Sorry don’t know about yours, but totally the opposite for me, no Delta Sigma I’ve heard can match it with those three R2R Multibit dac chips you mentioned or others when implemented well, for "prat", "boggie factor" and "dynamic slam" when converting PCM redbook.
That's the point. You have not heard every DAC, so making sweeping statements is not useful. The dynamics and clarity I get is unsurpassed. Every time a customer brings over or ships me a DAC to try, it is disappointing. Other vendors have brought their DAC's over (I wont mention) and they lasted 30 seconds in the system because they sounded so bad. Even the other vendors wanted me to remove them.
I hope that CDs will also hit a revival life LPs. I have 7,000 CDs. However, currently there are CDs that sell for $100s each. Those are the Kevin Grey/Steve Hoffman CDs especially gold DCC CDs. I also favor Japanese jazz CDs from the 1980s which were expertly transferred/mastered. I have about 2 dozen remarkable Japanese jazz CDs from that era. I've been buying excellently remastered CDs for a decade now and jumped on the CD bandwagon since I bought my EAR Acute CD player. No, it's not the latest R2R DAC but wow, it sounds as good as my $22K analog front end.
As to LPs, many of my 1980s classical Japanese pressings, although perfect and often virgin vinyl, used lower quality submaster tapes which had lower resolution and compression compared to the original masterings. I can point to German pressed Living Stereo recordings which generally sound dynamically tepid compared to the originals, only superior in pressing quality. The master copy of the recording makes the difference there.
I designed DACs with the 1704 as well. Musical, but not live like my Sigma Delta DAC.
Sorry don’t know about yours, but totally the opposite for me, no Delta Sigma I’ve heard can match it with those three R2R Multibit dac chips you mentioned or others when implemented well, for "prat", "boggie factor" and "dynamic slam" when converting PCM redbook.
If anything the good Delta Sigma’s are too sweet and limp, not exciting, without any "live" feel to them when doing PCM Redbook, but they can do DSD SACD if your into that stuff.
The Sigma Delta architecture has to my ears a sound that gives digital a bad reputation.
Just bad implementations. If you do the digital filtering right, it can easily beat all the old chips, including 1541/1702/1704. I designed DACs with the 1704 as well. Musical, but not live like my Sigma Delta DAC.
I agree that DACs have advanced to a point that the only real issue is the recording. . . I feel we’ve stepped into a realm where mysticism often masquerades as truth and there aren’t enough of us that can push the recording industry to do the right thing. . .
As as far as 16/24 sounding great. Here’s why it is possible. Almost all records are produced from analog tape used in recording studios. Analog tape can only capture 73db of what the human ear can hear (130db in the range from +/-20k. Real world examples are a whisper to a jet engine) Every time analog tapes are copied it looses 6db. There are 5 copies made from each master and the record is being cut from those so a record at best can only capture 61db. This translates to about 12 bits in PCM digital. A traditional CD has 16 bits and the extent of human hearing can be captured digitally at 96kHz/24bit PCM. The real issue is how the studio engineers are crushing the sound levels and loudness wars with little dynamics so it sounds good on earbuds and the radio. It doesn't matter if the production is then placed on analog or digital means of distribution, it all sounds bad. It's been common practice for many years and there are a few studios doing it right. Only those studios who record and produce the music digitally at 96/24 or higher throughout the music chain can claim the title of high resolution audio. I get upset at studios taking old recordings and sticking them in big bit buckets and saying they are high resolution and making people feel they need to buy their music over again at 2-3 times the cost. If you analyze the file it's filled with air. Provenance of the recording is the most deficient aspect of the recording industry (detailing the entire recording chain). I wish the recording industry had standards they must follow and would detail where the song was made, mike technique, production chain, and bit depth range of the recording. . . Fortunately or unfortunately for us most music produced today can't take advantage of the increased dynamic range because they simply don't use it.
