Article: LessLoss Echo’s End Reference DAC Full Review

[AudioDoctor]

I love the wood enclosure, the build quality of the internals looks outstanding as well. I was glad to see they had a unit at 1/4th the price as well.  That's more my style!

[AudioDoctor]

23 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

yes, the grooved wood is ... uh ... groovey lookin'

 

but does not provide any RF shielding

 

That's okay, I live inside a giant faraday cage, and every single piece of electronics I own is also inside its own faraday cage...  

 

My walls are made of Shakti Stones with special glue that reduces vibrations.

[AudioDoctor]

13 minutes ago, esldude said:

 

Somehow, Less Loss makes me think of Less Nessman. 

 

 We always know that sonic performance has primarily to do with Jitter reduction, and that Jitter is always going to be contended, since it is impossible to measure with authority. We work by ear where the lab equipment can’t follow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh the Humanity...

[AudioDoctor]

Wow...

 

The DIY part linked above lists that it is capable of 24/384 and Native DSD. The LessLoss Website says the DAC is capable of 24/192 and DSD.

[AudioDoctor]

It might be an earlier version of the board, there is a note that there is a version not being stocked anymore.

[AudioDoctor]

$314.89 x2 = $629.78 for the two DAC boards

 

$19,628.00 - $629.78 = $18,998.22 left over for the rest of the parts and the engineering, custom programming they say they did, etc...

 

Basically, 19K for the rest of it. Is it worth that much?

[AudioDoctor]

I echo SuperDad's sentiment. I infect think the engineering and prototyping etc... is worth a lot. My Brother has in fact brought an item to market and I have seen first hand the steps he went through to get there. I would love to hear one of these for myself, but perhaps the 5K model and not the 19K model.

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

sounds like a post on Porsche...

 

 

 

hey, I know damn well where my 20K+ went on engine work... 😉

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, Danny Kaey said:

 

That’s a great question and I don’t know the answer to it, nor do I frankly care. The DAC is fabulous and LL Implantation of the final product is terrific.

 

Can you verify that it is indeed limited to 24/192 in actual implementation? Did I miss that in your review?

[AudioDoctor]

52 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

the cost of the parts was subtracted out in the post up above

 

the huge amount left over must represent R&D + pure profit

 

I expect per unit profits to be much higher on a product that sells to a small market

 

but...  how much is going to "excess profits"??

 

a comparison test with a $10k DAC or a $5k DAC is what's needed

 

 

Only two of the parts to be fair. There are more parts inside the DAC, but I don't know the cost of those.

[AudioDoctor]

I would be interested to know how this DAC compares to something such as the Aqua Acoustic La Scala MKII Optologic DAC which retails for 8k.

 

Edit, I see we are apparently done talking about the DAC.  My bad... 😉

[AudioDoctor]

17 hours ago, Louis Motek - LessLoss said:

 

The S/PDIF standard only goes up to 192 kHz sampling rate, and that is the limit we published on our website. The USB input, however, does play 384 kHz sampling rate files, not that any truly exist. 

This type of talk about sampling rates has absolutely no correlation with sound quality. One can easily devise ways to create lower sampling rate files which sound obviously superior to their higher sampling rate counterpart. All you need to do is tweak the upsampling/downsampling algorithms in order to do this, and the market is chock full of available algorithms. Each has its own sound.  The unsuspecting listener often never knows, nor even takes the time to try to inquire, what the originally recorded sampling rate was in the first place. The general mentality and experience in this regard is so narrow and fragile that it is an embarrassment to the entire art of audiophile culture that this topic ever exploded the way it has. Remember the scandalous sampling rate hacks on HDTracks? The publishers would upsample to a higher rate and charge more for the downloads just because somebody passed the file through an upsampling algorithm, something that most any DAC today does in real time anyway, including Soekris. 

These days, most people listen to conversion being carried out at 384 kHz without their even knowing it. They play what they think are different sampling rate files (not knowing the original recording's sampling rate in the first place, nor having any way of finding out), then listen as their DAC upsamples in real time to 384 kHz, without even knowing it. 

 

Those who are quickly excited about sampling rates very quickly get turned off by the math and engineering behind it. It is ironic. 

 

Meanwhile, we and like-minded audiophiles are still discovering deeper and deeper depths in good 'ol 44.1. The whole question of sonic discovery in digital always was and always will remain the further and further reduction of jitter. It is just that simple.

 

The whole numbers race in digital audio can be traced back to the analogous numbers race in the competitive field of computer processing. The big difference is that the concept of audio quality is strictly a real-time process, whereas computer processing is always a break-neck speed of churning out of crunched numbers with error correction algorithms with no recourse to perfect timing in real time. Like, why do I have to wait for my cursor on my screen to show me the word I typed half a second ago? I think you get the picture. Latency and multi-tasked resource allocation vs. the smooth flow of real time. The prior easily marketable with faster and faster speeds. The latter boring as hell from a marketing perspective. 

 

This is why the higher sampling rate numbers are so much more attractive to those in the selling business.   

 

 

 

 

It was just a question regarding my own curiosity about whether or not we were actually talking about the same DAC board is all.

[AudioDoctor]

I like the ideas, I like the looks, I love great sound... I don't love the price...

 

[AudioDoctor]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I believe this is false, but even if it were true, who cares?

 

Frank...