Is there really no audible difference between different DACs?

[raif71]

Hope he's not. Heam, do you miss that guy? :

I just really like what he had to say about R2R Dacs. Yeah, yeah no excuses on being impolite. I know you guys are trying your hardest for people to see your points and being helpful by the way. Kudos!! However...just a little bit of understanding and more of patience instead of sweeping the problem under the carpet imo would be better. There will be people with opinions that do not "comply" to the spirit of this wonderful forum but instead of showing them out of the door, I would think a little of variety will do good for all us, right...hmmm ?

 

[Celty]

Gets out the popcorn...

 

[RayDunzl]

Bah...

 

[mansr]

I just really like what he had to say about R2R Dacs.

Most of what should be said about R2R DACs is not fit for print.

 

[Celty]

A little more tolerance and a bit less heat all round is seldom amiss. It's a great forum, let's keep it that way.

 

[LTig]

No it does not. Multitone did not show level dependent non-harmonic spuriae that occured at 1kHz/-60dBFS sine test and are very audible. They are audible with very low volume passages of classical music, e.g.
Low frequency distortion you would see with low frequency sine. The case is that one has to tune wide scale of levels, frequencies and combinations of frequencies to get view wide enough. A standard wideband multitone with fixed crest factor does not tell the story.

View attachment 40670
1kHz/-60dBFS. This behaviour was not disclosed when tested with a multitone. Multitone result was close to perfect. These non-harmonic, signal related spuriae are perfectly audible.

I doubt that this spuriae are easily audible in a real world situation. At -60 dBFS even the main signal is barely audible when listening at normal SPLs so the spuriae with some 50 dB lower SPL cannot be audible.

With very loud listening SPL - 0 dBFS peaks at 120 dB SPL - the spuriae are at 10 dB SPL and may be audible if there is a sufficient long period of very quiet music for the ear to recover.

 

[scott wurcer]

Most of what should be said about R2R DACs is not fit for print.

There are R2R DAC's that do -122dB at -1dB FS and 0.05dB linearity down to -120dB. as good as almost any of the dash boards here. Unfortunately they were not commercialized.

 

[solderdude]

No it does not. Multitone did not show level dependent non-harmonic spuriae that occured at 1kHz/-60dBFS sine test and are very audible. They are audible with very low volume passages of classical music, e.g.
Low frequency distortion you would see with low frequency sine. The case is that one has to tune wide scale of levels, frequencies and combinations of frequencies to get view wide enough. A standard wideband multitone with fixed crest factor does not tell the story.

View attachment 40670
1kHz/-60dBFS. This behaviour was not disclosed when tested with a multitone. Multitone result was close to perfect. These non-harmonic, signal related spuriae are perfectly audible.

Another DAC without issues:
View attachment 40671
This is a correct behaviour and no spuriae are audible.

Multitone test of both DACs was almost identical.
View attachment 40672
No spuriae around 7.5kHz. Issue not disclosed with the multitone test.

A couple of questions:
you say: 1kHz/-60dBFS. This behaviour was not disclosed when tested with a multitone. Multitone result was close to perfect. These non-harmonic, signal related spuriae are perfectly audible.

When I look at the plot I see the spuriae below -100dB (ref = -60dB and highest spurious = -45dB below that.
In this case for this to become audible one would have to be playing the music at really loud levels ?
Would such low levels not drown in noise of the recording of a classical music piece ?

Also it is not clear from the measurement if the 7.5kHz is also there at say a 1.6kHz tone nor any investigation where it may have come from.
Just that it is there but not seen in the multitone test which is at a level where music would be as well.

Furthermore I did say this:
So the multitone is not easy to pass and indicative of certain issues, but of course not the sole important thing just like SINAD is not the sole number to judge quality on.

Would you disagree with this ?

We could always ask Amir to do multitone measurements at various levels when measurements show no issues with other tests and for instance -60dB or -90dB 1kHz signals.

 

[Grattle]

With some cheap tweaks the old ODAC sounds much better. Its biggest weakness is that it has insufficient noise filtering and...

Mind sharing the tweeks? I have an ODAC or two to play around with.

 

[magicscreen]

Because every DAC has an analog side (op-amp/transistor etc) they may sound different of course.

Can two DAC chips sound different? That is the question.

