DAC Quality: Myths vs Reality

[pennstac]

Listeners?

People who have never been educated on basic typography may not notice seriphs, x-height, differences in how ascenders and decenders play with line height, kearning or ligatures.

So tell me more about these “listeners”.

[SSN757]

You need to ask the folks at AP Mastering, who actually conducted the studies regarding the listeners.

[donjoe0]

@SSN757

The evidence to date

… is always something preliminary, with conclusions possible to amend or even reverse after getting more evidence. Just scroll up: DAC Quality: Myths vs Reality - #29 by abm0

The problem with overly ambitious/absolutist statements like “X is transparent” or “no one can hear such-and-such difference” is that a single counter-example blows that out of the water. But more to my point: why do people who like to use the word “transparent” so much have so few studies or experiments to point to in support of their pronouncements? Do we have to start talking about “the religion of transparency”?

[pennstac]

Precisely the point. If you don’t know if these were trained or experienced listeners, then a simple assertion that
“Listeners” can’t distinguish is insufficient.

Perhaps @Torq or @generic might comment. While DACs that are of sufficient quality may sound similar, there are plenty of poorly implemented ones that can easily be distinguished.

And I’m also pretty sure that I would be able to A/B most of the ones I use in the $50 to $650 dollar category, although not sure I’d be consistent between a couple of them.

[Shawn_Dumas]

Really enjoying the range of perspectives in this thread — it’s clear a lot of folks here are trying to walk the line between open-minded listening and data-grounded analysis.

I recently wrote a long post over on r/audiophile about whether time-domain or waveform visualizations — like impulse response, step response, or square wave overlays — might help us better understand the subtle differences people sometimes report between DACs that measure “identically” in terms of FR and SINAD.

Not to claim those differences are necessarily audible or meaningful — but to ask whether our current measurement vocabulary might be missing some perceptually relevant information. Especially since most consumer-facing reviews focus on THD/SINAD, SNR, and flat FR, but don’t typically visualize filter behavior, group delay, or transient shape.

We already know that impulse response shapes (e.g., ringing symmetry, phase behavior) can vary quite a bit between linear and minimum-phase filters — even when their FR graphs look identical. The question is whether those time-domain differences might correlate with the slow-burn impressions people report around staging, texture, or fatigue.

I’d love to hear thoughts from folks here.

For anyone curious, here’s the discussion I started:
Reddit: Would Time-Domain or Waveform Analysis Help Bridge the Gap Between Measurements and Perception?

Not trying to stir up the subjectivist/objectivist war again — just hoping to find better tools to ask the right questions.

[pennstac]

Thank you for coming in on this. I always think of time domain ch in the context of multi driver speakers. How can it apply to DAC with headphones?

[generic]

@SSN757

The evidence to date seems to show that listeners cannot reliability discen sonic differences

@pennstac

Perhaps @Torq or @generic might comment. While DACs that are of sufficient quality may sound similar, there are plenty of poorly implemented ones that can easily be distinguished.

I started my headphone journey by working my way up from cheap and frugal gear toward more expensive stuff. I was very willing to entertain “dragon slayer” deals and believe the measurements-are-best thinking of NwAvGuy and ASR. It didn’t work.

Cheaper DACs often have BLOODY OBVIOUS flaws. Per my comment above a few weeks ago, playback artifacts are routine at the low end. I spent years trying to avoid whines and whistles and ringing and headaches with my HD 600. I went from integrated laptop and tablet DAC/amps to budget standalone models. Every one of my first ~6 DACs whistled and whined and caused discomfort (e.g., Cirrus Logic, ESS, AKM), but they were all different. With my intentionally rough 3-hour evaluation playlist, I’d expect ringing or hissing or stabbing pain at a certain note on a certain song.

With every new DAC and amp, how far will it make it? None of the cheaper ones made it through the last third of my list.

In the end, I no longer suffer with a Bifrost 2/64 and Decware Zen Taboo Mk 4 amp. That’s $800 for the DAC and $3,000+ for the amp. I’ve demoed many higher end DACs, but they sometimes add heavy creamy filtering or don’t add significant value.

Measurements mean little. Price matters up to a point, and then products shift to the luxury and novelty markets where performance doesn’t matter.

[SSN757]

Welcome Shawn.

