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

[trioderob]

Of course not. That would be a ridiculous claim without a handful of qualifiers.

Back to my question. Based on your reaction, you haven't used any meaningful controls when making these comparisons. True or falsehood?

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

 

[Blumlein 88]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

No you didn't......the wife card..............wow...............how did this become a thing???????????????????

The wife beats science?

 

[Beave]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

You mean she wasn't in the kitchen? YOUR BROTHER LETS HIS WIFE OUT OF THE KITCHEN?!?!!?

 

[Blumlein 88]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

Okay, so can you trust us, if you don't level match with care that alone is enough to make you hear a quality difference where there is none??

So can you at least level match?

 

[BDWoody]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

No, I asked if you used basic controls. Things like matching the output levels and doing the comparison without peeking.

So, the wife even heard the difference. Well, that's compelling.

 

[JustJones]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

I changed DACs and my dog woke up and growled so I switched back. Best not to get him rilled up, he's a Maltese.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I changed DACs, and the HOA said someone on my street filed a complaint. Now this would normally not be at all surprising, I mean it was a different DAC. The surprising part is I was only listening with headphones. So I guess someone else's wife jumped up after hearing it.

 

[Newman]

the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

Anecdote beats science any day. Everybody knows that.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Of course, can bee one explanation. But all gain stages have its own SNR and THD, is unavoidable.
Weather this parameters are audible or not, I don’t know.

Easily you can try, if you have a preamp or a DAC with an preamp function, reduce the volume of the DAC to -60 dBFS and compensate if possible with the preamp adjusted at high or max values, and then going to -20 dBFS with lowing the master volume.

If you’re listening to music with a lot of instruments, like orchestra, you can feel the change in tonality (or maybe not).

Of course this doesn’t demonstrate anything, as you can have the same psychological influence on the test.

Nevertheless is not true that the signal is the same: in an ideal situation all should be linear but this us precisely what nonlinearity means: it can’t be preserved at linear mappings (gain is a linear transformation over the entire curve of frequencies).

Even on power amplifiers and preamps one can set (if each SNR and THD values are known for the stages) an optimal combination of gains given a target SPL.

This is obviously non practical, as one has to change volume from one track to other (assuming are not normalized like Spotify for example), so reasonable values are desirable.

Actually home signals are so hot, whereas many devices are optimized to less than 1V, a lot of DACs give 4 Vrms or more (mine has a surprising 5 Vrms output)

In practice and which my actual setup, is worth to not use XLR balanced or I will loss 5 bits of information.

When I retired from a fairly well paid job with long hours I had time to do some controlled tests.
Firstly on myself, to get an idea of what I could hear, then on carefully level matched DACs, some I owned, others I borrowed.

I mainly listen to classical music.

One interesting thing was just reducing tle level by 60dB from my normal listening level. I could still hear a very low level of music from the speakers but I am quite sure I would not still be able to hear it if, at the same time, I was listening to music at my normal level, after all the irritating hum made by the power supply of my home theatre screen disappears (ie is masked) immediately as soon as music is playing - I become completely unaware of it whereas normally in my listening room I have to cut mains power to it because of the irritation.

Anyway I had DACs from dCS, Linn, Goldmund, Chord, Resolution audio and Metric Halo ADC/DACs.
With precisely matched levels all the differences I thought I had heard disappeared as long as they all used normal reconstruction filters.
I did hear a difference between some of the switchable reconstruction filters but with a normal filter they were all the same audibly. Certainly any difference there may have been was so small as to be un-noticable and certainly have zero impact on my enjoyment of music.


FWIW Things I find do make a significant difference are speakers and their position within the room, microphone position when I am making recordings, all 4 of my record players sound a bit different too.

So for me the laws of physics and and audibility have worked, DACS I tested all have zero differences within the audible region, as would be expected, whereas my record players have different frequency responses and different resistance to mechanical and acoustical coupling and so on.

I could have saved a lot of money on electronics if I had done the test when I was younger but I did not have time and did have money.

 

[Miguelón]

When I retired from a fairly well paid job with long hours I had time to do some controlled tests.
Firstly on myself, to get an idea of what I could hear, then on carefully level matched DACs, some I owned, others I borrowed.

I mainly listen to classical music.

One interesting thing was just reducing tle level by 60dB from my normal listening level. I could still hear a very low level of music from the speakers but I am quite sure I would not still be able to hear it if, at the same time, I was listening to music at my normal level, after all the irritating hum made by the power supply of my home theatre screen disappears (ie is masked) immediately as soon as music is playing - I become completely unaware of it whereas normally in my listening room I have to cut mains power to it because of the irritation.

