YouTube DAC Comparison -- Of course flawed but interesting none the less

[dtaylo1066]

Sound signatures? Bright? Warm? Rythm and pace? Winner? Loser? Well, my ears hear no particular difference. They all sound pretty damn good, even the Audio GD which sister units have had poor measurements on ASR. Yes it is a recording of a recording over speakers and on YouTube, I get that, but levels seem well matched, and while it's 100% subjective based on one's hearing, some insight can be gained. My insight: There appears to be little or no difference in these DACs in this sytem.

 

[Mnyb]

Sound signatures? Bright? Warm? Rythm and pace? Winner? Loser? Well, my ears hear no particular difference. They all sound pretty damn good, even the Audio GD which sister units have had poor measurements on ASR. Yes it is a recording of a recording over speakers and on YouTube, I get that, but levels seem well matched, and while it's 100% subjective based on one's hearing, some insight can be gained. My insight: There appears to be little or no difference in these DACs in this sytem.

The flaws in this method are magnitudes bigger than any differences they might strive to capture. “Seems level matched” won’t do either . One can watch these as fun product presentation at best , but one can not really draw any conclusions about sound quality.

DAC’s have very very small differences they would get lost even if you did a straight line level recording without a microphone and then applied a codec like opus or similar like YouTube do.

You migth catch cross fr deviations or really bad noise levels.

 

[DonR]

A musician can have good rhythm and pace, audio reproduction equipment cannot.

 

[JSmith]

They're not using any cable lifters... test is negated, invalid, moot.


JSmith

 

[Mnyb]

Thinking about it , why don they just capture DAC’s at line level when doing DAC comparison why fuss about with speakers room acoustics and microphones which in itself have magnitudes larger impact than a DAC ? Weird ?

This could sort of maybe work a little for speakers to get the general tonality, if listened to trough headphones ? You get differences you can hear but it’s unclear if they really represent the speaker properly ?

 

[voodooless]

There is very little to see here. In the track with the symbals at around 7:00 I think I hear the Audio GD fuck up: it seems to have a lot more busy symbals. The one after sounds cleaner. But it could also just be me hating on the R2Rs . Otherwise it’s a wash, especially given these kinds of scenarios and setup.

 

[dtaylo1066]

A musician can have good rhythm and pace, audio reproduction equipment cannot.

I am being facetious or tongue in cheek when using those descriptors. Yes, this test his highly flawed and totally subjective. But I still think interesting. It is recorded decently and the sound quality of the system is impressive, and the person took great time and effort to create the video. The point that is clear to me, as non scientific as this demonstration might be, is that there seems to be no perceptible difference between what DAC was empolyed.

 

[Mnyb]

I am being facetious or tongue in cheek when using those descriptors. Yes, this test his highly flawed and totally subjective. But I still think interesting. It is recorded decently and the sound quality of the system is impressive, and the person took great time and effort to create the video. The point that is clear to me, as non scientific as this demonstration might be, is that there seems to be no perceptible difference between what DAC was empolyed.

My point is that this kind of test can't convey this. It's simply impossible to know in any direction. You can't make any conclusions about the equipment only on what you hear in the video.
There could have been small DAC diffrences at the test (there is an audio GD there after all) but the video and recording tech would have glossed over all of that? So, the information is lost

 

[Gradius]

You need to be there, IN PERSON, to really hear (and compare) something.