Yeah that will work for low level signals. Done that before myself, though I don't have a Millenia so not quite as quiet. Used this approach to measure low level linearity of DACs.
If you are just interested in people's subjective opinions here is one comparing ESS and BB... his opinion is the opposite of yours, but he does describe it in great detail and uses an interesting platform with which to make the comparison.
How do you propose they sound different. (Before I go off about they don't.)
They are warmer and sound more relaxed and yes i've abx'd blind.
Well if you've blind tested then I could argue but I'm not because you did a blind test. How big was the difference? Was it obvious or subtle etc? I am very curious.
Not really the Burr Browns are warmed and more relaxed, sort like the difference between my Hd580's and 400i's.
It is easy enough to pick out.
IC. What age where these DACs? Are they new gear or dated? I'm trying to understand this.
The burr's are at least 10 years old, ess is newer as well as an akm.
IC. Interesting. It could be that the technology has improved that much over the ~10 years and the peripheral audio circuitry is lacking compared with the newer audio ICs. It would be very cool if you could send that old DAC to @amirm for a test. To see what is going on.
Much older than this thread, is testimony like yours being offered as sufficient evidence of sonic diffence between DACs.
Thanks. I checked my notes. The waveform I shared was 30uVrms, which at 5.2V max I think is -105dBFS. What system are you using to capture a visual waveform? And what preamp for the +60dB gain?
That remindes me of homeophathic treatments - the active ingredient is extremely diluted but if you believe it works, it might just as well.In the pro audio world, we listen to reverb tails. Pathological, indeed. We listen to music and ambience until the moment we lose perception. Of course, recording levels this low are only as good as the recording itself (room, mic, adc, pre, technique, program, etc). Some studio friends did a DAC shootout in L.A. a while back, like 25 DACs. Blind. They listened only to complex-pulsed reverb tails, at levels most people (perhaps like yourself) would never consider. Hugely revealing. Very-low-level DAC performance impacts atmospherics and timbre purity. Recording engineers know that imaging and depth is best perceived in the very quiet passages, and DACs with the best very-low-level waveform purity deliver the best spatial reality.
Can you record the same song twice and make the recordings downloadable ?
But is not the low level performance excellent in most modern DAC’s anyway ? Amir does not do the -100 or -90 dB sine test but it can be inferred from his other test for example linearity that this must be the case .
CD’s
