When the S.Q. of my system was very bad, i listened to my favorite best music: Bach.... It was possible to concentrate then on music not troubled by the bad sound...
When the S.Q. goes from bad to acceptable, i go on with all style and different kind of music.... The recording was not my primary concern because sound quality begins to be acceptable....
The listening habits has 2 parts linked together: concentration on musical composition, or concentration on sound quality....
The concentration on sound quality must relax with time and with a good embed audio system...Concentration on music is the goal....
Listening musical composition shift the attention and the awareness to music not sound ....Sound being no more a restraint or an impediment, music only must grab you but by way of the sound quality it is easier...
For the last years my attention focus was dedicated more than half the time to sound...
I was in the obligation to create my own audio system, it begins with directing the awareness and attention to sound...
The best way to develop sound awareness is to set the stage for listening experiments: what if i change something on the wall?
What if i put a piece of quartz on the electrical panel? What if i change the speakers and put something under it to attenuate vibrations?
Small step by small step you will develop a greater attention capacity for details perception and this new listening awareness will guide you toward the implementation of better conditions for your audio system.... You will discover that it is not mainly the electronic design of amplifier. or of dac, or even of the speakers that create the S.Q. but on par with it and perhaps even more than the electronic design only, it was what i called the mechanical embeddings(controls of vibrations /resonance), the electrical embedding of your house(the general noise floor of the house where is embedded the noise floor of your audio system) and the acoustical settings of your room...
Then you will quit the blind urge to improve your system by buying costly new promising parts... You will trust more your ears in an incremental process of listening experiences linked to some simple experiments about vibrations, noise controls and acoustic....You will read reviewers for what they are : sellers not mainly technical adviser about how to create audiophile experience....
More you will develop a trust in your ears more confidence you will have and you will learn to know the truth about audio by listening not reading about consumers products...
I have ZERO hand craft hability, and i am not a master of D.I.Y. at all but at some time if you want badly something without the necessary money you must be creative.... My way was listening and experimenting very simple thing indeed...
After 2 intense years i begin to be conscious of the 3 dimensions of the audio system way of embeddings.... Nowhere any article advise seriously people about that.... They speaks most of the times about costly products supposed to be a cure for ONE only of the embeddings....But no single product by itself can resolve the acoustical embeddings and the electrical embeddings.... Perhaps one product like the springs can help for vibrations, but even in this embeddings only one product or device cannot optimally do the job for all pieces of gear....
It is here that learned listenings experiments helped me toward my own original solution, especially with the acoustic embedding...
It is more fun to learn to listen between experiments than buying illusions ....
It takes only time.....
In a word:
Try to create the material varying conditions that will gives to you the necessary feed backs variation controls that will transform your passive hearing capacity into an active listening organ....
The room is the ear and the ears are the room, you then must learn to work with the 2 at the same time....
last word:
Some people argue that the sound memory is very short lived then illusory....It is not totally true...I dont record sound memory by itself in my body, what is recorded is the pleasure/displeasure associated with certain sounds impression, the emotion is enduring not the sound memory by itself....I remember then not the sound directly, but my body remember his reaction to the sound and recreate the emotion like a response/habit, this is these emotional responses that are encoded in my body and that will serve me like some steps in a feed back loop of learnings experiments....
Then learning to listen is learning also to retrieve in you some past emotion and recreate it....You then became active participant in your own hearing transformative process, not only a passive ear that recorded external facts....
There is no more pure external facts only (sounds); there is music, where any sound is a unique emotional conscious experience....
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It’s all hype. There is no challenge to getting a clean accurate signal to the preamp. We don’t need to worry about dedicated power supplies or dampening vibrations. Just consider for a second that all that is needed is a $2 chip part. Amen..... After someone who affirm that only big money can afford audiophile experience, someone who says that there is no audiophile experience, no need of money, no need to think about that anymore at all.... :) What great faith..... I just this week bought cheap springs that increase my speakers isolation controls, am i deluded? The sound is way better....Placebo effect? Or perhaps it is your ignorance or indifference with some blinders to go with? Sleep with that, all is hype....Problem solved..... Amen..... :) By the way IT IS NOT THE PRICE that make audio experience what is is, it is simple cheap intelligent controls of the embeddings.... Read a page about acoustic..... That will enlighten you.... Ok i apologize for my rant.... I will let that like it is here..... My best to all..... |
Audio is not about an upgrading race, not about buying costlier components at all...
This is a truism, or a common place evidence that costlier gear can be better....
Audio is about creating the best conditions to experience a good S.Q.
Thinking that money only can buy that is ignorance....
