And this Airist discrete R2R Multibit Dac was peanuts, around $299 or something with a Massdrop purchase, got the quota filled very quick. All 300 getting shipped next month so they say.Apparently nearly 2500 requests for just 300 units......
High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.
Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.
Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.
The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.
The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
181 responses Add your response
@nickecb 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. |
As explained to me by Paul Weitzel of Tube Research Labs, who was both a recording and equipment engineer, the problem centers around engineering, engineering of the source material and engineering at the reproduction end. People fixate so much on format types and it really comes down to the quality of the recording and the quality of the equipment used to transduce it. Hi Rez formats have no relevance to me as most of my source material and prized music is Redbook. |
Now, we can finally do discrete dacs well enough and economically enough...so R2R comes back with a vengeance, in the high end area of digital. Same for the FPGA versions of similar design and thinking as discrete R2R dacs. And this Airist discrete R2R Multibit Dac was peanuts, around $299 or something with a Massdrop purchase, got the quota filled very quick. All 300 getting shipped next month so they say. https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-airist-audio-r-2r-dac?mode=guest_open&utm_campaign=Drop%... Review https://darko.audio/2018/06/airist-audios-r-2r-dac-350-via-massdrop/ Measurements https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/airist-r2-r-dac-measurements.6418/ Cheers George |
Digital has made great strides ,and many dacs have custom analog output stages as well as very well designed power supplies which were often overlooked.even the digital cables have come a long way in 10 years ,bits are notjust bits. digital noise or artifacts better know as jitter is finally much bettter understood. there are still a lot of Audiophiles who get sucked in with the numbers game such as DSD which can be very good but not much for offerings.and 48/192, when in fact most digitalis in 24/96. all the terminology about sampling,oversampling is many times a marketing ploy. it can make a difference if designed properly but there are so many ways to implement a digital design . Unless you are a digital engineer you just have to trust your ears. some of the best digital I ever heard was the now rare Multibit dacs like the BB 1704 ladder dacs which were individually tested which was why they were often used in pro audio.or even The old Phillips 15 series 16 bit non oversampling dacs ,they we're very natural sounding ,there are also great Vacuum Tube dacs that truly add body And naturalness to recordings . You can spend over $100 k from DCS if you have the income to afford it. I have heard several of their lower budget stuff around $35k which was fantastic. But as Eric stated for under $2k youcan get excellent digital performances,and who would have thought even 5 years ago that we would have highquality streaming ? And there is still Much more to come .digital now can not only match a good turntable but in many ways surpass them in several areas . Welcome to the future !! |
Sorry for the double-post, but it did occur to me that there is a benefit to DRM-free high resolution lossless audio. Namely, it has the flexibility to allow compensatory equalization made to it (to nullify deficits in any given transducer) without quantization artifacts or undue loss of quality. That’s the entire point of a high res file, you can play “late stage mastering engineer” to overcome your own system’s shortcomings. * Caveat Emptor: All of this within the obvious limits of your system’s transducers. If your speaker is reluctant over a given frequency range, you can boost it or tamp down the others to some degree, but if there’s a big gaping hole in its reaponse no amount of eq is going to fix that! |
I agree 100% My setup is comprised of a Soekris dac1541 (fully balanced R2R ladder DAC) feeding a Mjölnir Audio Pure BiPolar differential headphone amp over an XLR connection. The results with redbook audio are simply astounding and I have friends who subscribe to Tidal for the MQA cursing under their breath! muahahaha! |
