Do all DACs sound more or less the same?

[Allan F]

IMO, the simple answer is that some DACs sound the same, some sound slightly different, and others sound significantly different. There is no single reason to explain those differences or similarities and the reasons may be completely different depending on the DACs being compared. For example, in one instance it may be because of the chips being used and in another it may be because of differences in the analog output stage. Use of the same DAC chips does not mean that the DACs will sound the same. It depends on the implementation.

[Paul R]

Interesting! Here the Benchmark DAC-2 and the NAD M51 sound very different to me. I could pick out which was which with my wife switching them about 100% of the time. When I switched them about, Karen could also pick them out 100% of the time. Between those two particular DACs I mean. Other DACs were much harder to tell apart, some were impossible to tell apart.

 

 

 

Did anyone see the Dac shootout at Headfi?

A gentleman ordered up 14 of our favorite sub $2K dacs and compared them side-by-side.

 

December 2013 Mid-Level DAC Comparison

 

Long thread short, they all sounded the same except to him except 2. Interesting post.

 

The tested dacs included

 

[TABLE=width: 100%]

[TR]

[TD]1. Emotiva Stealth DC-1.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]2. Resonessence Concero. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]3. Yulong DA8.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4. Metrum Octave Mk II.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5. Lynx Hilo. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6. Schiit Gungnir. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7. Chordette QuteHD.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]8. NAD M51.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]9. Ciunas DAC [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]10. Benchmark DAC-2.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]11. Dangerous Source.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]12. BMC PureDac.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13. Arcam irDAC[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]14. Anedio D2. [/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[gmgraves]

The thing is that the differences are so apparent no one I know of has ever wasted time doing double-blind testing. The closest thing I know of is that Resonessence says in that FAQ page I linked that they tried out various filters on testers to see which they preferred. Seriously, these differences are on the order of tone controls. Who do you know who would spend money setting up a DBT on whether you could tell a difference between bass turned all the way up and flat?

 

There is one that I know of performed by AES fellows Meyer and Moran where more than a hundred people participated in a series of ABX tests where digitally recorded music was decoded and re-encoded multiple times (daisy-chain fashion) and compared using a an ABX switcher to the same recordings, decoded once. The results (for what they were worth) was that statistically, no one could tell the difference between the DA/AD/DA daisy-chain loop and the single conversion, Here is the abstract for that test from the AES page. I used to have a copy of the entire paper, but I can't find it. Since the paper cost money to download again, the best I can do is the abstract:

 

[Engineering Report] Claims both published and anecdotal are regularly made for audibly superior sound quality for two-channel audio encoded with longer word lengths and/or at higher sampling rates than the 16-bit/44.1-kHz CD standard. The authors report on a series of double-blind tests comparing the analog output of high-resolution players playing high-resolution recordings with the same signal passed through a 16-bit/44.1-kHz “bottleneck.” The tests were conducted for over a year using different systems and a variety of subjects. The systems included expensive professional monitors and one high-end system with electrostatic loudspeakers and expensive components and cables. The subjects included professional recording engineers, students in a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles. The test results show that the CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels, by any of the subjects, on any of the playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only at very elevated levels.

[wgscott]

Did anyone see the Dac shootout at Headfi?

A gentleman ordered up 14 of our favorite sub $2K dacs and compared them side-by-side.

 

December 2013 Mid-Level DAC Comparison

 

Long thread short, they all sounded the same except to him except 2. Interesting post.

 

Which two ( that thread is 78 pages!)?

 

The tested dacs included

 

[TABLE=width: 100%]

[TR]

[TD]1. Emotiva Stealth DC-1. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]2. Resonessence Concero. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]3. Yulong DA8.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4. Metrum Octave Mk II.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5. Lynx Hilo. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6. Schiit Gungnir. [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7. Chordette QuteHD.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]8. NAD M51.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]9. Ciunas DAC [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]10. Benchmark DAC-2.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]11. Dangerous Source.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]12. BMC PureDac.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13. Arcam irDAC[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]14. Anedio D2. [/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

What is the significance of the italics?

[esldude]

Which two ( that thread is 78 pages!)?

 

 

 

What is the significance of the italics?

 

Post #582 is where he lists his conclusions. Page 39. That isn't his final conclusions, but it is where he starts to get to them. One of the different sounding dacs was considered inferior by him. Will list which is which once I have found his final list.