Saying that costlier gear are better is a common place argument devoid of any originality....
In audio we must use a minimum of brain power to identify the problems and after that solving them.... My experience is that this does not cost much money....It cost fun work and time....
Then am i a fool completely deluded or is it possible to reach something acceptable and very good at low price? yes i know that by my experiments....
ANY system MUST be embedded mechanically, (minimizing vibrations/resonance)electrically (decreasing the noise floor) and very important located in an acoustically controlled room...
Any relatively well chosen audio system at relatively low cost may sound marvellous, if its embeddings are well done.... ANY.....
Contradicting that saying that i never listen to 100,000 dollars system is logically a sophism....
When you enjoy a good S.Q. it does not mean that there is nothing better than your system, it means that you are no more obsessed by sound race to upgrade at all cost, because you have it in way so satisfying that throwing money is ridiculous....
But i know it by reading all threads all this years most people dont have a clue how to reach some S.Q. level except buying costly gear....I was like that....
And saying to people they will never have a clue about good sound without paying a fortune is not only false it is pure ignorance about audio creativity and experience.... Consumerism is not audio.....
My best to all.... |
I bought it in a lucky streak of bids....But if you look for one used, for about 150 dollars you can get one....
Christophe Mariac is the designer of this dac.... His price were upgrade just after i bought mine....I read a lot before buying this dac and never come back....
For my audio journey, the most rewarding part were not the upgrading of some electronic components but the work to embed what i have already.... This completely transform my audio system and my understanding of this hobby....I dont sell anything..... All my device are simple and homemade or very low cost for the springs or the Schumann generators(10 dollars each i own 10 )....
Mechanical embeddings:
If you put good isolation under your speakers and gear it is a beginning.... I just put some springs....With success....It is low cost..This embeddings can be take care of with many solutions.... I use a "sandwiches" of different materials(quartz,granite plates, sorbothane duro 70, cork plates, bamboo plates) for my amplifier and dac .... Springs under the speakers and a load to damp them(70 pounds) and to compress the springs....
electrical embeddings:
Try my "golden plates" on top of your electrical main panel.... Shungite tile+ copper tape on the external side of the application....I use them on the external electrical meter of my house, on the main touter, behind my speakers electronics, on my conditioner, all along the electrical grid.... This is relatively low cost for the cleaning all along the line.... Cost around 500 dollars....But which device at 500 dollars can lower the noise floor of the house all along the electrical grid and which you can use with this flexibility? Try a couple of these plates and if you enjoy the changes go on with more.... The loss will not be big if not....
Acoustical embeddings:
This one is the most impactful embeddings but a bit more complex to do....
I use materials essentially homemade and low cost to do a basic treatment.... I use my ears to do it for my liking...This is PASSIVE acoustic treatment.... I simply use a balance between reflective surface, absorbant one and diffusive devices....
I also devise many ACTIVE acoustics controls but you must read my thread to have an idea and many people would call me crazy.... But it works for me and my system is more than good for me now...But all these active controls are possible in a dedicated audio room not in a living room with your wife to convince :)
I cannot describe the acoustic solutions i create for myself here....
My thread is " miracles in audio.... " here on Agon...
All my devices are simple, low cost and very efficient...
At the end with almost any good electronics you will get audiophile experience if you take care of the embeddings....
If you have questions i will give you the information if i can....
My best to you.... |
I have choosen my dac on the basis of the fact that his design is minimal....Not a cell phone dac but not too far i guess with internal battery to lower the noise... (suffice to inspect the internals to see the minimalistic approach)
Every electronic component in a piece of gear will add noise, it is always a trade-off...Then a minimal dac seems to me a good idea and it was retrospectively an illuminated choice....( confirmed by no negative reviews at all anywhere.)(the fact that some better dac exist at high cost is not a counter argument for sure)
That was a good choice for me....I forgot to underline that in my other posts, and this is the basic fact that guide me in my choice : minimal design then low cost and low noise....
The engineering of dac is very complex and without engineering background very difficult to understand completely....
If someone want to understand all alternatives for dac design one hour reading will not do the job...More like one month to the introduction.... :)
For myself i never wanted to immerse myself in this particular study but only to buy the cheapest and the best at the same time to solve my audio problem....My other purchases for a dac being if not atrocious not very good to my ears....
One thing i realized very rapidly is the fact that dac design is a field of audio engineering that is booming and all these cost associated to research must be paid by the customers...And all research is not always about the minimal design with optimal quality but rather the better performance in the absolute at all cost, never mind the price...Normal these dac engineers are enthralled by their research of the top high end results....
