Topping E30 vs Shiit Modius, any notable differences?

[Plcamp]

Question: If I set up two microphones, one in front of each speaker about 3 feet away. Then I level match the voltage and gain and record a full song on to my computer using each DAC. Would those small difference in sound (if they exist at all) be noticeable if I were to just overlay the recorded WAV tracks and compare? For example, subjectively, if one DAC sounds like the midrange is boosted (500-2K) wouldn't I see that reflected in the recorded WAV track if I overlay the two DAC recordings to compare? Would it be too subtle to pick up? Not trying to argue here just curious as this is an experiment I can try in addition to another ABX test. Sorry if this has been discussed to death before.

Instead you could scan the same speaker without moving the mic using REW freeware, and compare the resulting shapes of the frequency response. Unless something is wrong with one or the other DAC, I do doubt you will see any differences.

 

[eardiggler]

Ok - thanks. But the variables don't move or change. Same mic position, same matched voltage just swapping out DAC's and re-playing a full song. I know if a bird sits on my window sill and chirps it might get picked up but I should be able to pick that out. But, I guess your right I'm adding variables. I was trying to simulate my listening environment but in the end it's how the signal comes out of the DAC.

 

[eardiggler]

Instead you could scan the same speaker without moving the mic using REW freeware, and compare the resulting shapes of the frequency response. Unless something is wrong with one or the other DAC, I do doubt you will see any differences.

I've played around with REV. That's a great idea. Yeah, I know I will probably find nothing here but I'm fascinated with this subject.

 

[righthookmike]

I have a question as well. If sound comes in waves, what are the particles that make up a sound wave?

 

[HiFidFan]

I have a question as well. If sound comes in waves, what are the particles that make up a sound wave?

Not particles but pressure.

 

[devopsprodude]

Maybe you should change that to what YOU can hear. How can you put out a blanket statement about what I can hear? Subtleties are what differentiates us as individuals. Science is a great tool to be used but it's supposed to be a tool used to grow and learn. It is never an absolute or we couldn't learn expand and grow.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The onus is on the person making the claim to prove the statement, not on the skeptic to disprove.

 

[devopsprodude]

I'll hop in quick to say that if we go believing that DACs sound the same despite measurements, and we go find the most likely explanation, psychoacoustic properties are maybe a million times more plausible than "rare undiscovered measurement" or whatever. Just the fact that our long-term memory is garbage, the fact that we can percieve sound differently when rested and tired, the fact that different volumes have different psychoacoustic curves, the fact that placebo exists and is very, very strong, the fact that we listen more intently when we get new gear or compare intently, all of these are a billion times more plausible to me than some magic DAC element that by the way, engineers also don't know about so you're suggesting that we just design gear blindly and put a bunch of shit in there and maybe it'll sound good. Why not go further, do two DACs of the same model sound the same? If I buy a Modius today and a month later, which one sounds better? Sure the measurements won't show it, but....etc, etc. That's why we need a test that elminates this variable, and it's the ABX test. As humans we often first question anything but ourselves, it happens to everyone. Ask a producer if they hear the same thing if they start on a mix in the morning and mix all day to the evening. Ask them if they ever thought that something they changed produced a great change that fixed the mix only to discover they had the bypass on and the effect didn't even take place yet (happened to me before for sure). Producers and engineers often take breaks to refresh the ears (or brain, rather) because our hearing is very variable.

Audible phenomena are measurable even if we can't understand them completely - absolute polarity, for example, has been proven to be audible but we cannot completely explain why and some people don't hear the difference in the same way. But we can definitely show it - in the time domain. However, I haven't found anyone to have shown this difference on a frequency graph, which is why there still is a debate on its audibility. But in terms of what audio signal is, we know the parameters that influence it, such as frequency response (tonality), distortion (THD(+N), IMD), linearity. Analog signal has only so many properties, it's not magic.

I have long rationalized it as an identity crisis, as mike says - yeah it's relatively unexciting to live in a world where DAC performance is transparent, especially if you grew up in the time of analog audio where a bunch of things from amps/recievers to phono cartridges and needles would make a real difference. But this is no reason to then go on and say, there must be SOMETHING that makes them different. Reminds me of the "I want to believe" alien poster. There are luckily other things in audio that make an incredible audible difference - that's right, buy speakers and headphones, treat your room acoustically, there are so many variables there. The DAC is not going to be a variable as long as it's transparent. Every time someone postulates the DAC difference, I replace every mention of DAC in my head with "high-end cable" and I scan to see whether the arguments change at all, but it's really all the same - I heard it, there must be something, it can't be measured, maybe we're measuring wrong, etc.

Long term memory is garbage? Speak for...uhh, what were we talking about again?

 

[devopsprodude]

I like this well thought out response and it makes a lot of sense. But, can you point me to the AB tests that were performed that prove NO ONE can hear a difference between different transparent measuring DAC's? Yeah - I get it, DAC's nowadays are very transparent and measure extremely well and yes that is kind of sad and boring but great at the same time. But since people feel so strongly about this conclusion I would like to see the tests that were performed and recorded showing humans failing this AB test over and over again to prove out this logical hypothesis. Do they exist? At the very least it would be a very fun YouTube video to watch.

Again, it's not the job of the skeptic to prove or disprove anything. It's the job of the person making the extraordinary claim. If someone says they can tell the difference between two whatever, it's on them to prove the claim, not on us to disprove.

 

[Shazb0t]

I have a question as well. If sound comes in waves, what are the particles that make up a sound wave?

