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Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent? Are that many confused?

Blumlein 88

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Well, not paying out $1000 for one thing. I don't know the site (business?) well, but I would assume there is some sort of revenue stream to keep it going. Maybe fewer patrons would donate if they felt the underlying premise was flawed? I don't know.
Considering the rapid growth of this site the premise must sit well with a large number of people. I think the site owner has spent something like $100k of his own money for test gear. I don't know if donations keep up with expenses now, but I'm sure it didn't earlier in the site history.
 

Xulonn

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I would disagree with this. A professional is someone who follows a structured occupation that has, for example, codes of conduct, continuing education, peer review, licensing, and so forth. A job or occupation is what one does for a living. Being a professional means more than being someone with a job.

And Mr. Dictionary disagrees with you...:rolleyes::

Professional...
Adjective: engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
 
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Goodman

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I know there are people out there that think cables affect sound, which is much worse, but there really is no response to something like that, but just to smile and nod. But what about people who talk about DACS as if they were headphone drivers or speakers, and talk about the SOUNDSTAGE, IMAGING, and MIDRANGE of a DAC? I actually don't know what to say to people to not be rude. If you try explaining that a DAC isn't something that actually changes the sound, they accuse you of having "a hard-on for measurements", as if it were the measurements themselves that tell you that DACs don't have a sound. What they don't get though, is that even if we had no equipment to measure distortion or other aspects of sound, still would not have a sound to them. So you try explaining by telling them that when you listen to different DACs using the same headphone and amp, that you cannot tell the difference. "You can't tell the difference between DACS????" "There must be something wrong with your system. You don't have revealing enough upstream and downstream equipment. Either that you haven't "learned" to tell the difference between them." Then you explain that in double-blind studies people are not able to tell the difference between Dacs any better than someone picking random answers. And their response is that the differences are "subtle", and them and other audiophiles who have spent time practicing and learning how to listen properly can hear a difference. "That doesn't sound like a very good way of testing that. Just taking a random group of people who know nothing about audio equipment and asking them to try to find the difference between DACs? Those people haven't yet learned to know the difference!" Then you ask them how they know that they actually hear the difference and it isn't just placebo. ETC.

The problem is that this isn't even an uncommon view. I would say that people who understand there isn't a difference between decently engineered dac (except perhaps small amounts of distortion in the lower end ones that may or may not be audible). Most audiophiles think there is at least a subtle difference between DACS and don't realize that saying the DACS sound different is like saying the portion of a DVD player that takes the 0s and 1s that are read off the disk and converts them into video can make the same DVD "look different" on the same exact TV. It's incredible, but if you want to be friends with audiophiles or even post on an audiophile board, you either have to pretend you agree or somehow remain silent when people talk about this stuff. Like "ohh have you heard the utopias in the chord hugo?? it really makes the mids stand out, but its a warmer dac". The main problem is actually that there is a confusion. They think that we mean that what makes a DAC "objectively good" is a TRANSPARENT DAC, and that we first define a good dac as a transparent DAC and then say that the measurements prove that the DAC is transparent, and therefore it is the better DAC. They think there are other dacs that are not transparent, but rather, color the sound in a good way, and therefore "measure worse" but sound better. This is nothing but a huge confusion. If that were how dacs worked, then I would actually agree with them. What matters most is how something sounds. However that is literally not what DACS do. DACs by nature do not have a sound signature. Saying a DAC has a sound signature is like saying a cable has a sound signature (well I guess if it is a really ****** dac it can have a sound signature of "fuzzy" or whatever dac distortion is, but you get the picture). Problem is, I don't think there will ever be an easy way to educate audiophiles about this, and so the only remedy will be like who the hell knows?
So the 3 Dollar Dac inside your laptop sounds the same as 3000 Dollar Hugo? All outboard Dacs include several op amps so they do sound different.
 

antcollinet

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So the 3 Dollar Dac inside your laptop sounds the same as 3000 Dollar Hugo? All outboard Dacs include several op amps so they do sound different.
Why does having different op amps make them sound different?
 

Xulonn

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The only way to prove it to yourself is a scientifically rigorous level matched blinded A/B test. Otherwise, all subjective notion is worthless as your memory of the last track is flawed. But that’s what companies depend on to keep this industry running.

Your ears are only so good. Whether this is touting the benefits of high res audio 192/24bit versus CD 44.1/16bit or differences among amplifiers or DACS, your ears aren’t that good.