With a high resolution system you can hear great recordings done right. I’ve had to listen to streaming for awhile because my CD collection was buried. I pulled out Peter Hurford playing Bach and OMG. I swear I’m in the cathedral he is playing in, that’s all captured on 16/24 even the notes that vibrate my body. It’s great to hear that people are rediscovering how good CD really is. Most Redbook CDs were not recorded digitally at that bit depth or engineered at that rate unless they have been recorded and produced within the last few years even then it’s ubkikely. If at any point during the recording process the bit depth is reduced there is no adding in information. Most Redbook CDs were recorded on tape and so your CD counterparts easily capture what you’re listening to on Redbook.
Erik, Your point is well taken. I've grabbed some of my really old CDs and with my modern disk transport and DAC, the sound quality I enjoy is often times really excellent! I would not necessarily associate the format of a digital source (i.e. 44.1/16, 192/24, DSD, etc.) with the ultimate sound quality. I have a few SACDs where I find the "regular CD" sounds better. I suspect it's in the mastering.
not realising what they had, traded them in on the latest craze of Sigma Delta super hires units.
They had to get a Delta Sigma based dac because they were sucked into doing DSD download playback, and this was their down fall. As Delta Sigma does not get the best out of PCM redbook, it’s a "facsimile" only, and it’s not "bit perfect" . That’s why many now with big CD collections are reverting back to used R2R Multibit dacs like the PCM1704’s ect like you did, and if not buying used, getting the new discrete R2R Multibit ones, which the numbers of, are growing at a rapid rate.
The Sigma Delta architecture has to my ears a sound that gives digital a bad reputation. I own a Wadia 15 which uses the fabulous Burr Brown PCM63 and considering what I paid for this second hand I am surprised more folks don't snap them up. The TDA1543 was mentioned, also good is the IMO better TDA1541, PCM 1702 and some implementations of the 1704. Also UA D20400
I have an Oppo 103 and after living with its screeching disregard for human dignity, obtained a better sounding DAC to send my music to, a Bryston BDA-1. Yes it was better, quite good even, but still not right. Then came the Wadia and WOW, music music music, but, and I'm not concerned, only does redbook. A game changer. Wadia 25 outstanding, uses 4x1702 with slightly different sound and run don't walk if you find a Wadia 9, uses 8xPCM63.
There are many DACs using the above mentioned chips that are for sale used. Lots of guys that owned these DACs, not realising what they had, traded them in on the latest craze of Sigma Delta super hires units. http://vasiltech.narod.ru/CD-Player-DAC-Transport.htm Check out the link for very many players or DAC's that use the above. I modded an inexpensive Marantz CD40 that uses the TDA1541 and with Lukasz Fikus' help of Lampizator fame came straight off the DAC chip's pins to the grids of a tube completely bypassing their cheap inferior output stage. Later cut the traces to render it NOS. Non oversampling. This dirt cheap little thing sounded amazing. Try your hand at it, has lots of space to work and you can find them for practically nothing. You may still find instructions on his site.
Most of the Philips units shared the same board as Marantz so must be thousands of them floating around. Look out for a CD85 or CD95 which uses TDA1541s1 single crown and excellent transport. Great player as is and modified will beat most stuff.
I'm very pleased with Reference Recordings (HDCD) whether on LP or CD. The Japanese have also contributed to excellent sounding CD's and SACD's. The only question I HAVE is, if you still own some "records", how much should you spend on a turntable, arm, and cartridge? I know I'm going to get some negative feedback for this, but I wouldn't rule out getting the entire set-up in a box from company "X" and just assembling it in an hour, without sweating the alignment procedures, etc. Considering several price points (starting at perhaps $2000) you might get a super-well manufactured 'table that compares to the same level of fidelity as your CD's, so that one is not a disappointment and the other a revelation. Why I mention this is simply that not every vinyl disc has been released on CD, and many of them are very special even with a few pops and clicks, etc. I wanted a Dave Brubeck album (My Favorite Things-a superb record BTW) and had to get a Japanese import (at least "they" had it). A good used record shouldn't cost $150 either, and I wouldn't do that to someone. But I'm more nostalgic for vinyl that I grew with than a mono-Beatles' set although both are great depending on your inclinations. I mainly listen to my CD collection, but I also used to love shopping for records. For the $5 you could get "the good stuff"- great sound, clean pressings, good packaging, etc. I don't see a lot of those records on CD. Like 8K television, we're moving forward into "the outer limits" but we're losing sight of where we've been. My stereo gave me goosebumps 30 years ago. Just saying....
