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Can a DAC affect pitch?

J

Johnny2R

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Having just bought some excellent IEMs (7hz x Crinacle Zero 2) which don't require as much input power as the devices I have been previously using, I dug out a little dirt cheap USB C adapter ('Warkky') that I bought a couple of years ago, to try instead of my trusty FIIO KA11. When I bought it originally, I quickly rejected it because I got the feeling it was slightly affecting the pitch of the music, causing very slight pitch wobbles, even though I was pretty sure that was nonsense from a technical point of view. Knowing this pitch variation stuff to be impossible I just gave it another go - and there it was again, that sensation of slight pitch wavering! I switched back to the KA11 and all was fine.

Now I'm sure this is just my brain playing tricks with me (interesting in itself because even though I'm pretty sure that's what it is, I can't stop it). But I just wanted reassurance from someone that what I am talking about here is actually a technical impossibility with a DAC. And then, perhaps, some suggestions as to how I can get my brain to behave!
 
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Yes! Every device has a clock (oscillator) to generate the sample rate 44.1kHz etc. Usually they are stable so it's usually not "wobble" but no clock is perfect and you can get related pitch and tempo shift. If the clock is 5% fast, playback will be 5% fast and pitch will be 5% higher. Pitch wobble (wow or flutter) is certainly possible.

Some "consumer soundcards" are off by enough cause trouble for musicians when they are trying to play their properly-tuned instrument along with an out-of-tune backing track, or if they are mixing tracks recorded from different devices, etc. It's more-rare for regular listeners to hear a problem.

Pro studios often use a master clock (sometimes an atomic master clock) and DACs and ADCs with an external clock input. Besides being very accurate and stable, it keeps multiple devices in sync to the exact sample count.
 
OK, that's interesting. But I can't think I've ever seen this mentioned in any reviews of DACs I've seen, and as a problem it completely dwarfs any others which might otherwise be noted.
 
Have a look at Amir's DAC measurements and look for the 1kHz sine wave in the measurement panel (as shown below).
Look at the 1kHz frequency and there you can see how much that particular copy of that DAC deviates from 1kHz.
You will notice that any deviation in pitch is extremely small and far from audible.
Most decent DACs are less than 0.001% off in frequency.
As an example this cheap $30 dongle is just 0.03Hz 'off' relative to 1kHz so 0.003%
1772193162457.png


When you encounter a DAC that does change the pitch audibly it is defective as it would need to change about 0.5% (JND).
For trained listeners this is around 0.1% by the way.

For UAC1 DACs (SPDIF/Toslink) the deviation is largely determined by the clock of the source which can be off but then would be off with other DACs too.
 
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OK, happy enough to believe that this DAC is defective, then, and can go in the bin. I'm happy with the KA11 I have, and a Jcally JM6 Pro is on its way as well.
 
DVDdoug said:
Yes! Every device has a clock (oscillator) to generate the sample rate 44.1kHz etc. Usually they are stable so it's usually not "wobble" but no clock is perfect and you can get related pitch and tempo shift. If the clock is 5% fast, playback will be 5% fast and pitch will be 5% higher. Pitch wobble (wow or flutter) is certainly possible.

Some "consumer soundcards" are off by enough cause trouble for musicians when they are trying to play their properly-tuned instrument along with an out-of-tune backing track, or if they are mixing tracks recorded from different devices, etc. It's more-rare for regular listeners to hear a problem.

Pro studios often use a master clock (sometimes an atomic master clock) and DACs and ADCs with an external clock input. Besides being very accurate and stable, it keeps multiple devices in sync to the exact sample count.
Click to expand...
I dont think any DACs are going to be off by anywhere near 5%.
 
VientoB said:
I dont think any DACs are going to be off by anywhere near 5%.
Click to expand...
Yeah, what a BS response. You get that level of wow and flutter in turntables. DACs have crystal oscillators so their timing discrepancies are measured in parts per million. This results in error of a small fraction of a cent (1/1200 an octave) at most. The most significant timing error in digital gear is jitter sidebands, not frequency errors of the main tone.

We test DACs for their 1000 hertz response. We get mostly 999.999 - 1000.001 hertz output. One semitone (one piano key) higher is 1059.5 hz. 1000.059 would be 1/10 cent sharp which would be excellence for a freshly tuned piano but terrible for a DAC.
 
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Yeah, what a BS response.
Click to expand...
I've never had that problem myself but musicians do sometimes report playback pitch problems. I've heard of it being off by about a semitone (one note) which is around 6%. Of course the tempo is of too. Usually they notice it when playing backing track on a cheap soundcard while recording with an audio interface, or when playing back on their soundcard after recording with an interface or USB mic. Or when collaborating with someone else using a different computer.
 
DVDdoug said:
I've never had that problem myself but musicians do sometimes report playback pitch problems. I've heard of it being off by about a semitone (one note) which is around 6%. Of course the tempo is of too. Usually they notice it when playing backing track on a cheap soundcard while recording with an audio interface, or when playing back on their soundcard after recording with an interface or USB mic. Or when collaborating with someone else using a different computer.
Click to expand...
How on earth could a DAC be off by that? There is no way.
 
Mnyb said:
A problem you can get in a studio without clock sync is drift , the small difference between two devices adds up over time .
Click to expand...

Yep - I've actually encountered this in the context of CD production, with different production runs/pressings of some CD titles that are made from the same digital master. For reasons not worth getting into here, I've periodically had occasion to load up rips of two different CD pressings in Audacity (a free audio editing app) to compare the waveforms to see if the discs were indeed made from the identical master.

On a few occasions I've encountered a situation where they are clearly from the identical digital master and the waveforms are clearly identical down to the individual-sample level - except one of the CD pressings has a duplicated sample every 1-2 seconds. The two waveforms can be completely nulled out - meaning they are identical - if you select a small stretch of a few thousand samples that does not include one of those duplicated samples. And of course the difference is totally inaudible. But the overall album runtime of the pressing with the duplicated samples is a fraction of a second longer because of all those extra samples.

I remember specifically that I've seen this in the 1st and 2nd 1984 UK pressing runs of the Blue Nile's debut album A Walk Across the Rooftops. And I came across it again when comparing an original 1993 pressing of Robert Plant's Fate of Nations with a 2016 repress. Interestingly, in that case it was the 2016 repress that had the added duplicate samples - I was shocked that such shoddy CD duplication/manufacturing would happen when the technology was so mature.
 
Jarrett said:
Try listening to how the pitch is on vinyl playback :D
Click to expand...
Yes my TD126 electronic has a pitch control with no indent for the neutral position, so you watch the strobe for correct speed :)
In general besides the typical wow and flutter that varies the pitch fast , one wonder how exact they are on average over long term ?
Or the cutting lathe ? Shall we say several magnitudes worse than digital playback .
 
DVDdoug said:
I've never had that problem myself but musicians do sometimes report playback pitch problems.
Click to expand...
That comes from the recording, not the DAC playback. Starting with the instruments not being "properly" tuned to the common A=440Hz pitch, for any number of reasons.
 
When the DAC works in synchronous or adaptive mode the pitch of the sound is largely determined by the clock(s) of the source.
In asynchronous mode the source adapts its data rate to the DAC and the clock in the DAC is leading.

So when the source is a bit slow and the DAC works inside a range where it can lock the pitch could vary and even have jitter that is not filtered (enough).
This is why UAC2 is preferred.

In this particular case the most likely scenario is a DAC that is broken (X'tal or PLL)
 
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