Nothing is ever exactly the same. How much different? Anywhere from minuscule and not significant to big.
The sound quality from DACs - is it all the same?
I've been talking to my cousin brother about sound quality. He is a self-proclaimed expert audiophile. He says that Audio Science Review has all of the answers I will need regarding audio products.
In particular, he says an inexpensive DAC from any Chinese company will do better than the expensive stuff. He says fancy audio gear is a waste of money because the data is already bit-perfect. All DAC chips sound the same. Am I being mislead?
He also said that any DAC over $400 is a waste of money. Convincing marketing is at play here, he says.
He currently owns a Topping L30 headphone amplifier and D30 Pro DAC. He uses Sennheiser HD 569 headphones to listen to music. I'm not sure what to think of them. I will report my findings after listening one day! (likely soon, once I get some free time)
- Jack
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I have an Echo feeding an older amp and speakers in the bunkie at our cottage. Dead silent surprisingly and there are no obvious artifacts. @nonoise, to use the typical trope since you haven’t listened to it how would you know how it sounds? That works boh ways. I tried it after reading a review on some site that showed good performance. I was surprised. |
The most straight out admission of confirmation bias I've yet read. All the best, |
The room the equipment is in and where the equipment is placed is IMHO even more of a factor than the equipment itself. ASR cannot determine, by testing one speaker of a pair, how music will sound on a pair of speakers in all users particular rooms. Thus for me, ASR is the ultimate in snake oil. Worth a quick check before buying something but more worthy of a chuckle or two. |
I prefer to not let myself be influenced by others confirmation and cognitive biases. I don't consider gear a hobby. I consider achieving the best sound at an acceptable cost/benefit ratio a hobby. The gear itself is meaningless to me. In fact, the less gear, the better. My main source currently is Amazon Music HD via an Echo wirelessly straight into a preamp, so no CDs, LPs or hardware streamers. Knowing how to read graphs, and understanding through measurements what is audible to the human ear and what is not allows me to "filter" gear before wasting my time with it. I don't consider it time well-spent to listen to something that measurements show obviously won't sound any different to my human ears. |
"What if there are two dozen cars that go fast, handle great, and stop good? You gonna waste your time test driving all of them? " Nope-- I read pro and user reviews to get an idea of various DACs' sonic profiles then based on that, I listen to as many as I can (within my budget, of course).I listened to 6 DACs in my system before making a choice. Music is very important to me so, no-- it's most certainly NOT a "waste if time"-- quite the opposite!!! If you regard listening to gear as a waste of time, I cannot fathom why you are even attracted to this hobby. |
I totally agree with some here ,. Study the specifications of said component and understand any qualified test results like ASR does ,,..You will definitely get the best sounding system your money can buy at most price points however be warned up to a limit of course, anything above certain dollars is fantasy make believe in your mind ,… |
Yes, and not a waste of time to drive all of them, if you can. Specs on paper does not always translate to "enjoyable to drive". Same as audio, trying it first hand matters if you care about what you are buying. Specs-only people usually miss out. Same with audio, some of the best spec'd DACs I tested were not engaging to listen to. Great on paper, sound, not always enjoyable or engaging to listen to. |
Is it just me or are most of the DACs subtle in their differences? I can hear the difference between an Ares II, Merason Frerot, Border Patrol, etc but it’s not fundamentally changing that much of my experience with the music. I’ll go back to my Bluesound and I don’t mind it, so I’ve sold off those special DACs off. Maybe something in the 5k and more range would change my mind. |
The only way to put this to rest is have a level matched listening session. On that note I started my digital journey with Cambridge 851N streamer. Then added Chord Qutest, then Ares II, then Pontus II, then Musician Draco and now finally the best of the rest Musician Pegasus. Sounds closest to the real thing. If anyone wants to send me their Rockna Wavelight or Holo May Kte I will gladly give you my opinion!😃 |
"I am an innate skeptic, but my experience and others demonstrated knowledge leads me to believe those who can demonstrate real expertise as opposed to those who claim it by virtue of simply using something."
