Sabaj D5 vs. SMSL M500 vs. Topping DX7 Pro: measurement comparison

[NielsMayer]

Uh huh.

Do you lot have anything more than bleating charlatan and grunting uh huh? Like an actual counterargument with scientific references??

"Behind me in the empty shadows I hear them grunting.... Swine swine swine"
-Herman Hesse

 

[BDWoody]

Do you lot have anything more than bleating charlatan and grunting uh huh? Like an actual counterargument with scientific references??

"Behind me in the empty shadows I hear them grunting.... Swine swine swine"
-Herman Hesse

Mmm hmmm....

 

[SIY]

Do you lot have anything more than bleating charlatan and grunting uh huh? Like an actual counterargument with scientific references??

You've been given them. Time to do some reading.

 

[NielsMayer]

Those are articles about grounding and ground loops. That's a fraction of the story because you appear to be unable to comprehend the totality of audio that has zero to do with sidebands off a sinewave and associated objectivist goalposts moving.

Likewise balanced means more than impedance balanced but you've blindered yourself into that perspective as well. It's not even relevant anymore since we no longer use balanced audio signalling for our audio systems in power or current mode (even though still internally used in DAC chip outputs).

And Bruno... Maybe he should fix the RF susceptible inputs on his NC400 (they alias against the switching rate) instead of writing papers ... Speaking of RF susceptibility.

 

[RickSanchez]

PPS: it's too bad jitter artefacts can't be better measured on this site, as it would probably drop plenty of "20 bit linear DAC" (tested on a single 1khz sinewave) down to like 12-16 bits. That is conjecture, but from the above papers you can get an idea of actual bit-depth reduction equivalent that jitter introduces. It's nasty.

I sincerely try to avoid pulling Amir into threads as he has far better things to spend his time on, but @amirm : would you be willing to comment on the method and quality of your jitter tests? I think it's important to hear your perspective on the jitter tests that you perform on DACs vs. the claim by NeilsMayer that "it's too bad jitter artefacts can't be better measured on this site, as it would probably drop plenty of "20 bit linear DAC" (tested on a single 1khz sinewave) down to like 12-16 bits."

 

[NielsMayer]

I sincerely try to avoid pulling Amir into threads as he has far better things to spend his time on, but @amirm : would you be willing to comment on the method and quality of your jitter tests? I think it's important to hear your perspective on the jitter tests that you perform on DACs vs. the claim by NeilsMayer that "it's too bad jitter artefacts can't be better measured on this site, as it would probably drop plenty of "20 bit linear DAC" (tested on a single 1khz sinewave) down to like 12-16 bits."

The closest thing that would show that are the 32 tone tests.

Thus this

begets this:

While this:

begets:

and finally, really showing the IMD effects of jitter...

which begets (very surprisingly)

The latter should show worse results, which is why 32 tones -- all in constant phase and from the perspective of the FFT window, infinite in length, -- have very little to do with "music" but it's better than nothing.

And if i dare say anything more about the tons of research I've done into jitter and psychoacoustic perception of hearing positioning (something i"ve worked on at "work" back in the day) I'll just get flamed or people will stupidly go "uhuh" to things they haven't the first clue about, so what's the point??? And I'm still waiting for someone to do a study that forces bats to use "HD Audio DACs" and little miniature headphones to virtually navigate "caves" via their squeaks and echolocation ... I bet y'all audio ideologies would have the poor bats crashing into cave walls because of the way jitter destroys imaging... and then you'd get mad at the poor bats for not being 1khz sinewaves.

 

[BDWoody]

The closest thing that would show that are the 32 tone tests.

Thus this

begets this:

While this:

begets:

and finally, really showing the IMD effects of jitter...

which begets (very surprisingly)

The latter should show worse results, which is why 32 tones -- all in constant phase and from the perspective of the FFT window, infinite in length, -- have very little to do with "music" but it's better than nothing.

And if i dare say anything more about the tons of research I've done into jitter and psychoacoustic perception of hearing positioning (something i"ve worked on at "work" back in the day) I'll just get flamed or people will stupidly go "uhuh" to things they haven't the first clue about, so what's the point??? And I'm still waiting for someone to do a study that forces bats to use "HD Audio DACs" and little miniature headphones to virtually navigate "caves" via their squeaks and echolocation ... I bet y'all audio ideologies would have the poor bats crashing into cave walls because of the way jitter destroys imaging... and then you'd get mad at the poor bats for not being 1khz sinewaves.

So, it looks like no audible (to humans) effects...
Cool.

 

[deafenears]

I don’t love the idea of variable performance based on warmup time on the Sabaj,

Not sure if this is a problem now. Per @Sak's post elsewhere, there doesn't appear to have any heatsinks in the one he received:

I opened my D5, and it also don't have heatsink, only holes.

 

[Sak]

Not sure if this is a problem now.

