Pozz/Rick, thanks for putting this together. I do have some individual gripes...
- I want to filter on all in one DAC/Headphone Amps. The only applicable options I see are DAC (Multifunction) and Headphone Amp (Multifunction). Some of the results include Chromecast dongles, the D70 which is a dedicated DAC, Schiit Heresy which is a dedicated HAP, etc...Can you explain these categories a bit more?
- All of the column sort functions appear to be broken.
Cheers!
2nd item first: the column sort is entirely a Tableau thing. I don't think we can defeat the current function to make it more sensible, the way spreadsheets usually work for example by "remembering" all of the previous sorts. All the Tableau column sorts do is force alphabetical or large/small order referring to some internally defined initial state.
So for the first item: the range of devices that have basic stages like DACs, headphones amps, speaker amps or other things are extremely wide. Let me go through some of the categories you asked about:
- DAC (Dedicated): Just a D/A converter. No other functions.
- DAC (Multifunction): A D/A converter boasting other functions, like an analog preamp or headphone amp.
- DAC (Thumb Drive): A small USB key shaped DAC.
- Headphone Amp (Dedicated): Just an analog headphone amp.
- Headphone Amp (Dongle): Out of these, this is the most misleading, since this is a DAC meant to power headphones. But most people seem to either call these headphone dongles or USB-C headphone converters. Amir calls them dongles too, so that's that. And the name seems to fit since it's a little thing with a dangling flagellum.
- Headphone Amp (Multifunction): Mostly refers to headphones with a analog preamp. In very rare cases some companies advertise that their headphone amps can be outfitted with optional modules, like a phono preamp or DAC.
You see there are a lot of overlaps between DAC and headphone amps even without taking into account AVRs, DAPs, soundcards and such, which have both built in.
What we designed, within the many limitations of Tableau, is that users should select the primary kind of device they want and then use the Tags single dropdown filter to narrow the field.
So, instructions: I would guess that more than 95% of desktop DAC/headphone amp combos would be covered by selecting the DAC (Multifunction) device type and Headphone Amplifier tag. The others would be captured by the inverse, namely Headphone Amp (Multifunction) device type and DAC tag.
You might get weird results since for example the Mola Mola Tambaqui is a DAC with a headphone amp built in. What I've found by looking at all these devices is that what people put on their desk and the device size have no correlation. We could of course add device dimensions and let the sorting flow, but we will hit performance limits quick.