I probably shouldn't go here but ...... (- I understand some things about people's biases , or belief systems .........
But some of the things I don't understand are -- if we take for granted that we all tend to taste things differently - I don't like a particular bottle or brand of wine, or a particular kind of beer lets say - but maybe my buddy may really like it - no big deal , we may throw a few jibes back and forth, but nobody gets bent out of shape or starts a flame war --- same thing with the women I like, and you don't - or maybe I think a particular girl is beautiful - you don't agree you think girl "b" is better looking - again that's okay - no anger , no flame wars ------------ but you say you prefer a different sound of amplifier or that you can even hear the difference in amplifiers -- and people draw lines in the sand, and the flame wars and gang wars start....
- We can't know how someone else Exactly perceives things through their senses.... I think it's epitome of pride to think we now know how someone else does or doesn't hear things -- or that we know all there is to know about science and how the human ear or the brain works - that there is no measurement that we can't make, that can't not explain all there is to know about hearing and this audio hobby. --- Yes we know a LOT more than even a few years ago , and can explain why lets say, a lot of people like 2nd order distortion . But we know all?
- there was a time when we didn't even know there was such a thing as Quantum Science , and that wasn't that long ago ..... what don't we know today? ------------- )
But some of the things I don't understand are -- if we take for granted that we all tend to taste things differently - I don't like a particular bottle or brand of wine, or a particular kind of beer lets say - but maybe my buddy may really like it - no big deal , we may throw a few jibes back and forth, but nobody gets bent out of shape or starts a flame war --- same thing with the women I like, and you don't - or maybe I think a particular girl is beautiful - you don't agree you think girl "b" is better looking - again that's okay - no anger , no flame wars ------------ but you say you prefer a different sound of amplifier or that you can even hear the difference in amplifiers -- and people draw lines in the sand, and the flame wars and gang wars start....
- We can't know how someone else Exactly perceives things through their senses.... I think it's epitome of pride to think we now know how someone else does or doesn't hear things -- or that we know all there is to know about science and how the human ear or the brain works - that there is no measurement that we can't make, that can't not explain all there is to know about hearing and this audio hobby. --- Yes we know a LOT more than even a few years ago , and can explain why lets say, a lot of people like 2nd order distortion . But we know all?
- there was a time when we didn't even know there was such a thing as Quantum Science , and that wasn't that long ago ..... what don't we know today? ------------- )
🙂 - Sorry for the rant , i'm not a very good writer - - - but After years of reading all the different audio forums.... Iv'e wanted to say something like that so badly - 🙂
--------- Back to our regularly scheduled program - thank you for the suggestions so far. Anyone else come across an inexpensive dac that is amazing for the money --- or that can be easily tweaked ???????????????
--------- Back to our regularly scheduled program - thank you for the suggestions so far. Anyone else come across an inexpensive dac that is amazing for the money --- or that can be easily tweaked ???????????????
Hey its your thread, you're entitled to have a rant if you feel like it 😛
I'm currently working on a DIY DAC, I'm not sure if its likely your cup of tea as your previous DAC was a Buffalo and I figure those going for that kind of DAC are (in general) measurement-driven. Whereas my DAC is designed by listening, definitely not SoTA in terms of numbers. What's certain though is its well within your budget : Grossly parallel multibit DAC adventures
I'm currently working on a DIY DAC, I'm not sure if its likely your cup of tea as your previous DAC was a Buffalo and I figure those going for that kind of DAC are (in general) measurement-driven. Whereas my DAC is designed by listening, definitely not SoTA in terms of numbers. What's certain though is its well within your budget : Grossly parallel multibit DAC adventures
If you need great dac for cheap, you need to diy.
At the moment I'm using non oversampling pcm61 based dac with ad844 i/v. Feeding data through pi3>xmos.
It's best that I've ever heard. Because I did it 🙂
At the moment I'm using non oversampling pcm61 based dac with ad844 i/v. Feeding data through pi3>xmos.
It's best that I've ever heard. Because I did it 🙂
Btw, why do you need a Spidf input for the dac ? (Coax or Toslink ?)
Cause there are some nice dacs stacked on RaspBerry Pi , some have a very q/p ratio... cons, ask you time with IT things to let it work according your computer skills... the good side is you can hqve digital radio, stream from online digital contents or your computer, smartphone... nice learning curve. For 150 USD you may have something soundy.
Cause there are some nice dacs stacked on RaspBerry Pi , some have a very q/p ratio... cons, ask you time with IT things to let it work according your computer skills... the good side is you can hqve digital radio, stream from online digital contents or your computer, smartphone... nice learning curve. For 150 USD you may have something soundy.
