Is there really no audible difference between different DACs?

[CelticForest]

I have used multiple dacs and i could swear they all have sounded different but apparently there is no actual difference in how they sound and i'm just imagining it?
For example i could swear i can hear a much bigger soundstage if i get a cleaner power supply for a dac and some dacs i have heard are just inherently inferior when it comes to soundstage this is something i have a trouble just accepting is part of my imagination

Because that is the one thing that id say is the clearest differentiation between different dacs... soundstage performance...

now in headphones with a certain dac it might just sound like its inside my head when i listen to a recording but! with a better dac it might sound like the sound comes from outside the earcups almost as if im listening to a pair of speakers... but this is my imagination?

better soundstage when you listen to a speaker for me means the speaker vanishes i cannot locate the sound precisely to the speakers and it also mean that the sound is much bigger than the speaker bascially when i look at my speakers when i play music you could tell me they are off and i would believe you

Other things as well like bass performance i could swear i have heard dacs with very anemic bass response where there has basically been no power while another has super punchy bass and i always thought that feeding a dac cleaner better power drastically improves its performance

I i don't believe in audio cables there is no audible difference that i have heard personally

 

[Speedskater]

There should be no audible differences between accurate DAC's (that's almost by definition) however not all DAC's are accurate. Some are designed to sound different with euphonic colorations.

 

[snapcrackle]

I have used multiple dacs and i could swear they all have sounded different but apparently there is no actual difference in how they sound and i'm just imagining it?
For example i could swear i can hear a much bigger soundstage if i get a cleaner power supply for a dac and some dacs i have heard are just inherently inferior when it comes to soundstage this is something i have a trouble just accepting is part of my imagination

Because that is the one thing that id say is the clearest differentiation between different dacs... soundstage performance...

now in headphones with a certain dac it might just sound like its inside my head when i listen to a recording but! with a better dac it might sound like the sound comes from outside the earcups almost as if im listening to a pair of speakers... but this is my imagination?

better soundstage when you listen to a speaker for me means the speaker vanishes i cannot locate the sound precisely to the speakers and it also mean that the sound is much bigger than the speaker bascially when i look at my speakers when i play music you could tell me they are off and i would believe you

Other things as well like bass performance i could swear i have heard dacs with very anemic bass response where there has basically been no power while another has super punchy bass and i always thought that feeding a dac cleaner better power drastically improves its performance

I i don't believe in audio cables there is no audible difference that i have heard personally

You would be the perfect person to try a well measured low priced Topping DAC based on your experience. Check the soundstage out with a Topping.

 

[KxDx]

If they were rigorously measured (as this site does) and had nearly identical results, then you shouldn't hear much if any difference. But if their analog stages are wildly different, resulting in a different sound, that should show up in measurements as well.

Now on the "soundstage" subject, a question for those who know more than I-- is channel separation measurable? Is that the same as crosstalk? I have wondered if that could make one unit sound more "expansive" than another.

 

[Speedskater]

The audiophiles that write about soundstage differences are seldom interested in supporting their position.

 

[CelticForest]

That is why i brought up soundstage because for me that is the one thing i have noticed that is the most obvious i can clearly tell the difference especially when wearing headphones the best way that i can describe it is that with one dac it sounds like the sound is being played between my ears inside my head while on another dac a better dac it sounds as if the sound is coming far away from the headphone cups as if i am hearing it through a pair of speakers

But apparently all of this is just my imagination right?
Something i have noticed is that the most noticeable improvement i can hear if i improve the power supply to a dac is the soundstage increasing in size

This is also something i have noticed with headphone amplifiers... if i give a headphone amplifier cleaner power it always improves the soundstage performance

Is there any scientific explanation for this?

For example the Aune x1s i use the
AUNE XP1 External Linear Power Supply

and for me that drastically improves the headphone amplifier

Now i dont use the aune x1s as my dac my setup is as follow
Musicstreamer hd to give it clean power i use a
iDefender3.0 that is connected to an ipower 5 volt psu
When i listen to headphones i use the aune x1s as the headphone amplifier with the xp1
but i mostly listen through my adam audio t7vs which i find to be superior to the jbl 305 which i had in the past

 

[Veri]

You don't believe in audio cables but did buy that "iDefender" thing? can't see it doing anything worthwile, really.
Very sceptical of all that "decrapifying" stuff whether it's USB, AC or Ethernet :/

 

[pozz]

The main thing for listening comparisons is level matching, which has to be within 0.1dB to be accurate.