Another thing i realized, is that some old piece of technology and cheap piece, like the chip TDA 1543 at the basis for example of my dac, was always seen to be very good and exist since the beginning of this technology.... Then a minimalistic design around one of this electronic chip seems to me a bargain in money and for the given sound quality.... I was right....Like i said no come back.... I dont want today or will not want tomorrow, invest money to beat the quality of my dac with a little margin by paying many thousand of dollars....
The last discovery i made was to be crucial for me and totally underestimated; never mind the price of the dac, the resulting S.Q. of any system is more related to the rightful mechanical,electrical, and acoustical embeddings than from the design of the dac only at any price....
And what is the reviews value of different dacs comparison in a non controlled embeddings? No great value...The first dac i bought believing these reviewers was a bad choice....
I was right for dac, price and S.Q. are not linearly related at all, especially under 2000 dollars....And the booming research make obsolete swiftly the last costly hyped dac of the year....
I decide to go with minimalistic, low price,low noise,universally praised product..... I was right....
I hope my post will be useful, many people look for not only a decent dac but a very good one, at low price like me....
My best to all....
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We think the same then for this matter....
My main point, coming from my audiophile listening experiments and experience, is what people think about the sound of their dac, often comes from a wrong mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings of their audio system....
Dac are the most difficult component to buy without trying it....And very good one at low cost difficult to spot....
My best to you |
They aren’t even audibly transparent. Some are more audibly transparent than others.... It is a relative quality for which the criterial judgement is linked to the perception of a tonal timbre instrument accuracy.... The more accurate an instrumental timbre will be the more transparent the dac will be.... "Ideally" a good dac disapear to let piano or violin only in existence.... Numbers means something for the designer work, but it is the designer ears who judge at the end....Not numbers written on a white paper .... |
If it results in distortion then it is measurable. If it is above a certain level it will be audible. If it is audible then it’s a lousy DAC sell it to an audiophile and move on. DACs that are well engineered DO NOT have sound signatures they are considered audibly transparent
I hate to break it to you, but no audio equipment is 100% transparent. :) I am an audiophile and i said all that a few post ago without insulting all these people who lives by the book of measures or any book........ |
I am not a fan of shutting down others voices. DJones is technically correct. The measurements are what they are. The difficulty in refuting his absolutes is that “transparency and measurements” does not always sound so great or the same. I have 2 transports with similar measurements- one I use daily the other is in a box. Why in a box? Because it doesn’t sound as good as the other. The one I use does have much better components. Does it sound better due to some yet to be discovered attribute? Don’t know, nor do I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating. I have plenty of technical background but I also have travelled the world extensively and realize that some things buck current science. I also do not believe that big money is the only path to phenomenal anything. Big dollar components can be trumped by better application and synergy of lesser priced components. What’s wrong with audio being a mixture of science and art and magic? Last point, all of us have varying financial means, and similarly varying definitions of audio nirvana. It isn’t a zero sum game where ones win is another’s loss. i very much like your post and wise comments.... Thanks.... I will add my own comments about "what buck science" : Too much tools use dependency, not enough disciplined perception.....Something that, almost 2 centuries ago, Goethe called "delicate empiricism"..... |
Dull and lifeless?
