Analogue sound from a dac requires superior clocking. Whatever you do, get a dac with a 10m BNC clock input. The cheapest 10m clocks can be had on Alibaba for $100. Seriously, it‘s the single most important factor in choosing a dac.
Looking for a vinylesk sounding DAC
I cannot say I wasn’t satisfied with my system.
Laptop (Quobuz Studio) - > Schiit Bifrost 2 - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > Werner Acoustics, Selene (active tube preamp using two VT-231 from RCA) - > passive preamp - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > First Watt F6 dual mono custom built - > HEDD Audio’s "Heddphone" / Hifiman HE 4
From the beginning I started to built it I had a quite concrete idea of what it should sound like in the end: vinylesk without using vinyl. It took me a while to get there and now I really thought I got it: Due to the F6 the outcome is brutally powerful and incredibly fast while the tube stage adds lots of body, depth and a rich organic undertone. Finally the RCA’s from Ocellia were adding the fine raffinement and a nice holographic soundstage. Nothing smears, in just every situation everything stays transparent, well controlled/articulated and the separation is just excellent.
BUT when listening to streamed vinyl I still feel the need for action - I just want EVERY track from quobuz to sound like this. Please take just some seconds and listen to this:
https://musicandvinyl.blogspot.com/2020/08/haruomi-hosono-from-aegean-sea.html?m=1
There is just MORE elasticity, MORE tonal density, MORE plankton, MORE concentration to the point, MORE light-footedness and MORE palpability (compared to a "disdainful" quobuz stream). Do you know what I mean?
I still think and hope a new dac could be the nirvana-solution. But which one would manage the job to sound just like vinyl (99% would be ok...)?
Happy to hear your suggestions!
Laptop (Quobuz Studio) - > Schiit Bifrost 2 - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > Werner Acoustics, Selene (active tube preamp using two VT-231 from RCA) - > passive preamp - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > First Watt F6 dual mono custom built - > HEDD Audio’s "Heddphone" / Hifiman HE 4
From the beginning I started to built it I had a quite concrete idea of what it should sound like in the end: vinylesk without using vinyl. It took me a while to get there and now I really thought I got it: Due to the F6 the outcome is brutally powerful and incredibly fast while the tube stage adds lots of body, depth and a rich organic undertone. Finally the RCA’s from Ocellia were adding the fine raffinement and a nice holographic soundstage. Nothing smears, in just every situation everything stays transparent, well controlled/articulated and the separation is just excellent.
BUT when listening to streamed vinyl I still feel the need for action - I just want EVERY track from quobuz to sound like this. Please take just some seconds and listen to this:
https://musicandvinyl.blogspot.com/2020/08/haruomi-hosono-from-aegean-sea.html?m=1
There is just MORE elasticity, MORE tonal density, MORE plankton, MORE concentration to the point, MORE light-footedness and MORE palpability (compared to a "disdainful" quobuz stream). Do you know what I mean?
I still think and hope a new dac could be the nirvana-solution. But which one would manage the job to sound just like vinyl (99% would be ok...)?
Happy to hear your suggestions!
70 responses Add your response
Vinyl sounding? Take the DAC of the month, record yourself eating Rice Krispies, fry an egg in the background, and you are done. if you love the sound of vinyl so much, why are you wasting your time here? Why not, you know, just sit and listen to some petroleum slabs spun on a platter that you hope plays at a stable speed with a sewing needle slashing the grooves to transmit some vibrations and call it a day? If you truly believe vinyl is so superior why are you trying make digital sound like vinyl? Do you also go to Burger King and expect to get Filet Mignon? I’ll take the increased dynamic range and drop dead quiet backgrounds of digital. God forbid I get a DAC that generates the illusion that I am hearing what I gladly abounded 35 years ago |
EAR Yoshino Acute Classic is the most analog sounding CD/DAC I know and in THAT sens outperform Lampizator and probably almost any other DAC. It’s relatively cheap in the world of top gear. It may lack some precision and details, compared to Lampi, but you’ll get the most emotional and analog listening experience you can get from the digital source. |
Fake -- Lack of a reconstruction filter in a typical NOS DAC allows high frequencies (aliased images of the original signal from the stair step) to pass which when they hit things like tube amps and speakers with high distortion, they generate frequency components in the audible range that are a mix of aliased images with frequency shift (IMD), random distortion products, and signal modulated noise. While sounding complex and awful, some people like the way it sounds. The general description is "airy". Thanks, not at all what I mean by 'air' then. Glad we've settled that. |