 

[ViperScythe]

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 haven't tell us if your "TEST" is Sighted / Blinded ABX? If your "TEST" is Sighted then there is not much we can talk about here... Do a proper blinded ABX with level matching volume, then let's talk if you still can find the differences 10 out of 10 times, because from you words, the differences between cheap and expensive dac seems big for you.

 

[ElNino]

No it does not. Multitone did not show level dependent non-harmonic spuriae that occured at 1kHz/-60dBFS sine test and are very audible. They are audible with very low volume passages of classical music, e.g.
Low frequency distortion you would see with low frequency sine. The case is that one has to tune wide scale of levels, frequencies and combinations of frequencies to get view wide enough. A standard wideband multitone with fixed crest factor does not tell the story.

View attachment 40670
1kHz/-60dBFS. This behaviour was not disclosed when tested with a multitone. Multitone result was close to perfect. These non-harmonic, signal related spuriae are perfectly audible.

Another DAC without issues:
View attachment 40671
This is a correct behaviour and no spuriae are audible.

Multitone test of both DACs was almost identical.
View attachment 40672
No spuriae around 7.5kHz. Issue not disclosed with the multitone test.

This is amazing -- I really appreciate your contributions to this forum, PMA.

 

[Digital_Thor]

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?

Slightly started to think that there was a big difference between equipment..... but then I found my senses again and started reading about acoustics, measurements and sound reproduction. Followed the best advises how to measure speakers at home and using a DSP to filter drivers. Lower frequencies were not so precise and my stereo image was a bit un-clear. After I got them nice and flat - added 4 subwoofers that blended nicely with the fronts - everything smoothed out and even music that before sound a bit bloated, nasal, "hard" or maybe boomy, now sounded absolutely great and stereo imaging is dead-center like it should be. I did not change cables(just build my own - cheepest), DAC is the same and drivers, room and music is the same. What I did, was getting the basics right - by simply obeying the rules of acoustics and stop hunting for ghosts and magic.
I know we're writing about DAC's - but just wanted to remind you, that sometimes going back and making sure the basics are in order - really can be the source for better sound - rather than specific electronics

 

[sonci]

I`ve always heard differences between dacs, certainly there are small sometimes you have to listen carefully on very accurate monitors or headphones, sometimes there are obvious differences and you can easily pick them.
Most of the time and for background listening DACs are not important at all, they sound the same. You can say a good dac is good enough, but really this is the worst thread we can have here. Is an Intel Core i9 good enough?
I really hope they don`t stop improving dacs year after year, even though most people just need a phone and earbuds..

 

[Willem]

The difference between computers and DACs is that with DACs you are dealing with the limitations of human hearing acuity. More perfect than perfect is logically impossible. And no, I don't listen with a phone and earbuds, but with Quad electrostats.

 

[mansr]

You can say a good dac is good enough, but really this is the worst thread we can have here. Is an Intel Core i9 good enough?

Is a Core i9 good enough for what? In my world, a computer is good enough if it can deliver the correct result before the deadline. A faster computer would only be a waste of money and power (wait, money _is_ power). The reason faster computers keep being made is that no matter how fast they are, there are always tasks for which they are too slow, or at least annoyingly slow. DACs have already reached the point where all distortions are well below the audibility threshold, and lowering them further won't make them more inaudible.

 

[BDWoody]

I`ve always heard differences between dacs, certainly there are small sometimes you have to listen carefully on very accurate monitors or headphones...

You can say a good dac is good enough, but really this is the worst thread we can have here.

Not as long as people keep hearing differences between transparent, competent DAC's.

 

[A800]

I hear a lot of differences.
Everything sounds different.

 

[M00ndancer]

I hear a lot of differences.
Everything sounds different.

All depending on time of day and mood, not the DAC.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I hear a lot of differences.
Everything sounds different.

I hear differences between microphones
I hear differences between microphone positions, surprisingly big.
I haer differences between loudspeakers.
I hear differences between loudspeaker locations in a room (very big too)
With record players I hear differences between cartridges and turntable support/location.
In level matched DAC comparisons I hear no difference, as long as they all have normal reconstruction filters.
I do hear the differences between some (not all) the filter choices on my dCS DAC but not between the dCS and other DACs if using the conventional filter.