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

[antcollinet]

Maybe, at this point I’m beginning to have some doubts. But no matter the psychological question, I still need a coax input and want a remote, so probably go to topping D50 iii

Now you are getting it. It makes absolute sense to pick DACs based on things other than the audio performance. Eg features such as you have outlined here, aesthetics, brand reputation (eg for after sales support) and so on.

Once audio performance is good enough it doesn't have to be considered further. That applies to all the devices in the blue and green sections of the Sinad chart - which is what I will always use as my shortlist.

 

[ads_cft222]

I don’t know, synergy only be affected by signal level. If one has a very weak output, forcing the amp at maximum gain may produce some noise or distortion.

Otherwise I’m now convinced by experts on the forum and some extra research on circuits behavior that if the dac has high SINAD and flat response is impossible to tell the difference.

My only non psychologically plausible answer is still:

-Different filters used (perfect anti aliasing filters don’t exist so one can expect some false images of ultrasonic frequencies on the audible region, so anti image filters are used with some slight differences on the very high region but still audible if you’re so young)

-Problems on the emitter usb output energy or file processing, I use normally Tidal on iphone 15 pro max or ipad air M1: both have usb standards but the volume is low if I don’t use the supplied power. Since the dac need some minimum energy in electronics components and the iPhone is limiting the output power to protect the battery, possibly can affect performances. Otherwise with my PC sound is better, or if I use a Belkin usb c charger and audio usb adapter that supplies power and charges the phone at same time.

Well I am not sure about the sameness in absolute audible terms. Not happened to experience it even in blind level matched test between the internal dac of my amp vs another measured transparent. I would like to see metrics that measure how good is the reconstruction filter of each dac. However the differences were small. So not really critical but in the end shaped preference...

 

[BDWoody]

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@Jimbob54 Thanks for your reply and I am pretty confused now with a reply from another member @Geert

He mentioned the following in the thread I created talking about visual/audio illusion Can you hear any audible difference if they are measured as audibly transparent? | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

View attachment 365434

He said that I might hear a difference (i.e. I replaced the word "see" to "hear" as we used seeing as analogy as hearing in my thread).

Could you tell me that if I mis-understood you?

i.e.

based on your reply, my understanding is "they sounds the same" (please correct me if I am wrong)
based on @Geert 's reply, my understanding is "I might hear a difference" (please correct me if I am wrong)

@Jimbob54 , could you please let me know if my understanding of your reply is correct or not? Thanks.

If you don't use controls, you will almost certainly hear differences.

When people say you won't hear a difference, that's assuming there are controls in place.

 

[Basic Channel]

Not sure if it helps but Geert is saying you see/hear a difference even though it’s the same.

Weirdly when it gets down to tiny tiny differences you can see “does it look more like an O with this or without”, you shrug your shoulders and the optician moves onto the next bit of the eye test.

 

[BDWoody]

I think it would be easier for us to discss here (same as my iniitial posting for the other thread I mentioned earlier)

No, I don't find that easier.

I'm really not sure what you are debating here.

The brain plays tricks. If you want to make assertions about differences in sound, use appropriate controls.

There isn't much more to it.

 

[pkane]

I think it would be easier for us to discss here (same as my iniitial posting for the other thread I mentioned earlier)

============= from my other thread =============

Have a look of the following picture:

View attachment 365435

What do you see in the middle column?

Answer A: 4 different boxes of gradient of greyscale? or
Answer B: 4 different boxes of static grey color?

I am not sure if all people would pick A (but I did).

How many of you would pick B honestly based on your experience / feeling without knowing the answer first? I don't know.

Yes, the answer is B.

Did I tell lie if I state that I see gradient of greyscale instead of static grey color? Well... I didn't (at least that's my believe)

After knowng the answer should be B, would that affect/change my experience / feeling in "reality" (i.e. what I can experience / feel actually)? Hmm... I still expereince / feel the same (i.e. I will pick A) even I know the answer is B.

