Maybe it's okay now to briefly say something about the audibility of the file differences. They all sound different coming out of the DAC-1, although the differences are more or less small-ish.
Of the 16-bit files, file A sounds best to me, although not the same as the 24/96 file, this despite the fact that I don't hear high frequencies near as well as when I was much younger.
Since I don't think I have golden ears or anything like that, I will hazard a guess that if other people didn't hear differences, there might be something in their playback system that isn't performing as well as it seems like it should. We did see that some built-in computer sound cards have headphone amp outputs with THD+N specifications of -70 db, or so. Between that and headphone or other component performance characteristics that may not be fully specified by the manufacturers, there may be some logical explanation for no difference detected. Certainly, in a good mastering room the differences would probably be expected to be distinctly audible, although fairly small.
You only need a three word sentence to violate logic, but no worries mate, I would miss you too if you went absent.
Last edited:
BTW. Record a turntable. If it sounds different, it is different. Allowing for temperture and all factors the strength of sound of analogue sources is reasonably reliable. Denon DL110 has a temperature compensated suspension so helps in these winter days, that can be too hot or too cold when my kids want it tropical. It needs a special preamp to give it's best. If you have a Revox that's better still. If you like analogue has an accent.
Thanks for the results Mark. I guess that statistically the impressions I posted don't really mean much as its possible to put some spin on the results.
Its a real pity that more didn't post their impressions... however.
I did feel E stood out as being lacking in resolution in some way and that is one you mention as having some expected pre-ringing. Would that be the audible effect of that. I don't know
Thanks.
I will my impressions now, which are a null result in a rather quick listening over small speakers. You might need fresher ears to discern the differences in this test.
If it helps at all, I would describe the differences as sounding to me a lot like small differences in, or subtle flavors of, grainyness. To hear for one's self what people mean when they say grainy, reducing the bit depth of a file to lower and lower values tends to add more of what people often tend to describe as grainy and brittle. In theory, all that changes is quantization noise, but apparently it doesn't sound like white noise, or pink noise, or something of that nature. To many people words like grainy and brittle seem to describe the mental experience of hearing the noise.
As an aside, some early synths used only 12-bits. They don't sound particularly realistic, smooth, or lush by modern standards, but some people like them for the retro sound.
EDIT: VST plugins that can be used in Reaper and similar programs that reduce bit depth for musical effects purposes are often referred to as bit-crushers. I think there are some freeware ones around that should turn up with a Google search if anyone is interested in seeing what they sound like.
Last edited:
Phew I skipped the spoiler alert on a page refresh. So I still get a chance to listen. I feel bad as I requested these. The setup I have is linux using ALSA to output 24 bit over USB into a USB-SPDIF converter and into a relatively cheapy Beresford T7510. From there straight into the Koss electrostatics. Sadly the DAC has no lights for bit depth or sampling rate and I have no easy way of measuring the output to check that way. I know the converter is good though.
I didn't know what a Beresford T710 was, so I Googled it. It seems there is a great deal of controversy surrounding the proprietor and the product. Apparently he was banned from several forums where discussions had started about the T710. There were reportedly claims made to the effect that it sounds vastly superior to a Benchmark DAC-1. The second post here points to one summary: Beresford TC-7510 DAC - New kid on the block - ecoustics.com
EDIT: Published specs are here: http://www.beresford-dac.nl/TC-7510/specs.html Trying to make sense out of why frequency response and phase linearity would be given as they are.
Last edited:
It's certainly not the greatest product out there. I do know there was a rabid mod community around it, egged on by the designer. I picked it up very cheap as a stop gap about 6 years ago and its hung around ever since. Worth the £40 I paid as has switchable inputs so can hook everything up. I wasn't aware of the dedicated sock-puppeting though.
What is curious is that Beresford now sells from here home but the earlier models are available from the nl website you linked to.
Meh, now you know what carpy old stuff I use
What is curious is that Beresford now sells from here home but the earlier models are available from the nl website you linked to.
Meh, now you know what carpy old stuff I use
Meh, now you know what carpy old stuff I use
Don't feel too bad. I went through a succession of converters, preamps, mics, speakers, and amplifiers, fully convinced I could buy based on specs alone, before I finally settled on what I have now.
And I ignored or discounted advice from experienced professionals saying I should save up and invest selectively over time, spending what I can on a small number of well proven high quality products even though they may be expensive, rather than a larger quantity of cheaper gear.
Otherwise, they said, I would just end up getting rid of stuff later that wasn't satisfactory. Of course, it worked out exactly like they said and I was kicking myself.
At least I learned to be wary about specifications telling the whole story, and that there is often an enthusiasm bandwagon associated with the latest greatest products. At first they may be called stunning, until the next better thing comes along, anyway. Modeling guitar amplifiers come to mind for one example. They certainly demonstrated that digital is not always better, at least least not at price point anyone can afford to build to.
Oh I don't feel bad. As long as I can play music everything else is icing on the cake. Took me many years to get to that point though.
Ref the guitar modelling. Back in 90s where I worked there was a list of design commandments on the wall, one of which was 'trust not thy simulator lest the results beguile thee'. Accurately modelling something that analog can give you for free is a thankless task, although there are some very accurate synth models out there.