My ears are just as happy listening to high quality MP3 files encoded by LAME encoder in V3 setting (formerly APS, variable bit rate approximately 190kbps) as they are listening to high res 192kHz/24bit recordings. As long as the original recording was mastered at high bit rate/frequency (to maintain the raw data and headroom/dynamic range prior to compression to CD quality) and then converted to CD and then converted from CD to MP3 using a high quality encoder (LAME), it all sounds the same to me (as self-proven via ABX testing). There is “good enough” which is beyond the limits of my imperfect ears. Everything better than “good enough” sounds the same absent intentional coloration/distortion.
That is absolutely identical to my audio philosophy of stored music files after 64 years of being seriously into the hobby. I started in the 1950s with my parents 78 RPM shellac and 33 RPM "Microgroove" vinyl "microgroove" LPs , moved up to stereo LPs, played with R-R tape (but did not buy pre-recorded R-R recordings). I used cassette tape for car stereo for many years, then moved on to CD's, and finally, 10 years age, ended up with LAME-encoded VBR MP3s.

I no longer chase unicorns, although I am still fascinated by the various paths and wide variety of methods and technologies employed to recover, interpret and deliver to one's loudspeakers an accurate, high-fidelity audio signal. I am quite confident that, with perhaps an occasional rare exception, in a double-blind ABX test, I could never tell the difference between my choice of digital format and those with higher resolution.

My system is fairly modest, but with very high end-to-end fidelity to the audio signal. Neither my EL34 PP vacuum tube amplifier nor my solid state ICEPower amps add audible noise or distortion to the signal. Indeed, pretty much anything in the top two-thirds of the ASR electronics ranking charts will provide an uncolored, distortion-free signal to your speakers in normal, non-exotic systems. And that leaves the last stage of home music reproduction as the final area where the difficulties of attaining a flat frequency response and a smooth, uniform soundfield lies - loudspeakers and room interactions.

When I retired to Panama in 2012, I ripped all of my 320 CDs to VBR MP3s with the paid version of FreeRIP. More recently, I used the truly excellent and fast Chinese freeware - "Format Factory" - (which incorporates the latest LAME encoder for MP3s) to convert all of my remaining 192/24, FLAC and 256/320CBR MP3's to that same format. At age 80, but fortunately still able to hear up to 10KHz, it works for me, but if were half my current age, I think my current choice of format would still be a valid one.
 

radix

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And Mr. Dictionary disagrees with you...:rolleyes::
Way off topic....

I understand that the term "professional" is used pretty loosely in common English. But a professional should have some sort of credential, license, professional society, be regulated, or have codes of conduct.

A professional builder is a licensed contractor. A carpenter, while he may be a master at his craft, is not necessarily a licensed professional. Doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, stock brokers, massage therapists, barbers, cosmetologists, and many others, are professionals. Some others, like researchers, might loosely fall in to this as they need to publish in peer-reviewed journals or conferences and adhere to certain codes of research conduct. They often belong to professional organizations like IEEE or ACM or other societies. A professional engineer (PE) is a very specific term for a type of professional. Someone with an EE degree designing light bulbs, while they are doing it for a job, is not the same as someone with a licensed PE.

So yes, we commonly use the term professional to mean someone who is paid to do something versus an amateur, but this is not the same as the formal use of professional careers. I think the former use might carry over from sports, where professional athletes are, by definition, ones who get paid for it in a league or association, while amateurs are those not playing in a league. But this is just my impression of that use. Hmm, now that I think about it, professional athletes generally do need to conform to rules and norms and are regulated by a sporting association or body, so I think that does fit my use of professional too.
 

Xulonn

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So yes, we commonly use the term professional to mean someone who is paid to do something versus an amateur, but this is not the same as the formal use
I get it - you don't believe in dictionaries... :eek: ...and I don't believe in Santa Claus :p.
 

garbulky

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That is absolutely identical to my audio philosophy of stored music files after 64 years of being seriously into the hobby. I started in the 1950s with my parents 78 RPM shellac and 33 RPM "Microgroove" vinyl "microgroove" LPs , moved up to stereo LPs, played with R-R tape (but did not buy pre-recorded R-R recordings). I used cassette tape for car stereo for many years, then moved on to CD's, and finally, 10 years age, ended up with LAME-encoded VBR MP3s.

I no longer chase unicorns, although I am still fascinated by the various paths and wide variety of methods and technologies employed to recover, interpret and deliver to one's loudspeakers an accurate, high-fidelity audio signal. I am quite confident that, with perhaps an occasional rare exception, in a double-blind ABX test, I could never tell the difference between my choice of digital format and those with higher resolution.