Similar arguments in the audio domain are happening here.

Many people do tell us here that the answer is B, i.e. you shoud not "SEE" any difference. They are the same!

Well.... would that change how I experience / feel in "reality"? Hmm...

========== End ===========

In the above example, we all agreed that the four boxes in the middle are just 4 different static grey color (i.e. the answer is B)

But most people would still experience / feel that they are not static as below (this is actually the capture of the second box).

View attachment 365436

What control we are missing here?

Could you repost that same picture and the question another 20 or 30 times, please? I don't think it's enough to have repeated it in only 4 or 5 threads so far.

 

[Jimbob54]

View attachment 365433

@Jimbob54 Thanks for your reply and I am pretty confused now with a reply from another member @Geert

He mentioned the following in the thread I created talking about visual/audio illusion Can you hear any audible difference if they are measured as audibly transparent? | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

View attachment 365434

He said that I might hear a difference (i.e. I replaced the word "see" to "hear" as we used seeing as analogy as hearing in my thread).

Could you tell me that if I mis-understood you?

i.e.

based on your reply, my understanding is "they sounds the same" (please correct me if I am wrong)
based on @Geert 's reply, my understanding is "I might hear a difference" (please correct me if I am wrong)

@Jimbob54 , could you please let me know if my understanding of your reply is correct or not? Thanks.

You mean @Geert response here? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...red-as-audibly-transparent.53959/post-1957137

Pretty clear what I meant earlier in this thread if you'd bothered to read the first few pages of this thread and the various others you have been directed to over your time here. Also pretty clear what geert meant if you either read or quoted his entire post.

 

[BDWoody]

Exactly, it is measured perfectly and the measurements show they are the same and we agree that measurements are the same objectively.

But we still "experince/feel" (aka "hear") the difference.

I think you're having some kind of mental block here, and the way you are trying to have this discussion in a bunch of different places makes it harder. If you take a little time to process what is being said I think that would be better than just repeating yourself.

 

[oleg87]

I think you will be able to prove the opposite perfectly well, using scientific research as an example) Study the topics of capacitor forming, electrolyte training after storage, and similar topics, etc. Do you think that a new amplifier sounds the same as a warmed-up one?

If it's halfway well-designed, sure. The temperature of devices certainly has an effect that needs attending to in a design, "burn-in" not so much. Audiophiles love finding out about arcane physical phenomena and making evidence-free assertions that they have a significant audible effect, but the problem for their theories is that anything that results in distortion levels below 0.01% basically does not matter as far as your ears go, and well-designed amps/dacs are going to greatly linearize anything within the feedback loop.

 

[antcollinet]

In any case, I'm not going to dissuade you and impose my opinion, demanding justifications from you, relax) everyone's hearing is different

This is true. But also:

No-one's hearing has infinite bandwidth.
No-one's hearing is infinitely sensitive.
Everyone's hearing has limits.

And the imperfections in the audio coming out of transparent measuring Dacs are below the limits of all humans - even those with the best hearing.

Furthermore, the phrase "everyone's hearing is different" actually means "most peoples hearing is significantly worse than that of the humans with the best hearing.

 

[krabapple]

I go away for a few days and whackable moles proliferate, oh dear.

Also I abandoned hi-fi speakers some time ago precisely because the “sound signature” of amps and speakers, as in classical music we prefer stick as well as possible to the recording in order to don’t introduce artifacts on dynamics or loose instruments when listening orchestral music.

Huh?

The above bolded statement isn't my only puzzlement; I can't figure out if this person is a mathematician, astrophyisist, or doctor of 'physical medicine', as it seems to have claimed to be all three.

It's funny) You doubt my statement and want me to prove something to you and find scientific grounds for you. Study the topics of capacitor forming, electrolyte training after storage, and similar topics, etc. Do you think that a new amplifier or DAC sounds the same as a warmed-up one? Well done, that's your business.