Try Starting point systems at his price nothing to loose and it is not dull nor lifeless, it sound very natural.... |
One DAC is $139 the other $10,500 in a sighted test which one will win consistently? I think i am with djones about that, not because some technicalities about measures numbers prove that improved technological advances are inaudible.... I am not sure ears are so well understood in their astonishing capacity to retrieve information from sound .... But i sense no limitations in upgrading my sonic s.q. for the last 2 years to another level completely and my modestly price dac was never a limitation and never reveal any of his own limitations to me if there is some...(I am sure my dac has limitations for sure but whose dac has none ?) I think really that, except if my dac was a miracle at low cost, and i think it is one anyway, perhaps also limitations seeming to come from dacs are coming sometimes from a too much sophisticated technology in relation to the rest of the gear or rather reveal limitations in relation to the 3 embeddings of the audio system more than from the dac itself, or comes from really too digital sound harsh bad dac....All the dacs i owned before the last one were bad, even the best one, in spite of glowing reviews.... They all were low cost one for sure.... My best purchase in Audio was this dac.....Starting Point Systems NOS dac....There exist no negative reviews of this dac and some talk about his limitations being a lack of details....I was thinking the same the first month i listen to it, perhaps a bit lackimg in details.... But with my upgrading embeddings many controls improvement that put my system on another level totally, i realized that the seeming lack of details was coming rather from a wrongly or defective mechanical, electrical, and acoustical embeddings of my audio system, not from the dac at all... Then what is the value of reviews by reviewers that listen to compare many dacs in a not so well embedded audio system and room? Zero.... Because the best dac in the world, if there is one, must theoretically have no sound of his own, it is a translator, the defects are then coming from the audio system embeddings....For bad dac, all people know what is their sound: harsh,digital, cold, analytical etc....Or too warm, lacking details etc A good dac does not exist, it is his best quality.... My dac do not exist indeed.... :) |
If you can listen and distinguish clearly these 5 brass instruments intermingled with one another in a totally gleaming space, encompassing your room and exceeding the speakers in all direction even the extreme left and extreme right... Your system is good... Empire brass ensemble "Gabrieli" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olIrf-uioD8 If you can listen to this piano music of Chopin, Nocturnes by Ivan Moravec, and if the piano is in front of you low chord at your right, higher chords at your left, and completey out of the speakers.... Your system is good... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BaLVjoLUAQ The last one is difficult to have it right... This is my favorite therapeutic music... Very powerful...Goldman "Holy Harmony" But you must listen very subtle chimes on top of very precise pulsating tuning forks frequencies encompassing the room and in front of you a Mantra by superposed female and male voices... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJRpoUk-mpU&t=344s Try to buy the cd if you like them on youtube.... |
Mahgister,
Always been a big Groucho fan. You’re quotes reminded me to do some binging on old "You Bet Your Life" episodes available on Tubi.
Still waiting for some of those deep philosophical quotes, but the quick wit is on full display,
Not one of my attributed citation comes from Groucho.... He is more swift and humorous than i ever will be and i borrow his reputation to navigate with my own philosophical rambling flaws.... :) |
:)
I like him so much that i attribute all my thinking to him and much..... |
Rubbish! Brightness is first and foremost a function of the engineering of the recording. Brightness and harshness are IMPRESSIONS.... They come from the recording yes sometimes....And this is what i wrote: " Files or cd VARY in relative brightness"... Please try to read a post before trashing it.... Anyway bright recording are unlistenable on some BAD system, way less so on a good balanced one.....That was my point...But you can take a bad audio too warm system and listen with it too bright files for sure, but 2 bad dont do a good one.... And your "first and foremost" forget the way many bad audio systems, already bright and harsh by themselves, worsen the situation with a bright recording...There exist way more unbalanced bright audio system than too much bright files or cd in a collection....I own 10,000 files and cd by the way.... Then your suggestion is wrong because these IMPRESSIONS of brightness may come from one or another or the 2, the recording and the audio system....But a balanced audio system make anything more listenable and that was my point.... Rubbish yourself then.... :) «Logic is a two way sword, dont cut yourself with the sword» -Groucho Marx |
Brightness on any cd or files is not a files or cd defect so much than the sign of an imperfect dac....Lacking completely sometimes of 3-d holography soundstage is another sign...
Files or cd VARY in relative brightness, and in their capacity to deliver holographic soundstage, but this variation is NEVER an absence or a complete lacking with a good dac, nevermind the files or cd...
I know i own one...
Wit a good dac music exist first all time, not the dac or the files first.... |
i reach and create a very great S.Q. in the last 2 years: dynamic, clarity all across frequencies,details and more, soundstage in all the room, imaging with depth in near listening and in regular position, 3-d holography, name it...
All that with my controls of the mechanical embeddings, and all this time, i never think one second about my DAC.... It does not exist at all.... And all this time this thing that never has signal his existence to me, never did’nt hold me back ever, in each and every one step toward better S.Q.....
This is what i call a DAC....i will never look back.... |
A dac is the most difficult thing to buy for me in an audio system....
And it must not exist.... When nothing suggest to you his existence this is the good one....
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I am lucky to own the best deal on quality/price for dac....Paid 24 dollars new, with a used value around a little more than 100 dollars...
No coming back..... My dac shows no limitations and in the beginning i had the impressions that my dac has limitations, for example lack of details...(Starting Point Systems NOS dac)
What an error i was making !
My audio system was not the culprit of my unsatisfaction at all, his triple embeddings was faulty simply...
Most people evaluate dac or gear on a wrongly embedded system and most of the defects they attribute to the gear most of the times comes from the electrical, mechanical and from the acoustical powerful embedding...
Thats life, who says that it will be simple?
The best quality of a dac consist in his total non-existence to the ears....This is my experience with S.P. S. dac. If you say no, it is retrieving details, i know immediately, especially if your system is rightfully embedded, that your dac is not a good one never mind the price.... :) |