Me too, although my background in physics amounts only to a fluked O level (one of the papers was a multiple choice). A few years back, to cut a long story short, I needed to solder in a tiny capacitor, were talking 2/3 mm, on the back of my CD player’s circuit board to allow it to play CDRs. A rather unsuccessful attempt which resulted in 3 outcomes, none of which resembed what I was looking for. a) I almost wrecked the circuit board b) I almost burned a hole in my jeans due to the frustration of repeated failure. c) The iron slipped and almost burned the soldering iron’s cable.
A friend suggested I try this family owned electronics store in town, and without any other option, other than to admit abject failure, I decided to give it a go. The owner took the drive off me and disappeared. I could smell the sound of something burning as I waited a little nervously. In less than 2 minutes he returned with the capacitor safely soldered in place. From that moment on it became patently clear that, no matter what I might like to imagine, there are people out there whose skills exceed mine by far.
Anyway, do DACs all sound the same, does Bluetooth 5.1 sound any better than Bluetooth 5.0 or even 4.2? When it comes to audio and all of its myriad facets (imagery, bandwidth, dynamics, distortion, transients, coherence, timbre etc) can we ever sort out evidence from opinion? Questions, questions...too many questions. On second thoughts, just give me some meaningful data. |
And Erin's Audio Corner and Audioholics. After all, when looking at performance cars which information would you rather have when starting your research, "goes fast, handles great, stops good" or "707HP@5800RPM; 0-60 in 3.8 secs; 1.3 lateral g-force; 70-0 in 128 ft."? |
Precisely.... It is important to listen others and discuss... |
@cd318, the difficult part is getting the people who know how to implement audio reproduction to accept that "perfect" does not mean "good sound", and the people who don't implement audio (but think they do) to accept the other side actually knows what they are doing. My background is in solid state physics and material sciences. If you need someone to build a battery for you from scratch I am your guy. My background and tools I have access to could allow me to completely simulate an acoustic absorber, but I still hired an acoustic engineer to design my listening room. I could literally build a transistor from scratch, but I trusted the engineers who designed my electronics know what they are doing since that is not what I specialize in. I am an innate skeptic, but my experience and others demonstrated knowledge leads me to believe those who can demonstrate real expertise as opposed to those who claim it by virtue of simply using something. |
Unless they can statistically prove over a larger population that it sounds better, it don't mean jack. The ultimate approach in audio so far has been Floyd and Olive's at Harman, where they can predict with 0.86 correlation coefficient which speaker listeners will prefer in blind listening tests. And when bass extension is similar, that number goes up to 0.996. Believing anything someone or some company subjectively says without going through this kind of statistical scrutiny is akin to believing in get-rich-quick schemes. Unfortunately, the human psyche is built to want to believe in these kinds of schemes.
The exploitation of human frailty is often the marketers goal.
On the other hand folks like Floyd Toole, Sean Olive and more recently Amir Majidimehr at ASR have done some good work in ushering in a new era of measurement based "statistical scrutiny" for which an increasing number of peoplebseem to be grateful.
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Well, that's not the point I was making, but they should use statistical information to filter their own decision-making process. And studies like Toole and Olive's show the likelihood of what the typical human prefers. I'm first going to assume I'm a typical human before I assume I'm an atypical one and flounder around testing atypical equipment. Likewise, with electronic equipment I'd rather start from a neutral base and determine what adjustments to neutral I prefer. That's why humans use common baselines for just about everything. |
I totally agree. They know what they are doing, and huge part of that is marketing their story. They know better than to try to compete in a lower cost market even if they could make products with their house sound for a significantly lower price. It would be as futile as if Ferrari tried to try to compete in the sub $30k new family car market. They don’t know how to do it. It ain’t easy at all! They could possibly team up with Toyota, but that would just tarnish their brand image, even if it turned out to be an excellent family car. The people who buy Ferraris don’t want to see the label on every low end sedan and mini van everywhere. The people who don’t typically buy Ferraris aren’t going to care much about that label. Making a car analogy is somewhat weak because a fast Ferrari easily has measurably better performance than a sub $30k family sedan. With audio equipment the "performance" as it might be measured typically doesn't correlate much with the price. So it's paying for taste, just like paying for styling on a Ferrari compared to some cheaper car someone has hot rodded so it's crazy fast. High end exotic cars typically get their special looks by having small amounts of internal usable space compared to the size of the car. Any practical design cannot look the same. |
I highly doubt people buy their audio gear to statistically prove (satisfy) the mass population. I have a strong feeling they buy them to satisfy themselves. Not other people. There may be exception.