Hi Hallcon,
Yep, all of the creatures we share our house with are throw aways by other people, but I can't imagine not having them here.
I am just starting to look at DACs, so I won't be of much help to you, but it seems you are getting some very learned suggestions.
I am lucky to have music-loving people at a local hifi shop who have indulged me on occasion with blind a/b listening tests on their nosebleed expensive reference system, using both Sabre and AKM 449x based dacs.
My opinion - there are differences in sound, but I can't point to a "better".
Some DIY alternatives on these forums I've been looking at:
dam1941 - Next Gen Discrete R-2R Sign Magnitude 24 bit 384 Khz DAC module
AK4490 USB Dac with dsd support.
These may be just out of your budget, but I do agree with an earlier post that to an extent you get what you pay for, although with the caveat that paying up by multiples to chase another 5% in SQ improvement is a very personal choice.
Best of luck with your search.
-K-
Looks to me like Evenharmonics and the Cowanaudio guy are two of the people for whom dacs really do not sound different. In other words, they appear to be mostly deaf to distortion of any type. However, they may hear other things quite normally or better than normal, possibly including things such as musical pitch. It is even possible that they are closer to normal than those of us in this forum who do hear distortion and sound quality quite distinctly.
My best guess to explain how such differences in hearing occur is in how brains self-organize to hear things that appear in conscious awareness as meaningful, such as words in a language that is spoken fluently, for example. However, we do not readily have the ability to memorize the sound of distortion for very long, unlike being able to remember the meaning of words. In a recent thread in another part of the forum PMA found that hearing small differences and proving it by ABX are two very different things. He found ABX much harder than just listening to differences, something people who haven't experienced it might not understand.
Returning to Evenharmonics for a moment, one may observe that he has turned into a one man crusader against believing sound quality differences can exist, and at the same time seems to think he is protecting other members from getting swindled from buying audio equipment that is more expensive than the cheapest available.
My best guess to explain how such differences in hearing occur is in how brains self-organize to hear things that appear in conscious awareness as meaningful, such as words in a language that is spoken fluently, for example. However, we do not readily have the ability to memorize the sound of distortion for very long, unlike being able to remember the meaning of words. In a recent thread in another part of the forum PMA found that hearing small differences and proving it by ABX are two very different things. He found ABX much harder than just listening to differences, something people who haven't experienced it might not understand.
Returning to Evenharmonics for a moment, one may observe that he has turned into a one man crusader against believing sound quality differences can exist, and at the same time seems to think he is protecting other members from getting swindled from buying audio equipment that is more expensive than the cheapest available.
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Okay then, getting back to dacs: Allo is very close to releasing a new ES9038Q2M dac with exceptionally good measurements. I listened to a pre-release version of it along with some other people and found it pretty good when powered from the Allo Shanti power supply and when mounted on their USBridge Sig ultra-low noise RPi device. The new 'Revolution' dac is USB so it could run from a PC once a Windows driver is released (I understand one is in the works). In the meantime there are USB drivers for Linux including RPi. Since RPi can act as a streaming bridge outputting I2S or USB, the new dac can be run from a PC by streaming from it to an RPi bridge and then into Revolution.
The new dac sounded very good considering its $200 or so price point. However, Shanti and USBridge Sig would bring up the cost significantly. Sound quality of Revolution (and indeed any Sabre dac I have heard) pales in comparison to a really good AK4499 dac, but AK4499 dacs start at a higher price point and will go up significantly too as sound quality improves in higher end models. I would not jump to buy the first ones out until we start hearing a number of sound quality reviews including some from especially competent reviewers (maybe some people who have other high performance dacs to compare with).
The new dac sounded very good considering its $200 or so price point. However, Shanti and USBridge Sig would bring up the cost significantly. Sound quality of Revolution (and indeed any Sabre dac I have heard) pales in comparison to a really good AK4499 dac, but AK4499 dacs start at a higher price point and will go up significantly too as sound quality improves in higher end models. I would not jump to buy the first ones out until we start hearing a number of sound quality reviews including some from especially competent reviewers (maybe some people who have other high performance dacs to compare with).
Someone else may prefer a little IMD, they may even call it "better". I'm sure you get my drift, better remains a pretty useless descriptor due to it's very personal nature, even more so on internet forums where it's very difficult to share the actual sounds being compared.
The measurement is not everything, but IME the objective performance is a very trustful barometer when we choose a DAC. Even a simple RMAA test result still means something. I have never heard a 100dB DAC that sound "subjectively" better than a 120dB DAC.
This is probably not because of the numbers, but because the designers who can design objectively excellent DAC know what he is doing, I guess.
