Review and Measurements of Totaldac d1-six DAC

[BDWoody]

to this day it utterly amazes me how people think their hearing has immeasurable magical properties that are beyond the abilities of measuring equipment when countless DBTs have shown this to be a load of baloney.

From an old 'The Audio Critic.' I was reading through a few of those...Including one with an interview with Mr. Toole, and realized how little has changed between the Obj/Subj discussions. I always enjoyed his debunking of those who thought they had valid things to say.

 

[Nango]

Conclusions
By now, we have such a solid library of product tests that we can predict what happens when someone attempts to sell a concept rather than performance to audiophiles. Lack of measurements is the first warning sign. Totaldac has a single graph that is competing with a long bullet list of audiophile marketing.

The d1-six throws out the most fundamental science in signal processing and digital audio, hoping lay notions of audiophiles compensates. Well, it doesn't. When you put aside all emotions for or against the product, what you are left with is a product that fails to impress across many tests. In some cases like THD+N vs frequency brand new ground is broken, unfortunately on the negative side.

The path to success here is using a proper DAC chip and bringing excellence in the form of implementation. Attempting to reinvent the wheel without design goals and verification is a bad way to go as our test results show. You can't build a new car tire that is not very round and try to make up for it by painting it red and saying it goes fast. Design a custom DAC if you want. But first make sure it brings high-fidelity with it. Don't sacrifice that in order to cater to non-technical audiophile beliefs and myths.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Serious not: we almost did not do this review because of the extreme high cost of shipping and insurance. If you as much as me value occasionally dipping our toe into high-end audio, please donate some money so that I can pay for the return shipping as opposed to just the owner: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Your conclusion is way the best I have read in many time!

 

[graz_lag]

A growing number of us audio enthusiasts realize t

^ Could be, but don't underestimate the power of faith & denial. For example quite many Finnish commenters in that thread seem to defend Totaldac and shift the burden to ASR to prove the relevance of measurements when it comes to listening music.

Indeed, the hi-fi passion is not just an hobby, its an illness, a weird one, something like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, we know that what we are doing is a bit daft but we cannot stop ourselves ...

 

[graz_lag]

So... apparently one Totaldac owner emailed this review to Totaldac and posted their reply to a Finnish hifi forum here. Here's a copy & paste of the reply. Let the discussion continue

- - -

> No I didn't see this article before.
> It is not really surprising, this guy already tried to discredit
> Totaldac before with a USB cable.
>
> He claims "science" but noting says that these type of measurement
> conclusion are a correct image of the sound quality.
> This pseudo-scientific process would make it say that any DAC based on
> a ESS Sabre chip is always much better sounding that any turntable,
> which is wrong.
> This pseudo-scientific process would make it say that any transistor
> DAC with a lot of feedback is always much better sounding that tube or
> hybrid amplifier, which is wrong.
> Hundreds of persons have tested a Totaldac DAC against other high end
> DACs before choosing to purchase it and a vast majority chose to keep
> the Totaldac.
> Many reviewers having tested so many DACs have chosen Totaldac as
> there permanent reference DAC.
> Totaldac rooms in hifi show was so many times found among the best
> sounding in this show.
> This says more than a test made by someone making some arbitrary
> measurements and without the ability to make a real listening tests.
>
> Also Nagra evaluated a Totaldac DAC, by listening tests as well as
> measurement process, and then they decided to try to buy the
> technology a few years ago.
> This is not confidential anymore because the information fell into a
> 6moons article.
>
> Recently, a well-known university has evaluated a Totaldac DAC for
> their research on the hearing and the brain reaction to the human
> voice, and they chose the Totaldac DAC because they found it more
> neutral sounding.
>
> Almost 50 yeas ago some pseudo scientists claimed that CD players and
> transistors amplifiers with a huge amount of feedback measured
> immensely better than a turntable + tube amplifier, so that they
> automatically sounding that much better.
> Today who is stupid enough to believe that the most basic CD player
> for that period and the most basic transistor amp for that period did
> sound better than the best turntable + tube amp for the same period
> because some arbitrary measurements made some pseudo-scientist claimed
> it?
>
> I didn't design the Totaldac DACs to please his measurement process, I
> made it first by music listening tests, because this is what it is
> made for.
> Some other make it only by arbitrary measurements, because they still
> believe that it represents the musicality (maybe because they have no
> proper system to listen) or because their marketing consists in
> showing nice arbitrary measurements.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Vincent

Mr V Brient, TotalDAC's owner is an intelligent person, it would be very good for the community if he would decide to join ASR bringing some technical elements in favor of his technology.

