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

[Old_School_Brad]

Can a subwoofer be integrated into a system without using measurements or can the phase and crossover level be set by ear or would all the mental "illusions" be too much to deal with? After all, turning the knobs doesn't mean they actually do anything. Maybe they're broken or turned off/don't work. Without measuring it could all be my imagination experiencing another fairy tale?

This is bait but I'll answer anyway for other readers.

Can you integrate a subwoofer into a system without using measurements?
No. You can't perfectly integrate a subwoofer without measurements.
What you can do is a lot of sub crawling and a lot of running back and forth to perceive the different increments in the crossover region and getting the phase right with different test tones.
And even after all that work you can't be certain that the settings you've made can't be improved. They probably can.

 

[antcollinet]

Thanks for good intention, keep it for yourself.

Im sure we could say the same about your nonsensical “impressions”

 

[Frank2]

Can a subwoofer be integrated into a system without using measurements or can the phase and crossover level be set by ear or would all the mental "illusions" be too much to deal with? After all, turning the knobs doesn't mean they actually do anything. Maybe they're broken or turned off/don't work. Without measuring it could all be my imagination experiencing another fairy tale?

I think you highlight the central issue here: if I know that audio illusions exist, how can I separate them from what's actually produced by my subwoofer? Can I ever trust my ears again?

The picture with the visual illusion raises a similar question. It illustrates that part of my visual perception is solely created in my brain. How can I separate this from what's actually in the picture? The answer is: by measuring the pixels we discover they do not actually move, even though the visual illusion persists after knowing this.
The same is true for a DAC with its own sound signature: by measuring the signal produced by the DAC we may discover its sound signature is not in the signal, even if the auditory illusion persists. A well controlled double blind test that takes your brain out of the equation can confirm this by showing the perceived sound signature disappears.

Do DAC's have a sound signature? Yes, they do, but the question is whether it's produced by your brain or whether it's in the actual signal produced by the DAC. This can simply be determined by measuring the DAC output and by a well controlled double blind test.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

...

Do DAC's have a sound signature? Yes, they do, but the question is whether it's produced by your brain or whether it's in the actual signal produced by the DAC. This can simply be determined by measuring the DAC output and by a well controlled double blind test.

The highlighted is contradictory, is it not?
If a DAC has a sound signature in your mind but not in the actual signal it does not exist in the real world.

 

[solderdude]

DACs can have a sound signature though.
DACs can also be perceived as having a sound signature while not having one in reality.
DACs can also have both a sound signature and not have a sound signature depending on the used filter setting.

But agree that Frank 2 perhaps should have stated:
Can DAC's have a sound signature? Yes, they could, but the question is whether it's produced by your brain or whether it's in the actual signal produced by the DAC.

 

[Frank2]

The highlighted is contradictory, is it not?
If a DAC has a sound signature in your mind but not in the actual signal it does not exist in the real world.

That to me seems just a matter of definition, i.e., whether you define 'sound signature' as something measured or something perceived.

It can even be more subtle than that: The visual illusion picture does contain a 'signal' (pattern of colors and shapes) that causes the illusion of movement. So, in some sense you could argue that the visual perception of movement is actually encoded in the picture.

In a similar way you can encode auditory perceptions in a DAC output signal by (dynamic) manipulations of phase, frequency response, etc.
You could even disable these signal changes if the DAC detects a measurement signal. Such implementations do exist, like in this test of a Denon CD player on Audioscience review:

Now, those of you used to perform and/or look at these tests will see an impossibility here. It is an obviously slow filter response (as we can see from the white noise), and so it's not logical to see total absence of aliases of 19kHz and 20kHz which would show up at 25.1kHz and 24.1kHz respectively.

Well, that is because the Denon (its AL24 filter) recognizes the typical test tones and switches to a sharp filter in that case, which would make people like me (theoretically) happy. Fail

To counter the test detection by the filter, it is enough to add a third test tone with this standard CCIF test. So adding a 9kHz test tone defeats the detection of the AL24 filter, and here below we get what we should:

 

[AudioSceptic]

I went back to their site to see if the whole thing was like this. Holy crap, it gets even worse. I feel like I need to take a long shower after wallowing in this morass of dishonesty.

I'm not sure if this is dishonesty. It seems more like a complete misunderstanding, one that unfortunately the writer passionately believes is the only possible description.

 

[Mart68]

I'm not sure if this is dishonesty. It seems more like a complete misunderstanding, one that unfortunately the writer passionately believes is the only possible description.

A lot of those sort of manufacturers and vendors do really believe in what they are selling.

Obviously potential customers pick up on that and it helps to convince them.

What's that old saying?

'Sincerity. When you can fake that, you've got it made.'

A lot of them don't need to fake it.

 

[JeremyFife]

Do DAC's have a sound signature? Yes, they do, but the question is whether it's produced by your brain or whether it's in the actual signal produced by the DAC. This can simply be determined by measuring the DAC output and by a well controlled double blind test.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Isn't it more that DACs can have a sound signature (different outputs based on the same input) but the question is whether that difference is audible or not.
Actual outputs can be measurably different, but the resulting audio is audibly the same since the variances are too small for human hearing to identify.
Questions of perception are interesting but are not specific to DACs.

One for the philosophers: if a change to a sound is too small to be audible, has the sound changed? ... the sound wave has, but is sound the transmission of pressure through air or is it the interpretation of that in our brain?

