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Why do NOS dacs sound different to oversampling designs?

Thomas savage

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Do a real listening test with real controls, otherwise this has all the evidentiary value of people claiming to be kidnapped and anally probed by space aliens. Stamping your feet and endlessly repeating your unsubstantiated claims does not make them any more true.
 

sajunky

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Do a real listening test with real controls, otherwise this has all the evidentiary value of people claiming to be kidnapped and anally probed by space aliens. Stamping your feet and endlessly repeating your unsubstantiated claims does not make them any more true.
I heard you already, you are repeating yourself. Also when I am getting fatigued after 30 minutes of listening of Topping D30, I don't have to do blind listening tests. Either I do enjoy it and can listen for hours or not.
 

SIY

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Also when I am getting fatigued after 30 minutes of listening of Topping D30, I don't have to do blind listening tests.

Only if you want to be taken seriously and have a shred of credibility. Apparently you don't.
 

Frank Dernie

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Neither you.
PMFJI but @SIY and @j_j are well known experts in the field with decades of actual real experience whereas you are somebody that we have never heard of. We have, however heard similar points of view from other people who haven’t made proper comparisons and I, for one, think you are wrong.
 

sajunky

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PMFJI but @SIY and @j_j are well known experts in the field with decades of actual real experience whereas you are somebody that we have never heard of. We have, however heard similar points of view from other people who haven’t made proper comparisons and I, for one, think you are wrong.
Maybe @SIY need to do blind test on himself whether he should dominate this thread with such ordinary remarks. For all others, do tests, even subjective, I enclosed a link to the material.
 

Thomas savage

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@sajunky , the evidence you have supplied falls below what's expected in terms of validating your claims or even initiating a discussion about them. Furthermore your current trajectory in terms of your attitude is going in the wrong direction.

Both these things need to be addressed and amended if you want to carry on discussions in this thread.
 

amirm

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I do appreciate your effort, but blind tests are done when differences are small. The effects I described are severe. Even if on delta-sigma DAC you pop volume much higher the gong will sound flat and will decay below the background much faster. If you don't have a good R2R converter for comparison, go to the show room.
I have had plenty of R2R DACs here that I have tested blind and sighted. There is no "there there." There is no magic and certainly no better detail resolution.

Set up a camera and record yourself while someone switches DACs on you as you state. If you can identify the R2R DAC over DS, I will pay $500 to your favorite charity. If not, please don't keep insist on it being true.

Hundreds of millions of people listen to music on their phones and none complain about fatigue as you do. That is a made up notion in your mind once you convince yourself of it. Not reality. I listen to hours and house on my DACs without any issue. Any ear fatigue comes from the content or playing too loud (or the speaker/headphone).
 

Krunok

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Maybe @SIY need to do blind test on himself whether he should dominate this thread with such ordinary remarks. For all others, do tests, even subjective, I enclosed a link to the material.

OMG, not another one, not again.. :facepalm:

What's your other favorite belief? Area 51? Flat Earth?
 

sajunky

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I have had plenty of R2R DACs here that I have tested blind and sighted. There is no "there there." There is no magic and certainly no better detail resolution.
I did actually mention that I never had better resolution of details comparing to the current (D30) setup. In that subject delta-sigma wins, I agree. So maybe we talk about different things?
 

THW

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OMG, not another one, not again.. :facepalm:

What's your other favorite belief? Area 51? Flat Earth?

i see flat horizon therefore earth flat

/s
 

solderdude

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It's just his personal preference and 'audio religion'.
If he is happy with his DAC, then I am happy for him, in the end its about personal enjoyment.
Nothing wrong with that.

He just should not sell his theories and 'wisdom' as facts and 'truth'.
It's just his opinion.
Looks like he has no idea who J_J is.
 

j_j

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You are talking about small differences that can change your perception based on auto suggestion, so you need blind tests.
Stop it. I did not say that, and I am not talking about that. Do not put words into my mouth.

One of us does this for a living. It's me. So you can stop "talking down" and being disgustingly insulting to somebody who actually knows his chops here. Be quiet and listen.