Anyway I had DACs from dCS, Linn, Goldmund, Chord, Resolution audio and Metric Halo ADC/DACs.
With precisely matched levels all the differences I thought I had heard disappeared as long as they all used normal reconstruction filters.
I did hear a difference between some of the switchable reconstruction filters but with a normal filter they were all the same audibly. Certainly any difference there may have been was so small as to be un-noticable and certainly have zero impact on my enjoyment of music.


FWIW Things I find do make a significant difference are speakers and their position within the room, microphone position when I am making recordings, all 4 of my record players sound a bit different too.

So for me the laws of physics and and audibility have worked, DACS I tested all have zero differences within the audible region, as would be expected, whereas my record players have different frequency responses and different resistance to mechanical and acoustical coupling and so on.

I could have saved a lot of money on electronics if I had done the test when I was younger but I did not have time and did have money.

I didn’t say nothing as comparing DACs, they are transparent mostly.

Is about better implementation of gain stages: DAC, preamp, power amp. Read the article, also are laws of physics. Once you have a given three block system, you can choose which gain combination is optimal to reduce nonlinearities and have enough dynamic range.

Consider the following situation: you use the DAC-preamp bit perfect. In this case digital volume is set on 0 dBFS fixed, and you only can change volume on the preamp (we suppose the amp fixed and preamp has a volume knob). Then you’re sending the most information as possible to the speakers, but don’t have any headroom to EQ for example. Also harmonic distortion of the DAC is at the maximum values (probably is not audible). Preamp is at the minimum possible gain to the desired listening volume and SNR of this stage is higher whereas THD will be lower.

The combination of SINAD of DAC and preamp will be determined by a formula you can find on the article.

On the opposite side we can consider the other extreme: you use directly your DAC with maximum volume on the preamp, or if they are on same device as mines, you bypass the preamp analogue part and the 4 volt signal goes directly to the power amp.

Then the signal is super hot (depending on the sensitivity of the amp of course, but usually 4 Vrms are too much), and you reduce those 60 dBFS on the DAC. THD of the DAC became neglectable but you loose 6 bits of information to the speakers, SNR is quite high.

As this example, without expending any extra dollar, you will have your best setup somewhere in the middle: probably with digital volume at -20 to -30 dBFS and preamp at its 70%-90% volume.

And we leaved the third block away from that, happily on my Genelecs G Three I only can choose between 0 and -10 dB gain input…

If for you this doesn’t matter, I agree that random gains may work. But you can loose some minutes or hours reading the article, specially if you have that amount of free time

 

[Frank Dernie]

I didn’t say nothing as comparing DACs, they are transparent mostly.

Is about better implementation of gain stages: DAC, preamp, power amp. Read the article, also are laws of physics. Once you have a given three block system, you can choose which gain combination is optimal to reduce nonlinearities and have enough dynamic range.

Consider the following situation: you use the DAC-preamp bit perfect. In this case digital volume is set on 0 dBFS fixed, and you only can change volume on the preamp (we suppose the amp fixed and preamp has a volume knob). Then you’re sending the most information as possible to the speakers, but don’t have any headroom to EQ for example. Also harmonic distortion of the DAC is at the maximum values (probably is not audible). Preamp is at the minimum possible gain to the desired listening volume and SNR of this stage is higher whereas THD will be lower.

The combination of SINAD of DAC and preamp will be determined by a formula you can find on the article.

On the opposite side we can consider the other extreme: you use directly your DAC with maximum volume on the preamp, or if they are on same device as mines, you bypass the preamp analogue part and the 4 volt signal goes directly to the power amp.

Then the signal is super hot (depending on the sensitivity of the amp of course, but usually 4 Vrms are too much), and you reduce those 60 dBFS on the DAC. THD of the DAC became neglectable but you loose 6 bits of information to the speakers, SNR is quite high.

As this example, without expending any extra dollar, you will have your best setup somewhere in the middle: probably with digital volume at -20 to -30 dBFS and preamp at its 70%-90% volume.

And we leaved the third block away from that, happily on my Genelecs G Three I only can choose between 0 and -10 dB gain input…

If for you this doesn’t matter, I agree that random gains may work. But you can loose some minutes or hours reading the article, specially if you have that amount of free time

I know all that but IMO actual music recordings, and I have done a few over the last 60 years, don't have anywhere near as big a dynamic range as the maximum we can sense and pretty well all analogue equipment I have ever owned had enough for the music to always be above the noise but below any non-linear overload. The SNR is indeed much better than it was but IMO has been plenty for music already for decades, after all LPs can be enjoyable, and for some people to consider them superior, which they do, their very limited performance capability must be "enough" for a lot of music a lot of the time.