 

[Beave]

I'm not sure if this is dishonesty. It seems more like a complete misunderstanding, one that unfortunately the writer passionately believes is the only possible description.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
​

― Upton Sinclair

 

[DSJR]

Love that picture. Many audio illusions are essentially based on vision. Some years ago I turned the knob that controlled the cutoff frequency of my subwoofers. I unmistakably heard a significant difference. But then I saw my subwoofer amplifier was switched off... The difference I heard was created by my brain after the visual perception of the knob being turned. A very curious experience...a bit like looking at that picture.

Yeah, all it takes is for a definite difference to be heard A-B and then discovering that *nothing* has changed at all, this a while before my ears gave out on any notion of audiophooldom!

 

[Purité Audio]

A lot of those sort of manufacturers and vendors do really believe in what they are selling.

Obviously potential customers pick up on that and it helps to convince them.

What's that old saying?

'Sincerity. When you can fake that, you've got it made.'

A lot of them don't need to fake it.

Imagine spending a whole career in retail and never once actually verifying preconceived assumptions, I find that very hard to believe.
Charlatans or merely incompetent.
Keith

 

[AudioSceptic]

Imagine spending a whole career in retail and never once actually verifying preconceived assumptions, I find that very hard to believe.
Charlatans or merely incompetent.
Keith

There are apparently quite a few out there, both manufacturers and retailers. ;-)

 

[SIY]

I'm not sure if this is dishonesty.

I am. It takes deliberate action to create dishonest argument. This isn't just mistaken, it's carefully crafted to sell boxes to the ignorant by increasing their ignorance.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I am. It takes deliberate action to create dishonest argument. This isn't just mistaken, it's carefully crafted to sell boxes to the ignorant by increasing their ignorance.

While I agree, I do think people get "educated" into this world and many of them have crafted nothing with no intent to deceive. Someone does the deceiving initially, but many salesmen, regular audiophiles and even some companies believe it. Though wrong and though mislead they aren't trying to con anyone.

Of course on the sales end the really good ones are salesmen. No skin either way. They would turn around and sale the exact opposite if they make a cut and that is their job. Deception or not never enters their vocabulary. The idea is irrelevant.

 

[SIY]

Can a subwoofer be integrated into a system without using measurements or can the phase and crossover level be set by ear or would all the mental "illusions" be too much to deal with? After all, turning the knobs doesn't mean they actually do anything. Maybe they're broken or turned off/don't work. Without measuring it could all be my imagination experiencing another fairy tale?

In theory it can if you have sharp ears and lots of training on recognizing and identifying defects. But it will be a lot slower and more prone to error than measuring and getting it right from the beginning.

And this comes literally days after it happening to me. I have been setting up a DBA subwoofer system to compare with Trinnov's Waveforming. I set the parameters the way they should be theoretically, and @jan.didden and I listened to the results. I was unhappy with the way the whole thing sounded even though it was supposed to be right. I spent a day playing around with levels and phases and slopes, but it just didn't... gel. So I bit the bullet, pulled out my CLIO Pocket, and did some careful measurements and saw some funny things. Tracing back, I uncovered some errors in the way I set up the crossover ("Me make a mistake? Unpossible!"). Fixed them, fired things back up, and... it sounded terrific. Five minutes of measurement let me get the integration right in a way that I couldn't do in a day of futzing around by ear.

 

[Mart68]

I am. It takes deliberate action to create dishonest argument. This isn't just mistaken, it's carefully crafted to sell boxes to the ignorant by increasing their ignorance.

No I don't think so, not in this specific case.

Easy to forget that there's a whole other world through that looking glass where audio replay is something that is semi-mystical, with many known unknowns.

A lot of people live in that world (including some EEs) and they never give much if any thought to a more rational approach as espoused here. They heard the difference, so ASR is wrong. Case is closed for them.

 

[SIY]

Easy to forget that there's a whole other world through that looking glass where audio replay is something that is semi-mystical, with many known unknowns.

This is true of the target audience. I sincerely doubt that it's true of the people who design, build, and sell actual functional boxes and craft the marketing messages.

 

[Mart68]

This is true of the target audience. I sincerely doubt that it's true of the people who design, build, and sell actual functional boxes and craft the marketing messages.

I know some of them and it is absolutely true of them. But agree it won't be so in every case.

 

[Tinker]

In theory it can if you have sharp ears and lots of training on recognizing and identifying defects. But it will be a lot slower and more prone to error than measuring and getting it right from the beginning.

And this comes literally days after it happening to me. I have been setting up a DBA subwoofer system to compare with Trinnov's Waveforming. I set the parameters the way they should be theoretically, and @jan.didden and I listened to the results. I was unhappy with the way the whole thing sounded even though it was supposed to be right. I spent a day playing around with levels and phases and slopes, but it just didn't... gel. So I bit the bullet, pulled out my CLIO Pocket, and did some careful measurements and saw some funny things. Tracing back, I uncovered some errors in the way I set up the crossover ("Me make a mistake? Unpossible!"). Fixed them, fired things back up, and... it sounded terrific. Five minutes of measurement let me get the integration right in a way that I couldn't do in a day of futzing around by ear.

So it happened to you too! How about that!

What you're saying is that even though you followed the parameters your EARS were able to detect that something was wrong leading to further investigation. When I heard the same thing you called it impossible and I was imagining things.

We both FIRST heard a difference that something was not right. You then checked measurements and found an error. I also checked measurements and found an error. It seems we had a very similar "experience" but mine was "Worse" than an invalid "fairytale". Interesting how that works.

Wouldn't you agree that setting up a subwoofer is very subjective? There isn't one perfect setting of 'measurement' that's good for all. For subwoofers (not speakers) listening is my tool of choice.