I have a stash just like some folks do on matches Toshiba pairs.
Once they are gone, it’s back to the Linear stuff
????
John, please, oh, please, if it is true that something that measure right do not necessary sound right, when something is wrong, it measure wrong.
Agree ?
Had-you seen the measurements results ? Amazing.
SNR - A weighted: 128sB
thd+N: 0.00022 %
Frequency response: 20 to 20K: +0, -0.015 dB
Compare with your vinyl !!!!!
Digital filters ? You have the choice between 4 of them, at your preference, and, I'm sorry for your friend, but they all look as working as expected.
Near everybody say that it is almost impossible to distinguish them (At my own surprise, my point of view too.).
Anyway, you talked with SOTA ? This DAC is THE SOTA.
Do something on your own instead of listening to some friends opinions that do not own your ears:
Record in digital some LP you like, and listen to the result with your evaluation board. You will find some very subtle différence, may-be ?
The kind of difference an analog guy is able to work on it, are-you not ?
They use AD797 ? Do your own. You have a lot to work on; on the analog side: power supplies etc...
Now, sorry to say this, but if you do not try-it, I believe the problem is you don't like HIFI.
Your answer look to me like somebody sayin', looking at the photography:" I prefer painting".
Hifi is not paint art, it is photography. All the art of a photograph, and you know-it, is to make the sharp image... enjoyable.
How can you not take up the challenge? How can you so lack curiosity and appetite, desire?
Wake up, John and go figure: THE John Curl DAC !
It is a pity to look at you sayin in loop, "i dislike digital". Vinyl is dead and we just can put some flowers on its thumb.
My words are brutal, forgive me, you know they can not be friendlier, brotherly.
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You can get to 0.7nV/rtHz with three BF862's in parallel.
Now, of course that's not goof enough for some folks.
😉
John's position seems understandable to me. So does yours. You would have be listening to the same sources at the same time in the same place to see what each other are listening to and or listening for.
Also, IME lots of things can obscure potentially audible subtleties of a dac. In addition, some dacs measure pretty closely and sound rather different. Either nobody has studied exactly why that is, or if they have then it must be proprietary research. My guess would be that numbers like THD-N are simply too coarse to correlate with how some people hear. Then there is the issue that S-D modulators can sound very different even if they reproduce sine waves with very low distortion. Two different modulators may react differently when dynamics vary a lot in music, for example.
Of course, I agree with you, Mark. on each and every points.
What we are listening "to and for" is the right question.
Magnetic tapes are enjoyable, They help to produce enjoyable sounds in the mixes, specially in the basses. Bandwidth decrease as the level increase, and nice distortion is added. Square waves are softened. and the noise and the intermodulation help to the coherency of the total message. Like grease in the cooking. But it is not hifi. Not at all.
Vinyl adds a blur on everything. It leaves more room to our brains for imagination and recreation. Because we do not hear them so clearly, we can forgive all the blunders of the musicians and the sound engineers.
Digital brings everything in a crude light. A terrific precision for the ones that are not used with what goes out from a mixing desk slide ;-)
Listening to digital, we have to change our way to listen. Micro and macro-dynamic, little details that we never notice with analog tapes, presence,
separation etc. And it forgives nothing.
What we have to work on, for the best result, when we are about digital design, is to transform harness in ease and fluidity, emptiness in material presence. All about voices and percussions. And to remove some confusion when the message is too complex, that brings fatigue. All this is in the analog domain (even in the digital side) Power supplies, analog stages. Up to us, up to the DIYer.
You say DAC sound different ? It is something like a subtle character. The mysterious thing that measurements do not enlighten. And there is the room for the designer that use its ears, in opposition to the pure scientific engineer ;-)
If I questioned John so brutally, it's because it is (was ?) his favorite field: the character of the reproduction. But of course, we all had to change our minds with digital: We don't look for the same thing, driving a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce.
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In rare occasion, I agree with you. I would add matched volume level.
Was your experience same sources at the same time in the same place at matched volume?
First, 0.4nV/rt Hz, while not amazing today, was considered 'impossible' without a transformer, back 46 years ago when Mark Levinson introduced the JC-1 pre-preamp at the AES in 1973. Yes, people can do it today, but not without effort, AND balanced makes it 4 times more difficult. How about that? That is why I put the Constellation schematic up to compare. That is the subject at hand. Get it yet?
T, I wish I could speak French in but a fraction of the ways you express so well in to you a foreign language, I hear and understand you perfectly.
What we are listening "to and for" is the right question.
That is a multi question, dependent on circumstance with ease I switch and blend listening modes between critique mode and musical enjoyment mode....the sounds in the kitchen and in the garage (and back fence) tell the truth.
Magnetic tapes are enjoyable...
Yes, and each emulsion formulation has character and with level and frequency dependencies.....and other behaviours that can be subjectively agreeable, sort of.
Vinyl adds a blur on everything...
Yes, a dithering blur and another set of dependencies that can be agreeable...or not.
Interestingly the vinyl formulation used adds/injects/affects/effects particular character/signature to the sound at a base level.....there are treasured releases that got the mastering/pressing process 'just right', and it wasn't just the mastering responsible.....the actual vinyl is critically important.