Ref the guitar modelling. Back in 90s where I worked there was a list of design commandments on the wall, one of which was 'trust not thy simulator lest the results beguile thee'. Accurately modelling something that analog can give you for free is a thankless task, although there are some very accurate synth models out there.
Meh, now you know what carpy old stuff I use
That unit looks suspiciously like a rebrand of a Chinese unit I bought years ago. Did you ever try an exactly full scale digital sine wave my unit clipped in the resampling filter? Otherwise a functional totally ordinary product.
entirely possible. Modifying the Beresford TC-7510 DAC | What Hi-Fi? has some pics with the lid off. I assume its a spec sheet wolfson implementation. It was certainly a step up from an old and tired TDA1541 that the CD player had in it.
Thanks, and yes there is a link to a generic Asian reference design house at the end ID'ing it.
Looks like there may have been an old Burr Brown part in the early versions: Repairs - Beresford TC-7510 Hi-fi DAC || ABELtronics
Ah yes sorry. Shows how much I treat it as a workhourse. Rule one is never mod something that you don't have a backup for. In this case no backup DAC so I ignored all those modding guides. Plus having a crudy 4558 gives it rocknroll cred
But it's certainly not worth pooging. Money better spent elsewhere! For example if upgraditis gets me on the miniDSP I can put these in https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidspkits/curryman-i2s-dac .
But it's certainly not worth pooging. Money better spent elsewhere! For example if upgraditis gets me on the miniDSP I can put these in https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidspkits/curryman-i2s-dac .
Ah yes sorry. Shows how much I treat it as a workhourse. Rule one is never mod something that you don't have a backup for. In this case no backup DAC so I ignored all those modding guides. Plus having a crudy 4558 gives it rocknroll cred
But it's certainly not worth pooging. Money better spent elsewhere! For example if upgraditis gets me on the miniDSP I can put these in https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidspkits/curryman-i2s-dac .
I see open loop JFET buffer by our very own JG. BTW the FET buffers on that preamp I showed were not matched by Idss but rather I picked a current (5mA) and used a little spread sheet with Idss and Vp data to compute what source resistor gives exactly 5mA for 25@ N and P channel and picked ones that were close to the same value. In my case 4 or 5 of each flavor were close to 26 Ohms (standard value). So no trimming or individual picking of FET's and resistors right out of the bin and all offsets were <1mV and distortion was near the min possible (need some theory on that).
unvarnished truth... I thought that it would simplest to just drop the wav files on to a CDR and see what that did. Mucroshaft's Media disaster burned 3 useless CDRs that would not let them be recognized, then finally it made one that was quickly recognized and all the sound on it was glitched. PLUS that worthless bag of puke shaftware has a hidden check box in the options that is normal'd to set the volume max to "0" - dunno if it does it for each track or based on the whole selection of tracks, or what. Of course the one that worked and glitched is the one where I turned it off... of course.
I used to have EAC, which simply worked.
Plus it would deglitch "iffy" discs and save them from the dustbin, which was useful for things like live recordings that go "over used" and ought to have been backed up and copied from the start, and that were not super hifi to begin with, just the performance was cool.
So, since I migrated to a Win7 laptop, and the EAC was like 4-7 laptops back, and that was XP, etc... it never survived the disc crashes and the like, and now it is bye-bye.
What else is free, non-invasive, hopefully open source (so it is not mining my drive), and effective for burning CDRs these days?
So this is why I did not respond earlier, also not much time for these things right now, and I may try to make this laptop talk to the USB input on the DAC, but since this laptop has not done this trick as I have not tried it yet, who knows what it will do or not do, and I really don't want to spend very much time dorking with stupid Win7 trying to get it to do something that it ought to be able to do without dorking - thanks so much Mucroshaft.
I didn't look at the post about what was what.
I did listen to the tracks with halfway decent headphones off the laptop and couldn't stand what I heard, but that's not an indicator of much... really have tamborine right up there with cow bell. MORE COW BELL!!
I used to have EAC, which simply worked.
Plus it would deglitch "iffy" discs and save them from the dustbin, which was useful for things like live recordings that go "over used" and ought to have been backed up and copied from the start, and that were not super hifi to begin with, just the performance was cool.
So, since I migrated to a Win7 laptop, and the EAC was like 4-7 laptops back, and that was XP, etc... it never survived the disc crashes and the like, and now it is bye-bye.
What else is free, non-invasive, hopefully open source (so it is not mining my drive), and effective for burning CDRs these days?
So this is why I did not respond earlier, also not much time for these things right now, and I may try to make this laptop talk to the USB input on the DAC, but since this laptop has not done this trick as I have not tried it yet, who knows what it will do or not do, and I really don't want to spend very much time dorking with stupid Win7 trying to get it to do something that it ought to be able to do without dorking - thanks so much Mucroshaft.
I didn't look at the post about what was what.
I did listen to the tracks with halfway decent headphones off the laptop and couldn't stand what I heard, but that's not an indicator of much... really have tamborine right up there with cow bell. MORE COW BELL!!
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.