[sandyk]

George

There is a whole industry telling you, that you and this technical paper are living back in the 20th century.

Digital audio doesn't stand still anymore than the design of those high price tag gas guzzlers you speed down autobahns as a reviewer.

 

Alex

[Savage]

I think the Italics were either confirmed delivery or dacs that other head-fi members had lent him. I forget, and yes...very long.

 

He thought the Metrum and Yulong (with one specific filter setting) sounded different from the others. Not more true to fidelity but pleasing to him. I don't think he had a lot of love for the others and branded them "The indistinguishables"

 

Kind of a heroic effort, I think I could do about 4 before I went batty listening to the same test tracks over and over. He was also using headphones, excellent quality cans but not known for their transparency.

[lazy]

Meyer Moran paper: http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

 

Interestingly, based on a few brief exchanged comments on his website, it seems Mark Waldrep is trying to get support to revisit some or all of that study. Robust studies like this are really time consuming to do, so I wish him the best in moving forward.

[gmgraves]

IMO, the simple answer is that some DACs sound the same, some sound slightly different, and others sound significantly different. There is no single reason to explain those differences or similarities and the reasons may be completely different depending on the DACs being compared. For example, in one instance it may be because of the chips being used and in another it may be because of differences in the analog output stage. Use of the same DAC chips does not mean that the DACs will sound the same. It depends on the implementation.

 

 

Here's the problem as I see it. You have to listen to DACS in your own system. Price, above the bare minimum for good quality components, that is, is no judge of sound quality. Right now, I have six DACs here in my system, plus an Ifi iLink/iUSB/Gemini II USB to SPDIF converter. The most expensive (Wadia 121) is NOT the best sounding -by a long shot. The three cheapest (In descending order of cost) DragonFly ($199), Gefen Hi-Res USB DAC ($129), and a nameless Chinese ($50) 24/192 USB DAC*, all sound so close to each other, that just listening to them, I can hear no difference (perhaps I could in a DB test, but I suspect that they are so close that any differences would be inconsequential). The best sounding DAC in house currently is the dual-differential model (based on four AD1955 DAC chips) that is built into my Harman Kardon HK990 integrated amplifier. So you can't really go by price. As for specs, most decent DACs these days have noise and distortion figures that are either at or below the threshold of human hearing, so you can't go by specs either. If you are in the market for a DAC and sound is important to you (which I suspect it is, or you wouldn't be contributing to CA), borrow the ones that you think might interest you and LISTEN in your own system. You might find that the differences (if you can hear any at all), don't really matter to you, or are a tradeoff between characteristics, and thus a wash, or one will emerge head and shoulders above the rest. DON'T LISTEN to those who say that they are all alike. These people either can't, or won't hear the differences.

 

And yes there is a difference between being able to hear differences and caring about them.

[esldude]

Post #582 is where he lists his conclusions. Page 39. That isn't his final conclusions, but it is where he starts to get to them. One of the different sounding dacs was considered inferior by him. Will list which is which once I have found his final list.

 

Haven't finished pouring over the thread yet.

 

The guy had an Emotiva XDA which was his personal DAC for two years. He thought all of those tested sounded better than it. Note the Emotiva Stealth he put in the group of sounding like the others. It also was his opinion the bulk of the same sounding DACs were neutral.

 

He liked the Metrum Halo thinking it sounded a bit better. And the Ciunas Dac sounded ever so slightly different in between the bulk of the DACs and the Metrum. Post #743

 

He later says the Yulong sounds different with one filter setting, and sounds different on DSD files, but not PCM (other than the one filter).

[gmgraves]

There is one that I know of performed by AES fellows Meyer and Moran where more than a hundred people participated in a series of ABX tests where digitally recorded music was decoded and re-encoded multiple times (daisy-chain fashion) and compared using a an ABX switcher to the same recordings, decoded once.

 

Here is more on that Meyer/Moran test

 

BAS Experiment Explanation page - Oct 2007

[gmgraves]

George

There is a whole industry telling you, that you and this technical paper are living back in the 20th century.

Digital audio doesn't stand still anymore than the design of those high price tag gas guzzlers you speed down autobahns as a reviewer.

