it is obvious except in blind tests that b has changed. Therefore, if c has changed, but a has not changed, then the cause of the change was b via a psychological mechanism.

 

[ads_cft222]

If deltawave software is reliable to detect audible differences you should add it to the suite of testing of various devices when there is a review. I am also interested if there was a feedback from the industry on this software and its results.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Different DACs do have different sound qualities. The quality of the capacitors and other components used after the chip to the outputs influence the sound.

It's not that the intrinsic quality of the components in the circuit influence the sound, it's more that the circuit itself influences the sound.

Make no mistake about it; some designers fabricate electronics that have an identifiable "sound". They use that characteristic as a sort of trademark. The thing to remember is that in all instances, circuits that have identifiable characteristics which are above the threshold of hearing will show those characteristics on tests and measurements.

So basically what we're saying is, "Ain't no place to run, ain't no place to hide."

Jim

 

[Blumlein 88]

I just rely on what I hear.

And that last part is a mistake applied improperly. Your hearing without controls is unreliable in this type of situation.

 

[Blumlein 88]

If deltawave software is reliable to detect audible differences you should add it to the suite of testing of various devices when there is a review.

It is reliable to detect inaudible differences. One thing that can be learned from it is that normal testing is good enough done well.

 

[DonR]

I just sold my Cambridge CXNV2 after I purchased the new CXN100. The improvement in sound quality was immediately apparent. Forgive my lack of understanding of "transparent." I just rely on what I hear.

Without controlled listening tests it is impossible to tell whether those differences exist in reality or are byproducts of internal biases. Hearing is incredibly unreliable.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Does everybody here listen to test signals all day? I listen to the music. Is it possible that a piece of equipment tests extremely high in all aspects but doesn't sound good?

 

[Jim Taylor]

I just rely on what I hear.

Although a natural inclination, reliance on the senses is very problematic and inaccurate. The human brain is packed chock-full of cognitive biases. They allow our reflexes to work on minimal input or time delay, but they are very unreliable for accurate appraisals.

Here is a list of cognitive biases. You may consider it interesting.

List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jim

 

[antcollinet]

Now you pretend like you don’t understand what is the point…

D'y think?