In the case of home audio speakers, the "waves" are just pressurized air. They are made of the same particles air is made of.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure

 

[companyja]

Long term memory is garbage? Speak for...uhh, what were we talking about again?

Long-term memory, as in pausing even a minute between listening one source and another can make you fail even the most basic tests. ABX comparisons are far more effective if you can switch immediately or with as short a pause as possible. A lot of subjectivists will put out claims such as "this amp is lifeless" or "this amp has better soundstage" when playing different parts of a song for maybe a minute each instead of comparing the same part instantly. We can basically believe any preconcieved notion like that since our long term memory is terrible when it comes to comparing similar things

Oh, and I just got the joke as I was typing this I'm tired

 

[righthookmike]

Not particles but pressure.

if it exerts pressure is there a physical element to it?

In the case of home audio speakers, the "waves" are just pressurized air. They are made of the same particles air is made of.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure

I was genuinely curious because our atmosphere contains different density's of different elements based on elevation,polution etc. but still, do we understand exactly what is moving these particles of air to produce sound waves and the effects on timbre? I know some overtones that do effect timbre are not harmonic so are they measurable? I posted over in the newbie section because my understanding is very limited

 

[companyja]

I am writing this in response to someone earlier mentioning the effects of audio information over 20khz even if we can't hear it:

Most audio engineers agree that everything above 22.05khz is forfeit (above 20khz really but the few more khz give you good wiggle-room for exceptional-hearing people). There are some engineers such as Mark Waldrep, who claims that there is no audible difference between a track recorded in 16bit/44.1khz (or truncated to it) and a track in native 24/96 or above, but he anecdotally says that high-resolution audio creates less pressure on his ears and he can produce a lot longer with high-res audio. Keep in mind however that he claims that this is only a benefit of high resolution DIGITAL audio as even the best analog recordings are capped at about 12-14bits of dynamic range due to tape properties.

The type of distortions that are mostly pleasurable or masked to humans are harmonic, which are produces as overtones and do not produce non-linearities below their dominant frequency (a 1khz tone will only produce harmonic distortions at 2khz, 3khz, etc). Non-harmonic distortions are completely new information that isn't in the original recording and does not directly correlate to the original audio signal - distortions to the left of the original signal can only be non-linear/non-harmonic in nature. Therefore, even if there are some ear-relaxing benefits of audio past 20khz, there is no reason to believe they contain any information that will return to the audible range in a form of anything except unwanted aliasing (signals above shannon-nyquist due to poor attenuation of the low pass filter, for example - this is going to be crud that is not accurate to the original source of the audio).

 

[eardiggler]

Again, it's not the job of the skeptic to prove or disprove anything. It's the job of the person making the extraordinary claim. If someone says they can tell the difference between two whatever, it's on them to prove the claim, not on us to disprove.

Thanks for teaching me your personal perspective on this matter.

 

[Veri]

Thanks for teaching me your personal perspective on this matter.

He made a good point though, at this point it's just you "personally" not accepting said remark.

 

[eardiggler]

He made a good point though, at this point it's just you "personally" not accepting said remark.

Ha ha! Man you are sensitive! Don't worry, it will be OK. I understand his position on what he deems 'Extraordinary' but that's his position and it's perfectly fine. I'm sure he shares that position with many others on this forum. No big deal. I still wouldn't mind seeing some properly conducted A/B testing videos or see some data since people are 100% convinced that all DAC's sound exactly the same and no one can point the differences side by side in a blind test. I've seen some great information on speaker bias w/ A/B testing done which was an eye opener - but not that much on DAC's. I watched this video last night and the user was able to point out the correct DAC 'most' of the time but you can probably find many flaws in his test to make it insignificant.

I plan on doing more A/B testing with my two DAC's with the voltage measured. But, I also plan on testing the output of each by overlaying the WAV graphs to see if the boosted 500k-2k that I'm subjectively hearing exists or not. Perhaps the software EQ on my DAC is 'stuck' on. It will be interesting to see.

 

[Veri]

I plan on doing more A/B testing with my two DAC's with the voltage measured. But, I also plan on testing the output of each by overlaying the WAV graphs to see if the boosted 500k-2k that I'm subjectively hearing exists or not. Perhaps the software EQ on my DAC is 'stuck' on. It will be interesting to see.

Would be interesting. From other measurements such boosted FR areas should not exist though. So if they do show up it would be.. hard to explain

 

[magicscreen]

Topping E30 has a smooth and creamy sound. Why are you misleading? Why are you telling that it is transparent, colorless and tasteless?

 

[jokan]

Easy question. Nope. Transparency is the threshold competence for SQ. Beyond that is about paying more for pretty much every reason other than SQ. Boutique DAC's all have their own story to tell...but there's no veil to be lifted with a 'higher end' DAC, just the money out of your wallet.

If there is a meaningful difference in sound, it is because they chose to *add* distortion (or, more likely, just got whatever they got based on some sub-optimal design choices...not conscious ones based on SQ) in order to differentiate themselves.

Spend money on your speakers and/or room.

Welcome to the forum!

Speakers are the audio equivalent of the human voice. The better the voice, the better things sound to our ears. I 100% agree that it's far more cost effective to buy better speakers over a DAC that is already very competent.

 

[eardiggler]

Speakers are the audio equivalent of the human voice. The better the voice, the better things sound to our ears. I 100% agree that it's far more cost effective to buy better speakers over a DAC that is already very competent.

I agree with this. Put your money into the speakers. Most budget DACs are ridiculously good at this point.

 

[jsrtheta]

Thanks for teaching me your personal perspective on this matter.

It's not a "personal perspective". It's a bedrock scientific position.