 

Alex

 

Where did I say that I agreed with or in any way supported the Meyer/Moran study? Jud asked if we knew of anyone who had wasted their time with a DBT study of DACs. I responded that I knew of only one and cited it. As for speeding down the Autobahns in gas guzzlers, I don't understand the relevance to this discussion.

[Savage]

Interesting! Here the Benchmark DAC-2 and the NAD M51 sound very different to me. I could pick out which was which with my wife switching them about 100% of the time. When I switched them about, Karen could also pick them out 100% of the time. Between those two particular DACs I mean. Other DACs were much harder to tell apart, some were impossible to tell apart.

 

It does raise the question of what are you listening for when comparing dacs. To me, the differences don't follow a similar criteria to the rest of hi-fi - amps, speakers, pre-amps..et al, tonality may be similar but other things seem to pop out after a while.

[esldude]

It does raise the question of what are you listening for when comparing dacs. To me, the differences don't follow a similar criteria to the rest of hi-fi - amps, speakers, pre-amps..et al, tonality may be similar but other things seem to pop out after a while.

 

The usual complaints could be made about the guys comparisons. Mainly it was sighted.

 

He did do what most people don't do for the comparison which would improve the chances of his comparisons meaning a little something.

 

First he carefully level matched them with tones and white noise. A couple he couldn't match for one reason or the other he dropped from the test list. The #1 thing people don't do in casual comparisons which often even in sighted listening will make many differences disappear.

 

Second, he had them set up so he could seamlessly switch immediately between them instantaneously whenever he wished to do so even in the middle of songs being played. That would improve the ability to discriminate small differences considerably.

[sandyk]

A whole industry is yet once again illustrating the fact that most EEs, and especially committees , are simply unable to organise meaningful ABX comparisons. I have yet to hear a completely transparent switcher either. As for using the ABX comparator of Foobar, that many use as an example, it's far from transparent, as indeed is Foobar itself in comparison with jPlay,XXHE, cPlay and the better Mac software players.

I would love to see the same Poll conducted in DIY Audio, where I expect the results would be VERY different, and I would also welcome thoughts from Barrows and others who actually try these things for themselves, using different DAC chips and PSU implementations etc. instead of those just buying DACs based mainly on price, and various reviews.

Anybody who believes that a typical implementation of a top of the range Sabre DAC chip sounds the same as a typical implementation of say a DSD1792, or even the ladder type DAC chips, or for that matter Peter St's Phasure NOS DAC has no idea how vast the sound differences can be, despite measuring very well.

[Jud]

Where did I say that I agreed with or in any way supported the Meyer/Moran study? Jud asked if we knew of anyone who had wasted their time with a DBT study of DACs. I responded that I knew of only one and cited it.

 

Except Meyer/Moran was not a DBT comparison of DACs, it was a DBT comparison of two different music track resolutions that involved the use of three different disc players (so not DACs alone, but DACs incorporated with different transport mechanisms) in three different systems at different places and times in separate listening tests of those music tracks. So it really did not test what I am talking about. But thanks (I mean that sincerely) for the attempt to find something corresponding to what was asked for.

[Jud]

Until I hear a certain DAC implementation with 2 different actual DAC chips it would be an assumption on my part.

 

True, though you wouldn't need different chips, you'd just need to switch filter settings. There are a few DACs that offer this, at least one (the Resonessence Invicta) with 5 different filters. Charles Hansen's Ayre QB-9 also I believe offers two filter settings, Measure and Listen. (I think it's the QB-9 that does that.)

 

But the cheapest, fastest, easiest way is to move part or all of the filtering from the DAC to your computer by running free trials of HQPlayer on Windows or Linux, or Audirvana Plus with its bundled iZotope software on OS X. You can just change the filters or filter settings in the software then and compare.

[Jud]

Rather that DO they sound the same, the questions should be why do the NOT sound the same.

 

We should not be able to hear the equipment. We should hear the music as the artist intends us to hear it. Many audio copywriters use words that describe equipment as "deeper" "brighter" "airy" "fat" and so forth.

 

We should not be spending our audio cash reserves on equipment that sounds like anything!

 

There was a time when that was the mainstream goal. High fidelity. Straight wire with gain.

 

But the high end conventional wisdom has turned that idea into the more revealing equipment becomes the more different it sounds. Which fits in a way. If it can never get good enough to be indistinguishable, rather becomes more different, there can be no end to how good it can be. Perpetual audible improvement with no possible end. Me thinks it about as likely as a perpetual motion machine my self.