You pose some interesting questions. The time-domain aspect with headphones should not be much of an issue in theory because headphones are a full range driver. I do tend to think whatever differences people report to hear may very well be due to differences with filtering. Many reviews that evaluate filtering selections often report they hear little to mo differences between the selections.

[Evan_H]

@Luke

As consumers, I don’t see why the idea of transparency being quite easily achievable would be an issue at all since this means we’re free from wasting time worrying about whether our DAC is already transparent (reasonable devices of course, not the very cheap ones!). The only people unhappy presumably would be the audiophile “high end” industry not liking this idea being perpetuated because it cuts into whether and how much money they can extract from consumers, but that’s IMO their problem.

See my post above about the different groups who have an interest in perpetuating the DAC myth, especially the last group.

@KlicketEClack

I do love the people who spent thousands on DACS – and reviewers whose revenue streams depend on people believing DACs can sound radically different – digging in and insisting the testing is somehow flawed without ever producing a test which contradicts these results.

Of course. If DACs had obvious differences, then those differences should easily show up in a proper blind test. But a lot of this hobby is post and pre-purchase rationalization. People want to believe different DACs sound different. They need it to be true so they can justify their purchases.

@donjoe0

Of course not, that would just show they perform the same, regardless of how close to or far from transparency they both are. I think what you want is to null some material as it comes out through some DAC vs. the original audio file, and even then you run into trouble not only with sample alignment but also separating out any ADC defects so you can focus only on DAC defects.

I should have specified “transparent to each other” rather than simply saying transparent. You could also compare the output recording of each DAC to the original samples used, as you point out, which would be an interesting test.

[ADU]

@SSN757

I do tend to think whatever differences people report to hear may very well be due to differences with filtering. Many reviews that evaluate filtering selections often report they hear little to mo differences between the selections.

Perhaps. I think some DACs could also just reveal more of the flaws and limitations in recordings (and perhaps also the transducers used to listen to them!) than others. And maybe this is why some audiophiles may not want one that is totally transparent.

I’d like to believe that we have licked the problem of transparency though. And that you don’t really have to spend an arm and leg to get it. And I suspect that the folks who want to spend more on their DACs are simply looking for something else that may be more pleasing to their ears.

This kind of relates back to Floyd Toole’s concept of the circle of confusion. If you get a perfectly flat, neutral set of speakers, that may not make all of your recordings sound better, because it may reveal flaws in the recordings that you never heard before. Especially if they were produced on lower quality gear that wasn’t as neutral.

[donjoe0]

@ADU

I’d like to believe that we have licked the problem of transparency though. And that you don’t really have to spend an arm and leg to get it.

Same here. In fact that’s the thing that got me fired up about this topic lately: I heard problems in a more expensive dongle DAC vs. a cheaper one, even while the priests of Modern-Day Transparency keep telling me this shouldn’t be possible, that we have been saved and we’re already living in DAC Heaven. That’s why I can’t back down from this, there are (relatively) expensive dongle DACs out there that don’t even present a neutral FR. I won’t accept this is a “solved problem” = you can pick any old product off the market without worry, once I’ve heard differences for myself, and certainly won’t accept it based on preaching from the pulpit or ad hominems about “types of people who support X opinion”, with zero actual studies or experiments to point to. That’s not how science works, it looks a lot more like how religion works.

I do believe measurements can help us pick transparent DAC/amps (or DAC-containing sources, streamers, whatever), but I no longer believe people who go around talking about “human audibility” of the defects that come out in measurements actually know what the limits are and can point to which experiments have told them those are the limits, and what populations those results can be extrapolated to. All I’m served when I ask for details on this are more pronouncements from the pulpit.

[ADU]

The studies I’m aware of don’t say they all sound the same. And that is my personal experience as well. Differences can often be discerned. But they are generally small. And it’s hard to specify which are most preferred.

I don’t think this is really as hard a problem though as some like to make out. Objective measurements (such as FR, noise, distortion, jitter, L/R balance, etc.) should tell alot about a unit’s performance. I would still advise doing some comparative listening tests though. Blind, and level matched if possible. But any opportunity to compare with well-controlled conditions helps imo.

If a DAC passes all the measurements with flying colors, and you can’t discern a difference in listening, then it should do the job imo.