My system is fairly modest, but with very high end-to-end fidelity to the audio signal. Neither my EL34 PP vacuum tube amplifier nor my solid state ICEPower amps add audible noise or distortion to the signal. Indeed, pretty much anything in the top two-thirds of the ASR electronics ranking charts will provide an uncolored, distortion-free signal to your speakers in normal, non-exotic systems. And that leaves the last stage of home music reproduction as the final area where the difficulties of attaining a flat frequency response and a smooth, uniform soundfield lies - loudspeakers and room interactions.

When I retired to Panama in 2012, I ripped all of my 320 CDs to VBR MP3s with the paid version of FreeRIP. More recently, I used the truly excellent and fast Chinese freeware - "Format Factory" - (which incorporates the latest LAME encoder for MP3s) to convert all of my remaining 192/24, FLAC and 256/320CBR MP3's to that same format. At age 80, but fortunately still able to hear up to 10KHz, it works for me, but if were half my current age, I think my current choice of format would still be a valid one.
Though I prefer to listen to lossless, the truth is most of my listening is streaming which is lossy mp3's. And it sounds pretty good. :)
 

SIY

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Way off topic....

I understand that the term "professional" is used pretty loosely in common English. But a professional should have some sort of credential, license, professional society, be regulated, or have codes of conduct.

A professional builder is a licensed contractor. A carpenter, while he may be a master at his craft, is not necessarily a licensed professional. Doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, stock brokers, massage therapists, barbers, cosmetologists, and many others, are professionals. Some others, like researchers, might loosely fall in to this as they need to publish in peer-reviewed journals or conferences and adhere to certain codes of research conduct. They often belong to professional organizations like IEEE or ACM or other societies. A professional engineer (PE) is a very specific term for a type of professional. Someone with an EE degree designing light bulbs, while they are doing it for a job, is not the same as someone with a licensed PE.

So yes, we commonly use the term professional to mean someone who is paid to do something versus an amateur, but this is not the same as the formal use of professional careers. I think the former use might carry over from sports, where professional athletes are, by definition, ones who get paid for it in a league or association, while amateurs are those not playing in a league. But this is just my impression of that use. Hmm, now that I think about it, professional athletes generally do need to conform to rules and norms and are regulated by a sporting association or body, so I think that does fit my use of professional too.
Well, since I never got an Official Scientist License or approved by the National Science Board, the 45 years I made a living from being one, I wasn't a professional.
 

LTig

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I have to admit, after getting into decent intro audio gear over the past year I was surprised to find that a standalone DAC was even a thing, and not only that, it's pretty much standard equipment among "audiophiles." Then, after reading reviews and watching videos describe how certain DACs such as those from Denafrips have a noticeably different sound, perhaps a more pleasant sound than the run-of-the mill DAC built-in to an integrated amp or receiver, I was ready to try one.

In all honestly, it's still difficult to accept the premise espoused here. I can certainly buy the argument for cables, that any decent-measuring cables will sound the same - especially power and digital cables. That makes sense to me. It's just REALLY odd, though, that so many people describe the same sorts of differences with some of these DACs- have they all really convinced each other? I know I'm about the millionth person to wonder this out loud here. I'd sure like to find out for myself without spending say $700-$800 and then having to go through a return process, and all that if it turns out I don't hear any difference.
I inherited an old Edirol UA25 USB 1 audio interface several years ago, and later bought an RME ADI-2 PRO fs as replacement and also for measuring audio equipment. Despite the RME having much better measurement results I' m unable to hear which one is playing as long as the EQ settings of the RME are disabled.
 

Gorgonzola

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Wearisome issue for sure, but the same-old.

I'm not a scientist and I can't explain why ABX-style, blind tests would not refute subjective claims of sound differences. Seems they ought to, but there might be something about that testing method that, while it may prove that difference do exist, it can't certainly prove they don't, nor that under different listening conditions some people, at least, can those differences.

Some might recall the famous testing reported in the January 1987 Stereo Review that compare a series of amplifiers. The general conclusion was the people cannot reliably tell the difference between amps. However when you look at the detailed results, you can see document that some people were able to tell the difference between amps in case of some paired amps at well above chance probability.

My own subjective experience is that things the measure well do tend to sound the same -- or at least the differences are utterly insignificant. I replaced my Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC with a Topping DX7s DAC/headphone unit because I could hear no significant difference -- this despite the fact that the Gungnir MB doesn't measure all the well. I replace the DX7s with a D90 because it the latter has slightly better measurements but frankly I can't really hear any difference.

