Why are people using higher priced dacs in 'stacks'

[Berwhale]

Thank You

There are over 52,000 ASR members according to this...

Poll: Audio Science Review in the World (2024)

Hi Folks, Back in November 2019, I started a thread/poll thread here, in which I was wondering where our fellow members were actually living. Initially, when ASR started back in 2016, most first registered members were either from USA, UK, Canada, or Australia (according to @amirm), with...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[BDWoody]

How many are there ?

Normally forums put the information out so it is easy to find.
Even small forums.
This took zero effort to find:

Right there on the front page. I can circle it if needed.

Back on the topic of this thread please.

 

[Killingbeans]

I have never seen the hostility and rudeness exhibited here on other audio forums

Dude, chill.

Someone pointing to the high risk of an assumption being erroneous is not the same as hostility. ASR does not handle people with kid gloves, and that's one of the things that makes it really great.

I personally used to be deeply infatuated with the idea of R2R DACs, but this place helped me realise what I deep down already knew; They don't do anything special, and the whole idea of different DACs having "sound signatures" is dubious at best.

The truth sometimes hurts. When you have an opinion that's mostly supported by feelings and emotional connections, then the information, needed to snap you out of it, is nearly impossible not to take as a personal attack. But once you get past that hurdle, there's a whole new world of factual functionality to make use of.

 

[David James]

That two DACs that test the same sound the same.
That a DAC that tests lower is by definition lesser and less desirable.
A post was moved from this thread that stated that DACs alter sound.
This is absolutely true but it may be more accurate to say “have their own sound.”

”That's exactly why this forum continues to grow and thrive”

I could not find how many members there are on this forum.
How many are there ?

Normally forums put the information out so it is easy to find.
Even small forums.
This took zero effort to find:

AVS Forum

• 34M posts
• 1.5M members

I had a few questions on a DIY and knew nothing about the AVS forum and got a lot of kind and constructive responses and courteous help from the members.
Imagine that.

I have never seen the hostility and rudeness exhibited here on other audio forums
It seems not only tolerated but encouraged here

I'm not a science guy, but when you say confirmation bias it implies that the data is skewed by the bias of the authors. If you believe that there is confirmation bias, you should point to the data, as opposed to restating the conclusion. One can simultaneously believe something, and conduct a valid experiment provided sufficient precautions are taken, such as double blind testing. Prior belief is not confirmation bias. Allowing data to be skewed because of that belief is.

Secondly, saying things are the same, because they measured the same, is simply pointing out an evident conclusion. If i weigh two cats, and they weigh the same, and you say, no, they are not because i detect with my cat weight sense that they are different, you need to provide some data to show that your assertion has a basis and that your data was arrived at without flaws in the methodology.

Saying that data supports that the cats weigh the same is not the same as saying your cat weight sense is bullshit. It is saying here is a reasonable, valid, data supported conclusion, that we can reasonably hold as fact unless it is disproven, and that your conclusion does not have the same basis of validity. Its just a matter of course that conclusion not backed up with science are not accepted as fact.

In the actual spirit of this site, you are most welcome to provide valid data to show that your belief is correct. It would be received with tremendous interest if it is valid, and likely even be met with delight at the unexpected turn.

 

[Killingbeans]

Back on the topic of this thread please.

People build fancy stacks because it looks cool and makes them feel good.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Audio is more than just sound reproduction. For some people it's a hobby. For many hobbyists having the highest quality equipment is a big deal. A lot of electronic devices can reproduce audio with accuracy that exceeds the limits of human hearing by a lot. If having the closest thing to perfect you can get is important and you have the money why not get it. I'm more of a utilitarian. I'm delighted that devices like DACs have gotten so good and cheap. Now if they could do that with rooms and speakers.

 

[radix]

That a DAC that tests lower is by definition lesser and less desirable.

Who has said this? Or what gave you that impression?

I'm pretty sure that most people here will say that beyond a certain threshold, there's no audible difference between components, so neither is better or worse in practice. There maybe other factors, like features or perceived engineering or build quality that may influence the "better or worse" judgement. For example, minidsp products often get recommended as DACs because they have DIRAC, not because they are the best measuring DACs.

I think, based on my not-scientificially-backed reading of the forums, people tend to recommend DACs in the top ranks of SINAD (e.g. over 110, which is a pretty wide margin) with the lower prices (e.g. under $500). There's a bunch of those, but really features and system integration tend to trump absolute SINAD.

Yep, ASR ranks units based on their SINAD, for example. And some users post preference scores for speakers. And ASR compares some units against a SOTA, e.g. comparing amps to the AHB2. Those are all useful information for someone looking to buy or evaluate the equipment. But "recommended or not recommended" is the only result, and that result is even relative to the price point (i.e. Amir may recommend a mediocre measure unit based on its price point).

As to the fancy stack question, for me the UI/UX and features is of very high importance. And looks. I want integrated command & control! Not 3 remotes or having to use apps all the time.

 

[Zibi]

That would surprise no-one. That's exactly why this forum continues to grow and thrive, as this is one of the very few places where people can come, expecting the advice they get is based on reality and not on storytime.

That big audio world out there is welcome to refute the base-line position of this site, which is that there is nothing magical in audio other than the music itself, and competently engineered, competently chosen components are going to be nigh unto impossible to differentiate under controlled testing conditions.


Here is an excerpt from an interview with the founder of Stereophile, J. Gordon Holt:

"Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel."

https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/index.html#:~:text=Do you see,spreading my gospel.



I could stand with less of the derisive amusement expressed by some of our members to be honest, but when someone shows up spouting the standard nonsense, while being generally insulting and condescending while *not* flexing his credentials (which unfortunately around here puts him in the kiddy pool), that's where the posts go.

Sorry if this is all a surprise, but that's kinda how it goes.

Too bad that you have cut Gordon Holt quote short. In the next sentence he has said: "For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing." Cheers,

 

[DLS79]

Too bad that you have cut Gordon Holt quote short. In the next sentence he has said: "For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing." Cheers,

What some people who love to quote Holt forget is that the quote is from 2007! Electronics has come a long long way in the last 17 years. Not to mention Hold wasn't even talking about the present day when that "interview" occurred.

One of the beauties of science & technology is it never stands still. What was STOA or impossible on day is routine and common place a handful of years down the road, and in some cases obsolete a handful of years after that.

 

[DonR]

As always, take some hearing tests to find out where your level of audibility lies. For SINAD in DACs, mine is far to the right of the green scale on the SINAD chart. My DAC cost me $13 and sounds the same to me as every other DAC I have owned.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Obviously, one should not expect a little dongle DAC to have the same mechanical rigidity as a desktop affair in a solid metal enclosure. Cases, knobs, switches, additional input and outputs, displays and firmware programming are all things that affect look and feel, usability and durability (which are also very important) and cost money. (*)

Plus, shoving a decent modern DAC chip and a decently powerful headphone driver into a bus-powered dongle DAC is one thing, but equalling the capabilities of a Topping L30 in terms of output and noise would be a much different story.

It's reassuring to know that good sound by itself doesn't have to cost much in any case.

*) An analogy that comes to mind: Technically, I could be writing this on a smartphone, they've got plenty of computing power these days. Except the user interface would be utter garbage for this use case. Give me a decent set of keyboard, monitor, mouse (well, trackball) and good speakers on a whisper-quiet PC any day of the week.