I am a novice at modern day DACs but the ones I have tried as a stand alone DAC using my Marantz CDP as a transport sound a tad too clinical, upfront and not as musical as the internal DAC in my Marantz SA11-S2. I do have on loan a T+A DAC 8 non-DSD so can't wait to hear it later this evening.
I have the D3020, and it's a pretty sweet and small integrated! I used to use it on my desktop. Certainly better than DAC's and Class D from 20 years ago.
Media sample rate takes a backseat to recording quality no doubt.
However I am now a convert to upsampling and there is no going back. I upsample all files to DSD 512 and play back through the T+A DAC8 DSD’s single bit chipless DSD converter.
While there are many “sounds the same” DACs around $2k that are very good, the T+A Dac is more than a couple notches above these. How much of that is due to the upsampling and more powerful filtering, I don’t know.
I can’t help but think this method is going to gain more and more traction as CPU cycles get cheaper because it’s another significant step up.
Wherever people talk about DACs, certain themes reliably emerge: -- that R2R, specifically NOS, sounds better, more natural than D/S -- D/S DACs sound way more accurate than multibit & NOS DACs, and image way better -- that certain DACs or DAC mfrs totally suck based solely on their measurements (irrespective of multibit vs D/S)
I agree with the first (wholeheartedly), but not the 3rd (and really don't much care about the 2nd). The limitation of any "measurements are all that matters" approach is that it disregards all subtle sonic differences from components--pretending that such differences don't exist or don't matter.
I own 2 DACs from Audio GD, the brand one post above disparaged. One is multibit (DAC-19) and the other is NOS multibit (NOS 19). Both are better than any delta-sigma DAC I ever heard or owned. The NOS 19 is my day-to-day DAC (in primary desktop system w/studio monitors + sub as well as headphones); and the DAC-19 is in my secondary, headphone-only system.
I started listening to digital in the mid-1980s (on a big, high-resolution 2-channel system) and pretty much hated it. Things slowly got better, but only w/the arrival of multibit have I succeeded in forgetting the whole digital vs analog conundrum and just enjoy the music.
Both my monitors (ATC SCM12 Pro) and various headphones & amps are highly resolving, so I am basing this opinion on sonic experience, not simple prejudice.
So what are the best r2r dacs tknget for a good price . I’m currently using a marantz sa14 s1 for sacd/cd playback that uses a burr brown dsd1792a chip . Is this r2r or sigma delta?
I had a very weird experience last weekend. My friend has a DIY dac. In it was a NOS TDA1543 Philips chip hooked on a a Rasberry pi with i2s. It could only play 16/44. The power supply was a very cheap phone charger with an extra usb cable in the charger (2nd power supply). I looked at the psu and my thoughts were. "are we going to listen to music through this?"
When the music started playing i fell off the couch in disbelieve. The music was so pure, tangible. It was audiophile heaven...... He paid €300,- for this setup. It sounded like a million bucks.
I'm seriously thinking to sell my own dac after hearing his.
My own stuff is no slouch either. and i buy new cd's constantly!
Imho, musical original masters recorded directly to a hi-res digital format should be the norm. It has the highest capacity for frequency response and detail accuracy, a lower noise floor and the ability to capture the actual transient response/dynamics of live instruments and voices. Hi-res digital files also don't deteriorate over time and unlimited exact copies can be easily made without any degradation to sound quality.
Someone said the Mytek is "not bad" ... if you are referring to the Manhattan, that's selling it way short. It's a great DAC. Same for the Bricasti M1SE. Lesser DAs are surely coming up as the OP says but it's not my expertise.
Bottom line with playback ... is knowing the mastering source sample rate. There is no advantage to upsamping and MQA adds distortion. Just the 24 or yes the 16 of the real deal file is great.