11-11-2020 8:26pm Just going on the many reviews other impressions I’ve read, if I were you I’d gravitate toward a tubed R2R NOS DAC such as the Audio Mirror Tubadour Mklll SE, etc. I believe several companies (AM, MHDT, Denafrips?) offer trial periods, and I think that’s the way to go. Personally, the best DAC to me is the PS Audio DirectStream DAC Sr. Easily upgradable, very flexible inputs, and a volume control with 20dB attenuator if required. It is as close to Analog Vinyl like LP playback as you will get. TDA1541 chips are more than 33 years old ! So that's a no go in my book and I've heard those DAC's. Denafrips does not do a 30 day trial so they are out as well. I did a head to head comparison between The Terminator and the PSA DSSr. There were times where I didn't know which DAC I was listening to but on certain music, the PS Audio DAC edged out the Denafrips especially in the upper midrange (where I personally am more sensitive) |
Fake -- Lack of a reconstruction filter in a typical NOS DAC allows high frequencies (aliased images of the original signal from the stair step) to pass which when they hit things like tube amps and speakers with high distortion, they generate frequency components in the audible range that are a mix of aliased images with frequency shift (IMD), random distortion products, and signal modulated noise. While sounding complex and awful, some people like the way it sounds. The general description is "airy". "Fake air?" All I hear with my Audio Note Dac is a natural sounding top-end with air and space between instruments. No, what you think you hear is "natural". It is not, no more than vinyl sounds "natural", no more the analog tape is "natural". They are not natural, they are colored. You just happen to like that coloration and associate that with natural. Maybe there will come a time when most "audiophiles" will accept that what they like, and hence what they attribute as "natural" and accurate is anything but, at least if they put vinyl or tape on a pinnacle. It is not the pinnacle of accurate sound reproduction. Digital is. Very few audiophiles have heard the difference between a live microphone, a digital loop and a tape loop, let alone the eventual vinyl cut. And that is completely okay. It does not matter if you prefer the vinyl cut. All that matters is you like what you are listening to. However, describing it as natural is wrong because it is not. Here, have a read: http://recordinghacks.com/2013/01/26/analog-tape-vs-digital/ I will excerpt a pass from the article, "It is my belief that much of the pain of switching over to digital recording was due to the tools that engineers had mastered for analog recording. For instance, applying EQ and compression (or no compression) to tape to make up for the color that the tape added didn’t sound so great when recording to digital. Bright FET microphones and harsh transistor preamp tones became rounded off in a pleasing way on tape, and by the 100th mix pass, the high-end was rolled off and the transients smeared so much that the final mix sounded phat, warm and fuzzy. It took experienced engineers a minute (or years) to gather their thoughts, re-examine their tools and learn how to take advantage of the clarity, quiet, and unforgiving purity of digital recording. At that point recordists moved towards super-fast, ultra-clean and high-gain preamps and transparent compression. Low cost digital processors stopped using transformers and tubes, which lowered costs and also lowered THD, while widening frequency bandwidth specs from DC to light. We had finally found it: perfect, clean, sterile audio! |
@barrista0611 well implemented digital can sound somewhat 'vinyl like'... but it will never sound like vinyl as vinyl has its own unique and sympathetic colorations (not mention issues) but i would agree with posters below suggesting various r2r type dacs, and ones with tube buffering of analog outputs, they head in the tonal direction you seek - there are Delta Sigma dacs and ones w/o tubes that do this as well... you do not mention your budget for the dac - if you stay in the schiit bifrost range of cost it will be hard to get there you need to be at least in the $750-1000 price range to get a very nice somewhat tonally denser ’analog sounding’ dac from the list of gear you mention you seem to be a headphones guy -- there is tremendous discussion on mhdt, audio mirror, denafrips, etc etc on the couple well subscribed hp boards |
George's suggestion for channel mixing to more center the image (gives a sense of immediacy), and you may capture much of what you love about vinyl.Not with todays magic digital, only like I said with those bad early CD that had ping pong left and right sounds. Todays cd blow them away, and there's absolutely no need to bleed left into right, as with the channel separation of 120db you have it all and more with proper sound stage, that even goes outside the speakers now. Which I remember never ever did, no matter how good the vinyl was. |
