- Thread Starter
- #21
To be clear, this is a "hump" as it elevation, not a mains hum.
As with SU-8, you can choose the usual filter settings and special ESS DSP functionality to emulate tube sound and such with distortion products.
The latter. Problem is there at all sample rates.
Too bad about the unbalanced performance though, not everyone uses a balanced amplifier..
Too bad about the unbalanced performance though, not everyone uses a balanced amplifier.. Still, quite respectable compared to the Benchmark as well as the Auralic Vega: both go around $2000 and the D1 comes very close, if not about equally performing in balanced.
I agree. Most home audio amplifiers have only rca input. If someone uses active monitors, it would be good match.
One could use XLR to RCA convertors in this case and get maximum performance perhaps ?
Sure, but I am going on a little road trip so likely won't get to it until the end of this week.@amirm
Are those spikes the same thing?
Could you unplug the USB cable and measure coax and toslink as well? Thanks!
See the review thread of SU-8 for more detail. Briefly, the ESS DACs have a distortion mitigation logic. This changes the shape of the transfer function of the DAC. SMSL has used this not to correct distortion, but to add it in different ways. Some of it for example attempts to emulate "tube sound" by increasing second harmonic distortion. See examples here: https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...measurements-of-smsl-su-8-dac.3778/post-91324Hey amir can you elaborate on this special ESS DSP functionality? First time I hear about something like it
@amirm could you confirm that? Could you explain more detail if the xlr to rca or rca to xlr would affect the sound quality cause my monitor only have an xlr input but I am thinking of using a Pi DAC which only have rca out.Pretty sure that would not go well? You can have a single end xlr output on an amp just for the connection but afaik you can't plug truly balanced into single end. Things might/will break.
you can't plug truly balanced into single end.
Things might/will break.
No, but you can pick the + signal from the balanced output and use that. Substitute the - output if you want to introduce an inversion in the signal chain.
If the balanced output is derived from a proper balanced line transformer, that won't work.
+1 on that. A very good observation.I'm thinking those spikes are common mode noise which is why they disappear balanced. If you go XLR to RCA, you'll lose the other phase to cancel out the common mode noise, and the spikes will be back. Even faux-balanced has some common mode noise rejection.