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SMSL M500 DAC and HP Amp Review

armani006

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Is it bad idea to attach M500 preamp outputs with two ARCHEL2 PRO AMP as balanced amplifier, one for one channel? Archels are very very transparent for signal, M500 has ideal THD and Dynamic range. Seems like it can be good system, it is also good that M500 can control volume of pre-amp outputs..
or may be better idea to make a pair of M500 with SP200? Why don't SMSL make a one device M600 with amplifier from SP200 and sell for 700$ ?
 

ClosDeLaRoche

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I have a pair of MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Closed headphones, with an impedance of 13 ohms and sensitivity of 92 db. What kind of power could the headphone amp provide with these?

Also, are there gain setting on the headphone amp section? If not, do we know the stock gain?
 
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amirm

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But the real signal is at 300hz or something, not high frequency, how can that leak.
If you have no filtering, this is what you get:

DigMyth7-.ph8I_OVKoU_IgLOftQwdWKlhG8hY..K.jpg


If you have 100% brickwall filtering, then nothing shows up after the Nyquist frequency. If the filter is not that sharp, then some of the images remain including some around 2X sample rate that is visible in the spectrum I showed.
 

gvl

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The SMSL VMV D2 may can't be released this year. That using R2R technology with 4*PCM 1704 chip.

https://hifi-express.com/blogs/news/more-info-about-the-new-items-smsl-will-be-released-2019

More info can be checked here.

You must be joking, right? SMSL plans to use an obsolete part that hasn't been in production for several years now in a DAC? If you sourced a new-old-stock stash of these chips then I suspect the D2 will be very expensive so they don't sell out very fast.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Also, are there gain setting on the headphone amp section? If not, do we know the stock gain?
The input is digital so there no concept of analog gain.
 

VintageFlanker

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i also like this idea )) but from another side I think to by one device - DAC with good balanced amplifier, for example Audio-GD NFB28 used for 400$...
Is that some kind of joke? Audio-GD are unable to make either good DACs or Headamps...

I have a pair of MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Closed headphones, with an impedance of 13 ohms and sensitivity of 92 db. What kind of power could the headphone amp provide with these?

Also, are there gain setting on the headphone amp section? If not, do we know the stock gain?

500mW under 33ohms should be more than enough for your Aeon Closed.
 
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amirm

amirm

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- On one hand, during the fantastic TotalDAC discussion on ASR this summer ( the whole thing was so incredible that I read the 100 pages twice!, and that really motivated me to join ASR :cool:), such ultrasonic components were found out, a few subjectivists said that it didn't matter as they cannot be heard, yet what I perceived as the "dominant", "enlightened" view an ASR was that it was really bad :facepalm: because it could quite negatively affect the electronics of further devices (e.g. an amp for speakers) downstream or the behavior of transducers ( tweeter, headphones).
- On the other hand, when it is created by MQA it is OK because it cannot be heard :).
There is massive difference between the two. Here is the comparison:

SMSL M500 vs TotalDAC.png


The TotalDAC has no filtering so aliasing is exceptionally high rising to just -11 dB below our signal. With MQA with M500, it is down to -60 dB. That is nearly 50 dB difference between the two with respect to aliasing components. And, we are free of the other distortions, noise and non-linearities in TotalDAC.

There is a huge difference between a weak filter (MQA) and no filter (TotalDAC).

I can't with a straight face make a case for that single spike at -60 dB damaging tweeters, causing amps to oscillate, etc. If you can, good for you. :)
 

protoss

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No wonder then that the M500 ranks way up in our DAC ratings based on SINAD:

Of course it will! We living in 2019 now. Anything that is AKM/ESS will score highly. Unless the company truly screws up on a already perfected easy to implement measure rated chip.

This is not the devil aka R2R dacs that consistently measure horribly.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Second, re. apparently fraudulent marketing claims:
- When this is the case with a device such as Schiit, TotalDAC, PS Audio, it is really bad :facepalm: (and OK to speak of " scam ").
- With MQA it would be OK because part of the necessary marketing discourse for establishing a new standard :).
No. I explained the reasons. If you are going to build a perceptual DAC that encodes high resolution audio most efficiently, you would start by including the audible band, and then exponentially preserve less and less of the ultrasonics. By the time you get to 48 kHz, you have covered anything good that might be there. There is no reason to perceptually encode stuff above that, especially if that may come at the expense of fidelity in the audible band.

This is covered by the Stuart et. al. paper on potential need for higher sample rate (AES paper, the audibility of typical digital audio filters in
a high-fidelity playback system
):

1572387355315.png


Notice that at around 50 Khz or so, we are at the minima of the music spectrum and from there on, it is just noise that is rising up. So no need to encode that.

PCM is highly wasteful format. The goal here is not to preserve it all for the sake of it.

So no, there is no scam here with respect to upsampling to 192 kHz. It is the right thing to do to preserve music information but no more.
 

protoss

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Really? I'd read a lot of good reviews about their NFB amps system and R2R DACs...

R2R dacs are the devils in this forum. They can never reach good measurements to satisfy the cult of this forum. 90% of people here are distortion-ist free types. Not the pleasurable types. They will never admit it but they want that boring lame sound.

The old saying of Dac is a Dac has become nonsense now. Its distortion vs no-distortion. Like anyone can hear any differences as the founders of the statement claims.
 
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