Just going on the many reviews other impressions I’ve read, if I were you I’d gravitate toward a tubed R2R NOS DAC such as the Audio Mirror Tubadour Mklll SE, etc. I believe several companies (AM, MHDT, Denafrips?) offer trial periods, and I think that’s the way to go. I agree, go with a R2R NOS Dac if you want a more organic, analogue-like presentation. A tube stage adds a sense of realism to music. "Fake air?" All I hear with my Audio Note Dac is a natural sounding top-end with air and space between instruments. |
Where you hear MORE elasticity, MORE tonal density, MORE plankton, MORE
concentration to the point, MORE light-footedness and MORE palpability ... I hear MORE wickedly high noise floor, MORE compression, MORE distortion, MORE loss of low level detail, MORE loss of tonal balance, MORE fake "space" coupled with LESS instrument separation, and more unwanted/unnatural sibilance. I will give you that the vinyl version has more of a "live" character to it, but I couldn't get past the artifacts to the point of it grating on my ears. But that's me ... and you are you. When you grow up with that sound, and that becomes "natural" to you, then that is what you are going to gravitate to. I grew up spinning records, but spent too much time listening to what is coming off the microphone, so what sound natural to you, sounds unnatural to me. The fake air of a NOS DAC running at CD sampling rates, the added distortion of a tube stage, and if you could couple it with George's suggestion for channel mixing to more center the image (gives a sense of immediacy), and you may capture much of what you love about vinyl. Some friends/acquaintance have played around with a bit of compression in the digital domain as well, but not aware of any players intentionally doing that. BUT when listening to streamed vinyl I still feel the need for action - I just want EVERY track from quobuz to sound like this. Please take just some seconds and listen to this: |
George, what's wrong about the Lapizator TDA1541 NOS DAC? I liked hi-end vinyl when I had it, but today to me good discrete hi-end R2R to me is better in every way. I have mimic'd vinyl to a good degree with my digital rig by bleeding L to R together (switchable) to come down from 120db channel separation to vinyls best of 30db at 1khz (below and above that it's more like 10-20db). What this did was to give me ''similar" sound to what my vinyl had. It kind of monized the old "left right ping pong'' sounding cd Beatles ect era digital, and richened it up through the bass and lower mids. But for today's digital cd recordings I was back at 120db channel separation no question. Cheers George |
Oh, I didn't know Fremer's article back from 2000 but it's a good read. For me the main question is if that is still the truth after 20 years. DACs have been improved a lot and most of them claim to sound "analog" (while just some do). But my concern is going further as I think sounding analog is just a part of sounding vinylish. George, what's wrong about the Lapizator TDA1541 NOS DAC? Nordicnorm, thanks for suggesting the doge dac. I did quite a lot 6SN7 tube rolling with my preamp and had fun with it but after all I don't think the specific vinyl sound can't be reached through tubes. Yes, regarding a full-bodied, warm, lush sound full of texture, but no in respect of all the other aspects I mentioned. I don't wanna miss tubes in my system but as I am already using some in my preamp I'll be looking for a pure DAC for the moment. |
To get an analog sounding system, go with all tubes in your chain. The Schiit Bifrost 2 is a very decent entry-level DAC. I used to own one. A Lampizator would give you a significant improvement, but also at a significantly increased cost. The Doge 7 DAC (at ~$1,400 new) would be a good choice that is (cost wise) in between the Schiit and Lampi. Disclosure: I had owned the Doge 8 preamp at one point and was impressed with its performance, although it is highly susceptible to tube rolling. To improve on it, I ended up replacing it with a Croft RIAA phonostage and a Don Sachs linestage (at 3x the cost). As for amps, I am partial to tubed monoblocks personally. Tons to choose from, and in every budget range. Good luck in your search. |
barrista0611 Looking for a vinylesk sounding DACIf you looking for a "vinyl sounding" dac, go to a Lapizator TDA1541 NOS tube dac, not my cup of tea though. Cheers George |
That's a pretty good way of describing all the ways vinyl kicks butt on digital. Michael Fremer still holds first place with, "There's more there there" but you did just fine. That's the reality. Vinyl is so far beyond digital MF is even able to record the sound of different cartridges on files and play them for people who would never otherwise have the opportunity to hear these super top of the line carts. That's what digital is good for. Comparing stuff. Convenience. Background. That kind of thing. The minute you stop all that and want to just enjoy music you simply change to the medium made for listening to music. That's all. |
