Yeah I have an oppo bdp95 with dual mono Sabre DACs and it's no where near as musically engaging as my Elac DS-S101-G with an old CS4398.
AKM are using the term "switching resistor dac" to describe the AK4499. What exactly does this mean?
I’ve got one of these also, love it! It’s a highly underrated piece of gear that hasn’t really gotten traction.
Although it’s the CS4350 (Actuallly two @ 109db) with BB OPA2134.
Thanks
These guys are saying CS4398
ELAC Discovery Series DS-S101-G Music Server | AudioStream
I will check my manual
EDIT: Manual doesn't specify which DAC.
Anyway, yeah I love the Elac, such a well thought out product, and using Roon, bloody nice.
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Elac Discovery DS-S101-G The Tech, Reviews, The Hans Beekhuyzen Project
New update says the 30k track limit is lifted now to unlimited!
Edit, sorry for the interruption.......now back to the regular scheduled programming.
New update says the 30k track limit is lifted now to unlimited!
Edit, sorry for the interruption.......now back to the regular scheduled programming.
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Pico and Bob,
I think you guys will find that AK4499 is in another league from what you are used to. The Topping D90 at its price point is well worth the cost IMHO. It sounds quite good even with native 16/44, and if you can upsample to DSD256 using Roon or HQ Player, CDs sound even better. It beats my old Benchmark DAC-3 for sound quality, which cost me a lot more $$$. If you know somebody that has a D90 you might want to check it out, see what you think. Of course, the sound of a dac is affected by power amps, speakers, and rooms. They better those things are the more its possible to hear the dac at its best. ...Hey, at least we aren't hot-rodding cars
I think you guys will find that AK4499 is in another league from what you are used to. The Topping D90 at its price point is well worth the cost IMHO. It sounds quite good even with native 16/44, and if you can upsample to DSD256 using Roon or HQ Player, CDs sound even better. It beats my old Benchmark DAC-3 for sound quality, which cost me a lot more $$$. If you know somebody that has a D90 you might want to check it out, see what you think. Of course, the sound of a dac is affected by power amps, speakers, and rooms. They better those things are the more its possible to hear the dac at its best. ...Hey, at least we aren't hot-rodding cars
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I am referring to oversampling, filtering etc.
Distortion at -116dB is already inaudible, same with signal to noise of -128dB, already inaudible.
If you look at what companies like Chord and DCS spend their R&D dollars on it’s eliminating jitter, and playing around with filters using much higher powered FPGA chips and writing their own code.
This seems to be what AKM is trying to achieve with their separate chips and increasing over sampling to 256x etc.
Distortion at -116dB is already inaudible, same with signal to noise of -128dB, already inaudible.
If you look at what companies like Chord and DCS spend their R&D dollars on it’s eliminating jitter, and playing around with filters using much higher powered FPGA chips and writing their own code.
This seems to be what AKM is trying to achieve with their separate chips and increasing over sampling to 256x etc.
I should have specified I was referring to the oversampling spec.
“ The AKM AK4191EQ ........ has increased the oversampling rate of digital processing to 256x from the previous 8x. This allows for aliasing artifacts due to sampling to be driven even further into the upper frequency range. Additionally, the AK4191’s digital filters can reduce noise by 50 dB more than previous devices.”
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Pico,
We already know about the new AKM chips. Eval boards should be out pretty soon, but mass production of chips not expected to start until another year after that. May take longer to get consumer dac products out there.
How do you know we can't hear -116dB distortion, somebody told you and you believed it? Of course, we get that all time around here. How about -96dB distortion? Yep, some people can hear it, not even controversial. Simply make a CD without using any dither. There is truncation distortion at the boundary between the 16th bit and the truncated 17th bit. Using a figure of 6dB per bit gives the truncation level as -96dBFS.
Now, hearing -116dB distortion is controversial for sure, but remember that stationary nonlinear distortion is usually measured as harmonic distortion. Play music and that same stationary nonlinearity produces IMD at a much higher level. What you are hearing then, -116dB distortion? Not exactly, but you are hearing distortion that was characterized in specifications as having been measured at -116dB HD.
We already know about the new AKM chips. Eval boards should be out pretty soon, but mass production of chips not expected to start until another year after that. May take longer to get consumer dac products out there.
How do you know we can't hear -116dB distortion, somebody told you and you believed it? Of course, we get that all time around here. How about -96dB distortion? Yep, some people can hear it, not even controversial. Simply make a CD without using any dither. There is truncation distortion at the boundary between the 16th bit and the truncated 17th bit. Using a figure of 6dB per bit gives the truncation level as -96dBFS.
Now, hearing -116dB distortion is controversial for sure, but remember that stationary nonlinear distortion is usually measured as harmonic distortion. Play music and that same stationary nonlinearity produces IMD at a much higher level. What you are hearing then, -116dB distortion? Not exactly, but you are hearing distortion that was characterized in specifications as having been measured at -116dB HD.
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What info are you looking for? We know some things, but crystal balls are in short supply
I have a Keysight U8903B distortion analyzer and routinely do these types of measurements.
Once you go beyond 100dB, it's kind of like saying "my new Ferrari is 2 mph faster than my old Ferrari, but all I ever do is drive it to work"
Power supplies, pcb layout, filters, discrete or chip analogue output stage etc have a far greater affect on the sound than distortion numbers of the dac when you reach figures above 110dB.
Not saying it's impossible to hear such differences but it's far less significant than the other design problems.
Scenario: When you connect your dac with 0.0005% distortion to a tube amp with 1% THD and compare with dac with 0.0002%, 1.0005% vs 1.0002%, it's kind of meaningless. Same could be said about speakers with all their inherent problems.
There certainly are audible difference between DACs, I am not convinced that the differences we actually can hear are those associated between a dacs measuring -117dB and -130dB.
I personally feel timing errors are more offensive to our ears.
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True, but after you bust your behind fixing all those things, then you are back to hearing the dac distortion. Also, what I find and what I think Jam has been finding is that fixing all those other problems you know about improves sound in ways we don't know how to measure so easily. Where people go wrong with measurement is when they overdo it to produce perfect sine waves but don't listen to how music sounds. There is a path to proper optimization and I think we know to do it pretty well with AK4499 at this point. What's wrong with D90 sounds like its mostly in the clocking and in the output stage. Of course, if we peel back those layers of the onion we might find the next set of problems
What info are you looking for? We know some things, but crystal balls are in short supply
I was expecting you to sweet talk AKM to get your hands on some early engineering samples.