 

[NDRQ]

Of course he saying these things, he want to sell this crap.
He just saying the things that every random "audiomitology" believer want to hear.

I really cant understand how these guys can really believe products, that fail in almost every measurements.

 

[Andrex]

Another gem of DAC discovered by Mr Lavorgna ... but this one comes from your beautiful country ...
https://twitteringmachines.com/in-barn-mola-mola-tambaqui-dac/

Mola Mola Mola is owned by Bruno Putzeys, of Hypex and Purihifi.
I think their products should have better measures.

 

[Andrex]

Hmmm ...
726,093 euros of sales turnover with 234,641 euros of profit as officially declared by the company for the 2017 fiscal year ... all that's not bad at all !
Look at the sales growth from the company set up in 2013.

View attachment 30104

The ratio turnover/profit is really important. 28%

Audiophilia still has a bright future.

Congratulations to the marketing team, which is and will remain more important to the audiophile than the engineering team.

 

[JJB70]

And some wonder why high end audio is dismissed as a world of overpriced snake oil and scamming where common sense and scientific inquiry doesn't exist.

I take it "pseudo science" is science that shows stuff for what it is.

 

[THW]

And some wonder why high end audio is dismissed as a world of overpriced snake oil and scamming

which also gives audio enthusiasm imo an overall bad impression, which is a shame because high fidelity playback is actually very enjoyable to listen to and a great form of entertainment.

my HD 600 and DX3 Pro together has brought me countless hours of joy.

 

[Patatorz]

The FIR itself, efficient or not, is probably responsible for half the price - whereas any laptop with Rephase + EqualizerAPO would allow you to do the treble correction for free.

You should also have a look of the « bass boost » option : 20% additional to the price of the DAC.

 

[tomchr]

The d1-six is a two-box solution with the power supply in an external box:

It appears the second box is just a transformer. At least the label next to the (fancy MILSPEC) power connector says 22 VAC. Many will likely place the transformer atop the DAC, which completely negates the point of having it separate. In fact, it may make the performance (even) worse. Now, to be clear, I'm not seeing any evidence in your measurements that the power supply corrupted the performance. The DAC did a wonderful job at that itself.

Maybe tastes are different in Europe so I am open to be corrected on that front.

I'm sure tastes are different in Europe, but usually in the direction of smaller, sleeker, and not black. Big and bulky are usually not selling points.

Honestly, this DAC looks like it was designed by a couple of engineering students. Maybe it was a capstone project or something... They then proceeded to wrap it in sheet metal. There's a box! See!! Man, that sounds familiar. It reminds me of my HP-1 headphone amp. Common critique was, "it looks like a DIY project". In part because it was a DIY project. Sadly, the engineer-friendly user interface and DIY look don't quite cut it in the retail market. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one learning that lesson the hard way. Now, I should say that what my HP-1 lacked in look and feel, it made up for in performance.

The yellow OLED display is nice but too small for viewing in a main system configuration. Strange to see 44.1 kHz sampling shown as 44K1. This convention (replacing the decimal point with the unit) is used among engineers sometimes when giving measurements of electronic parts like resistors but I have not see it used in a user interface for non-engineers.

It's MILSPEC notation or a derivative thereof. The military only knows uppercase letters, so forget capitalization right off the bat. Minus signs are easy to miss in the middle of a war, no negative numbers are preceded by N (N40 = -40, for example). Similarly, decimal points are itty-bitty and don't reproduce well, so they're replaced by R. So it really should have been 44R1 KHZ. Or maybe even P44R1 KHZ, 'P' for positive.

<RANT>
Tom's pet peeve #1: Prefixes. You have to get the prefixes right. All prefixes greater than 1 are uppercase. The only exception is kilo (k), which is lower case. Prefixes less than 1 are lower case. 1 Mm = 1000000 m = 1000 km. 1 mm = 0.001 m. There is a difference...

Tom's pet peeve #2: Units. Get the units right. The unit for conductance is Siemens, which is abbreviated with an uppercase S. The unit for time is seconds, abbreviated with a lowercase s. I don't know how many times I corrected jitter in femto-Siemens to femto-seconds in National's data sheets. The applications engineers got it eventually. And don't get me started on mho. Mho is just stupid!
</RANT>

The Totaldac d1-six is an "R2R" DAC. Translation: "we wanted to build our own DAC because we know more than people who build DAC chips."

