dCS Bartók Measurements by GoldenSound

[aj625]

If the bad stuff is under -96db, you'll need near noiseless 24 bit recording and ultrasonic capable amp and speakers in dead silent room. Inaudible.

then it's better reason to not to spend $17500 on dcs bartok. any cheap dongle having sinad of 96db is enough.. i wonder why people visit this forum at all

 

[Ata]

it does measure well enough thus will be audibly undistinguishable from an Apple dongle coating $9, while costing 150 times more. At that price it ought to break all measurements levels we have had so far and sound better than the dongle.
The stupendous price is the problem. The elephant in the listening room

Make that 1,500x the price of the Apple dongle.

 

[Robin L]

I don't see anything that bad other than the price, what am I missing?

The price.

Making claims of SOTA performance when the same performance [or better] can be easily found for 1/40th of the cost.

 

[Jimbob54]

But, but, but

How does it SOUND?!?!?!

 

[Jimbob54]

btw how headphone amp graph is better but sinad is almost same as dac ?

Whatever is knocking the Ch2 SINAD down by 5 or 6 dB isnt affecting the headphone out- so something is dodgy either internally or with the connection/ cabling to the AP.

 

[FrantzM]

I will not reward the Steorohile review by reading: I already know that the precision, pace and purity of the Bartok DAC are special but not as delineated as the pompous mellifluous ease of its bigger brother the Vivaldi…
What needs to be clear to audiophiles of all persuasion : DAC is a solved problem. If you need the highest numerical performances start looking into Topping et al… And you wont even spend $1000 for the superior albeit non audible, increase in performance.

Peace!

 

[aj625]

Whatever is knocking the Ch2 SINAD down by 5 or 6 dB isnt affecting the headphone out- so something is dodgy either internally or with the connection/ cabling to the AP.

Stereophile measurements too has that anomaly where one channel has more distortion than other .

 

[tcli]

Whatever is knocking the Ch2 SINAD down by 5 or 6 dB isnt affecting the headphone out- so something is dodgy either internally or with the connection/ cabling to the AP.

Or there is a problem with the XLR output level buffer that is not on the way of the headphone amplifier.

 

[deprogrammed]

it does measure well enough thus will be audibly undistinguishable from an Apple dongle coating $9, while costing 150 times more. At that price it ought to break all measurements levels we have had so far and sound better than the dongle.
The stupendous price is the problem. The elephant in the listening room

Wouldn't that be 1897 times more?

 

[Jimbob54]

Or there is a problem with the XLR output level buffer that is not on the way of the headphone amplifier.

Either way, if its inside the box, not what one would expect.

 

[KSTR]

Golden One wrote:
"dCS uses a proprietary ‘ring dac’ design, which they explain in detail in this post on head-fi:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dcs-ring-dac-a-technical-explanation.957387/page-6#post-16353403

It’s actually an extremely similar approach to what ESS chips do internally, the algorithms handling the mapping and other signal processing are different (and of course neither company will say too much publicly about the inner workings of their designs), but the core approach is actually remarkably similar."

It might be proprietary, but the basic "ring dac" idea is also implemented in any bog standard AKM DAC, etc:
Use a D/S-modulator to 5bit (or so), convert to thermometer code to steer 31 equal summing elements (current sources or capacitors), and shuffle around the bits in the thermometer code so that each individual on/off element gets selected as often as any other, over time. This trades, as explained in the link, almost uncorrelated noise for linearity.
See for details on the DWA (Data-Weighted Averaging) algorithm:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Henderson/publication/2977525_A_19-bit_low-power_multibit_sigma-delta_ADC_based_on_data_weighted_averaging/links/5657399a08aeafc2aac0c7c5/A-19-bit-low-power-multibit-sigma-delta-ADC-based-on-data-weighted-averaging.pdf

 

[AudioJester]

Locally people cross shop this with MSB among others. Wonder if MSB measures any better?
Glad I got off the dac bandwagon and went Topping.

 

[Matias]

Locally people cross shop this with MSB among others. Wonder if MSB measures any better?

The few measurements I found were not very encouraging for MSB...

Mola Mola Tambaqui Measurements

In response to precisely that remark on my part they’re suddenly getting inquiries relating to "old design" etc etc... It’s odd that people might think that the development timeline should affect the performance of the product but there you go. Back in the day, for example, McIntosh would keep...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[MaxBuck]

then it's better reason to not to spend $17500 on dcs bartok

I wasn't in need of any more reasons, but thanks anyway.

 

[DACs_Lover]

What a good day. The sun shines very bright when I read the megabuck DACs are all lies.

 

[Jimbob54]

What a good day. The sun shines very bright when I read the megabuck DACs are all lies.

What's the lie?

 

[Eetu]

What's the lie?

These perhaps:

"unrivalled in its sonic and technical performance"

"reimagine the limits of sound reproduction"

"honed and refined to deliver the purest possible sound with the lowest possible levels of distortion and noise"

and so forth..

 

[Jimbob54]

These perhaps:

"unrivalled in its sonic and technical performance"

"reimagine the limits of sound reproduction"

"honed and refined to deliver the purest possible sound with the lowest possible levels of distortion and noise"

and so forth..

You're not familiar with the concept of marketing?

Had they claimed a certain measure of performance and the measurements here were at odds with that, you might have had a point.

 

[aj625]

What's the lie?

Claims of state of the art hi fi performance. You can find many such claims in their website.

 

[Tks]

You're not familiar with the concept of marketing?

Had they claimed a certain measure of performance and the measurements here were at odds with that, you might have had a point.

What portion of the concept were you wondering of? The exagerations, or the clearly straight up false advertising when they say "unrivaled in sonic and technical performance"?