Level match was set equal, this is what we normally do. I did even set delta-sigma player lever higher at times to see whether it helps, but it didn't.
And how did you know this was "equal". Please detail your measurements. Your measurements must be exact to at least a factor of 1.016, in other words, your overall gains through the system must be equal to within that factor. What instrumentation did you use? Any meaningful test MUST be state precisely how this was measured, and with what kind of signal, to what degree of error.
I explained it was a very good quality recording (Deutche Grammophone, Telarc or Sony, I don't have it anymore). Before the gong was engaged there was a culmination of choir performance, very intensive, then a second of silence. The amplitude of the gong was about -40dB, VU meter merely jumped. There is no case of clipping. A similar amplitude are reverbation of piano recording, you should know about.
At www.aes.org/sections/pnw in the "meeting reports" area, you will find an "fft workshop". This explains how to load a freeware version of Octave, which is a Matlab clone, and provides an octave script that will analyze your track.

Please post the results of that script on your chosen clip, and then we can talk about it. Your "VU" reading is meaningless in the digital world, sorry, at least for what we're talking about now.

AND my DAC's don't do what you describe, NONE of them do that.

So, I've given you minimum tolerances, I've given you a way to analyze your signal, and I've corrected your complete misapprehension about what level of "obvious" is necessary to obviate a DBT. Basically "signal completely missing" is about how far you need to go to make a DBT not necessary.

So, do it over, and give your results some basic meaning.

Also, put in control signals, an A vs. A, and an A vs. impaired A that SHOULD be obvious. You can't test your test until you do that.

So, now you know more, and you have real, expert advice.
 

THW

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I did actually mention that I never had better resolution of details comparing to the current (D30) setup. In that subject delta-sigma wins, I agree. So maybe we talk about different things?

you are also talking about fatigue, in which case you missed this bit:

Hundreds of millions of people listen to music on their phones and none complain about fatigue as you do. That is a made up notion in your mind once you convince yourself of it. Not reality. I listen to hours and house on my DACs without any issue. Any ear fatigue comes from the content or playing too loud (or the speaker/headphone).
 

amirm

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I did actually mention that I never had better resolution of details comparing to the current (D30) setup. In that subject delta-sigma wins, I agree. So maybe we talk about different things?
I know precisely what you mean. And that is not there. It never has been. Once you perform the test without knowing which is which, such differences vanish.
 

sajunky

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I know precisely what you mean. And that is not there. It never has been. Once you perform the test without knowing which is which, such differences vanish.
Still I am not sure you know exactly - what is not there and never had been, so I am here again. BTW, I am not addressing anything to the "established experts" who require up the front to pay respect to them, while they respond in a generic way to some keywords, not a substance.

There always have been a problem with delta-sigma converters (my most of experience is with the first generation one-bit) that many people, including salesmen in the show rooms describe as "lack of the body" or "thin presentation". I describe it as follows: the tones with strong amplitude are presented clean on the expense of everything that happens in the background. The most affected are lower amplitude tones with frequencies that are very close to the dominant tone, but also the same for the harmonics. In that way any reverbations, interaction with wood of the instrument, overtones are filtered out, (partially) removed like an unwanted noise. The dominant tone is presented clean, but without body, like salesmen said. Our measurements do not cover such situation.

I think we should dispute how we should improve our test metodology. To address the above, lets say we will generate 5kHz -5dB tone with an associated 5.01kHz tone at -20dB, -40dB and then -60dB. Lets measure these signals on the output of the DAC to see dynamic linearity. We do linearity tests, but it is in a static way, with a single dominant tone, is not the same. Just in case if the modulator is removing variations of the frequency (making a tone more clean), we would modulate frequency of the 5.01kHz tone and find out whether modulation depth is preserved. I took 5.01kHz value quite arbitrary, it should be chosen as close to the main tone, subject to the measuring equipment resolution.

With Topping D30 I also noticed a serious fault, it may be related. A hammer of the piano hit not one, but two or three strings simultaneously. On my D30 piano sounds like it were detuned. It is not about accords, but hitting just a single key. It sounds like those three strings were not tuned alltogether. Very unpleasant effect and fatiguing. When there are three dominant tones of a similar apmplitude the cleaning process designed for outputing a tone clean is confused and is trying to alter these frequencies little-bit to achieve better resolution. Whooow! I will be put down for this...

Just 1 cent.
 

Blumlein 88

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Still I am not sure you know exactly - what is not there and never had been, so I am here again. BTW, I am not addressing anything to the "established experts" who require up the front to pay respect to them, while they respond in a generic way to some keywords, not a substance.

There always have been a problem with delta-sigma converters (my most of experience is with the first generation one-bit) that many people, including salesmen in the show rooms describe as "lack of the body" or "thin presentation". I describe it as follows: the tones with strong amplitude are presented clean on the expense of everything that happens in the background. The most affected are lower amplitude tones with frequencies that are very close to the dominant tone, but also the same for the harmonics. In that way any reverbations, interaction with wood of the instrument, overtones are filtered out, (partially) removed like an unwanted noise. The dominant tone is presented clean, but without body, like salesmen said. Our measurements do not cover such situation.