I read it as: "we built an R2R DAC so we could put "handcrafted R2R" in the marketing babble". R2R DACs are 'in' in the audiophile community for some reason - probably the same reason as why discrete designs are 'in'. Maybe because the original TDA1541 DAC (14-bit, used in the original Philips CD104) was an R2R DAC. Sadly, they seem to forget that it's not 1982 anymore and the world expects more of a DAC than can be obtained by an R2R DAC - in particular a discrete R2R DAC.

In a resistor ladder DAC (be it R2R or otherwise), the precision depends on the resistor matching. All resistors in the ladder have to match within 1/2^N, where N is the bit depth. I doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure out that the ±0.01% resistors ($10/each!) that are now available won't get you very far.
On an IC, the situation is much better as the matching between components is stellar. This is especially true in an analog-optimized process. Some ten years ago, I designed a resistor-ladder DAC and ADC for a subsystem within the LMK04800-series timing chips. I was able to get almost 12 bit performance out of a 12-bit DAC without too much fuss. That was plenty for the application, but still a far cry from the 24 bits in modern audio DACs.

One trick to reduce the number of resistors in a resistor-ladder DAC is to use subranges. For example, to make an 8-bit DAC, take two resistor ladders with four taps each. Use one for the course range and "walk" the second up the different taps on the first. That way, each tap on the course DAC is divided into four smaller steps by the fine DAC. Now you get 8-bit resolution from eight resistors. But you also open up a new can of worms as all this switching needs to be done cleanly. You tend to get a DNL excursion when the DAC switches ranges. That could explain why you see the jumps in THD vs level, actually.

Tom

 

[Dialectic]

Here’s a picture with the remote, Amir may want to save your souls but I don’t care:

That remote looks like it was made for a Scientific Atlanta converter manufactured in about 1996--perfect for selecting from a Pay-Per-View Steven Seagal flick, a WWF special, or soft porn.

Suboptimal for bundling with a $15,000 piece of luxury audio gear, however....

 

[daftcombo]

You should also have a look of the « bass boost » option : 20% of the price DAC.

Totaljoke. That shit is clearly for the dumbest with big salaries.

Everything is a gag with this brand. From the ugly logo to the ugly measurements, and from the guy's face to Saint Michaels mount picture.

One more reason to be ashamed of my country at the moment!

 

[tomchr]

So... apparently one Totaldac owner emailed this review to Totaldac and posted their reply to a Finnish hifi forum here. Here's a copy & paste of the reply. Let the discussion continue

Paraphrasing Totaldac's response: "Many people say... Many people like our products." Wow.

I'm also absolutely blown back by their website. No product photos. No nothing. Just crammed text and some rather hefty price tags.

Tom

 

[diegooo1972]

No way. I love audiosciencereview. Only here I can see Amirm scientific measurements and I can say that this box create magical distortion effects like a 5 buck dac. And people also agreed. And it cost like a decent car. thank you thank you thank you all. Honestly I feel at home.
Special thanks to Amirm of course. It's not an easy task to find a review that numbers at hand destroy a crazy overpriced product.

 

[Willem]

The remote was specifically marketed years ago by Philips as an easy one with big buttons for the elderly. Few other manufacturers bothered with that market where no money could be made. It was dirt cheap.

 

[Shadrach]

I see him as the 'Keith Moon' of Tory politics.

Nah, Keith Moon had some talent. Boris is just one more public schoolboy twit the British still haven't learned to ignore.

 

[Shadrach]

Oh yeah the wack dac. Bargain I would say.

 

[Patatorz]

Totaljoke. That shit is clearly for the dumbest with big salaries.

Everything is a gag with this brand. From the ugly logo to the ugly measurements, and from the guy's face to Saint Michaels mount picture.

One more reason to be ashamed of my country at the moment!

Look to what there is inside : http://www.laudioexperience.fr/le-systeme-askja-origin-ou-laccomplissement-dun-reve/

Don’t look to the price

 

[KenG]

Paraphrasing Totaldac's response: "Many people say... Many people like our products." Wow.

I'm also absolutely blown back by their website. No product photos. No nothing. Just crammed text and some rather hefty price tags.

Tom

But Niagra almost bought them so that changes everything!!!!