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

[raistlin65]

I wonder if I already am involved there? I have posted I am pretty sure, but I spend so little time on Reddit. If I remember correctly, one of the things somebody needs to accept about Reddit is the threads can and do get very personal when people don't agree. Or maybe I am not remembering correctly. In any case maybe I need to spend a little more time there and see how things go there.

Reddit is not a single, monolithic community. Rather, every subreddit has its own character.

r/headphones has much more debate than r/headphoneadvice, and it does get a lot more contentious.

 

[killdozzer]

It’s the brain that makes our eyes and ears unreliable.

Although I'd jump to agree, this is a fairly difficult statement to make. In order to make it with a sufficient amount of certainty, you would need to have access to what eyes and ears sense without the brain. Like, for example, having a human eye connected to some other measuring device other than brain and see what comes out the other end and what registers. It is not entirely improbable that not even our sensory organs are mere "what goes in, comes out" direct registers of objective reality. I mean, imagine, what or who would calibrate our sensory organs before hooking them up to our brains to make them neutral, direct, objective witnesses of reality that are only skewed by the workings of our brain?

Just a side note. Not that it really matters.

 

[pkane]

I just wondered and maybe someone with DeltaWave, who knows how to use it properly, can do the following experiment:
Use a 44.1/16 recording. Upsample it to 176.4/24 and then downsample the file back to 44.1/16 and find out how much changed.
Maybe also to 192kHz/24 but this would create more problems.

DeltaWave has a built-in resampler, so it's fairly easy to test this. Here's a 2 minute music file @44.1k upsampled to 192k and then downsampled back to 44.1k in DeltaWave and then compared to the original file. RMS of the difference file is -140dBFS.

Spectrum of the difference (null) file:

Phase difference:

 

[killdozzer]

DACs actually DO sound different, so ...

Seriously, there are a couple of reasons they do. The DAC chips, themselves, act differently - for example, I've never been fond of ESS Sabre chips, but like Burr-Brown / TI. In addition, the output stage can make the resulting (i.e., analog) output sound COMPLETELY different, even if the initial digital conversion is identical.

So I believe your premise (as I read it at least, which is: "all DACs sound the same") is incorrect.

No, they don't. Output stage is not a DAC in a strict manner of speaking. What does this COMPLETELY mean? Like a musician strikes a string on a double bass, but out comes violin?

 

[killdozzer]

Banned + ignored.

 

[SIY]

What does this COMPLETELY mean?

"I judge by preconceptions and peeking, not actual ears-only evaluation."

 

[khark]

Why not expect actual data, rather than prose? They don't give it because they don't have it. No one does.

It's the word of a manufacturer, that capitalizes on ignorance to make money.

Neumann? I think you are taking it too far. They are not exactly the kind of manufacturer who needs to make stuff up for marketing purposes, their product measurements speak for themselves. Sometimes one need to be more respectful to the accomplished people in the industry and their views.

 

[raistlin65]

No, they don't. Output stage is not a DAC in a strict manner of speaking. What does this COMPLETELY mean? Like a musician strikes a string on a double bass, but out comes violin?

You know. As opposed to an "incomplete" difference.

 

[SIY]

Neumann? I think you are taking it too far. They are not exactly the kind of manufacturer who needs to make stuff up for marketing purposes, their product measurements speak for themselves. Sometimes one need to be more respectful to the accomplished people in the industry and their views.

"Puffery" is a long-standing tradition in marketing materials. The fact that Neumann is a great company with great products does not mean that they don't need to tailor their message for the intended audience.

 

[audio2design]

DACs actually DO sound different, so ...

Seriously, there are a couple of reasons they do. The DAC chips, themselves, act differently - for example, I've never been fond of ESS Sabre chips, but like Burr-Brown / TI. In addition, the output stage can make the resulting (i.e., analog) output sound COMPLETELY different, even if the initial digital conversion is identical.

So I believe your premise (as I read it at least, which is: "all DACs sound the same") is incorrect.

The premise is that all DACs that measure with whatever configuration they're measured in are sufficiently low in THD and have high SNR then you will not be able to tell the difference. There are underlying assumptions with respect to say ground loops etc not creating audible effects.

It's a painful reality for many audiophiles to accept that Uber expensive DAC cannot be reliably distinguished from a $200 DAC. It's the same painful reality that does not allow him to accept that their Uber expensive turntable is also sonically less transparent then that same $200 DAC.

Many Uber expensive DACs do sound different because they do things like using tube output stages that are not transparent. These would also measure poorly though.

