My dongle search rabbit hole

[Basic Channel]

If you are mixing or worse still generating live from VSTi then higher sample rates will make a difference for sure. How much though in the case of not using VSTi I am not really sure. I am still dubious you'd hear all these differences blind, but I appreciate that you don't necessarily want to or can, nor certainly do you need to prove anything to me.

Just two points that are even more my opinion than usual. I think the frequency response quoted as 0.5db will differ mostly outside the audible range. If they quoted 20hz-20k it'd be the same I bet.

Running the whole project at 700k or something would run very slowly (although I have old man ears and an old man PC!). I think there is a good argument to do that and force yourself to bounce stuff down and make decisions. Which is more analogous (geddit?) to an old analogue process. I think the DAW can be a bit of a nightmare for making electronic music in the sense you can do too much at once, to do the equivalent in 1990 you'd need 20 synths, reverb FX, etc, etc. Or I suppose for making "real" music, the Beatles did stuff on bounced down 4 tracks. Even later stuff like Bohemian Rhapsody with (I think) something silly like 100 tracks - they were surely being mixed straight off tape and not all going through separate chains of compressors and whatnot.

Ramble over....

 

[OK1]

If you are mixing or worse still generating live from VSTi then higher sample rates will make a difference for sure. How much though in the case of not using VSTi I am not really sure. I am still dubious you'd hear all these differences blind, but I appreciate that you don't necessarily want to or can, nor certainly do you need to prove anything to me.

Just two points that are even more my opinion than usual. I think the frequency response quoted as 0.5db will differ mostly outside the audible range. If they quoted 20hz-20k it'd be the same I bet.

Running the whole project at 700k or something would run very slowly (although I have old man ears and an old man PC!). I think there is a good argument to do that and force yourself to bounce stuff down and make decisions. Which is more analogous (geddit?) to an old analogue process. I think the DAW can be a bit of a nightmare for making electronic music in the sense you can do too much at once, to do the equivalent in 1990 you'd need 20 synths, reverb FX, etc, etc. Or I suppose for making "real" music, the Beatles did stuff on bounced down 4 tracks. Even later stuff like Bohemian Rhapsody with (I think) something silly like 100 tracks - they were surely being mixed straight off tape and not all going through separate chains of compressors and whatnot.

Ramble over....

For two of the dongles, Apple dongle and the CX, there is no specification provided, by the manufacturers, for frequency response. So it's impossible to tell officially from the specs.

The challenge with the CX are there are so many different suppliers and even if I found a measurement for the frequency response, it would be difficult to know if that applied to the version I bought.

For the BHD, the +/-0.5dB is specified between 0 to 40Khz, which is pretty good, for such a wide frequency response. I would assume that between 20 and 20 Khz, the variance would be smaller. Would be interesting to see what an actual measurement looks like, between 20 and 20K, which is what matters the most.

Buttressing what I mentioned about professional audio interfaces, which seem to focus less on SINAD, but more on frequency response, here are some of the specs for a PRISM Lyra 2 : Down to +/- 0.05dB or better, in the audible frequency range.

 

[OK1]

I remain extremely happy with the TempoTec Sonata BHD, it represents excellent value for money. Excellent measurements - same as the BHD Pro (but omits MQA feature in the non Pro). Only thing missing would be A/D inputs to support a microphone. Clearly this is a device intended for discerning listeners. Sounds better than the Apple dongle, and much better than the GraveAudio CX31993.

I've come across a new DAC chip the CS 43198 - which has single and dual implementations thereof. Not intending to buy, cos I am extremely happy with what I have. But this seems to be a more recent alternative chip to the CS43131, which the BHD and the BHD Pro are based on.

I've tested the Apple, fake Samsungs, GraveAudio CX and the BHD - on both Windows 10 and a Samsung Android smartphone - Sound quality - BHD wins any day, all day, with the bonus that it does have an ASIO driver for Windows. More than enough power to drive low impedance IEM's. (one could say the same for ALL the dongle DACs I've used).

BHD - I have not done too much scientific tracking, but it does seem that the ASIO driver crashes occasionally like once every few days (could be up to 10 days - with the computer being set to suspend mode every night), and I do not recall any crash when using the WASAPI Exclusive mode driver, for this device. It never becomes warm to the touch. Plug and play everytime, just works.

IEM's tested with - CCA CRA (no longer recommended by me), and KZ ZVX (my current daily driver which is head and shoulders better than the CCA CRA).

Only issue with dongle DAC's on the Samsung Android smartphone, the default volume control settings are far too coarse, and teh lowest setting above silence, is already too loud for me, and I'm searching for a solution to refine the volume control on the smartphone.