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Review and Measurements of Soekris dac1421 Multibit DAC

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amirm

amirm

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Amirm, So if the limit is 116db, are you saying you can DB test those and tell a difference reliably?
How did you go from what I said to this? I said that 116 dB is the provable inaudibility across all content and all people. That doesn't mean that *I* can grab some piece of content and demonstrate it with my ears for all of you, and content. It is like me saying you can't get sick if you have pure water and you asking me that if you had one microbe to it, it will make you sick. It may, or may not. There is doubt there whereas there is no doubt with pure water.

The dynamic range of human hearing is calculated both using listening tests and limits of noise floor in our hearing system.

Anyway, none of this is specific to the DAC in this review so follow ups should be to this thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-debate-thread-about-audio-measurements.2580/
 

Bds3151

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its not that simple. There are other factors to take into account.
For example different amps behave differently with different loads from different headphones. This creates a lot of variables as to what you are actually listening to.
Amir measures what is the best performance available from a specific device and tries to get a baseline of what the "reasonable expectation" of performance could be with his various tests.
Therefore gear which performs better simply performs better.
"How it sounds" isn't a measurement since its totally subjective and pointless. Some people like garbage sound with tons of distortion... some people like overblown and muddy bass.
We are a forum of objectivity; benchmarking what is objectively performing better.

From my own experience; the data on this site does translate into real world listening results. Although at the high end of scores; it would be very difficult if not impossible to tell most devices apart (DACs) through the same Amp.
Often telling Amps apart is easier as there are different topologies and using different headphones with different amps can result in wildly different performance on a per-case basis.

In conclusion the data on this site allows you to make an informed purchasing decision about the reasonably expected performance of a given device at a given pricepoint.

Doesn't "reasonably expected performance" mean audibly better sound to you? If so, the measurement data on this site, by the owners admission and confirmed by DB tests by him and others, doesn't indicate audible change for the better or worse. What is more objective than that? What is the value of this information then? There are some things that are audible to most of us, for example, 60 cycle hum. In audio, the S/N ratio, distortion beyond some percent and several other measurements that were developed to indicate audio quality.
 

Bds3151

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How did you go from what I said to this? I said that 116 dB is the provable inaudibility across all content and all people. That doesn't mean that *I* can grab some piece of content and demonstrate it with my ears for all of you, and content. It is like me saying you can't get sick if you have pure water and you asking me that if you had one microbe to it, it will make you sick. It may, or may not. There is doubt there whereas there is no doubt with pure water.

The dynamic range of human hearing is calculated both using listening tests and limits of noise floor in our hearing system.

Anyway, none of this is specific to the DAC in this review so follow ups should be to this thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-debate-thread-about-audio-measurements.2580/

Ok I'll move my comments. Amirm, I didn't say you could, I asked if you could differentiate or develop some differentiation at another level. It was a question.
 

RayDunzl

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I had a thought about how to tie the measurements to some user experience.

So did I, a while back.

Have you visited the Shoutometer?

Beyond that, I dunno. We are all sensitive to different excitations.

Music is complex, hides many faults.

1 bit resolution (think on/off/negative value) is enough to create identifiable playback.

Turn your volume control way way way way down, and try this "one bit" remastering.

Did I mention, turn the volume down?

https://soundcloud.com/ray-880875693%2F1-bit-audio
The waveform looks like this:

1566768928438.png
 
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Bds3151

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So did I, a while back.

Have you visited the Shoutometer?

Beyond that, I dunno. We are all sensitive to different excitations.

Music is complex, hides many faults.

1 bit resolution (think on/off/negative value) is enough to create identifiable playback.

Turn your volume control way way way way down, and try this "one bit" remastering.

Did I mention, turn the volume down?

https://soundcloud.com/ray-880875693%2F1-bit-audio
Could I have a link to your previous work? I listened to the 1 bit audio - awful.
 

RayDunzl

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SIY

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Maybe you should communicate your point clearly?

It was pretty clear- even at 1 bit, the sound is recognizable. One. Bit. The ear-brain system is remarkable in its ability to listen past distortion.
 

Bds3151

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It was pretty clear- even at 1 bit, the sound is recognizable. One. Bit. The ear-brain system is remarkable in its ability to listen past distortion.
So what? My question was about relating measurements to actual audio quality. I agree it's interesting that one bit conveys intelligible information. I just thought he had more to contribute directly related to my question. No help there.
 

DonH56

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an interesting page around D/S and R-2R Dacs
http://www.mother-of-tone.com/conversion.htm
Medical or military appliances don't use D/S ...why?

I barely skimmed the article -- it starts off with a lack of understanding of noise-shaping and delta-sigma conversion, throws out a whole bunch of hooey to make DS converters look horrible, and then goes downhill.

I am aware of a number of medical and military components that use delta-sigma data converters and since I have not been involved with that area for years I am sure there are many, many more.

BTW oversampling and noise shaping was applied to conventional data converters long before delta-sigma converters arrived.
 

Veri

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an interesting page around D/S and R-2R Dacs
http://www.mother-of-tone.com/conversion.htm
Medical or military appliances don't use D/S ...why?
Note that military/medical converters are not meant for music and will be terribly glitchy when misused as Schiit does. It's a sham really. You're not getting any more 'natural' sound, you're getting high frequency 'grass' in tones that should be pure ...
 

Thomas savage

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Note that military/medical converters are not meant for music and will be terribly glitchy when misused as Schiit does. It's a sham really. You're not getting any more 'natural' sound, you're getting high frequency 'grass' in tones that should be pure ...
The right ' Grass' can make the hifi a more.. profound experience.
 

SIY

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gvl

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I'm being voluntarily spammed from drop.com, they have Denafrips Ares r2r on sale, I had a good laugh this morning when I read the description :

Sometimes, older is better. The Denafrips Ares II R-2R DAC makes use of the very first form of digital-to-analog conversion, a resistor ladder, to deliver exceptional audio. Unlike modern processing chips that decode signals digitally, resistor ladders respond to voltage pulses from the original analog sine wave signal. With quality resistors, this design leads to higher audio fidelity that doesn’t require extra analog filtering.
 

Veri

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I'm being voluntarily spammed from drop.com, they have Denafrips Ares r2r on sale, I had a good laugh this morning when I read the description :
Oh my, a digital analog converter that decodes somehow not digitally? Quite the oxymoron.
 
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Can someone explain how 0.005 THD+N at 1kHz was measured in first graph but in THD+N vs Freqency graph it's above 0.01% at 1kHz?

Also what its much better 20 bit linearity means in practice when SINAD is at only ~85db
 
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