OTOH, I know a member on another forum who has decades of experience listening to many different amps and DACs. I have come to respect his wholly subjective impressions far more than most. He replaced his Topping D90 with the RME ADI and claims that they sound the different and he prefers the latter -- but I'm not rushing out do the same switch.

StereoReview_DoAllAmplifiersSoundTheSame.jpg
 

Goodman

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I inherited an old Edirol UA25 USB 1 audio interface several years ago, and later bought an tfs as replacement and also for measuring audio equipment. Despite the RME having much better measurement results I' m unable to hear which one is playing as long as the EQ settings of the RME are disabled.
I own the RME ADI-2 PRO and also a Topping 50s. If I dont use the equalization on the RME I doubt that I could identify which was playing in a blind test, however, if I bring in one of my other dacs, like the basic Schiit or a Fiio, I do hear the difference (using them all as a preamp) in my permanent system.
 

SIY

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.I'm not a scientist and I can't explain why ABX-style, blind tests would not refute subjective claims of sound differences. Seems they ought to, but there might be something about that testing method that, while it may prove that difference do exist, it can't certainly prove they don't, nor that under different listening conditions some people, at least, can those differences.
Nothing can prove a negative. And it takes a ridiculous special pleading to argue that ears-only controls have a special flaw which allows positive results for tiny changes in frequency response, level, and localization, as well as data compression, but somehow are invalid when testing for claimed differences that escape engineering analysis.
However when you look at the detailed results, you can see document that some people were able to tell the difference between amps in case of some paired amps at well above chance probability.
It shows no such thing as anyone with basic knowledge of statistics can see.
 

dominikz

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Wearisome issue for sure, but the same-old.

I'm not a scientist and I can't explain why ABX-style, blind tests would not refute subjective claims of sound differences. Seems they ought to, but there might be something about that testing method that, while it may prove that difference do exist, it can't certainly prove they don't, nor that under different listening conditions some people, at least, can those differences.

Some might recall the famous testing reported in the January 1987 Stereo Review that compare a series of amplifiers. The general conclusion was the people cannot reliably tell the difference between amps. However when you look at the detailed results, you can see document that some people were able to tell the difference between amps in case of some paired amps at well above chance probability.

My own subjective experience is that things the measure well do tend to sound the same -- or at least the differences are utterly insignificant. I replaced my Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC with a Topping DX7s DAC/headphone unit because I could hear no significant difference -- this despite the fact that the Gungnir MB doesn't measure all the well. I replace the DX7s with a D90 because it the latter has slightly better measurements but frankly I can't really hear any difference.

OTOH, I know a member on another forum who has decades of experience listening to many different amps and DACs. I have come to respect his wholly subjective impressions far more than most. He replaced his Topping D90 with the RME ADI and claims that they sound the different and he prefers the latter -- but I'm not rushing out do the same switch.

View attachment 190139
Thanks for pulling out that report - very interesting!
However looking at the numerical analysis and specifically the probability column, it doesn't appear that any of the trials beat the common <1% probability of chance criteria (a few seem to be borderline for the more lax <5% criteria).
Of course I'm no expert in statistics, but these results seem to suggest to me that the participants really couldn't reliably distinguish between the compared devices.
 

SIY

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Thanks for pulling out that report - very interesting!
However looking at the numerical analysis and specifically the probability column, it doesn't appear that any of the trials beat the common <1% probability of chance criteria (a few seem to be borderline for the more lax <5% criteria).
Of course I'm no expert in statistics, but these results seem to suggest to me that the participants really couldn't reliably distinguish between the compared devices.
Do a set of ten coin flips fifty times.

Normal distributions are expected for null results.
 

dominikz

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Do a set of ten coin flips fifty times.

Normal distributions are expected for null results.
I agree - the result from the report look suspiciously like coin flips to me too. :D
 
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Gorgonzola

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Nothing can prove a negative. And it takes a ridiculous special pleading to argue that ears-only controls have a special flaw which allows positive results for tiny changes in frequency response, level, and localization, as well as data compression, but somehow are invalid when testing for claimed differences that escape engineering analysis.

It shows no such thing as anyone with basic knowledge of statistics can see.
Granting the 5% was used vs. 1%, a result like 0.056%, (6/1000) chance of result being due to random chance is too low to blown off.
 

SIY

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Granting the 5% was used vs. 1%, a result like 0.056%, (6/1000) chance of result being due to random chance is too low to blown off.
Not even that. Would you like some references on basic statistics and distributions?
 
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