Next best exponential DAC quality level?

 

@lordmelton , that was quite a feat to include so much "wrong" in a single post.

Here we go: A $99.00 DAC is a turd and you can’t put lipstick on it you probably have a better DAC in your laptop or car.

The $99 DAC has one of the best DAC chips made, the ESS9038, and yes that matters, because the chip does almost all the heavy lifting. My computer and my car most definitely do not have one of the same quality.

What makes a good DAC? Firstly it needs as good a signal as possible, so just sticking a computer USB into it isn’t going to cut the mustard.

Define a "good signal"? It is USB, and it really is "bits". The transfer is virtually every new DAC is async, i.e. the data transfer is completely independent from the audio output. That would be wrong #2.

If you’re using a computer you need JPLAY or similar to reduce computer jitter and provide drivers for the DAC.

Async transfer. "Jitter"on USB is meaningless and I don’t need JPLAY, I just need to ensure I have my setting correct. There are many good guides on the web for doing this. Wrong #3.

A big clean linear power supply is more important than what OP amps you use.

Perhaps you have not noticed the most recent Class-D amps, and linear amps using switch mode supplies and having performance better than just about anything with a linear supply? You don’t need a linear supply for good performance, you just need to know what you are doing. "BIG"? It is a DAC. They have fairly small power requirements. More important is ground loops and in most cases not relying on computer power, but not always either. A USB isolator is far more important than a linear supply. That would be wrong #4 and wrong #5.

The icing on the cake is a Word or Master clock so you can either slave your system to the Master or output separate Word signals.

Async USB, again. There is no "slaving" of anything. Except for the most cheap DAC implementations in your phone / laptop, external DACs will run a separate oscillator for the DAC, even that $99 one. Wrong #6.

Some good cables both digital and analogue will help enormously.

How will they help? Not hand waving. Very specific, how will they help. How will spending big sums of money, as opposed to say $10 or $20 for shielded cables make any difference? Again, not hand waving. That would be wrong #7

 

I do find irony in your accusing me of reading of Wikipedia but you don’t seem to have much understanding of how a DAC works.

I’m not liking the new poster and their forum flooding...their inability to show their name and face, and how they operate under false name after false name, etc.......but I do tend to agree with most of this.