Again, I don’t think people blindly listen to what a company subjectively says. There may be exceptions. I have a strong feeling people buy their audio gear based on what they like and enjoy. Personal preferences. Commensurate with their budget / money outlay they can afford. Who cares about "Statistical scrutiny", and not sure whether the masses or a large group of "sample population" needs to have any impact on individual people’s decision to buy their personal audio gear.
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+1 Unless they can statistically prove over a larger population that it sounds better, it don't mean jack. The ultimate approach in audio so far has been Floyd and Olive's at Harman, where they can predict with 0.86 correlation coefficient which speaker listeners will prefer in blind listening tests. And when bass extension is similar, that number goes up to 0.996. Believing anything someone or some company subjectively says without going through this kind of statistical scrutiny is akin to believing in get-rich-quick schemes. Unfortunately, the human psyche is built to want to believe in these kinds of schemes. |
good discussion and good points made @ghdprentice great companies in this field know exactly what they are doing, just as great car companies, great winemakers, great chefs are expertly competent and in control of their processes and end goals... over time these may change to meet their view of market and business requirements but their new products and how they perform don’t come about by their shooting in the dark i repeat this every and now and then on this discussion board, great durable companies that have sustained success in this field - like conrad johnson, audio research, pass labs, magnepan, vandersteen, sonus faber, audio note, msb, sme and so on... they have not been stealing money from the deaf all these years... |
Each major high end audio company has a house sound.. B&W, ARC, Sonus Faber, Conrad Johnson, Wilson, etc. They know what they are trying to achieve.
I read an interview with the head designer at MBL (?), Burmeister (?). Anyway, one of the most highly respected high end audio company. He talked about how he approached design and that he could achieve what ever sound he wanted. He knows that brand x capacitors sound like this… and brand y sounds like that… so he can make the equipment sound like anyway he likes. Their high end (very high end) was designed to be an assault on what is possible… but that there was a limited market for that sound. So he just completed a design for folks with less refined tastes, for a lower level markets (not remotely cheap). Additionally these are trade secrets. A company / design engineer that understands the characteristics of different components within different design has proprietary knowledge. This is the stuff of competive advantage. Over time it becomes widely known in the community, the company moves on, to say, using cryogenic treated wire… or machined solid blocks of unobtainium for the case. Design engineers capable of that level of sound quality engineering are exceedingly rare. I have had the pleasure of managing and working with truly incredible minds… literally geniuses. Those that make smart people look stupid. These are the kind of people capable of creating leading edge designs. Companies that produce really high end equipment are not unaware or stumbling around. They don’t play with blind tests any more than the top birders in the world need to refer to google to make sure of the correct identification of a sparrow. |
Sounds great according to them. You would wonder how they assess what sounds great. If it’s done by swapping components and then blind testing that would be most interesting. Then of course I’d re-test to see exactly what changed because it may be possible to achieve the same result in a more cost effective fashion. This would also add to a body of knowledge about which deviations from linearity sound great and which don’t. If the change passes a blind test but nothing measurably different can be found then that is also an extremely interesting finding that would expand science and engineering in ways that would extend past the field of hifi. I see little of that kind of contribution from the world of audio reproduction happening, so I’m convinced that the "secret sauce" has to be some audible deviation from linearity that offers nothing new to the general fields of science and engineering, and it seems unlikely that expensive sub components would be required to create the most pleasing effect unless one grooms one’s tastes in that direction. This gets me thinking of moissanite vs diamond. Moissanite actually exceeds diamond for fire. It diffracts light more strongly. This would seem desirable but since it is known that moissanite is cheaper than diamond the extra fire is seen by some as a tale tell of it’s cheapness, thus it is not as beautiful as the more restrained fire of diamond. |
