Apple products have various restrictions on connection, and there are many trouble reports not only with D-6s but also with ASR. I recommend that you thoroughly investigate the product before suspecting it is defective.
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SMSL D-6s Balanced DAC Review
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dsnyder0cnn
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Sounds like user error. There's no such thing as "Apple OS."
Frequency response graph does not show differences in time domain behavior.
PyramidElectric
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Have you been able to test the Dac with another computer? If not, i'm going to repeat the suggestion of a USB hub, maybe try and get one where you can return it easily if this doesn't solve it, but I think it's important to isolate where the problem lies... Like I said I have mine running fine with a fairly old Macbook Pro, so this is not as simple as 'doesn't work with Macs'.
dsnyder0cnn
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To specifically what time-domain behavior do you attribute pleasantness of sound?
In this forum, we generally don't get excited about phase or group delay since the passive crossovers in our loudspeakers have orders of magnitude greater errors.
I have posted about filter pre/post ringing elsewhere in this thread and forum. I prefer the sound of filters that exhibit minimal ringing, but especially pre-ringing. Others enjoy minimum phase filters with relatively long post-ringing. Most folks don't hear significant differences among the filters provided by AKM and ESS DAC chips.
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You are correct, I confused the D-6s with the D-6, which is using dual (AKM) chips.
Jim Anderson
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I tried with an Airbook, Iphone, Imac, 4 different cables...I have no windows stuff. It may be a bad one, I guess malfunctions happens, what irks me it's the complete lack of post sale support, they simply ignore my emails. Apos looks like a scam, lots of one star evals on BBB...
When inquiring about a problem with a product, we will not be able to answer unless you provide a detailed explanation of the symptoms and the system environment used. I think both SMSL and APOS are probably confused and can't reply.
However, the non-response response may not be understandable based on common sense in your country, but it is often experienced in China, which has a different social system. I have made inquiries to Chinese companies many times, and I always try to give as detailed a report as possible.
I also see one-star reviews on Amazon and other sites, but for some reason those reviews often involve Apple products. Therefore, prior knowledge of the unique rules is required to connect with Apple products.
DAC chips don't consist of digital processing only. There is of course also D/A stage present. That's the processing part which restricts DR, SNR and ads its own distortion. No matter what for perfect numbers you had in digital domain. So it does not work as a theoretically ideal processing part.
Then, listener does not listen to DAC chip output. There is an analog stage present in each DAC device - filter, buffer , sometimes current to voltage output conversion. For example ESS chips require additional filtering.
IME a DAC device sound character is still present no matter what for filter you use in digital domain. Just an opinion, no intention to start a flame.
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Looks like its bad quality on those dacs. The cheap price is probably because the manufacturers have no quality control, no guarantees and no support. I look at those cheap dacs as they would be second hand, already used item to buy. With no guaranty or support. At least they seem to sound good in many cases.
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somebodyelse
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Hence people in Europe buying from somewhere like Audiophonics who do have to guarantee them, but may charge a bit more. Presumably the failure rate isn't unusually high as they're still stocking them.
nanook
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Do yo actually know how the filters in the d-6s relate to the ones described in the datasheet of the ES9039Q2M?
Did SMSL use the same numbering like in the datasheet?
Datasheet, e.g. at Mouser: https://www.mouser.de/datasheet/2/1082/ES9039Q2M_Datasheet_v0_1_3-3168946.pdf
Filters are on page 29 cont.
staticV3
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Yes.
nanook
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dsnyder0cnn
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First, you said, "Frequency response graph does not show differences in time domain behavior."
When I mentioned that the only significant time-domain behavior I've observed is associated with filter selection, you said, "a DAC device sound character is still present no matter what for filter you use in digital domain."
I'll ask again. To what measurable characteristic do you attribute "pleasantness" of sound. With these statements, you've essentially ruled out amplitude and time-domain behavior. What is left? Just your beliefs?
Done, now I turn the volume up to even 99.
Doesn't have delta sigma modulator time behavior too? Is that an ideal circuit without introducing any distortion? And the D/A stage and analog stage behind DAC? Is that an ideal circuit? I pointed to that the D/A stage behind modulator is mostly responsible for the chip output quality, since DR and SNR numbers of digital content are reduced just here. You are restricting everything, what can affect sound, to a part of digital processing within a DAC chip and particularly to something specific what is made to be adjustable. That's too simplified view. Read once again what I wrote.
I have been an Apple user since 1988 - it works perfectly here without any problems.
nanook
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I fully agree. We basically have two common ways to describe the transfer-function of a system, time-domain and frequency domain. A DAC (including volume control, digital filter I/V- stage, analog filter and buffer) finally has a transfer-function that transforms the digital data-stream into an analog signal. We measure the final analog signal, so we measure the whole reproduction transfer-function.
Both time-domain (the signal you see on an oscilloscope) and frequency-domain description (Amplitude and Phase) fully describe the system at the level the measurement was taken at.
We can measure the transfer-function in the frequency-domain with such a high precision and resolution, that everything audible should be covered.
This basically leaves no room for audible differences.
Of course these measurements are performed at a certain signal level and in case there would be strong level dependent nonlinearities (like we face them in speakers) , we might not really get hold of them.
Years ago we were measuring with sinewaves only and the argument was that this is a "quasi-stationary" stimulus compared to music which is much more complex. I started to use multitone for distortion measurements more than a decade ago for exactly this reason.
There once was an paper that tried to connect between measurements and subjective performance of speakers. The measurements could not predict the subjective judgement until they took measurements based on a multitone stimulus. Unfortunately I do not find this paper anymore.
Here is a comment from Linkwitz about multitone for speaker measurements: https://www.linkwitzlab.com/frontiers.htm#G
There is one thing, that to my opinion has a large impact on our perception and this is our expectation. If we expect some unit sounds better we will really perceive this unit sounds better - our brain is fooling us. The only precaution against this is a thorough A/B blind testing.
With thorough I mean e.g. that the listening level has to be perfectly matched. 0.5db difference is too much. We would not realize "it is louder" but we would e.g. conclude "it sounds more dynamic". We once fooled us with as little as ca. 0.3dB difference; after my colleague had aligned the level to within better 0.1dB we were not able to distinguish anymore.
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