I for one sure do expect them to, because I don''t believe the measurable difference between 'new' and 'warmed up' there should rise to the level of audibility. Are there data indicating otherwise? I mean data, not anecdotes from bias-prone listening.

I think it would be easier for us to discss here (same as my iniitial posting for the other thread I mentioned earlier)


What control we are missing

Ugh, a 'if it feels different , it is different' argument. What a waste of pixels.

 

[Miguelón]

The above bolded statement isn't my only puzzlement; I can't figure out if this person is a mathematician, astrophyisist, or doctor of 'physical medicine', as it seems to have claimed to be all three.

I don’t understand you very well: I’m physical therapist actually, is written on my little biopic.

Was mathematician before, astrophysics is not my domain but made some formation on riemannian geometry which is the basis of general relativity and other theories (but not astrophysics, just only topologically).

No electronic knowledge at all, unfortunately. Only theory, if I try to match a battery with an engine, the house will probably make explosion.

I studied piano at the conservatory and tried to dedicate to that, but fortunately for my potential audience I changed my orientation to maths

Again, thanks to a knee torn I re-oriented my career to rehabilitation medicine.

Here’s my brief biography, but what has this to do with Bang Olufsen and my change to Genelecs?

 

[Miguelón]

The above bolded statement isn't my only puzzlement

I think now I understand you better: I badly named commercial audio or home audio.

I was trying to say that I moved the way to perceive music reproduction from “good” in the sense of “expensive and guided by music stores” to “as flat and neutral as possible”

 

[solderdude]

What control we are missing here?

The control would be to eliminate the 'noise that fools the brain' so all optical input aside from the 4 gradients as input to your eyes.

In audio the control would be to eliminate every aspect possible such as:
volume differences, even minute ones so less than 1% (0.1dB)
filter differences (unless that's what you are testing for)
knowing what is playing
tells (looking at things/people that might give clues, which can be visual and auditory)

 

[oleg87]

Had another moment reminding me of the near-uselessness of sighted listening tests yesterday: I saw it mentioned in some documentation for the codec that 128kbps VBR Opus is "basically transparent" and after listening to a cursory test encode rolled my eyes into the back of my head; then decided to ABX it, and sure enough, my hearing magically got much, much worse.

 

[danadam]

then decided to ABX it, and sure enough, my hearing magically got much, much worse.

Surely that's because you became stressed

 

[Miguelón]

Had another moment reminding me of the near-uselessness of sighted listening tests yesterday: I saw it mentioned in some documentation for the codec that 128kbps VBR Opus is "basically transparent" and after listening to a cursory test encode rolled my eyes into the back of my head; then decided to ABX it, and sure enough, my hearing magically got much, much worse.

Why there are so much interest on loosy codecs? I mean, CD or DVD quality audio need 1,4-2,3 Mbps, for our actual memory devices and wifi bandwidth (even 4g or 5g) is not so much…

 

[antcollinet]

Why there are so much interest on loosy codecs? I mean, CD or DVD quality audio need 1,4-2,3 Mbps, for our actual memory devices and wifi bandwidth (even 4g or 5g) is not so much…

I think in this case, because it demonstrates how bad things have to get before we can hear a difference.

If many people are unable to tell the difference between 128kb/s mp3 and anything better, it doesn't say much for our ability to hear -100dB of distortion and noise, or any improvement from hi-res audio compared with redbook.

 

[Brian Hall]

I love CD quality. It sounds perfect to me. At the same time, I really don't hear any difference between CD quality and Spotify's 320kbps Ogg Vorbis and even Youtube Music's 256 kbps Opus.

People like seeing big numbers and fool themselves into thinking more just has to be better. I don't hear any benefit at all in any higher quality than CD's 16/44.1khz.

 

[antcollinet]

I don't hear any benefit at all in any higher quality than CD's 16/44.1khz.

I don't think anyone does. At least not from the sound waves hitting their ears.