I would refine what you said a little. Designers start with solid design that produce great sound with in high level requirements (watts per channel, gain… etc.). Then they will swap sub components like capacitors, resisters, special placement… etc to make it sound great… often the end product will sound much better… but not test as well. It doesn’t take anywhere the engineering time to create a component that just tests well as one that sounds great. Hence higher cost. Also why choosing equipment by specs will seldom sound good. So, the “secret sauce” is upgrading sub components and listening over and over and over during the design process and using much higher quality components. |
So it seems this thread is coming to the conclusion that better sounding DACs don't meet any objective engineering requirements better than cheaper dacs. It's not that they produce the signal more precisely, but that they add some special sauce that creates a more pleasant stereo listening experience for some listeners who find the experience worth the extra cost. |
The thing about increasingly expensive DACs in a really good system is that small differences are increasingly significant in the sound presentation. I have the most pleasing DAC I have heard in my system (the Audio Research Reference CD9SE).. before that a Sim Audio 650D (now replaced by the newer and better sounding 750) and a Berkeley Reference Alpha 3 ($17K, $18K, and $22K). Each were excellent and sounded far better than notably less expensive ones. Each worthy of their cost because of their sound quality. |
The $3500 DAC is the Auralic Vega, the $11,000 DAC the Bricasti M1SE with network streamer. It seemed that the sound improvement between the lesser DAC steps were maybe 40% improvement, the Vega to M1SE was about 20-30%. I wonder how much more improvement there might be over the M1SE but I seriously doubt I will have funds to find that out. |
I went from the DAC in my laptop to a $168 DAC/AMP to a $99 standalone DAC to a $360 DAC to a $3500 DAC to my current $11,000 DAC. And yes, there was a significant and easy-to-hear improvement with each step upward in cost, so all is right with the world in that I got what I paid for. That being said, the cost differences in sonic improvement escalated exponentially. Or as Stereophile once put it, it was a phenomenon of the ever increasing cost of the ever decreasing difference. |
Hi! I went from a Benchmark DAC1 USB to a Lampizator Amber DAC. The sonic difference in favor of the Amber Dac was HUGE! Really, everything changed for the best, i.e., more detail, more space between instruments, The soundstage became wider, deeper and more forward the listening position. The bass with the Amber Dac has more impact and goes deeper. I mean the difference is night and day!
Greetings! |
I just upgraded from the DAC listed below to a Gustard x26 Pro. I'm aware the price and build quality are not comparable, but there is a remarkable difference between these two DACs. Some audiophiles would consider this overkill in my system, but it's a completely different level of listening. |
@jackhifiguy You do you. If the ASR crowd makes you happy, hang there. |
Agree with most of Hansen's post. However point 4 is not correct: ") The DAC chip - almost everything these days is delta sigma with a built-in digital filter. Differences between different chips is one of the less important aspects of D/A converter designs. Both ESS and AKM have some special tricks to reduce out-of-band noise, which can be helpful, but not dramatic.". Firstly, there are still many R2R Dacs that are manufactured. Secondly a number of high end manufacturers do not rely on off the counter chips but make their own. Thirdly manufacturers using ESS chips tweak the chip so that it sounds differently. Personally I do not really like Ess chips, preferring AKM or Burr Brown. Ess to me often, but not always, sounds shrill in the mid range and is hard to listen to after a while. This is what the minion leader on another site in particular, finds difficult to understand.
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Just my 2 cents: Worked with several internationals from India (all very intelligent and well educated) some had family come over from India for a tour of USA and spent a few days at our work site. Joquime introduced his family visitors by name and called them his cousin brothers and cousin sister. When I asked what he meant, he explained that they were in fact his cousins (his father’s brother’s children) but in their culture consider all family other than parents and grand parents, as a brother or a sister - thus their term "Cousin Brother or Cousin Sister, etc. Before we insult people and expose our own lack of intellect, we might consider that not everyone on this planet shares our same culture or manor of expression. As far as specs - I use them to get a basic comparison, but still it comes down to good sound (they don’t all sound the same) and a history of reliability and performance........Jim |