I challenge you to prove my statement wrong in a level matched blind test. I've done it with people they can't tell the difference. They do make up lots of excuses.

 

[killdozzer]

DeltaWave has a built-in resampler, so it's fairly easy to test this. Here's a 2 minute music file @44.1k upsampled to 192k and then downsampled back to 44.1k in DeltaWave and then compared to the original file. RMS of the difference file is -140dBFS.

Spectrum of the difference (null) file:
View attachment 156545


Phase difference:
View attachment 156544

Sorry to say, I can't really read this. Could you, please, interpret it shortly?

 

[audio2design]

They are ‘supporting the industry’ and if they stay engaged there is a chance, slim admittedly that in time some of them will actually learn something.
Keith

There is less evidence of that happening then there is of two transparently measuring DACs sounding different.

 

[Jimbob54]

Sorry to say, I can't really read this. Could you, please, interpret it shortly?

Resampling has no affect (as performed by DW anyway)

 

[xaviescacs]

Neumann? I think you are taking it too far. They are not exactly the kind of manufacturer who needs to make stuff up for marketing purposes, their product measurements speak for themselves. Sometimes one need to be more respectful to the accomplished people in the industry and their views.

But all they say is that "attractive sound" can't be fully explained by frequency response and distortion. I think amir has stated more than once that his personal tastes don't always correlate with measurements and that this deserves some investigation. But they are talking about sound, which is far more complex than a signal on a wire.

 

[killdozzer]

Resampling has no affect (as performed by DW anyway)

Thank you!

 

[xaviescacs]

Resampling has no affect (as performed by DW anyway)

I'm not familiar with the algorithms, but the since the recovered file isn't exactly identical, my question is if the departure from the original increases if we run the process more than once.

 

[killdozzer]

But all they say is that "attractive sound" can't be fully explained by frequency response and distortion. I think amir has stated more than once that his personal tastes don't always correlate with measurements and that this deserves some investigation. But they are talking about sound, which is far more complex than a signal on a wire.

I may be wrong, but I think amir says something completely different. One may like a piece of equipment that measures worse than some other, but I've never seen amir say that if you have exact same measurements (as in, for example, two well performing DACs), that you'll be able to pick one solely based on blind listening. One can't prefer among equally measuring pieces of equipment other then by arbitrary and secondary attributes (read biases).

 

[solderdude]

DeltaWave has a built-in resampler, so it's fairly easy to test this. Here's a 2 minute music file @44.1k upsampled to 192k and then downsampled back to 44.1k in DeltaWave and then compared to the original file. RMS of the difference file is -140dBFS.

Spectrum of the difference (null) file:
View attachment 156545


Phase difference:
View attachment 156544

Thanks... so (at least) your resampler doesn't make a mess of things.

 

[killdozzer]

I've posted two threads using 8th generation ADC/DAC copies vs the original digital file. Used different gear in both instances. You can still download the files and give a listen for yourself.

8th generation ADC/DAC loop vs the original.....can you hear it?

Download this zip file. It will unzip into a folder with three 30 second snippets of a Fiona Apple song. Two are the original digital file. One is an 8th generation loop thru DAC/ADC. Pick the odd file out on the poll...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Listen and choose the 8th generation digital copy.

Each of these zip files will open into three wav files. One is labeled Reference, one is A and one is B. These are 30 second snippets of full songs. The originals were from CD so all 44.1 khz and 16 bit. Either A or B has been thru 8 generations of DA to AD copying. The other is identical...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Also to show how relatively important and imperfect transducers (microphones and speakers) are I did a 4th generation copy using mikes and speakers. You can still download those here:

4th generation speaker to microphone loopback for your listening pleasure.

Inspired by @RayDunzl I played some song snippets over speakers, and recorded with a microphone. Then took the recording and looped it back thru again. The microphones were 1.25 meters from the speakers. In this case if you download this zip file, it will open into 3 original song snippets...

www.audiosciencereview.com

And then he walks in with a Katana and just cuts directly through all the crap.

 

[xaviescacs]

I may be wrong, but I think amir says something completely different. One may like a piece of equipment that measures worse than some other, but I've never seen amir say that if you have exact same measurements (as in, for example, two well performing DACs), that you'll be able to pick one solely based on blind listening. One can't prefer among equally measuring pieces of equipment other then by arbitrary and secondary attributes (read biases).

I was talking about speakers, since Neumann's statement was on speaker sound. If I undesrtand it correctly, this is all about this issue of not having a reference. With a DAC you have one, you know how the perfect signal would be, and there is no room for subjective opinions there.