Been reading conflicting opinions on some DACs sound, how to know which are right?

[knkkskknk]

I recently bought an RME ADI-2-DAC. Before I had to used a Audient EVO4 Audio Interface.

I noticed improvements in soundstage and "3Dness" it was a pretty expensive upgrade. But anyway, my thinking here was "I want an accurate representation, buy the best and be done with it" Mainly for mixing / mastering music as a reference. But I've been questioning my choice upon reading people with similar opinions about RME ADI-2. I've seen a lot of them say "It's the RME sound, makes music sound sterile, its good but boring" etc... but I also seen many praising it as well, a lot more praise then negative, but I'm focusing on the negative here, because it makes me wonder whether these people arn't use to truly "reference, transparent flat sound source" an their other "DACS" have been coloring the sound to make it more exciting and pleasant for them instead of truly showing an accurate representation. Or maybe RME does has a "sterile like" sound signature, and is colored to be that way, and the other DACs are the ones who are right? I certainly don't know, but here are some opinions I've seen comparing high end dacs...

Seeing the opinions against it, gives me GAS, and makes me want try other DACs to see if I could get an even better sound
but seeing some opinions for it, saying it's the best already, then there's no point in trying out others as they would just be "flavored" or so differently.

I guess everyone just has to decide ultimately on others opinions eventually, and I'd likely get just as many different opinions here on here.
Most of these are quotes from gearspace and mixing/mastering engineers


against

for

against

for

against

for

against

 

[JSmith]

The numbers are the numbers... they don't lie, so my suggestion would be to stop reading subjective reviews where people are relying on an extremely short auditory memory often days or weeks since they heard the previous devices signal on their speakers and rely on the test results here.

Something that measures as well as the RME-ADI2 is simply transparent, guaranteed, it has state of the art performance.


JSmith

 

[charleski]

Here's a column post written by a committed subjectivist that's the perfect antidote for this sort of stuff:
"I remember the Tuesday night that music broke free of my hi-fi. The sound stirred my soul—everything was so right that I was tempted to call over my audiophile pals to earwitness its magnificence.... Wednesday eve was a different story. Some of that magic had vaporized. Mind you, I hadn't changed a thing ... I played some of the same Fillmore albums I'd played the night before. Somehow, they weren't quite as stirring. The music was just as great, but when the sound didn't make my pulse race, I began to fret about not getting there."

Subjective impressions of audio quality depend on the subject (i.e. the person listening) and have very little to do with the gear being used. Any impressions about whether a DAC is "musical" or "engaging" or has a good "soundstage" are happening entirely in your head and will vary from day to day. I've noticed exactly the same phenomenon Steve described: some days my system sounds absolutely magical and I can't imagine it could possibly get better, some days I fret that there's something slightly wrong. All these subjective descriptions of how a DAC 'sounds' are just noise and the last thing you should do is use them as guidance what to buy.

 

[Robin L]

1: Stop reading subjective opinions of Electronics. There's no "there" there.

2: The limit of audibility is -115 db. Anything better than that is completely out of the way of the signal. Something close to -115 db distortion +noise will be close enough. Anything with these kinds of numbers will be impossible to differentiate in a double-blind test because of the natural limits of human hearing.

 

[Jimbob54]

1: Stop reading subjective opinions of Electronics. There's no "there" there.

2: The limit of audibility is -115 db. Anything better than that is completely out of the way of the signal. Something close to -115 db distortion +noise will be close enough. Anything with these kinds of numbers will be impossible to differentiate in a double-blind test because of the natural limits of human hearing.

Yes, but let's see if we can extend this to 300 pages of the usual back and forth

 

[DVDdoug]

Mainly for mixing / mastering music as a reference.

I read this eye-opening article once about mixing/panning. IIRC, he says that you can carefully-perfectly arrange all of the instruments across the soundstage, and then if you move your listening position slightly, or listen to different speakers or in a different room, all of that careful positioning will be lost! (And then he suggests using timing instead of "traditional" panning.)

----------------------------------------------
The only noticeable difference between DACs (if any) is usually noise. If you're not hearing noise you're not going to hear any difference in a proper level-matched, blind, listening test.

I noticed improvements in soundstage and "3Dness" it was a pretty expensive upgrade.

Sorry, but that's impossible. ...Well, not entirely impossible in a sighted A/B listening test, since "soundstage" is an illusion anyway. Soundstage is mostly affected by the recording, the mix, and speakers & acoustic reflections. Frequency response seems to have an affect too. There are "tricks" you can with timing and phase. (Simply inverting one channel will give an impression of "space" or "widening").

None of these things can happen "accidently" in a DAC. The frequency response could be imperfect but in the real world frequency response variations in DACs are not gross-enough for this kind of effect. You might hear a loss of bass or treble but most DACs have frequency response that's better than human hearing (including whatever is built-into your soundcard/soundchip).

 

[TheBatsEar]

I recently bought an RME ADI-2-DAC. Before I had to used a Audient EVO4 Audio Interface.
I noticed improvements in soundstage and "3Dness" it was a pretty expensive upgrade.

Did you do a blind test?

It's a sad fact that your brain warps the signal coming from the ears (and all other sensors really), based on mood, glucose levels, sleep, time of day and so on. Consider this:

Only by using measurements (use your mouse cursor on one of the rings) can you learn what really happens (the rings don't move). Your eyes, like your ears or pressure receptors in your skin, are not to be trusted. Your ears are not instruments and can not help much in learning about objective reality.

None of your quoted texts have meaning if you want to know the performance of a DAC. For that you better rely on measurements that are repeatable. The people writing that prosa are mostly deluded.

 

[Katji]

Yes, but let's see if we can extend this to 300 pages of the usual back and forth

Yes, like there is any question, anything to debate, or anything to discuss other than the psychology. [Which is a topic itself, especially when there are audiophiles/whatever who think it means mental illness/psychiatry, and that too is a topic itself.]

One thing in the psychology domain that could be investigated here is why people do not use the search facility, and/or why they imagine/think/not that such a topic has not already been extensively discussed, whether some think they are describing or explaining the question in a better or different way, whether some tend to want personal tutorial.

I wish AI could somehow be applied, like to analyse such thread titles and explain.

[...]

 

[Hapo]

...I went through this a while ago...check out the Tradutto review...

EarMen Tradutto Review (DAC)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the EarMen Tradutto stereo DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $770 from the company direct. The Tradutto is extremely heavy for its size, having been machined out of solid metal. The corners are a bit sharp though for my taste. A...

www.audiosciencereview.com

...I could not tell a good inexpensive dac from an overpriced dac that was measurably inferior...

...a key point here is that I "heared" the same "differences" when I switched from one to the other...