I did not notice any changes in sound over time. The device sounds the same when it turned on, and after an hour or two.

 

[Shoaibexpert]

I have my D70 connected by USB to the Shield, and have had no problems.

Do you also use The USB Audio Player Pro or some other way/connection to stream on Shield TV to your D70? Thanks

 

[VeerK]

Not sure if this is a problem now. Per @Sak's post elsewhere, there doesn't appear to have any heatsinks in the one he received:

Thanks for the update, making my decision more difficult

 

[Shoaibexpert]

The closest thing that would show that are the 32 tone tests.

Thus this

begets this:

While this:

begets:

and finally, really showing the IMD effects of jitter...

which begets (very surprisingly)

The latter should show worse results, which is why 32 tones -- all in constant phase and from the perspective of the FFT window, infinite in length, -- have very little to do with "music" but it's better than nothing.

And if i dare say anything more about the tons of research I've done into jitter and psychoacoustic perception of hearing positioning (something i"ve worked on at "work" back in the day) I'll just get flamed or people will stupidly go "uhuh" to things they haven't the first clue about, so what's the point??? And I'm still waiting for someone to do a study that forces bats to use "HD Audio DACs" and little miniature headphones to virtually navigate "caves" via their squeaks and echolocation ... I bet y'all audio ideologies would have the poor bats crashing into cave walls because of the way jitter destroys imaging... and then you'd get mad at the poor bats for not being 1khz sinewaves.

Out of curiosity...since all 32 tone results show variation below -120db...and we all know you definitely can't hear below say -117db...is the difference between the DACs a matter of audible concern at all? I'm sure you can't hear one DAC being more jittery than the other...so may I know the purpose of quoting these results? Most importantly, is this a matter of importance to the whole real/fake balanced discussion...as @amirm mentioned earlier, he has never encountered a fake balanced DAC before...

I do wonder however, why Topping used the 3 expensive Accusilicon chips to manage jitter if the same results were acheived by SMSL by using much cheaper components! Still wondering why the SMSL M500 didn't appear linear to you as in you said the Lows and Highs sounded different...

 

[BDWoody]

Do you also use The USB Audio Player Pro or some other way/connection to stream on Shield TV to your D70? Thanks

Nope... I believe the act of plugging in a DAC to a USB port is all that is needed...all sound gets routed through the DAC no matter what I am playing or casting. No thought needed...

Isn't it basically a Linux box with USB 2.0? It's recognized any dac I've plugged in with no required driver updates or anything else...

 

[VintageFlanker]

Out of curiosity...since all 32 tone results show variation below -120db...and we all know you definitely can't hear below say -117db...is the difference between the DACs a matter of audible concern at all?

Nope. All three DACs are audibly transparent in that regard.

It should be audible only when you deal with this kind of mess:

(PS Audio Stellar Gain)

(Airist R2R DAC)

 

[Harry1973]

Lots of this jitter conversation goes over my head, especially Niels comments.

I am using cheap (but good quality) optical cable with Sabaj D5 (passes also 24/192) for purely practical reasons (for streaming flac files). Coax input is for another source as that only has coax out put.
-Can there be differences in jitter performance (optical, coax, usb) if the dac reads and "re clocks" every input bit-perfect? This does not make sense to me at all.

I have had the believe that optical has the benefit of cutting out possible electrical nasties from source to a dac (groundloops and such) and thats why I have never worried about optical, quite the contrary.

 

[SIY]

This does not make sense to me at all.

There's a reason for that.

 

[Shoaibexpert]

Nope... I believe the act of plugging in a DAC to a USB port is all that is needed...all sound gets routed through the DAC no matter what I am playing or casting. No thought needed...

Isn't it basically a Linux box with USB 2.0? It's recognized any dac I've plugged in with no required driver updates or anything else...

I am sure it is. Surely, MQA wouldn't pass through the Shield TV via USB and be played by the M500? Anyone using this set-up btw?

 

[Shoaibexpert]

There's a reason for that.

Lol, does the DAC reclock the input and eliminate jitter from an optical source btw?

 

[SIY]

Lol, does the DAC reclock the input and eliminate jitter from an optical source btw?

Take a look at the analog output. That's the only thing that matters.

 

[boXem]

There's a reason for that.

Well, although I agree with what you wrote previously, we cannot say that since external jitter countermeasures are well known, they are properly implemented. We have seen enough crap tested during the past monthes.
Unless I missed something, @amirm doesn't test the products immunity to the external disturbances (mains or inputs noise, inputs jitter, nuclear attacks, attractive women or whatever). As I understand it, the jitter test looks at the intrinsinc jitter of the DUT, but there is no injection of a disturbance.
Not to criticise the choices made, they are what they are, I perfectly understand that @amirm cannot spend 2 weeks testing each device.
The only thing we know is that since the test environment is somehow constant, devices with good imunity to external disturbances will produce better results than the sensitive ones.