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Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent? Are that many confused?
- Thread starter Willhelm_Scream
- Start date
Great catch! I got a nice chuckle from you pointing that out. ASR is a whacky (sometimes) place to hang out and have fun.
A serious troll. And let's face it: it worked brilliantly.
Unlikely. You could possibly be overloading the amp input- if it matters to you, play around a bit with gain structure.
oleg87
Senior Member
Another thing to consider (if lowering the output level doesn’t improve matters) might be that your dongle is dead. I’ve heard anecdotes of these dongles getting damaged by electrostatic discharge and still outputting (bad quality) sound.
Mine sounds fine when I’ve used it for this kind of thing, I doubt any difference I hear vs. my nicer sources would survive a blind test.
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restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Is your dongle a genuine Apple one? There's a bunch of copies out there and some have truly dreadful performance.
Also, make sure the 'headphone safety'- reduce loud sounds is not turned on as that Apple 'feature' butchers what little performance the dongle has.
Off:
Also, the Apple dongle's anaemic output I tested at 973mV 1kHz(0dBFS source, volume maxxed)@50R - 990mV 1kHz unloaded, would hardly drive a modern standalone amplifier. Integrated amplifiers with 150mV-200mV sensitivities, sure. Bear in mind the output of the dongle is half the standard line level of a CD player, so it will sound underwhelming and you'll need to crank up the volume a lot more.
What it does produce is decent enough audio, but the levels are miserable. It also has significant idle noise (300-600uV), which precludes its use where significant gain is set downstream- you do hear a background hiss.
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restorer-john
Grand Contributor
What amplifier are you using? The increased volume position required for the Apple dongle will only become a problem if you switch to other high level sources (like STB/Cable box/DVD etc). If it's an AVR, many offer input level trimming (+/-) so you could conceivably accomodate the low dongle output by throwing some gain on it.
Otherwise, just use it as an emergency DAC until you get something with a decent output. Having your phone/tablet volume cranked and the amplifier volume up way past where you are comfortable, is off-putting.
I have one I never use, as the dongle cable is too short, fragile and the volume maxxed with decent headphones is unacceptably inadequate. As an example of miniaturization- it's amazing, but that's all. I also picked up one off the footpath recently and it works perfectly.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Don't believe everything you read on ASR. It is not, nor will ever be, the font of all knowledge when it comes to high fidelity reproduction equipment.
And that includes any and all members' content, including my own. We just do our best.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
It's a useful thread. No good reason to kill it IMO.
Yes but have you read what passes for ‘technical knowledge’ on other hi-fi forums in comparison ASR is a giant among pygmies.Don't believe everything you read on ASR. It is not, nor will ever be, the font of all knowledge when it comes to high fidelity reproduction equipment.
And that includes any and all members' content, including my own. We just do our best.
Keith
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Everything back to front, try I do.
Keith
Keith
This and the other catch all serve a very useful purpose, and aren't going anywhere.
We get 30-50 or so new members every day. Many of those members are coming from a bizarre pseudo-sciencey world where they are fed endless streams of obfuscation. That leads to a handful of questions that are best handled in one (or two) places where they can be funneled.
These threads are not meant to be where we stock the barrel for easy shooting, but for those members who might want to help others who are struggling with some of the basics. If you aren't interested in that, this thread isn't for you.
It seems there are some who are more interested in pushing the buttons of those with long held but possibly completely wrong beliefs, almost relentlessly backing them into uncomfortable corners, rather than actually trying to help them understand anything beyond how wrong they are.
Fortunately we have many members who are relentlessly patient (if that's a thing) in dealing with people who may be struggling with all this crazy new information, but we have others who seem to take pride in seeing how many they can drive away. We should be looking at these threads as a chance to inform, to close knowledge gaps and make people less likely to be taken advantage of by those who capitalize on their ignorance, not a chance to poke fun at someone who is effectively a victim. Now, that doesn't mean we let them take over (hence a place to move posts where they might otherwise be much more disruptive), but it does mean that giving them more time and opportunity to climb the learning curve without trying to knock them off it might be a better approach.
The idea of catch all threads is fine but this thread in particular gives me a bit of the dread DIYaudio vibes, where important information is buried on page 100 of a never ending thread of no clear purpose. I and many others would love to positively engage with those who have come from a world of misinformation. I was one of those people myself once. But we can't really do it if the thread title is long abandoned to random interjections. Just my 2c because I'm grumpy about it _always being there_ on the what's new page
This thread is definitely more like a repeating loop, but there is a clear purpose. It is to keep all of that noise and distortion OUT of the other 35k threads while having it all in a place where the answers are already there for those who might choose to read through the thread, or can be given by those willing to give good faith answers.
Would you prefer to take these 4,500 posts and randomly scatter them across the forum?
I do get that these threads are very noisy, but consider it the result of careful noise shaping.
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