There's no freedom of speech on a forum.
you post at the pleasure of the board owner; he expects you to obey the rules; you agreed to do so when you opened your account. As a reminder:
THE RULES
NOT ALLOWED:
Disruptive behavior of any sort, including offensive language, trolling, threadjacking, insults, intimidation, harassment or other disrespectful or antisocial behavior.
FYI that's you and the other guy.
Do you realise that this post contravenes those rules far more than anything I have written.
You are trying to shut me up simply because I've said things you don't like or agree with. I have never done, nor will ever do that.
I RESPECT YOUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH, YOU RESPECT MINE!
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I haven't done any measurements, but I have no reason to believe they would be any different those already quoted in this thread.
The only modification I have done, is to replace the op amp with a genuine NE5532P. To be honest, as a budget DAC it doesn't sound too bad. I certainly don't agree that it sounds "terrible".
Most of us did that, personally I went LM4562 to start with and then I continued down various other routes....
1) stripped the unnecessary parts of the boards
2) replaced some of the capacitors
3) separated the power lines to the DAC
4) replaced/reconstructed the IV stage which is the biggest improvement
There loads more to try, it's just nice to find friendly people to share ideas and views with, we don't always agree with everyone, but that's life.
Most people seem to find that to be the case, along with AVCC supplies. Those directly affect what comes into the I/V stage (since AVCC has zero PSRR).
By the way, the original output stage design on the board is not I/V, its a voltage mode output stage. Measured distortion in voltage mode was found to be around -73dBFS, IIRC.
Its possible to get ES9038Q2M distortion much lower, I know of someone who got it down to -127dBFS measured with an AP. The person found it sounded better with the distortion back up around -120dBFS where ESS says it should be. They added too many caps of the wrong kind and in the wrong places on the opamp power rails in order to get measured distortion as low as possible. The surprise (to them) was that overdoing it was possible.
Back to mods discussed/recommended in this thread for one last point, after I/V and AVCC mods, perhaps the next most bang for buck mod is the ability to reduce DPLL bandwidth in the dac control registers.
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If it is your belief that there is no way to make a modern DAC to improve in sound, all your posts are just troll. If you have something to say about mod to DAC, such as your replacing the opamp with "genuine" NE5532P, you are entitled to describe the improvement you measure or hear. And we will appreciate your contribution.
BTW, I have a PHD in engineering from University of Minnesota, but not a pair of golden ears. I do not share your opinion on subjective listening. You can search my post on this thread by my user name. I (personally) cannot hear the effect of lowering DAC THD to -120dB. I appreciate the work Markw4 does and his response to my post of much more moderate mod. It is a pleasure to read his post, but not yours.
Going back to the exchange between you and Jacob2, Jacob2 wrote much more clearly scientically and convincing than you do. Just my personal opinion.
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You have every right to your opinion, but no right to tell me what I can say or do.
I do not post here to please you!
Guys, people seem to vary greatly in what they notice about sound quality, if anything at all. Psychologists have pointed out that everyone's perception of reality is mentally constructed. It is an overwhelmingly convincing construction though, one cannot believe is not an accurate perception of reality itself. Therefore, if someone hears small details it is real to them, if others don't hear the same then small details are not real to those people. Everyone believes their own senses and experiences are of the one true reality.
Furthermore, Jakob was correct that some people believe they hear differences then find out in a blind ABX test that they can't pass. It is a stunning experience for some people when they fail. They have a cognitive dissonance that begs for resolution. A common resolution we see around audio forums is the conspiracy theory one that Jakob alluded to. Humans can sometimes easily believe in conspiracy theories as we see with 5G towers being set on fire in some places. No amount of trying to convince people they are wrong works, maybe they will change their minds some day or maybe not, but there is no forcing it.
So, all kinds of people and all kinds of experiences. Some people will feel a need to attack what I just said since it downplays belief in conspiracy theories. Can't help that, but maybe the above explanation will help others understand what makes some behaviors appear to be trolling when it may not be exactly that or it may be a mix of trolling and serious belief (a fun game to at the same time defend and protect one's beliefs).
Furthermore, Jakob was correct that some people believe they hear differences then find out in a blind ABX test that they can't pass. It is a stunning experience for some people when they fail. They have a cognitive dissonance that begs for resolution. A common resolution we see around audio forums is the conspiracy theory one that Jakob alluded to. Humans can sometimes easily believe in conspiracy theories as we see with 5G towers being set on fire in some places. No amount of trying to convince people they are wrong works, maybe they will change their minds some day or maybe not, but there is no forcing it.
So, all kinds of people and all kinds of experiences. Some people will feel a need to attack what I just said since it downplays belief in conspiracy theories. Can't help that, but maybe the above explanation will help others understand what makes some behaviors appear to be trolling when it may not be exactly that or it may be a mix of trolling and serious belief (a fun game to at the same time defend and protect one's beliefs).
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IMO its the same type of thing as being able to mix hit records. If your taste matches the taste of most people, then your sense of better is probably better to most people. If your taste is different from most people's and you want to try to make something better from the perspective of most people, then its going to be a lot harder than if you could do it naturally. You can try to learn what it is other people like and try to figure out what those things are technically, but chances are you will never be able to do it as well as someone with a good track record who just knows what sounds right without trying to force it.
Of course, all the foregoing is personal opinion only. But it seems to hold pretty well as a practical matter.
You have a point if you are dealing with audio performance. When it comes to audio replay, it's way off the mark.
In your own bubble of course.
When it comes to the reproduction of those images as in photography, what's better, something that represents the actual color closely or the one that deviates from it? It's a no brainer.
Who cares, it's just a perception. Right now I am listening to Mark Knopfler, in HP reproduced by the last Philips 1-bit DAC mated with DSP implementing NASA developed binaural algorithms, and guess what, I am enjoying it very much
But yes, I agree I would be disappointed to learn that my passionate brunette is just a trivial coloured blonde
)OK, in order to stop all that BS above I would propose to discuss for instance something more relevant. For instance recently ppy (the developer of DSC line of DACs) published elsewhere something pretty interesting IMHO, what could be a great solution for HF load transients, like AVCC. I ordered some LTC6228, let see how it works, but judging from the simulation this opamp allows to get much better response than for instance LT3042.
And Evenharmonics is warmly welcome to express his judgement on this matter, of course!
And Evenharmonics is warmly welcome to express his judgement on this matter, of course!
Attachments
Not that optimistic about the prospects myself.
First, if we are talking about literal AVCC, that implies ESS which IMO amounts to beating beating a dead horse.
OTOH, if we are talking about AK4499 Reference Voltage, the eval board uses a passive RC LP filter after the Jung-style regulator. Higher frequency voltage regulator response would not seem to be the goal, just the opposite maybe. Maybe better to increase power supply impedance above audio frequencies, then maybe less RF/HF junk coming out of the dac and into the I/V to then have to be filtered out in further output stage processing. Lot of maybes, I know. Will have to get back to that later. For the moment working on some other things I am trying to get done first.