A good loop-back test might also be useful to help verify some results by ear. But I’m still not entirely convinced by the two examples that have been presented so far. I’d like to see more samples, and more diversity in the music used for these kinds of tests.

The music I listen to often has a lot of layering, and probably a fairly complex mixture of overtones in the higher frequencies. Maybe something like this would be more revealing of differences. I don’t really know though.

Some listeners will also have better hearing in the higher frequencies which could make them more discriminating of the differences than others.

[pennstac]

@ADU

If you get a perfectly flat, neutral set of speakers, that may not make all of your recordings sound better, because it may reveal flaws in the recordings that you never heard before. Especially if they were produced on lower quality gear that wasn’t as neutral.

All I want is a system that will turn bad music into good music. Is that too much to ask? Like Iron Butterfly in, Led Zepplin out.

@ADU

I’d like to believe that we have licked the problem of transparency though.

So do I. It’s called going to a live acoustic concert. With no smoking. Transparent air - maybe 30 feet of it between me and the musicians.

@ADU

Some listeners will also have better hearing in the higher frequencies which could make them more discrimating of the differences than others.

Pity there’s no way to make them more discerning instead.

[SSN757]

Lots of good information here. Appreciate all the various observations listed. The discussions always seem to come down to objective vs. subjective positions.

I’ve always tried to keep an open mind between the two camps. With modern DACs, the quality of performance has improved to the point that the differences with sonic quality is very small. What differences do exist are largely due to output filtering.

[pennstac]

I just trust my ears. Since I’ve started to do that – and possibly even before – they’ve been getting larger and larger.

[Saracen]

@pennstac

I just trust my ears.

That. Exactly that. To be honest, everything else in audio is pretty irrelevant to me.

I will say I fall into the category of thinking DACs making little or no difference to the sound provided they’re properly designed and built, with no faults. But they do have different purposes, for me. Of the three within reach right now, one is in a MOTU audio interface, one is in a Node X and one is a Chord Mojo II, for which the purchase justification (for me) was explicitly the portability. Can I hear any difference in sound? Yes … because I use them in different ways, different circumstances and definitely haven’t even tried level-matching them. Could I tell in a properly set up blind AB test? Having not done one I don’t know, but I very much doubt it. I also don’t care if I could, because each satisfactorily does what I bought it for. I don’t see me spending anywhere near £2k n a DAC let alone £20k or more, but if someone else wants to, regardless of why they want to, that’s their business.

Which is why I agree with pennstac - I just trust my ears. It doesn’t matter to me, in that sense, whether other people can or can’t tell the difference, or whether they just think they can, because I’m limited to listening with just the one set of ears.

[Rhodey]

Well after reading this, synergy doesn’t exist either. So we can use a HD600 with a topping amp/dac and it’ll be just as good as a BHC and BF2 combo…

[pennstac]

Thank you. For portability, I usually use the Luxury & Precision W4, unless I’m going out someplace risky for electronics in which case the iFi Go-Link is fine. No DAC nuance in earshot of breakers anyway. Work? that’s the Schiit Multibit Modi. Main stack, like @generic I use the Schiit BiFrost 2/64. Luggable DAC/AMP is the FII0 K9 PRO ESS, and at my wife’s house I have a Sabaj A20d.

None of them annoy me, although the cheapest iFi is a bit harsher. I’ve mostly retired the iFi xDSD (original) with it’s noticably lush Burr-Brown chip. Have not used the Dragonflies either. I do have a TEAC desktop DAC in my main Hi-Fi at home, and it’s adequate, so I see no reason to replace it. As you say, and with my (large) ears, it’s at most a nuanced difference between competent DACs that are not producing artifacts.

That said, among the ultra-portables, the L&P really does stand out. @Torq raved about his, and at the reasonable price (no Aston Martin here) I had to buy.

[pennstac]

Well, you might want to try it with a nice OTL tube amplifier. Definate synergy. This thread is about DAC myths. Nobody ever said that you don’t get profound differences with tube amps and high impedance headphones.

[Rhodey]

This was sarcasm…

Amps were mentioned above too.

And if someone doesn’t think certain dacs and amps have synergy then they either need to spend more time with the chain to understand it or just enjoy an AIO.