Uh, do you really expect to hear a difference between 2 DACs that both measure in the top tier with distortion products at -110dB or better? There is negligible difference between them in my view - I'd be stunned if anyone could hear a difference. I got one as an 'upgrade' from my Tone Board/JDS Atom strictly since my Neurochrome amp has balanced inputs, and this gives me a nice 2-box balanced solution - I don't really expect the audible performance to be any better. (not really an 'upgrade' - the TB/Atom will go to work to give me a headphone system, so I needed a replacement for my home desktop)
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Review and Measurements of Sabaj D5 DAC & Amp
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Oh, I hope there is some difference in terms of their “sonic signatures” as some people say that AKM chips have more musicality and ESS ones perform better in benchmarks.
If top tier DACs sound the same then that would mean the filters (Sharp, Slow, etc) all sound the same too.
IMO, I don't think it's going to be a DAC killer with the ESS IMD Hump.
I hear you (but the hump here seems not that big). I guess my main motivation is to have a (budget) state-of-the-art ESS-based DAC to compare with a AKM-based one.
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TooPoorForHiFi
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Would this be good for IEMs?
DeepSpace57
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OP
OP
- Thread Starter
- #31
Been spending time on head-fi lately?
I'm shocked. Never believed in warm up before...
That's really the point of ASR: objectively prove (or disprove) something even if it's hard to believe from an objectivist point of view.
Some might wonder... But honestly, even if it was cherry picked: This shows Sabaj is perfectly able to design a highly performing DAC.
PS: It seems like the very top of the SINAD chart is dominated by ES9038 Pro units.
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maxxevv
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Its not the first time I have heard of such things. But in this case, 30 mins seems a reasonable amount of time for electronics to reach a stable temperature. At least its not some ludicrous " hours " ....
OP
- Thread Starter
- #37
No I don't. They sent me the dashboard of another unit which was within 1 dB. So there are at least two with such performance.
Sabaj seems like a proper company to me. This is cheap enough device that I could test another in the future and find any schemes like that. They would have to be quite unwise to send me a hand optimized one.
If one of you wants to drop ship me one, I can test and confirm and then forward it on to you.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #38
Just adding on, they had a 2-series Audio Precision analyzer and just bought the APx555 that I have. So the design was verified using proper measurements. Such companies usually produce high performance products as they know and catch problems before I see them.
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