Digital brings everything in a crude light.
In nakedly rude light yes, crude not so much unless really bad digital.
If 'on stage' sounds good, this will be captured to the 24bit degree.
The problem is playback and here are so many variables.....filtering, dac ops, clocking, stages earthings etc.
Digital done right eliminates a bunch of analog tape and vinyl 'idiosyncrasies' that although sometimes sounding pleasurable are not the documantary 'Zeiss' lens view that really good digital can provide.
The letdown of 44k digital is the lack of 'highs/air' that vinyl gives freely, but when it is realised that this 'air' can be least partly artificial the love of vinyl diminishes.
All about voices and percussions....And to remove some confusion when the message is too complex, that brings fatigue.
Yes, these are the critical factors, when these are not reproduced pitch and timbre correctly the 'uneducated' cook and the 'uneducated' mechanic both will complain freely and without prompting...take heed.
So many here are bogged down in the finest minutiae of electronic/schematic design, or physical/component implementations......these approaches are of course correct but there are overriding 'subtle energies' at play in every audio system that need to be understood to achieve real progress and proper listening satisfaction.
I recently posted 'loopback processed' versions of a particular audio 'grab' in another thread.
I have in the past day 'processed' other tracks including a Whitney Houston track mentioned a few pages back and conclude that vinyl sound can be 'injected' at will, and more so the provenance of the particular vinyl is perfectly audible.....next experiment will involve known tape formulations.
Add to this, playback systems can be strongly dependent on the source material.....iow a really good playback system is 'plastic' in a good sense, and lesser systems are rigid in 'masking' or 'ordering' that overrides nuances in the programme material...this is called 'system signature' that becomes more evident the more time and the more tracks that are played on such a system.
I can post the Whitney Housten loopback recordings to Dropbox for you all to audition....the results are clearly different on my system, YMMV.
Somebody suggest favourite tracks and I can post them on another thread......'There's none so deaf as those who will not hear'.
Dan.
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When it comes to digital, I just don't find that anything that I could afford, and even mod will keep me really happy, so far.
Markw4 is the only guy here who actually compares DAC's and he has been very helpful with his input. Keep inputting Mark! I can learn from your experience.
Markw4 is the only guy here who actually compares DAC's and he has been very helpful with his input. Keep inputting Mark! I can learn from your experience.
Now, getting back to the original Vendetta, that originated 35 years ago or so, this input circuit is one of the most linear and 'streamlined' in existence and has 2'd harmonic cancellation, even nulling, built in. Try that single sided! I put this 'advanced' circuit up to show some of its features that you can learn from. It is a different way of designing, if you can use it. Of course it is not the only 'elegant' input stage in existance, but 'horses for courses' it is probably the best for MC input. For an oscilloscope input, etc, I would look to Barrie Gilbert or D. Feucht, and I am sure there are lots of other examples out there. The challenge is to do what is necessary RIGHT, with minimum tradeoffs. That is what good engineering is all about.
vinyl albums had been recorded digitally for years and reissues were all digitally remastered.
You fail to mention just how much the choice of speakers influence the sound.
My purpose was not to make an exhaustive conference on audio (Oh, Lord !), Just an other effort to bring John back to our time. Obviously in vain.
T, work in progress is mostly analog. Digital is just not good enough for me at any reasonable price, (under $5000) so far as I can tell or hear. If I had a lot of CD's that I wanted to sound their best, I would probably go to MSB. I have been told good things about them from people I trust. Have you looked at their prices? Right up there with Constellation.
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Cmon John.
Single sided or single ended with a JFET means even with heavy overload distortion you get only 2nds, 3rds and some 4ths. Higher harmonics mean you must be doing something really bad. And on an MC input, you will never get more than 30mV out with a 500 uV input.
If you want low distortion, then wrap an opamp around the whole thing like Denis Colin’s LP797 or Syn08’s design.
I’m using a BF244 single ended front end for MC with a gm helper and the distortion at 50 mV out is only 10’s of ppm.
Many ways to peel an orange!
Look closer Bonsai. I am making a fully complementary class A input stage. It is push-pull, and therefore cancels out 2,4, etc distortion. The 2'nd can even be completely nulled by adjusting a trimpot (20ohms) You can't do that single sided.
(Thanks for the compliment, but, to be honest, my poor English shames-me.
May-i add that, we, in Europa, had locally released vinyls copies of the US productions. That were, most of the time, poor sounding in comparison to the US vinyl, reason why we used to pay more for "imports".
On my experience, vinyl remove a lot of "treble shining" from the original mix.
In return it cuts a lot of unwanted harmonics, like distortions*.
Because of this, it was a common practice to sculpt the monitors response curve in such a way they reproduce more or less those losses that, instinctively, the mixer will compensate. That explain, may-be why, at the beginning of digital, the CD sounded so agressive, not having those losses. hence, its reputation. Masters of this period reissued in Digital need to be carefully equalized, in comparison with the vinyl issued from them. That is not always done in a happy way.
That I called character ?
* There i something TOO much and unnatural in the trebles of most of the hifi system I have heard.
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