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Review and Measurements of Gustard DAC-X26

frogmeat69

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Your must be an unhappy person too.


Just in posting this you made a personal comment toward me as if I made a personal.comment without provocation. You must be an unhappy person too. Have fun being unhappy with your you unhappy pretend scientists.
It's his website, his forums.
 
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amirm

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You must be an unhappy person too. Have fun being unhappy with your you unhappy pretend scientists.
We are not scientists. We follow what science says. And we do it cordially. If that is not for you, then by all means don't post anymore.
 

JjOz

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Didn't you read about the serious ABX organized with many people, where a 29$ Fiio couldn't be spotted from a 3.000$ DAC?
It was not a dCS Debussy but the organizer of the contest rent one at some point but couldn't find it anything special.
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/dig...blind-test-audible-difference-whatsoever.html

dCS should give the composers a break, also!

I found this link reading through the comments. Interesting read, but very few details on the ABX test. 8 people, we don't know how many trials. I'd give this very little confidence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test#Confidence).

In the link we can also read "Cables, amplifiers, Lossy v.s. Lossless/HD, EQ'd mid drivers, DAC... Nope. Nothing is passing a ABX blind test.". I would have to disagree with at least the lossy vs lossless (Little test you can do yourself: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality ).
Nop I don't think cables make a difference, nor think expensive DACS sound better, but be careful with ABX testing like this one. I'm working as an experimentation designer and I have seen very little well-designed ABX test in the links we can find around.

I'm going to run an experimentation with ~30 people this month, trying to tell if people can tell the difference with 128 kbs and lossless CD. I might share the results, power calculation and CI ;)
 

Viper Necklampy

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Measurements are amazing, but i see the distortion in high frequencies are not being mentioned even once, why that? And, i would like to see how it extend that 'distortion' on 20 to 50khz too, or more.. I mean, you can see that, It's the only minor thing that something like smsl d1 doesn't have..
 

JohnYang1997

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Measurements are amazing, but i see the distortion in high frequencies are not being mentioned even once, why that? And, i would like to see how it extend that 'distortion' on 20 to 50khz too, or more.. I mean, you can see that, It's the only minor thing that something like smsl d1 doesn't have..
As shown in the multitone measurement, the distortion doesn't rise at higher frequency. It should be an varying ultrasonic noise that caused it. You can go to d50s thread for little more detail.
 
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amirm

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Measurements are amazing, but i see the distortion in high frequencies are not being mentioned even once, why that? And, i would like to see how it extend that 'distortion' on 20 to 50khz too, or more.. I mean, you can see that, It's the only minor thing that something like smsl d1 doesn't have..
The curve usually tracks the same above 20 kHz that is below:

index.php


Since you can't hear the main tone above 20 kHz, you certainly can't hear distortion products many dBs lower.
 

Viper Necklampy

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The curve usually tracks the same above 20 kHz that is below:

index.php


Since you can't hear the main tone above 20 kHz, you certainly can't hear distortion products many dBs lower.
You're saying i can't hear the distortion of the treble? Sorry if i didn't speak well, but in the graph it rises and rises...
I had to decide between Topping d70 (0,9db loss on 20hz-20khz freq. Response ; too much for my 21yr old ears) Smsl d1 (imd hump and 0,5db loss) and this (treble distortion that my 789 don't like to be paired with!!)
Help :(
 

Viper Necklampy

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As shown in the multitone measurement, the distortion doesn't rise at higher frequency. It should be an varying ultrasonic noise that caused it. You can go to d50s thread for little more detail.
In which frequencies you mean it doesn't rise? <20khz? Because thd+n vs frequency i see that it rises past 2khz, what multitone do to it then? I do not know what is the multitone test, but i see there Is treble 'distortion' on the thd graph.. Not even mentioned once, so maybe i'm simply wrong (But i should have already been silences about), or more simply there is very little to worry about that, but I'm worried..
Edit: Hey! Why i see this on their measurements?? It does not have that treble distortion, why? (Photo)
 

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Viper Necklampy

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Could someone tell me if this Dac have oversampling? For example, if i use it via optical with an old device non hi-res 44-48khz, can the dac upsample it to hi-res? Or pcm to dsd conversion, as i see dsd on filter?
That would sell me directly :)
 
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Bamyasi

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In which frequencies you mean it doesn't rise? <20khz? Because thd+n vs frequency i see that it rises past 2khz, what multitone do to it then? I do not know what is the multitone test, but i see there Is treble 'distortion' on the thd graph.. Not even mentioned once, so maybe i'm simply wrong (But i should have already been silences about), or more simply there is very little to worry about that, but I'm worried..
Edit: Hey! Why i see this on their measurements?? It does not have that treble distortion, why? (Photo)

For each frequency point, the THD+N plot shows sum of all distortion components in the 90 kHz bandwidth, not just distortion at this particular frequency. So the distortion rise in the upper region of the input signal frequency range is most likely caused by ultrasonic harmonics, e.g. poorly filtered out aliasing noise around 85 kHz. Such ultrasonics are totally inaudible even at the 0 db level, much less at -90 dB as the plot shows.
 

JohnYang1997

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In which frequencies you mean it doesn't rise? <20khz? Because thd+n vs frequency i see that it rises past 2khz, what multitone do to it then? I do not know what is the multitone test, but i see there Is treble 'distortion' on the thd graph.. Not even mentioned once, so maybe i'm simply wrong (But i should have already been silences about), or more simply there is very little to worry about that, but I'm worried..
Edit: Hey! Why i see this on their measurements?? It does not have that treble distortion, why? (Photo)
Probably different cause from d50s.
As we know that thd+n vs frequency graph from amrim has 90khz bandwidth. So it could be somewhere in ultrasonic range.
However as you shown from manufacturer, ut does rise with 22k bandwidth.(it does rise after 2khz.) The cause of the difference is the measurement bandwidth. 22khz low pass will remove all distortion over 11khz and all thrid harmonics over 7khz.
Question is why not shown in multitone probably just to gradual to see.
And finally, is it audible? Most likely not.
 

Majestyk

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Does anyone know why this DAC gets so hot? Someone on head-fi mentioned it heats up to 50 degrees Celsius. Surprising since it has vents on either side. Could this temp be problem over time?
 

evrial

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Any A/B blind tests of this unit and DX3Pro? Anything audible at all?
 

Viper Necklampy

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Ok, you know what! I'll get it tomorrow on Amazon, so, which one version would you choose, and why?
: Usb vs non usb? :

Does this review was tester in optical?
It Also says Dsd64 (DOP mode) via optical: What does it means? It upsample the pcm to dsd64??
 

mac

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Does anyone know why this DAC gets so hot? Someone on head-fi mentioned it heats up to 50 degrees Celsius. Surprising since it has vents on either side. Could this temp be problem over time?

It has two large heat sinks (under ribbon cables) mounted to large chips. Assuming they're the DAC chips but not certain.

IMGP1674.JPG
 
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