Easy, peasy,
... having been there many times, I know how staggeringly good digital sound can be, my belief is that there are almost no limits as to the level it can rise to ... just that, at the moment, it'll take the real pioneers to show the way, hopefully without having taken too many arrows ... Frank
Howdy, PHEONIX ... I've been banging on about this in online forums for a couple of years now, and all the fine detail is there in my many posts. abraxalito, and a few others "get it", and their efforts in moving things forward should be closely monitored.
Anyway, the guts of it is that a lack of attention to detail is a killer for digital sound, as in, the gap between overwhelmingly unpleasant sound, and a brilliant, incredibly realistic musical event, can be disturbingly small in terms of what has to be done to a system. Unlike much analogue sourced sound, digital demands precision in how it is decoded to sound "musical", which is why typically only very expensive, or very carefully tweaked systems achieve top notch results.
The people at msb have a very good understanding on the need to be fanatical in how they go about everything, and hence they achieve good results. The fact that they "cloak" their message with PR about 26 bits, or whatever, is just part of a sales pitch which is easy for a customer to grab onto ...
There is plenty of info here in diyAudio, in a number of threads, about the sort of things that can, and should be done: improving power supplies, RF shielding, grounding schemes, filtering poor mains power, static effects, there are a myriad of things to be addressed. And the big problem is, if just one thing, just one, is left undone or not done sufficiently well, then it brings the whole edifice to its knees ... and you end up with that typical grey, boring, harsh, dreary, lacking in "musicality", digital playback which makes many people run to their TTs and tape machines ...
Frank
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but they got gazumped by a $50 "consumer grade" chip
It seems that the folks at ESS have a better understanding of the problems involved and how to solve them without making the consumer payout 10's of thousands
The thing is, what complete DAC out there has been able to match it with that msb, in an subjective evaluation by the obsessive, or fussy, using the ESS chips? Now, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with the Sabre parts, in fact they look very impressive to me, but until someone uses them in an audio component that can go head to head with say, the msb then the case is not "proven", so to speak.but they got gazumped by a $50 "consumer grade" chip
Which is my way of saying that there's a pretty nasty learning curve with digital; it's not trivial to extract good sound out of any particular chip. The msb people have taken a certain road, which is expensive to the end consumer, and perhaps down the track they may decide to go the ESS route, if someone else gets top notch sound from a unit using them.
As a complete contrast, I've been able to get very satisfying sound out of ordinary, el cheapo DAC chips, but I've had to go to probably extraordinary lengths by most people's estimation to make it happen. There are multiple ways to get there, but none of them are cheap and/or easy at the moment ...
Frank
Edit: about msb's power supplies not being "perfect", they don't have to be, they just have to function well enough that the normal poor quality digital sound problems don't arise. If it was all so easy to solve, in every scenario, then we would all be enjoying superb digital sound right now ...
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I just gave you an example of the Weiss DAC202. Plus it's one sixth of the price of that msb !!
Regarding power supplies does msb sell on weight, performance or the number of enclosures ??
So the ESS is only a 6 bit dac but measures significantly better than their 26 bit ladder dac !! What does that say about their dac ??
It says that their engineering skills suffer just as much as their marketing skills (they've been ridiculed all over the internet about their "6-bit" statements).
Perhaps, if they ask nicely and pay good money, Daniel Weiss and Samuel Groner could teach them a thing or twenty.
From the 202 measurements:
"The increase in bit depth drops the noise floor by an extraordinary 29dB, implying 21-bit resolution, which both readily allows the Weiss to decode a tone at –120dBFS (bottom pair of traces), and is the highest I have ever encountered. Wow!"
Oh, and the Weiss Medea+ is another "crappy 6bit" DAC from the same guys:
Design w Sound 2012 Weiss Medea+ Measurements
More expensive than the 202 but still sells for way less than that MSB joke.
HIFICRITIC, with Martin Colloms and others of the cream of the British hifi press, looked at the msb and Weiss DAC202 at the beginning of 2011, in the same issue. This magazine has a nice balance of the subjective, and objective measurements, and they acknowledge that the Weiss is ruler perfect in the numbers game. Yet, on a subjective marking scale the Weiss got 67, and the msb 200.
Some comments about the Weiss in the review: "tonality is not perfect", "hint of hardness in the midrange and a trace of grain in the treble", "fails to define leading edges as well as the best available", "not really the one for great dynamics and realistic rhythm and timing". These are the things that are important for audiophiles, so if you can point to subjective reviews that consider them to be on level pegging, please tell me ...
Frank
Hello Frank
Could you site the articles your talking about where these comparisons were made.
My I ask what these people consider the ultimate best sounding DAC is and what its subjective marking scale is.
so you find someone else who swears by the Weiss and then what ?
the problem with Weiss is that they didn't put a 43K price tag on their dac
Unfortunately, this is a subscription only mag, no ads - HIFICRITIC, audio review magazine, hi fi critic. The issue was Jan-Mar 2011.
