Best dac for my cd transport ?

[daftcombo]

Great

Yeh we can do it that way. I think it will be of limited value though, since the ABX test is what allows us to know whether a listener can detect a difference. If you're just listening to the files and ranking them by order of preference, we'll have no way of knowing whether it's a fluke or not.

With the Foobar ABX comparator you can listen to a file for as long as you like before changing, and the changes are instant and seamless, which will give you a much better chance of hearing any differences compared to having to hit stop and then opening a new file.

But if we do it the way you suggest, how about we make 3 files: 10% nonlinear distortion, 1% nonlinear distortion, and 0.1% (and of course the original).

Also, it would be better if you choose the track.

And let's continue this by PM, will be much less pressure than doing the whole thing publicly, don't you think?

I would gladly participate to your test with such files prepared.

 

[Calexico]

Great

Yeh we can do it that way. I think it will be of limited value though, since the ABX test is what allows us to know whether a listener can detect a difference. If you're just listening to the files and ranking them by order of preference, we'll have no way of knowing whether it's a fluke or not.

With the Foobar ABX comparator you can listen to a file for as long as you like before changing, and the changes are instant and seamless, which will give you a much better chance of hearing any differences compared to having to hit stop and then opening a new file.

But if we do it the way you suggest, how about we make 3 files: 10% nonlinear distortion, 1% nonlinear distortion, and 0.1% (and of course the original).

Also, it would be better if you choose the track.

And let's continue this by PM, will be much less pressure than doing the whole thing publicly, don't you think?

I got no cd rom player to get waves from my cd anymore. So it's easier if you choose one track. And i don't connect computer on my hifi system that's why i prefer shuffle than foobar. I can read files on usb with my cd player.
I'll tell you wich file i prefer the sound. I won't cheat to analyse the file lol. We can continue with pm yes

 

[orangejello]

Just an update on the transport / SPDIF issues that I was having...

I installed my friends RME ADI-2 DAC and used balanced inputs into the NAD M22. I used the Cayin SACD player as a transport and then the Technics DVD player. Both sounded great. I could hear no difference. So I am not sure why the Technics sounds so poor with the Marantz HD-DAC1 (while Spotify sounds great). I am still trying to figure that out. (BTW, I had an old, virtually unused, Rotel CD player on hand with coax output. Neither the Marantz nor the RME could sync with the coax input - I just heard one second of music, five seconds of white noise, one second of music, etc.)

But I also wanted to comment on this combo from a sonic enjoyment point of view. Lets just put it this way... it is gorgeous to me. Using the RME it becomes clear that whatever nasty sound that you might hear in a NAD M22 based setup is not due to the NAD. The M22 is just neutral and clean. It seems to add or subtract nothing. It just feeds a non-frequency dependent, non-impedance depended voltage to the speakers. It does this with more than adequate power. There may be slightly better amps out there, but the NAD appears to be in the ballpark of amps whose measurements and sound would be very difficult to improve on in any meaningful way (famous last words. I will probably stick with this amp unless I can find something equivalent at a much cheaper price. I also very much like the aesthetics of the design.

The RME has demonstrated to me what a very clean sounding DAC is all about. I don't like the interface because it is a pain to figure out. My friend gave it to me without the remote and with a setting that turns off the display in 10 seconds. I wanted to change the DA Filter and could not simultaneously follow the instructions in the manual to make the changes and interact with the screen before the display shut off. I managed to change the display settings so that the display stays on and, after ten minutes, figure out how to change the DA filters. My friend had it on "NOS" and this sounded harsh to me. So my initial impression of the DAC was that is sounded harsh. But all of the other filters sounded fine. It was kind of difficult to hear the differences. But I settled on Short Delay Sharp which is the default and the most neutral... Sounds great!

Since I probably will not use the vast majority of the features, the complexity of the DAC interface is of no value to me. However, once you get it setup to your liking you it is easy to use in daily operation. In any case, set up to my liking, it was a treat to hear such beautiful sound. I have never experienced this kind of transparency in my own system before. You just hear deep into the recording. The subtleties and nuances of artistic performance are rendered clearly - which brings you much closer to the artistic intention. Hearing a great pianist perform as though you are sitting next to the piano is exquisite.

I have been using Class A solid state and tubes amps along with vinyl to get close to this kind of transparency in the past. Solid state and digital committed the sin of unrealistic timbre and slight edginess that I found very off-putting. So I had ignored audio developments for a long time. This combo of the NAD and the RME has none of those problems. I am so glad, because I am tired of tweaking stuff.

