It's not designed for those, it's designed for earbuds and tiny IEMs. I'm not sure why this is a serious set of posts because it was (obviously?) a joke / sarcasm.
It's perfectly fine driving the loads it was intended to, and better than that at line level, which is what the posts were getting at. It seems to embarrass the line level output of quite a few expensive standalone DACs based on some of the measurements.
It's perfectly fine driving the loads it was intended to, and better than that at line level, which is what the posts were getting at. It seems to embarrass the line level output of quite a few expensive standalone DACs based on some of the measurements.
@Mark, what is needed is a better nit comb - one that gets at those invisible nits the standard combs miss 😀
It would be interesting to see some reports of listening impressions of that $9 IOS adapater DAC & see if these measurements tell the whole story?
It would be interesting to see some reports of listening impressions of that $9 IOS adapater DAC & see if these measurements tell the whole story?
This is the second time those results have been posted and with exactly the same response from Mark in both cases. This thread really pulls people down.
I have 3 of them but I don’t use them for anything but their intended purpose. In that role, my modestly priced IEMs are the bottleneck. My main systems are all balanced and digital in so I’ve never tried to use it as a standalone DAC.
I’ll save you some trouble and tell you that you won’t like it in listening impressions because it’s tiny, cheaply made, and only supports 48 kHz PCM.
@ Bill. Yep, same old same old, talk talk, no one actually does anything, what's the betting Jakob will be by shortly with more?
??? why bring this up here ... are earbuds the highest performance? Rather the planar types are much better.
Really low distortion driving high distortion ear buds? Whats the point in that?
THx-RNMarsh
Because the point is AS A DAC it appears to tick all the boxes for up to 48kHz sampling. You have your own headphone amp after all.
I'm not sure if I get the gist of this message....?!
What I meant was, that saying "that music is not only sinewaves" (as part of the explanation why the number race had not led to nondetectable differences between amplifiers) and hunting for the lowest possible THD numbers (preferable zero) is not mutually exclusive.
As I've stated before (more precisely, tried to state), the THD numbers aren't useless, and a plot over frequency is even more useful, but they are not telling the whole story.
Which indeed is great, but according to the other camp, that was already so for at least 35 years. 😉
(You know, conclusion drawn by looking at the published measured numbers and comparing it to the known threshold of hearing 🙂 )
As Bill said, it was being compared to the line outputs of other DACs not headphone amps.
No one here is dumb enough to insist a dongle that I have trouble keeping track of is going to drive heavy planar magnetic headphones.
I still think Bruno was just pandering to the audience. If you read the interview he does give some interesting pointers to his listening for specific artifacts and how he has focussed a lot of effort on clipping recovery (both voltage and current clipping). Bruno is remarkably astute in that sense.
Not sure, why you see it that way.
It was an information illustrating the context of the message "cheap can do it" (words to that effect), isn't it worth mentioning under which conditions it can do it and when it can not?
Quite innocent one line in a post without any push/boost ....
Of course that could be, can't read his mind. 🙂
But, as usual I wonder why the bias based interpretation (the nice one in this case) "plays the press/public" is more convincing than the other one "is just honesty reporting what he thinks and is doing" , which still includes the possibility that he might be mistaken.
which is always one of the favourite jokes, someone complaining about "ad hoc obfuscting BS" while exactly providing that by his complaint. 😎
Because I have read a lot of things Bruno has said on here and in interviews. He is very numbers driven. That is my interpretion. You are welcome to think of another. But I think his feedback article pretty much nails his philosophy.
Here is what Bruno wrote in February about his new amplifier:
Ncore design refinement
His design goals seem rather clear to me.
Ncore design refinement
His design goals seem rather clear to me.
I think this is a known fact. When our brain does not get visual stimuli, it automatically allocate more resources to auditory processing.
I always dim the light when listening to music.
~Kecap
I meant it that way; why not start with the assumption that his statement were a honest description of what he does and come to the conclusion that there is no contradiction, instead of starting with the assumption that a contradiction exists and he (therefore) must be "pandering the press/customers/whoever"?
Maybe someone could place a question about that at the ASR-Forum?!
Can we get something clear? Mathematically, music is only sine waves; that is the frequency domain view, which is fully equivalent to the time domain view. I am sure Bruno is well aware of that, so he must have meant something else by his troll-feeding statement. Perhaps he meant 'music is not one continuous sine wave at a fixed frequency'? Having said that, someone will now pop up with an example of music which is approximately just a sine wave.
You take one sentance and analyse just those words. I take it in the context of thousands of words by him that I have written. Taking a few words out of context will give a different answer and we are unlikely to reach a consensus on this point.
So what? Sennheiser HD-800 just fine, and I thought the DAC performance was what we were talking about or does that not matter and only the headphone driver does? Do you think the guys that designed that DAC can't design a driver if a different market became important? The ESS applications I've seen all use an external driver (usually a re-purposed ADSL driver or new design based on the same topology). If Mark would kindly use an ESS DAC with their internal driver as a comparison it would be fair.
Last edited:
Perhaps, but you seem to be confusing tavern talk with "investigation". If I am mistaken and you have actually done some work in this area, I would love to hear about it.
That's another assumption. 🙂
While I obviously can't decide if I have read the same statements from Putzeys or the same amount of words, my interpretation (which it is surely too) is indeed based on lot's of Putzey's statements/articles I've read. And in addition, as I share the number addiction, but know that they often don't tell the whole story, I don't think that the contradiction exists.
It seems as if we must agree to disagree, but thanks for the chat. 🙂
- Status
- Not open for further replies.