Older DA needed the higher rates, great DA never have needed it.
There is no audio perfection, and that quest is costly and pointless.
BTW, I own a few CD's but I never spin them. All my listening now is via USB and either internet radio or my flash drive. A perfect example of how good 44/16 is, listen to KCSM on line via your DAC if you can. It can be pretty amazing.
Look for a silver disc revival like we have seen in vinyl. There will be the dollar bins and there will be the ones that fetch big bucks. Meanwhile, if you got 'em, spin 'em and enjoy !
I think both stories are true. There are a lot of remasters people don't realize as well as better DACs.
The frequency response, compression, and channel separation of vinyl, CD's and SACD have been shown to be explicitly different.
SOME SACD transfers were shown to actually be remasters. CD's when they first came out were compressed in amplitude and L to R separation.
HOWEVER!! It is also very true that this generation of DAC's plays 44/16 MUCH better than before, and I can't tell you why.
I had an ARC DAC 8, and it was a prime example of this. It played high resolution files beautifully, as well as upsampled files, but 44/16 was pretty mediocre.
I upgraded to the Mytek I use now, and that difference vanished. It played all formats better than the DAC 8, but also, it no longer depended on the resolution. I've heard this same effect with a couple of other DACs so I have to believe it is now more wide spread.
If I was forced to use older DACs today, I'd be pretty stuck on getting high resolution files or SACD. That's gone now. I'm happy with high res, but I'm also much happier with 44/16
Absolutely. I have a Berkeley Ref 2 DAC here with MQA, and a T+A 3000 HV, arguably the best SACD player made. The difference is the recording, Not Redbook vs. SACD. And I have heard the new MSB DAC's are even better, albeit at a price. Perfect Sound Forever. Go CD. Lol.
wtf - I own the dac that mzkmxcv often brings up and praises. It is good, but it is not perfect. Neither is any other dac that I have owned. As for the Benchmark, it is quite forward sounding. I agree with him that it is very clear, but it does not evoke the "you are there" feeling that I get with my other dac. Which raises the point that even though modern dacs are greatly improved, they can sound quite different, and different models may appeal to different types of audiophiles.
I'll just weigh in that having read many of the posts, there are lots of things being confused here. 1. Confusing Upsampling vs magically creating more bit depth2. Confusing why one upsamples (its not to get more info)3. A vague notion that digital is suddenly good. Some of it has been good for ages, much still is awful, and most of that from the studio, and in Rock/pop4. Confusing chips with implementation. Differences are in the latter. Gimme some of the old 18/20 bit R2R DACs any day. Hell, don't give them to me, but please sell them to me. :-) 5. And just to make my point, it still doesnt matter because i can make both PDM and R2R sound good or sound bad. (note: PDM = 1 bit = sigma delta, it works like your fuel injection) But yes, overall things are improving, will continue, and red book is good enough But it does make all our engineering lives very difficult due to the proximity of the sampling rate to the nyquist limit. Give us some filter slop room, please! Why does auto-correct want ot make "Nyquist" = NyQuil? G ps: i have info on some of this on my blog at sonogyresearch.com
The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed.
Agreed. I have owned 5 dacs in the past two years. Two of them upsampled to DSD. With DSD upsampling, I felt the sound was washed out and flat compared to playback using 44.1/16.
Presently, I have a Benchmark DAC3L (used primarily in 44.1/16 mode) and a Border Patrol DAC SE, both currently manufactured. Although they are quite different sounding, they both in their own way bring a liveliness and fullness to the sound that I quite enjoy. No upsampling required.
Great discussion! Any opinions on the NAD M51 DAC? I sold my Benchmark and got this three years ago. Dunno if it is better as I sold the Benchmark first and did not do an A/B comparison
I think it's gotten to the point that it depends on the quality of the recording. You can get almost everything out of almost all recordings at Redbook quality, but a few excellent recording can be milked even more with higher quality files.
