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AUDIOPHONICS EVO-SABRE - Filter clutter

welder911

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The Sabre ES9038 family offers 7 filter presets.

* brick wall
* corrected minimum phase fast
* minimum phase slow
* minimum phase fast
* linear phase slow
* linear phase fast
* apodizing fast

Since there a plenty of fellow golden ear inmates around, I think
we should have a discussion about filter preferences.

Do you actually hear any differences?

If so, mind to share your preferences?
 
OP
W

welder911

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ess.jpg
 

Sukie

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I can, just about, hear small differences. I have no real preference for one over another. I tend to use the default filter and move on to the reason for buying the DAC - the listening of the music!
 

solderdude

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The only ones of real interest are the fast ones.
When you want rolled off upper treble go for the slow ones but these generally have lots of HF aliasing and other nasties.
People want so manufacturers provide otherwise they loose market share.
The 'sound descriptions' make no sense and are for marketting BS only.
A DAC should not have a sound so any filter 'changing' the sound is disqualified as a proper filter.
 

Katji

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All I know is...my SMSL M8 has 3, and the default shows FAST on the display. Soon after I got it, I tried the other two - quickly, just standing there - and so far I remember] they sounded soft / less clear / muted, so I put it back to the default/standard and left it at that.
 

tmtomh

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I have an Oppo UDP-205 with these multiple filter settings available on it, and shortly after I got the machine I did play around with them.

I did not do blind testing, but in my sighted testing my experience conformed with what @solderdude discusses above: no way I was able to distinguish among each of the 7 filters, but I was able to detect one type of difference: some of the filters sounded "softer" than others with regard to transients. I can't remember if this was the slow filters or the apodizing ones - and honestly I don't care. But I have read a fascinating analysis (will try to find the source and post here) that shows how certain filters (I think apodizing but it might have been slow instead) can actually result in the disappearance of some transients during reconstruction of the signal.

This leads me to suspect that I would be able to reproduce this perception of a difference even in a blind test. Although who knows, I might not.

Fortunately, it doesn't matter, because the worst-case scenario here is that there is no detectable difference, and since I set it at fast linear phase and forgot about it after that, I'm covered either way.
 
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