The 2nd answer has already been given, the msb!! However, I only received one year's subscription so something else may have usurped it in the meantime. Some comments therein about the msb: "It just sounds more like live music than any other digital source that I have yet head", "difficult to criticise and find fault with something that has set such a high standard. No matter how well I thought I knew a recording, this (msb) managed to reveal still more", "It might be one of the most expensive DACs around, but it's also easily the best we've tried so far".
Frank
Jeez the Weiss does alright in the recommendation stakes as well but it still only uses that $50 consumer grade dac !! What a pity
Weiss :: High End : DAC202 FIREWIRE D/A CONVERTER
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I don't want to appear to be a defender of msb, for I once made a technical inquirery to them via e-mail and received a rather condescending response. That said, it is not an apples to apples comaprison to make between the msb discrete converter and the Sabre chip. The Sabre chip is a sigma-delta type converter, while the msb is a discrete resistor full dynamic range (16+ bit quantizer) converter. It's no small accomplishment that the msb converter achieves 21-bits of effective resolution with a discrete circuit design not utilizing feedback based error correction. Sigma-delta converters utilize discrete-time feedback based error correction to obtain low distortion figures while utilizing low dynamic range (1-6 bit) quantizers.
My take on the point of the msb converter approach is that some people simply feel that full dynamic range (16+ bit) quantizer based converters provide subjectively more natural sound. The closest available DAC IC to the msb approach is probably the 24 bit input PCM1704, which I don't believe provides better than around 18-19 bits of effective resolution. So, do I believe that this msb DAC is overpriced? Yes, I do. However, probabaly no more so than a number of other DACs which have appeared in this stratospherically high price range.
My take on the point of the msb converter approach is that some people simply feel that full dynamic range (16+ bit) quantizer based converters provide subjectively more natural sound. The closest available DAC IC to the msb approach is probably the 24 bit input PCM1704, which I don't believe provides better than around 18-19 bits of effective resolution. So, do I believe that this msb DAC is overpriced? Yes, I do. However, probabaly no more so than a number of other DACs which have appeared in this stratospherically high price range.
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I for one don't need high cost parts or assemblies to be part of a component to hold it in high esteem. It all comes down to the engineering skills that went into getting a result, whether as manufactured, or from intelligent tweaking to optimise, or correct weaknesses.Jeez the Weiss does alright in the recommendation stakes as well but it still only uses that $50 consumer grade dac !! What a pity
Good to hear that the Weiss has done well elsewhere, the score it got in HIFICRITIC is still very respectable and puts it in a bracket with other highly regarded units; but in a direct shootout with the msb the indications are that there would be a very clear winner, from all that I've read.
To put things into perspective, what I listen to personally, at the moment, would look quite ridiculous to a lot of people here, as in that it's an as cheap as chips setup. But, the point of the exercise is for it to be a disposable testbed, to investigate ideas of how far you can push nondescript equipment to get respectable sound. And the good news is that it's quite remarkable what can be achieved, if all the right areas are fiddled with.
Which means really, that virtually all systems out there can be lifted to excellent levels of performance if sufficient effort and attention to detail is applied -- a good thought to end this post on ...
Frank
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I for one don't need high cost parts or assemblies to be part of a component to hold it in high esteem. It all comes down to the engineering skills that went into getting a result, whether as manufactured, or from intelligent tweaking to optimise, or correct weaknesses.
Good to hear that the Weiss has done well elsewhere, the score it got in HIFICRITIC is still very respectable and puts it in a bracket with other highly regarded units; but in a direct shootout with the msb the indications are that there would be a very clear winner, from all that I've read.
To put things into perspective, what I listen to personally, at the moment, would look quite ridiculous to a lot of people here, as in that it's an as cheap as chips setup. But, the point of the exercise is for it to be a disposable testbed, to investigate ideas of how far you can push nondescript equipment to get respectable sound. And the good news is that it's quite remarkable what can be achieved, if all the right areas are fiddled with.
Which means really, that virtually all systems out there can be lifted to excellent levels of performance if sufficient effort and attention to detail is applied -- a good thought to end this post on ...
Frank
I honestly believe that if the Weiss was some in-house proprietary design with a 43K price tag you would probably be giving it the same glowing accolades
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Yeah, those "top hi-fi reviewers" surely have no incentive to promote the most expensive gear and pretend that there is a reason for their rag to exist.
They would be committing career suicide if they came up with any other conclusion. I would bet they actually do believe it sounds better.
They would be committing career suicide if they came up with any other conclusion. I would bet they actually do believe it sounds better.
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This post of Bruno's has some relevance when discussing MSB's dynamic range measurements, bearing in mind its of an older version of their DAC: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors-bazaar/190434-hypex-ncore-40.html#post2898757
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