At least as far as the surface ’take’ on it might be. But not with the superiority complex that comes down on from high, in a ’kindly dismissing of a child’ kinda way. A psychological victim of their own shooting from the bushes constantly, where they have lost their moral and ethical compass when it comes to relating with others on forums. The true self has been exposed, kinda thing.

~~~~~

Then we get down into the nuts and bolts of how to implement the chip and methodologies, etc -that are in question. And that is the part that separates the knowledgeable/lore from the book learned.

Which is the part that is not shared on forums, generally, as that is the money maker part for the given audio electronics production and sales enterprise.

When those aspects are well known and copied by everyone. This, if they understand it or not - monkey see, monkey do, china builds come to mind--but certainly not exclusive to china. When it is popularized in the DIY to professional world (best practices in dealing with audio electronics implementation for audiophile concerns) ---then it can be discussed more openly on forums.

The fundamental disagreements and arguments will always exist, though. As long as people are individuals and have different minds and physiological aspects from one another, this 'argument'  and all of it's giant sweeping tail of complexities in life ---will remain.

Perhaps if you knew how to be less of a reactive and gasoline throwing pedantic ass, your presence might be more tolerated.

Again, I (mostly) agree with Cinyment on the fundamentals of what they present... (above post)

but differ slightly on what I personally understand that it means to the ear, how such interacts with the ear.

Where that is folded back into the design and execution stage, for the better result. If such is possible. Results vary. It is partly a question of understanding how sensitive the ear is to odd harmonics and dealing with that as a point in emphasis.

what they are saying comes back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s great facinstion with giant expensive speakers with low impedance and wicked impedance curves or changes. this causes an immense amount of interactive with the power supply and overall over stressing of the given amplifier design. this lead to the idea that the amplifier for working with that given speaker was really important and how the speaker would show an amplifier to be ’weak’, in it’s unsuitability. only the best amplifier would do.

Not true. If you over stress anything you’ll get some unwanted harmonics and bad phase response, noise, distortions,etc, and this will ’color’ the result. So a bad speaker design is not the arbiter of audio quality. good and correct design working in sympathetic scenarios is good design. Poor speaker design has those ugly impedance curves that some of those giant speakers tend to have. Contrary to some thinking, it is possible to have those giant speakers have a benign impedance curve AND be of extremely revealing quality. It just takes more work, properly thought out work.

the relentlessness and a lack of resolution indicates that your are missing something.

And I've had the kindness to spend hours and hours of my time trying to help you find it.

when I leave and stop doing so, like I've done before... it does not mean you' won', as there is no winning going on here, for anyone.

There is just ...the relentless grinding power of ignorance.

additionally, we're dealing with a situation where business is involved, where financial futures are involved, for me, for you, and others who might be listening in.

and you came in, in falsehood, in disguise. With false name and cover.

And attacked relentlessly, with no regard for whom you attack as your Armour is complete and psychopathic.

Psychopathic as it has zero consequence for yourself, no matter the outcome. This much is abundantly obvious.

So, in essence, your entire posting sequence and all therein is utterly selfish and without integrity..

You come to play a game that has costs for others, then you better believe it has to have costs for you.

many people here, in the design world have the answers you seek, not just I. A place where all these things gain clarity and connectivity. On other forums, places like DIYAudio, have the same. People who do have those answers, and are designers of audio. Many more...are not on forums for the reasons of what is happening here.

But you are blind to them. And without integrity.

But we have established tests that are quite accurate w.r.t. what a DAC can do w.r.t. THD, noise floor, frequency response, complex waveform IMD (close to real music), etc. and how those will compare to others. So yes, we can change regulators, or anything else you want and show that it does absolutely nothing, or that the change is so minimal that no one will be able to detect the difference.

In my experience, and with my ears.....not true.

You are making an arbitrary decision about our hearing. This is where you step completely over the line.

We are are cross purposes, in the definition of the completeness and correctness of the complex argument.

The longer a question sits unresolved the more fundamental the mistakes in the formation of the question.

From my position, it appears in the form of a blind spot in your data set and associated reasoning.

~~~~~~~~

This is reminding me of the sign at the professors lounge in the Physics building at the local Large university. Students are, emphatically.... not allowed to enter. It matters not the intellect and reasoing power of the given student, they still lack experience, they lack tempering, they lack the lore and the life. A few are correct and beyond the professors, etc. but it is not a constant, not a norm. they lack the reflection and study of said reflection that the professors earn from the students and their compatriots. for the students, maybe in a few years, maybe in a decade, maybe never. Depends on the individual.

This is the why of the desire of having a tweak and cable area that is separated out so that others can’t crash it like an animal seeking to entrap itself in a ball of rage, while cutting itself and others to pieces.....

Perhaps some will get there, on these particular points about hearing vs the idea of purely measurement and intellectually aided number based design. Where human senses are discounted into being the slave of linear based dogmatic thinking. All for the comforts of a few who aren't making it to the next step in complex reasoning, in this particular scenario.

Something (not separated out) which is which is the opposite, or a misstep, a completely wrong headed take of why we have schools for higher thinking.

Can you please detail exactly what measurements you have taken on what equipment and using what to measure that led you to this conclusion with your experience with your ears?

 

I am not making any arbitrary decisions I am basing what I stated off significant amounts of work done by people in this field and I mean real researchers who have done well thought out experiments.

 

A claim of audible benefit is only that a claim until shown with some level of certainty to be anything but. Sectors of this industry makes several orders of magnitude more claims of audible improvement than proofs of audible improvement. I can’t be proven wrong because the proof does not exist.

Thank you for making my argument for me. This is not a dig. It is business for some of us. And you come in and do harm, via your relentless blind spot. I’m not saying I don’t have blind spots, no, not at all. Just not here, in this, is all.

I believe we've done this dance before and the result was the same. You crashed yourself against the given wall in your mind that you failed to understand exists.

Philosophy is the parent of science and we have to return to it when the going gets difficult. It is the parent and origin point for a reason...the most powerful of all: The essence of what moves us forward, the realization of self...