I think we should dispute how we should improve our test metodology. To address the above, lets say we will generate 5kHz -5dB tone with an associated 5.01kHz tone at -20dB, -40dB and then -60dB. Lets measure these signals on the output of the DAC to see dynamic linearity. We do linearity tests, but it is in a static way, with a single dominant tone, is not the same. Just in case if the modulator is removing variations of the frequency (making a tone more clean), we would modulate frequency of the 5.01kHz tone and find out whether modulation depth is preserved. I took 5.01kHz value quite arbitrary, it should be chosen as close to the main tone, subject to the measuring equipment resolution.

With Topping D30 I also noticed a serious fault, it may be related. A hammer of the piano hit not one, but two or three strings simultaneously. On my D30 piano sounds like it were detuned. It is not about accords, but hitting just a single key. It sounds like those three strings were not tuned alltogether. Very unpleasant effect and fatiguing. When there are three dominant tones of a similar apmplitude the cleaning process designed for outputing a tone clean is confused and is trying to alter these frequencies little-bit to achieve better resolution. Whooow! I will be put down for this...

Just 1 cent.
Theory #14,282,568 on why delta-sigma DACs aren't good birthed in pure sighted listening experience. Now you guys go and prove it isn't so.

SIGH!

Would you test your perceptions unsighted and show us you really hear these differences? Then maybe it would be worth our time to show the results of your proposed test which btw doesn't seem like much of a test nor supporting your contentions the way you seem to be visualizing them.
 

j_j

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Still I am not sure you know exactly - what is not there and never had been, so I am here again. BTW, I am not addressing anything to the "established experts" who require up the front to pay respect to them, while they respond in a generic way to some keywords, not a substance.

Don't lie about the responses directed to you, and stop avoiding providing information in regard to your test. If you are unwilling to fully detail your test methods, don't expect anyone to consider them.

Your continued arrogance suggests strongly to me that you are actually more interested in your (testably false) anti-delta-sigma agenda than you are in learning how to run a test.

There always have been a problem with delta-sigma converters (my most of experience is with the first generation one-bit) that many people, including salesmen in the show rooms describe as "lack of the body" or "thin presentation". I describe it as follows: the tones with strong amplitude are presented clean on the expense of everything that happens in the background. The most affected are lower amplitude tones with frequencies that are very close to the dominant tone, but also the same for the harmonics. In that way any reverbations, interaction with wood of the instrument, overtones are filtered out, (partially) removed like an unwanted noise. The dominant tone is presented clean, but without body, like salesmen said. Our measurements do not cover such situation.
Stuff and nonsense, any such errors in a convertor would pop right out of measurements at the very simplest error-signal level. And I haven't seen any of that except in lossy codecs, which are designed to do that to some extent.

I think we should dispute how we should improve our test metodology. To address the above, lets say we will generate 5kHz -5dB tone with an associated 5.01kHz tone at -20dB, -40dB and then -60dB. Lets measure these signals on the output of the DAC to see dynamic linearity. We do linearity tests, but it is in a static way, with a single dominant tone, is not the same. Just in case if the modulator is removing variations of the frequency (making a tone more clean), we would modulate frequency of the 5.01kHz tone and find out whether modulation depth is preserved. I took 5.01kHz value quite arbitrary, it should be chosen as close to the main tone, subject to the measuring equipment resolution.
I routinely do technical testing much, much more complex than that, on "dynamic" signals, "stationary" signals, and the like. Your complaints, though, about "dynamic" signals make it clear that you do not understand basic Fourier mathematics, since any "dynamic" signal with finite length or energy can be constructed of a set of continuous sine/cosine waves with proper weighting. That includes peaky signals, flat-enevelope signals, you-name-it. All electronic audio signals that can be represented in the real world.

YOU may do tests in a "more static way", but please stop imagining that you are in any fashion expert in making measurements. You've proven you aren't, just now.

Why do you wonder about things like "modulation depth". It's pretty clear that you may be mistaken on how a delta-sigma convertor works, as well.

As to your rest, get back to proper test procedures, or you're just reduced to trolling. Refusing to talk to the people with experience is simply a combination of arrogance and avoiding valid criticism. Both convince me you're not REALLY interested in getting thing right.
 
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