I've taken a bit of a self-driven crash course in DACs of late.
It all started with the Belkin Soundform Connect Airplay 2 box. I bought one, but the analog output is easily 15 dB too low (along the way I actually built a stupid op amp 15 dB preamp as a workaround and that works, but that's beside the point). So I bought a $10 DAC from Amazon to take the TOSLINK output instead and that worked. But it got me to thinking whether I could make my own, just to see if I could.
I've gone through a half dozen designs now. At first, I was using the STA120 and CS4334. I got that working, and it was fine, but people waxed lyrical about higher performance DACs, so I decided to see if a higher performance DAC made a difference. I settled on the PCM1793. I also moved from the STA120C to the DIR9001 and more recently the CS8416 receiver chip.
I haven't done any double-blind testing, but there is absolutely no question to my mind that the 1793 sounds very, very different than either the 4334 or the $10 DAC from Amazon (I don't know what's in that DAC because the bastards sandblasted the chips). To my ears, the cheaper DACs sound very flat and the 1793 is far more lively. I am not sure if I have better vocabulary for it than that. The only other subjective comparison I've made is that if I connect the 1793 to my AirPods Max with the analog cable it sounds the same to me as simply streaming the same audio to the APM over its native bluetooth. Again, the cheaper DACs are just flatter to me.
I guess the question I have is, what does "flatter" and "livelier" translate to in objective terms? Because I can't believe that there isn't something objectively measurable in the difference between the 4334 and 1793. The difference is so stark that I just can't hardly believe it's mere placebo.
It all started with the Belkin Soundform Connect Airplay 2 box. I bought one, but the analog output is easily 15 dB too low (along the way I actually built a stupid op amp 15 dB preamp as a workaround and that works, but that's beside the point). So I bought a $10 DAC from Amazon to take the TOSLINK output instead and that worked. But it got me to thinking whether I could make my own, just to see if I could.
I've gone through a half dozen designs now. At first, I was using the STA120 and CS4334. I got that working, and it was fine, but people waxed lyrical about higher performance DACs, so I decided to see if a higher performance DAC made a difference. I settled on the PCM1793. I also moved from the STA120C to the DIR9001 and more recently the CS8416 receiver chip.
I haven't done any double-blind testing, but there is absolutely no question to my mind that the 1793 sounds very, very different than either the 4334 or the $10 DAC from Amazon (I don't know what's in that DAC because the bastards sandblasted the chips). To my ears, the cheaper DACs sound very flat and the 1793 is far more lively. I am not sure if I have better vocabulary for it than that. The only other subjective comparison I've made is that if I connect the 1793 to my AirPods Max with the analog cable it sounds the same to me as simply streaming the same audio to the APM over its native bluetooth. Again, the cheaper DACs are just flatter to me.
I guess the question I have is, what does "flatter" and "livelier" translate to in objective terms? Because I can't believe that there isn't something objectively measurable in the difference between the 4334 and 1793. The difference is so stark that I just can't hardly believe it's mere placebo.