Edit: By the way, 0.1dB is not an arbitrary figure. In psychoacoustics it's known as a just-noticeable difference ("JND"), a term carried over from experimental psychology. It sets an absolute threshold for detecting a minimal difference. It's why Amir uses it for the linearity measurements.

 

[CelticForest]

You don't believe in audio cables but did buy that "iDefender" thing? can't see it doing anything worthwile, really.

I only bought it because using it i can give any usb device cleaner power there is no easy way or cheaper way that i know of outside of the idefender that allowed this

 

[CelticForest]

The main thing for listening comparisons is level matching, which has to be within 0.1dB to be accurate.

Thing is even when i lower the sound on the superior dac the differences are still there it still sounds better

 

[CelticForest]

Oh and my headphones are the beyerdynamics 880 600 ohm version
i bought them because i have heard they are very neutral headphones for the price

 

[Mnyb]

If you lower the level on the “superior” DAC then you now . Sighted tests are not valid either for these kind of subtle and mostly inaudible differences bias effects are so much bigger than the thing you try to measure so you just can’t do it sighted no one can .

In well controlled test these differences usually disappears

 

[pozz]

Thing is even when i lower the sound on the superior dac the differences are still there it still sounds better

So the thing is that they have to be at the same level and you have to be able to make an near-instantaneous switch (200 milliseconds is the experimental threshold). Unfortunately if you don't have the capability and have to mess about rearranging your setup to test one unit and then another, it will be really hard to make a fair comparison.

Oh and my headphones are the beyerdynamics 880 600 ohm version
i bought them because i have heard they are very neutral headphones for the price

With 600 ohm headphones you're testing the limits of the headphone amplifier attached to the DAC, not the DAC itself. This type of design is from an age when studios worked on the impedance-matching principle (carried over from the telephone industry IIRC) and had no dedicated headphone amplifiers. What they did have was the equivalent of speaker outs tied to resisters, so there was a point to very hard to drive headphones. The Beyerdynamics are very good headphones, though.

I only bought it because using it i can give any usb device cleaner power there is no easy way or cheaper way that i know of outside of the idefender that allowed this

Read these reviews of power supplies:

• (2 June 2019) HDPlex 200W LPS
• (18 August 2017) Vinnie Rossi MINI PURE-DC-4EVR
• (16 August 2017) UpTone UltraCap LPS-1

Read this article about digital connections:

• (16 March 2019) Empirical Audio Synchro-Mesh

 

[CelticForest]

But should not the inferior dac sound better than the superior dac if the superior dac is at a lower level if i follow you?

 

[Jinjuku]

I've heard USB DAC's with the 8Khz USB packet noise. It also shows in measurements.

 

[CelticForest]

His voice is inside my head between my ears but the sound of the guitar is comfortably outside of the earcups of my headphones
How does it sound like to other people here?

 

[pozz]

But should not the inferior dac sound better than the superior dac if the superior dac is at a lower level if i follow you?

This is one of those "Yes, but..." answers: a DAC is just a conversion tool, there's nothing that would audible unless it was poorly built. Like @Jinjuku's example of case-specific noise behaviour.

 

[garbulky]

Let's say you think you hear differences in DACs. Then you can take a level matched double blind test.
Here the chances may be very high that you'll hear no differences between say a cheap laptops generic onboard sound output and the best dac ever measured (for real!) .
So there are two outcomes.

Outcome number 1.
You are now convinced that there are no audible differences for your use AND your use after the double blind test suddenly reflects that finding. Either you hear all dacs sounding exactly the same versus before. Or if they still sometimes sound different, perhaps you simply don't care because you KNOW they sound the same whether you hear it differently or not due to the experiement that proved it to you. You feel you are better off because now you aren't going to waste time or money chasing a better sounding dac because you know it's just your gullible mind.

or

Outcome number 2
You are neither convinced or unconvinced by the demonstration. You go back to trying out different DACs. Despite the previous experiment showing that you were seemingly unable to differentiate in the test, you find that you hear differences in DACs in normal use. You carry on as you did before.

I happened to be in outcome number 2. I wager most people on this forum are in outcome number 1.

 

[CelticForest]

Or this the clapping hands are very far outside of the earcups of my headphones to the right or the cymbals to the left
same with the piano to the left

 

[CelticForest]

last example

The cymbals are very very far away from the earcups on the left like if i am hearing it through a speaker
when the choir voices come in the main singer is in the middle of my head the choir voices outside of my head on both left and right far away