The vast majority of my music is 16/44.1 and my focus has always been to get the most out of the format. The first DAC which proved to me 16/44.1 was "good enough" was the dB Audio Labs Tranquility. According to many the DAC, with it's cheap TDA1543 chip and lousy measurements, couldn't possibly sound good. Apparently dB Audio Labs subscribes to the "everything matters" philosophy of DAC design and proved the naysayers wrong. I still own and use the Tranquility. A few years ago I decided to explore the high-res world for myself and purchased enough good sounding music to care about hearing it at the native rate. A couple of DACs later and I finally settled on the MHDT Lab Pagoda. This DAC sounds fabulous not only with 16/44.1 but higher rates also. Funny though, I have little interest in high-res at this point. Good old Redbook is all I require. |
Yes for me it is low jitter, better differential linearity and less noise with 6 bit sigma delta DACs that are the reason for recent improvements in sound. Upsampling helps randomize differential non-linearity. As usual, noise is always assumed to be random and if high enough it can be all filtered out. The reality is that it is rarely perfectly random. Just like jitter, if it was simply all random then it would never have been a problem to begin with. R2R has its merits as a technology but is limited in resolution due to differential non-linearity. 6 bit delta sigma DACs are kind of hybrid between old single bit sigma delta and R2R. That said DSD is still a highly elegant approach especially at 4x or higher, as it inherently has great linearity and then noise is pushed way up and far out of the way. It seems that DAC chips do suffer from everything being crammed together on a chip. So discrete DACs like PS Audio DS and others seem to have a more analog sound even if their measured performance is not as impressive as the latest Sabre based DAC. Lots of ways to skin a c@t! |
the point is that the older R2R dacs have less issues and less fundamental flaws than modern delta sigma dacs. You seem to have taken the statement and meaning, and put it on backwards..... Up sampling was marketing spin It might work and it does (a bit, anyway).... but it was mostly thrown out there as a marketing thing. People buy numbers, as that’s all they know about things, for the most part. Eg, on black Friday I was in the stores (Eg best buy) and predominately people watching, and only vestigially shopping. What I noticed is that they would always always always..buy a given 58" model of flat screen TV over any given 55" TV. As the number 58" is bigger than 55"..... Bigger is better, right? Right? Essentially, people bought dacs by the numbers, and quality was so far down on the list that it barely made any impact in any associated thinking. Audio fanatics got served what was sold to the masses ----- The End. Now, we can finally do discrete dacs well enough and economically enough...so R2R comes back with a vengeance, in the high end area of digital. Same for the FPGA versions of similar design and thinking as discrete R2R dacs. The dual pathway now exists for digital. One high end and the other - pap for the masses. FYI, delta sigma dacs and upsampling is the pap for the masses part. No big company is going to be making discrete R2R dacs any time soon. The volume required for good sales returns is not there. Thus, small companies with their board modules and some efforts of internal designs of the same at the larger audiophile companies-- will be the norm for the foreseeable future. |
Totally agree. DACs are finally getting things right. Although upsampling has been used for at least 20 years it is only recently that the higher quality of the upsampling/filtering has improved enough to really make digital more analogue sounding. Alternatively many folks have found that quality upsampling in a software like Roon can overcome many of the deficiencies in some of these older DACs. |
Totally agree Eric. I was truly shocked a couple of days ago when I put my Sony Discman back into my system and fed it into my Ayon S3 streamer/DAC. It really let the music flow in a way those silver discs have failed to do in the past for me. May have to pull my cds down from the loft where they are stored. |
Redbook indeed is at a new stage of awesomeness. High Rez will not die because: 1) it’s marketed at Audiophiles, and we are always looking for tat sonic holy grail. The general public could care less. 2) while not all high Rez recordings are true improvements, there are enough of them that once heard, continue to whet the appetite for more. When it’s possible to close your eyes and really imagine that you are in the room with the musicians, as I have with several DSD recordings, then I feel that I have crossed to the other side |
Erik, I can't believe how good Redbook and 16/44.1 streaming sounds. It took so many years for DAC technology to finally reveal how good those silver discs can sound. Just in time to see CDs being phased out as a dead format. And it doesn't take many thousands of dollars to buy a good DAC. I find it so interesting that manufacturers have been concentrating on R2R ladder DACs rather than upsampling to the very high rates of a few years ago. |
