2. digital
  3. 172713-115129

Single Ended DAC vs Dual Differential XLR DAC

Hi,

 

will a dual differential XLR DAC (with i.e. 2x Left DAC chips + 2x Right DAC chips) always sound better than a Single Ended DAC (with i.e. 1x Left DAC chip + 1x Right DAC chip) assuming that they have the same DAC chip model and same board design (except the dual circuitry of the XLR version)?

 

The XLR has twice the output voltage, but will pure audio quality be certainly superior to the Single Ended version?

 

Thanks for your opinion!

 

Gianluca

gkg2k

Showing 4 responses by cindyment

cindyment's avatar
cindyment
351 posts
 

@yage

I don’t see what beef people have with ASR or Amir. I think he’s doing a great service for the community measuring all this gear.

Because measurements cannot be refuted. Because it pokes holes in audiophile claims. Because how does one reconcile their claim to be able to tell the difference between cables and fuses, but you are happy with a DAC that has barely 8-12 bits of performance. Worse, how does one reconcile claims of superior hearing or listening experience, when unaware of very significant artifacts? One could almost make the leap that electronics really do barely matter, and the speakers really are king, by far.

I would have thought the logical first thought would be, maybe it is broken, but I don’t see this in the thread, just defending the truly abysmal performance. Perhaps it is broken or perhaps it is a really bad design. Taking a look at the pictures, there are some things that on first glance concern me, so I tend to the latter, a really bad design. It does give credence to the fact, one that many audiophiles object to, that loud sounds mask quieter sounds and hence claims of being able to hear low level details during louder passages is suspect.

I would be a little disappointed if I paid for an 8 cylinder with a supercharger and ended up with a 4 cylinder with bad compression on 2 cylinders, but never realized it as I never take it out of the neighborhood.

 

 

 

cindyment's avatar
cindyment
351 posts
 

@melvinjames ,

Measurements, done correctly, do not lie. Perhaps if manufacturers took their own measurements and published them, as opposed to others doing it, then sites like ASR would not even exist. As a consumer, I feel like manufacturers are taking advantage of us. When I started into audio in my teens in the 80's, ever speaker vendors with few exceptions posted response curves. Today that would be the exception. There is not desire on the part of manufacturers to educate their customers in general or even on their own products. We are expected to believe everything in their marketing blurbs. While I tend to find Amir's tone often arrogant, bordering on offensive, I do appreciate the work and other similar efforts as it levels the playing field between consumers and manufacturers.

I believe that most audio purchases are made with relatively little prior listening, and are based on reading reviews. Many of those reviews are highly suspect and involve little in the way of critical listening or critical comparison. Based on those reviews perhaps you buy this product, and you like it, but the noise background seems a bit high, and it sounds "good" but perhaps not quite right. So you come to a site like this, and people tell you, well you need to:

  • buy this or that expensive interconnect
  • buy a $500 power cord to make it really shine
  • buy a $1000 reclocker if you want better performance

Now, another $2,000 in, not knowing any better, you still think it sounds "off".

It sounds "off" because it IS off. And none of those glowing review sites told you that, and no one here told you that, they told you to spend more painting the pig.

cindyment's avatar
cindyment
351 posts
 

@verdantaudio ,

I think you are interchanging balanced and differential but perhaps do not mean to. "Balanced" would refer only to the connection. Differential would refer to the circuitry.

cindyment's avatar
cindyment
351 posts
 

@verdantaudio ,

The reason the circuit is duplicated, (4 chips vs. 2 chips, etc...) is driven by the need to produce the inverse for common mode noise rejection.  That extra chip does not increase resolution, etc...

While that may be true in this device, where the noise is so high that nothing will fix it, using two DACs in a balanced configuration will often result in an improvement in THD+N/SNR as non-linearity is averaged between the two chips.

I think you need to explain more about the transformer you mention. I assume you mean an external transformer based single ended to balanced converter?

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that balanced will sound better. It all comes down to the implementation as you have noted, and it takes more components and it is harder to do properly than a single ended connection. You are pretty much always guaranteed to get better noise/emi rejection, but I would be cautious about that blanket statement w.r.t. distortion.

 

More to discover