Just curious- can you cite an example of a difference being actually heard that was not reflected in a standard measurement suite? Just one example?
Still an open question vis-a-vis proving it with a listening test. I want to test it with ABX for the FiiO KA17 vs. Hiby FC3 once I find a good section of a good song to bring out the difference as much as possible. To be clear - and as I've said multiple times already - I think some audible problems are being reflected in standard measurements, just not zoomed in on, nor discussed in the graph review. It's a different question whether we could use other ways of measuring that could more easily highlight potentially audible problems than what is usually done. My first issue is with the current interpretation of what is "audibly transparent" and what levels of defect are worth zooming in on.
Which "audible problems" do you mean, specifically? And how was the audibility determined?
FR defects touching or exceeding 0.2 dB away from flat (though for now I'm also wondering about 0.1 dB - how widespread the ability to hear that might be). Not sure how it was determined but that's the number quoted in the Audibility Thresholds thread, sadly without citing any specific research papers.
Wait, why would you ignore the reconstruction filter? Is that not part of the DAC?
Of course "day and night" is ludicrous, but I'm coming at this from the opposite angle: nothing explains the "audibly transparent" claims that are so often made in this forum, especially in posts advising newcomers what to buy or not buy. That's an extreme claim that requires extremely high quality evidence, which I think has not been provided.
So have you been able to determine any audibility issues? I'm asking all of this because I just haven't seen frequency response errors in any DAC I've tested and suspect there might be measurement issues rather than audibility. But actual experiments answer objections.
You can test yourself here. I can tell you that 0.1dB is extremely difficult and noticing a 0.1dB difference in the downward direction is even more difficult. I suggest you start at a level higher than 0.1dB so that you can note that direction change difficulty.
That is absolutely false. Multiple people in this forum routinely give newcomers purchase advice based on this unproven notion that "90% of DAC/amps today are audibly transparent", meaning they are talking about real-world performance of complete devices (otherwise it wouldn't be purchase advice), meaning they are systematically ignoring reconstruction filter problems along with everything else.
Have you tested Bluetooth DAC/amps? Maybe it's normal for those. Also, remember this is between device and music file, not between 2 devices. The fit for these -19 dB ones showed "Very Good" x1 and "Excellent" x2. Don't think there's much I could've done better.
Of course I am, see also my recent replies for Geert. This is about real products in the real world, who cares about "just the DAC"? That would be a purely academic discussion, especially in recent years with manufacturers having started building these more complex "DAC" chips that are really integrated DACs and headphone amps (DAC-amps-on-chip? DAOCs? DAC-amp-systems-on-chip? DASoCs?
). I think some people have not woken up to this little complication, which makes it so you can no longer support the same statements you could before about "the DAC chip", since today "the DAC chip" also contains a headphone amp section.
Remember that on a quiet passage, noise or added distortion will be more pronounced/easier to hear, so you may want to know the source and, if significant, try to eliminate it.
and has absolutely nothing to do with noise in DACs nor anything I wrote. That is about bit depth and quantization noise.