Once again, thanks to this forum for making me challenge my assumptions.

 

[daftcombo]

You haven't proven you're more sensitive though You need to do a controlled test first before you can make statements like that.

PS do you have Foobar? I can prepare some files for you with noise and distortion added that you can then use to test yourself against the originals using Foobar's ABX comparator. You just need to send me your preferred test track(s) and the levels/types of noise/distortion you think you can detect and I can do the rest.

So, where are the files ?

 

[andreasmaaan]

So, where are the files ?

Hey @daftcombo, we're still discussing which track to use by PM. It'll probably take me a week or two to get my hands on the music, work out how best to add distortion in a way that can be verified by measurement, etc. etc. I'll start a thread and tag you in it when it's all ready to go

EDIT: we're discussing using something from Gould's 1981 Goldberg variations (digital recording). Does that sound ok to you? TBH, once I've set the whole thing up it would be a shame not to run a few different pieces of music through it. Solo piano seems a good start though, as distortion audibility studies have generally given the lowest thresholds with piano recordings.

 

[daftcombo]

Hey @daftcombo, we're still discussing which track to use by PM. It'll probably take me a week or two to get my hands on the music, work out how best to add distortion in a way that can be verified by measurement, etc. etc. I'll start a thread and tag you in it when it's all ready to go

EDIT: we're discussing using something from Gould's 1981 Goldberg variations (digital recording). Does that sound ok to you? TBH, once I've set the whole thing up it would be a shame not to run a few different pieces of music through it. Solo piano seems a good start though, as distortion audibility studies have generally given the lowest thresholds with piano recordings.

Perfect as I like that recording very much. Why not add a few tracks with violins, cymbals or flute?

I see that I can also mess with Audacity to add distortion to tracks to see what it does. Is that software what you plan to use? If so, I'd like to get my hands of a tutorial for the distortion toobox.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Perfect as I like that recording very much. Why not add a few tracks with violins, cymbals or flute?

I see that I can also mess with Audacity to add distortion to tracks to see what it does. Is that software what you plan to use? If so, I'd like to get my hands of a tutorial for the distortion toobox.

If you have any specific track you want to do this with, send it to me by email (PM me).

Re: how I'm gonna do it, that's a work in progress

I have various VST plugins that add distortion, but it'll take me some time to work out which to use. The plan is to measure the distortion created by each VST using sine waves to work out exactly what they're doing to the signal. Then I'll apply the same effects to the music recordings in various doses. The VSTs I have in mind to try are Blogohl Distorder, Melda Audio Saturator and a couple of others. I suspect Distorder will work best as my quick spectrum analyses of its output seem to show that its effects are not level dependent, but I'm not 100% sure yet.

If you have any input though please let me know - it's going to be a bit of an adventure. And I'm quite busy atm so it might take a couple of weeks. But the plan is to find a plugin that creates similar nonlinear distortion to typical DACs/amps and then to set it at levels that correspond to 10%, 1% and 0.1% THD and/or IMD, then to create versions of the track(s) that have been run through each setting. So we'd end up with 4 versions (including the undistorted one).

Instead of analysing the output files to see how much distortion has actually been applied, I'm going to set the levels of distortion with reference to a sine wave or an IMD test signal, firstly because it's much easier, and secondly because it the numbers will then correspond to the distortion figures we see from real-world devices on the test bench.

A secondary idea is to also run the files through some allpass filters to emulate the effects of loudspeaker crossovers and enclosures. That might take a little longer.

I'd love to be able to actually write the software to all do this myself, but unfortunately it's beyond me. So there is a chance that I'm not ultimately successful in getting pre-existing software to do what I think and hope I can get it to do...

Will ofc make all these files public and start a thread on it.

 

[Moriarty]

EDIT: we're discussing using something from Gould's 1981 Goldberg variations (digital recording).

Talking about 1981 Gould's GV - there is also analog recording, the sound is much better. Studio engineers recorded this session on tapes as a backup. These tapes were found accidentally years later. It was published as "Glenn Gould: Complete Golberg Variations: A State of Wonder".

 

[Deleted member 24508]

Actually, there are plenty of options for a tenth of that price that would do the job transparently.

I would look at:

• Schiit Modi 2
• Topping D30
• SMSL Sanskrit 10th

Measurements of all these can be found here. All have levels of noise and distortion well below any demonstrated human ability to hear same.

There are definitely other options in a similar price range too that will perform as well - those three are just off the top of my head.