 

So let me try to untangle this a little.

 

Nombedes, the problem with the philosophy you mentioned (equipment shouldn't sound like anything) is that it makes a great abstract goal, but it runs into the problem I mentioned earlier in the thread - it's mathematically impossible with digital filters (at least all those used in DACs today). So the sound of every single DAC must be some form of compromise between time domain and frequency domain performance. Different listeners, as well as different DAC and DAC chip designers, have different preferences in regard to this compromise. For instance, I really like good phase behavior, so I bought speakers which have that, and the phase parameter in my digital filter settings (which I do in software) is for linear rather than minimum phase. The linear phase setting I use unavoidably introduces some pre-ringing. On the other hand, Charles Hansen's Ayre QB-9 uses a minimum phase filter in its Listen setting, giving up completely correct phase behavior in order to avoid pre-ringing. That's an illustration of the necessary compromise between frequency domain and time domain behavior.

 

Dennis, the goal is still to try to get to straight wire with gain. But we weren't at the recording sessions, so how can we tell what is most accurate? Well, the component that allows different recordings (or even different tracks on the same recording) to sound most different from each other has the least sound of its own masking the different recordings, and therefore is most accurate. (Simple concept. Intentionally mis-set EQ to be bass-heavy and everything sounds the same, bass-heavy. A correct EQ or correct equipment will get out of the way and allow different tracks to sound like themselves, i.e., different.)

 

Edit: Dennis, just by way of a practical illustration - comparing two different builds of Audirvana Plus (I know, how can they sound different, but just bear with me here for the sake of my example), Build One had this really nice addictive bass sound on every track I listened to, and I initially preferred it for that reason. But then I heard great bass sound on a few tracks with Build Two, but not on other tracks. So I would either have to believe every track I listened to had the same bass playing and production, or that Build Two was more accurate.

[Dr Tone]

True, though you wouldn't need different chips, you'd just need to switch filter settings. There are a few DACs that offer this, at least one (the Resonessence Invicta) with 5 different filters. Charles Hansen's Ayre QB-9 also I believe offers two filter settings, Measure and Listen. (I think it's the QB-9 that does that.)

 

I might be totally wrong, but I thought Ayre's QB-9 filter implementation was done outside the actual DAC chip. That's what I took away from the interview Charles did in the fall of 2012.

 

Q&A with Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics Page 2 | AudioStream

 

But I agree with you if the filtering is used inside the DAC chip, but I didn't think that was always the case.

[elcorso]

DACs an another electronic gear should not have a particular "sound", then they should sound as music.

 

If they have a particular "sound" they are unmusical, then bad designed/implemented.

 

Roch

[sandyk]

Dennis, the goal is still to try to get to straight wire with gain. But we weren't at the recording sessions, so how can we tell what is most accurate? Well, the component that allows different recordings (or even different tracks on the same recording) to sound most different from each other has the least sound of its own masking the different recordings, and therefore is most accurate. (Simple concept. Intentionally mis-set EQ to be bass-heavy and everything sounds the same, bass-heavy. A correct EQ or correct equipment will get out of the way and allow different tracks to sound like themselves, i.e., different.)

 

+1

[Blake]

 

Uncle!

 

You guys win, nothing matters....

 

Where is the best place to buy lampcord?

[Jud]

I might be totally wrong, but I thought Ayre's QB-9 filter implementation was done outside the actual DAC chip. That's what I took away from the interview Charles did in the fall of 2012.

 

Q&A with Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics Page 2 | AudioStream

 

But I agree with you if the filtering is used inside the DAC chip, but I didn't think that was always the case.

 

You're correct, some DACs, including the QB-9, implement filtering via an FPGA (field programmable gate array) rather than in the chip. (The QB-9 is relatively inexpensive for a DAC that does this.) A handful of DACs either allow or are specifically designed to have the filtering done by the computer. So there are different ways to do the filtering, though by far the most common way is in the DAC chip.

[Jud]

 

Uncle!

 

You guys win, nothing matters....

 

Where is the best place to buy lampcord?

 

That was wonderful.

[Savage]

 

Uncle!

 

You guys win, nothing matters....

 

Where is the best place to buy lampcord?

 

Must be exhausting