I am of two minds. I have about 8K red book titles ripped to flac. Recently I upgraded my bridge to a SOtM sMS-200 Neo and was blown away. My little Teac NT-503 never sounded better. When I added the external word clock and Ben's Illuminati DC power it was unbelievable. The CDs were alive! But... I also have quite a few HiRes files that sound great too. I have found that those DSDs from analog master tape just sing. Yeah it's mostly the mastering, but the best sounding files in my collection are DSD256s.
All that said, I have started buying 10" Jazz and Classical records. In mono!
Now, you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar. But if you want to hear the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000 price range.
Not the first time I've read similar from you. Have you actually heard some of these DACs you so easily disparage? In fact, you seem to have opinions on many, many components (not just DACs) and I'm genuinely curious if you've heard them all. Are you in the industry?
BTW, I'm also curious to know which components comprise your audio system. Care to share?
We own close to 2,000 CD's which we haven't been listening to for years--mainly because we were falling back into vinyl and it was a pain to get a flashlight to search the bookcases for specific CD's. My wake up call that DAC's had come a long way was after purchasing a Bluesound Vault 2i, mainly to archive all of the CD's. I have about 1300 ripped so far (as native resolution flacs). I set up an Intel NUC running the Roon Rock OS and the Vault connected to my Audio Research preamp with Transparent Audio interconnects. After being blown away by listening to just a few of the flac files I realized that the 6-year old DAC just didn't have the mojo the new ones do. Now digital and vinyl are enjoyed at about 50-50 rate. It's like getting all new CD's.
I have a Mytek. It sounds fantastic, and I never use the MQA feature. I don't feel it changes my cost/benefit equation. It's still a fabulous DAC for the feature set.
The Benchmark DAC3 L and Chord Qutest are both more transparent. Now,
you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want
distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some
poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar. But if you want to hear
the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000
price range.
nickecb, i agree with mzkmxcv on these two DACs on my short list as well -- so are the Mytek Brooklyn and iFi Audio Pro iDSD. Depending on unit/config some are slightly above the $2k range but probably still worth a listen.
Apparently nearly 2500 requests for just 300 units......
Yes, it reached it's 300 orders very quick, a mate bought 3 of them, they were supposed to be delivered this month but got delayed a month. They look to be the bargain of the century.
Even $400 and below are now transparent. Well, the caveat is transparent when masked with music, like THD at 10kHz needs to be like -40dB to be audible, but even -50dB would be audible when using a sine wave.
I agree Digital has improved so much and is constantly improving. Gone are those days paying 50K for a DCS or MSB DAC to attain sonic nirvana, Dacs priced modestly under 20Ks are leading the game.
Just a point of perspective; I am old enough to remember that Phillips invented digital audio and proposed a joint venture with Sony to stop competitive standard conflicts. Phillips' proposed standard was PCM, with 21 bit resolution. This came out as an LP sized CD. The head of Sony insisted that the product had to be reduced in size so as to allow for portability: hence the Sony Walkman. This meant that resolution had to be lowered down to 16 bits and the current Red-book standard came from this limitation. I would personally like to see a new upgraded standard for digital recording and thus, digital play, so long as it is backwardly compatible. Look at what this philosophy has done for PCs over the last 25 years! Lastly, I think that most of the observations ahead of my comment are pretty astute, I just thought that I would broaden the scope a little on how we got here and how we might continue to improve the reproduction of music.
I'll weigh in as someone who designs this stuff, that redbook is in fact very very good. In fact i have been blogging on digital formats, compression, etc and trying to undo some myths. (Sonogyresearch.com/blog if you care)
Audiophiles' suspicion of redbook has been fueled by what can be either mis-steps or arrogant errors in the industry. Perfect sound forever (this in 1985). Bits are bits on digital interfaces a9whcih have a large analog component in timing), rotten early digital mastering and reconstruction filter. Yet, as noted, we are figuring it out. But some in fact were pretty good > decade ago. One stand out at its time was the Theta DS-Pro. I still have one and switch to it occasionally - and it can make great music with great recordings. Of course, like any clear lens, it can also make awful sounds with awful recordings. But that's the two-edge sword of reproduction, as opposed to production. G
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