The apparent improvement in dynamics and clarity between a high output DAC and a lower output one is dramatic and completely disappears once one matches the levels IME.

 

[NTTY]

No you didn't......the wife card..............wow...............how did this become a thing???????????????????

The wife beats science?

Alternative way to an AP for measurements:
1) Find someone whom you can "marry" or a least call "wife".
2) Organize uncontrolled listening tests with your "wife" to compare devices. No need to match-level, no specific music recommended nor test tones, everything random is very good enough.
3) Make your "wife" rate the best components and keep these.
4) Fill-in for divorce.

Tip: in this context, an AP is much cheaper (not to mention faster and better)

 

[Mart68]

Alternative way to an AP for measurements:
1) Find someone whom you can "marry" or a least call a "wife".
2) Organize uncontrolled listening with your "wife" to compare devices. No need to match-level, no specific music recommended nor test tones, everything random is very good enough.
3) Make your "wife" rate the best components and keep these.
4) Fill-in for divorce.

Tip: in this context, an AP is much cheaper (not to mention faster and better)

'Wife' must also be stationed in another room and also must expressly have zero active interest in sound quality. This is the calibration aspect.

 

[Miguelón]

The apparent improvement in dynamics and clarity between a high output DAC and a lower output one is dramatic and completely disappears once one matches the levels IME

This is what I was talking about, in fact actual issue is too much power output.

Take an example of on my DACs: 4,2 Vrms on fixed output. Well, the brand claims >117 dB of dynamic range at -60 dBFS but who needs all that? Except for a film, and even I think is so much…, I use more logically the 2 volts RCA output on the WiiM and I think 1V would be enough to music

 

[Miguelón]

if you are asking if I scientifically measured them then no I did not ........ I can tell you that the other day my brother swapped DAC without telling his wife and the first time she heard it - she jumped out her chair and exclaimed " what the hell did you change ? - its sounds amazing "

Hummm, when something like that “enormous impact” happens, it seems that sometimes went wrong on the first DAC. Terribly wrong, I guess…

Here the majority statement is that well done DACs cannot be differentiated by electronic, acoustic and even blind tests.

Even if I’m not 100% agree, I think 99% cannot be audible, or perhaps I’m wrong. I keep some doubts on the THD and SNR variations on the signal chain due to different voltage outputs of each DAC. Or even subtle differences on filters.

But this wouldn’t make jumping a human being, unless you put a pushpin on the chair

 

[womanofscience666]

Listened at -35db with Auto Ref on with my RME ADI 2 DAC FS

seems like it might be time to get a dac that isn't horrifically bright, try a NOS R2R dac or something with a nice tube amp. That should help with making your bright headphones more enjoyable (and music more enjoyable in general)

 

[womanofscience666]

DACs are a long solved problem and solved for very cheap, only consumerist marketing wants you to believe otherwise.

I mean they're hardly solved, there's lots of different ways to do dacs and they all sound different. If you're referring to the fact that topping and other companies like them are making dacs that measure really well that doesn't mean anything, Topping dacs are some of the worst I've ever heard. R2R dacs are getting better than ever and are getting seriously good both in sound and measurements

 

[womanofscience666]

It's a new DAC, just bought it, no way it got "gone bad" because of plugging in an optical cable a couple of times.

it's a new Topping DAC. Topping products are generally terrible both in sound and quality and their support is terrible

 

[Birdy]

I mean they're hardly solved, there's lots of different ways to do dacs and they all sound different. If you're referring to the fact that topping and other companies like them are making dacs that measure really well that doesn't mean anything, Topping dacs are some of the worst I've ever heard. R2R dacs are getting better than ever and are getting seriously good both in sound and measurements

Hearing is a personal and subjective interpretation of processing music and has nothing to do with a objective standard of quality. To promote personal experience as a general standard of quality makes no sense in my opinion. That's why we use objective parameters to determine a certain level of quality.

 

[womanofscience666]

Hearing is a personal and subjective interpretation of processing music and has nothing to do with a objective standard of quality. To promote personal experience as a general standard of quality makes no sense in my opinion. That's why we use objective parameters to determine a certain level of quality.

there is no objectivity in this hobby, everyone is after a sound they prefer and there is no one best piece of gear for everyone, that's why we all use different gear. We can measure different aspects of gear but those measurements do not tell the whole story of the sound and will not tell you how much you'll enjoy your favorite music through it