Perhaps poor implementation most likely psychological.
Keith
Keith
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How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent?
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Miguelón
Major Contributor
He/she reminds me of Knut(and some number I can’t remember), the Troll who argued obsessively in favor of Ifi DACs, but this time more on the anti-Topping side…a real woman of science would never have written what was written by @womanofscience666 .... I guess it is the 666 that is talking.
Miguelón
Major Contributor
I don’t understand you well, are you saying I’m psychologically bad implemented ?
Sorry, I’m not English native, even if your sentence was so short I cannot understand in which way goes…
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No he is saying perhaps there is a difference due to poor design between an XLR and RCA based unit. So you might hear it, but it has nothing to do with any inherent sound difference between balanced and unbalanced.I don’t understand you well, are you saying I’m psychologically bad implemented ?
Sorry, I’m not English native, even if your sentence was so short I cannot understand in which way goes…
But his opinion is the most likely reason you heard a difference is psychological as in bias from knowing one was balanced and one was not. Most likely there was not enough difference in the signal for you to hear a difference beyond the unintended bias.
Tilata
Member
It reminds me the Coke-Pepsi blind testing, which one is better, right? There are people out there drinking RC Cola and Vive cola or even Green cola. And they like it.All DAC's sound the same.
You should read this thread
How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent?
I know there are people out there that think cables affect sound, which is much worse, but there really is no response to something like that, but just to smile and nod. But what about people who talk about DACS as if they were headphone drivers or speakers, and talk about the SOUNDSTAGE...
And then try a blind test next time.
The purpose of music is to make you feel something your have either have not experienced i.e. new and exciting, or re-live something which you liked or experienced before. Music is not necessarily a single sensory experience. Some of us see pictures or colours or imagine a scene or picture. All this originates from the activation of the limbic system. Some of us like feeling the tactile resonance of speakers. So placebo effect and whatever else our brain adds to music has a massive impact on what and how we experience it. This makes it a human experience. So maybe customers of certain hi-fi brands are misled by adverts, reviews, semi-scientific interviews, but some of them/us are just happy to listen to good music the way they like it. The minute we stop listening with our ears and brain but focussing on just numbers, graphs, peaks, jotter noise and SINAD, we stop being a human.
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You are building your straw man here by creating a false dichotomy.
The minute we stop listening with our ears and brain but focussing (sic) on just numbers, graphs, peaks, jotter(sic) noise and SINAD, we stop being a human.
The above sentence makes no sense in many ways. Are mathematicians not human? Are electrical engineers who design circuits not human? Can these people not listen to good music the way they like and be happy? Can you listen to good music reproduction without them? Can humans not listen to music without placebo and other effects? Can they not listen to music without those effects and enjoy it and be happy? Are we not using our brain when we do look at other information? Can you not see colors with music unless you know the source? etc etc etc.
oleg87
Addicted to Fun and Learning
I listen to music with my ears. I evaluate electronic performance with test equipment.
VientoB
Addicted to Fun and Learning
People who believe all DACs sound the same just listen with their ears. They're not listening to graphs or numbers. They're listening to the music that the DAC produces. They're not listening to the equipment and thinking, "I wonder how it would sound with a Chord Dave and M-Scaler". It's actually quite liberating.
olieb
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Well, there might be a time for listening and there might be a time for focusing on numbers, graphs,.... Both is absolutely human, especially numbers are a rather human invention.
Yes, and it is your personal fun if you enjoy a music tune more when reproduced by gear from "audiophile hi-fi brands" with the promise of the "special extra", actually you would probably be part of the mainstream, most people seem to think that way.
All your fun, the money and the promise will not change the facts about the sound (physical reality) though.
Roland68
Major Contributor
Do you actually listen to yourself?
Everything, really everything around us, apart from the original nature, is an invention of us humans.
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DACs do not "pre echo" or "post echo". Are you referring to ringing which occurs at 22kHz for 44.1kHz audio, 48kHz for 96kHz audio, etc.?
If you're one to care about such things, I would think you are listening at at least 96kHz to start with...
Its often used in misleading marketing. The step pulse used to characterise the filter.
It is as you say . The filters don’t do do that with music aka “legaly” sampled signals .
The test signal is not bandwidth limited its a very steep pulse within one sample it provokes these behaviours to the max . Engineers can evaluate these and tell us a lot about the filters if its well implemented or not etc.
My blind testing between the on-board DACs in my preamp, NodeX, and a Weiss DAC 204 yielded 100% correct identification of the Weiss. The two built in DACs yielded about a 70% correct ID - but the differences became easier to ID when I learned that the three chips involved (ESS 9018, AKM 4499, ESS 9028) showed the widest sound differences with big classical pieces. tried this with four people and then had someone test me. You can state that DACs don’t make a difference, but for those who have heard differences, we know better. The winner in my system was the costly Weiss using the oldest chip design (the 9018).
solderdude
Grand Contributor
care to describe the comparison and the controls that were used as well as the statistics.
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Well of course not.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
The 3.75V output voltage on RCA (default) and double that on XL,R of course, probably didn't help at all picking the Weiss as the 'best sounding one'.
Nah ... it must have been the 9018 DAC chip that did it as 5 people could tell the Weiss apart.
Nah ... it must have been the 9018 DAC chip that did it as 5 people could tell the Weiss apart.
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Geert
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Could also be a 'broken by design' case, if it resembles Weiss-dac205-dac-review.
"Your guess is as good as mine as to why we have such high levels of intermodulation distortion."
"The worst jitter I have ever measured in a performant DAC."
But still "a winner".
"Your guess is as good as mine as to why we have such high levels of intermodulation distortion."
"The worst jitter I have ever measured in a performant DAC."
But still "a winner".
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Very late to the party, but I think I've recently found my answer to this question: a lot of DACs and DAC-amps that are reviewed and discussed online based on measurements do really have a "sound signature" and it really does reflect in the measurements, so they do not actually measure as transparent, but #1. people don't pay attention to the FR measurement (or ask for it when it's missing, or zoom in on the 32-tone test to see if the spikes differ from eachother even by 1 pixel, which may be enough at the scale the 32-tone test is usually presented) and/or #2. people don't know just how tiny of a spectral tilt can actually be heard by humans (see audibility thresholds topic: the limit is 0.1 dB per octave).
solderdude
Grand Contributor
0.1dB roll-off at 20kHz for instance isn't directly audible but measurable.
That 0.1dB per octave is a tilt of -1dB at 20kHz and DACs usually don't do that. They only roll-off near 1/2 fs and is only 'detectable' on direct switching and that roll-off cannot be called a 'sound signature'.
That 0.1dB per octave is a tilt of -1dB at 20kHz and DACs usually don't do that. They only roll-off near 1/2 fs and is only 'detectable' on direct switching and that roll-off cannot be called a 'sound signature'.
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