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plasnu,
You make a good point. There was a recent Gustard dac (Sabre, not AK4499) with great numbers that impressed a lot of people. Reading forum posts from a bit later around the net, many people who bought the dac showed they were disappointed and felt some lower cost dacs sounded better.
I have seen the same effect in a dac sent to me for pre-release listening tests. It measured superbly (< -125dB!) but sounded flat, and muddled in low level details. They manufacturer made some changes that they thought helped fix the SQ issues, but the distortion numbers got a few dB worse. Not unusual, ifi once posted on a forum about how they learned the same lesson a long time ago, and that they now design for sound quality having priority over best possible measurements.
We can see the same thing in amplifiers, not just dacs. Some amplifiers that measure great sound sterile and fail in the marketplace. There are several where that happened according to my amp designer friend, Jam.
You make a good point. There was a recent Gustard dac (Sabre, not AK4499) with great numbers that impressed a lot of people. Reading forum posts from a bit later around the net, many people who bought the dac showed they were disappointed and felt some lower cost dacs sounded better.
I have seen the same effect in a dac sent to me for pre-release listening tests. It measured superbly (< -125dB!) but sounded flat, and muddled in low level details. They manufacturer made some changes that they thought helped fix the SQ issues, but the distortion numbers got a few dB worse. Not unusual, ifi once posted on a forum about how they learned the same lesson a long time ago, and that they now design for sound quality having priority over best possible measurements.
We can see the same thing in amplifiers, not just dacs. Some amplifiers that measure great sound sterile and fail in the marketplace. There are several where that happened according to my amp designer friend, Jam.
You've claimed multiple times that I'm on your ignore list and yet you've talked about what I do multiple times. 🙄
What kind of listening test was it? It's the same type as the one you did when visiting RNMarsh (Q: no procedures taken to match levels within 0.1 db between components under test. As for for visual bias control? A: None what so ever..... ), right? Here's the flaw with subjective tests like the one you did.
Markw4, yes, I had a chance to compare 2 different WM8740 based commercial DAC that sound a lot different but measure only a little different with RMAA. I could not find direct correlation between SQ and measurement there, but I don’t think I should completely ignore the measurement of course.
I would say it's all about implementation, especially Sabre. Here is my experience.
All the Sable boards I bought from China were both subjectively and objectively mediocre at their best, and I'll never buy any Chinese board again since I have little knowledge to improve them, nor I would never recommend to buy them.
On the contrary, the sound quality of reputable professional models from Lavry and Apogee are great, which also measure very well. I guess one of the reason why the professional models are good in general is, they are usually finalized by the feedback from recording and mastering engineers before public release. As you say, listening test should be very important. Then Lavry and Apogee (both Sabre) sound the same? No. They obviously target to different people. I bet you will laugh if you have a chance to compare them. 🙂
I would say it's all about implementation, especially Sabre. Here is my experience.
All the Sable boards I bought from China were both subjectively and objectively mediocre at their best, and I'll never buy any Chinese board again since I have little knowledge to improve them, nor I would never recommend to buy them.
On the contrary, the sound quality of reputable professional models from Lavry and Apogee are great, which also measure very well. I guess one of the reason why the professional models are good in general is, they are usually finalized by the feedback from recording and mastering engineers before public release. As you say, listening test should be very important. Then Lavry and Apogee (both Sabre) sound the same? No. They obviously target to different people. I bet you will laugh if you have a chance to compare them. 🙂
I'm fascinated that you are able to hear distortion products many tens of dB below the electronic and acoustic noise floor of your system. I'd love to know what loudspeakers you have with distortion products in the ppm range that don't mask the distortion from almost any competant DAC. Your unique abilities sound like a serious burden to me. How can you possibly enjoy any music that passed through professional quality electronics? I enjoy but never trust my slightly better than normal hearing.
The speakers aren't bad, Richard Marsh's JBL M2 speakers with my analog active crossover, a Benchmark AHB2 power amp for the horns, a something better than a Bryston 4B for the bass drivers.
Still, the speakers could be Yamaha NS-10, it wouldn't matter much for listening to distortion.
How do you know that hearing as processed in the brain is linear, meaning time invariance and all that goes along with that?
If you can't prove that then it is meaningless to assume Fourier applies.
If you can't prove the Fourier strictly applies to hearing then you can't assume that distortion is below any threshold of audibility or buried in noise since the music I am listening to is clearly above both and quite audible.
He hasn't verified to see if what he heard during his subjective auditioning is indeed due to the superiority of some DAC chip or just symptoms of level mismatch, placebo effect, expectation bias... etc. the usual audiophile myth.