Nice to see more vindication from people passionate enough to keep experimenting and measuring even after being told countless times that “it’s pointless”, “it’s placebo”, “all DACs are already perfect, even cheap ones” yadda yadda:
Myth:
All affordable DAC/amps built around the Cirrus Logic CS43131 or CS43198 are “audibly transparent”.
My ringing ears routinely tell me that Cirrus, ESS, and many AKM DACs have bad treble artifacts. That’s the most direct and relevant measurement possible.
My Bifrost 2/64 and even ZenDAC don’t make my ears ring.
When “objective” measurements are at odds with the facts on the ground, there’s something wrong with the measurement tool or the assumptions about what the numbers mean.
Have you listened to the NTH-100? It doesn’t really care what is driving it. I simply said that’s what I would do with a limited budget. Never made any claims about it being perfect.
We all hear differently. I have not experienced any of the issues you have stated to Delta/sigma DAC’s whatsoever. The actual conversion is only part of the story. How the conversion is achieved, along with the post filtering processing, accounts for the majority of what is heard. For example, my primary setup is a Canever ZeroUno DAC/Headphone amp. The sound from this is simply amazing. Many would not identify it as digital or solid state, due to the design characteristics. For starters, it uses a legacy ESS Sabre 9018 chip. However, the unit employs his version of current to voltage conversion, which uses Lundhal transformers. He also wrote his own filtering code, bypassing the internal filtering. The output stage is a ultra linear FET arrangement with hand picked FETs that measure well. He would only use the top 20 or so out of a batch of 1000. The unit has six separate toroidal transformers. I was able to get it for short money, as its not a well known product.
What I also have noticed is that the vast majority of R2R DACs simply do not provide as good fine detail/low level resolution. So, I stick with Delta/Sigma DAC’s.
Now, to muddy the waters further, here’s a link to an article I ran across the other day regarding CD players:
I take all inputs with a grain of salt, including ASR. Some of ASR’s equipment recommendations are not in line with what I would buy, based on sonic performance and value for money.
Something to consider: If one uses Foobar2000 with PGGB, may as well throw out opinions/recommendations out the window. Between the ability to clip the signal excess, along with the ability to use the best state of the art Nyquist filter, that pretty much changes the sound to the point that one needs to trust their own hearing over a reviewers observations.
No change needed. My ears and my wallet are both connected to me. While I may be interested in what a reviewer says (pretty knobs, power switch still in the back) only my hearing will ever convince me that I like or dislike the sound.
The bulk of his recommendations are dubious, as the guy talks about playing music loud enough to make his earlobes shake. Are you deaf much?
For many years he judged amps and DACs with the dated and technically-limited Sennheiser HD-650. If you love a forced mid-bass bump and thin, scratchy upper mids, you may be happy. He was absolutely unaware that the HD-650’s drivers put an upper limit on everything he tested – but kept preaching “people routinely prefer products with the best measurement numbers.”
His recommendations forced vendors with zero interest in the dry, sterile profile favored by his chosen measurements to waste time developing pointless “me too” products to compete in a distorted marketplace (e.g., see the Schiit Magni Heresy).
He caused many buyers to waste time and money on mediocre or misguided products per his numbers-first reviews (e.g., the infamous sharp and edgy Drop THX AAA 789 and all the clones that followed).
His performance ranking charts leave the impression that tube amps are terrible, missing the entire point of them. The issue is that human hearing has performance limitations and tubes (or amps with “mediocre” measurements) often exceed human potential. Furthermore, his measurement methods do not capture the perceptual impact of tubes. Tubes are not about a bass boost or rolled-off treble.
His followers include more than a few armchair philosophers who show little evidence of actually listening to and directly comparing products. The numbers tell them everything they care to know. One of his acolytes used to RECORD playback samples of tube vs. solid state amps and tell people to replay them on their own systems – “See, you can’t hear the difference!” This is a useless research design, as the recording mic and playback speakers homogenize/castrate any differences. See above regarding the upper performance limit set by testing with the HD-650.
“ His performance ranking charts leave the impression that tube amps are terrible, missing the entire point of them. The issue is that human hearing has performance limitations and tubes (or amps with “mediocre” measurements) often exceed human potential. Furthermore, his measurement methods do not capture the perceptual impact of tubes. Tubes are not about a bass boost or rolled-off treble.”
Well stated. Tube amps designed properly can match or exceed solid state amps. I happen to own a tube headphone amp that I would put up against any solid-state amp. The design is from a Vacuum Tube Valley article in the summer of 1996. It’s a simple OTL design that uses a 6SL7 front end, and a 6080-power tube. I have had it for a few years and used it occasionally. A few months ago, my buddy who made the amp called me and said he has come up with significant upgrades that transform the performance. This involved a new power supply, with much greater power reserve and filtering. All electrolytic caps were replaced with film caps, and bypassed. All the resistors were replaced with non-inductive Mills types. The output filter caps were replaced with higher quality film caps as well. The sound from this amp has been transformed. Sounds like a completely different amp. It has all the qualities of a solid-state amp bass (deep and tight), with the midrange that very few SS amps can match. The treble is detailed, extended, and clean. The amp has plenty of power to drive the vast majority of headphones.
Not to mention the fact that even the best transducers (our headphones) can have distortion levels that are orders of magnitude worse than that “terrible” measuring tube amp!
Which makes all the upset over the amp’s “poor” measurements a moot point.
I don’t doubt the amp is lovely, but I can’t tell if the Grado comment is tongue in cheek or not. Regardless, you made me double-take, so well played sir!
No, it was serious. The Grado Signature HP100 is a great sounding headphone for a dynamic driver. It can sound overly bright with a lot of moderate SS amps. This tube amp brings out the best in the Grado, as it takes out any potential harshness out of the sound. The sound of the HP100 SE is extended and life like without being harsh. Vocals sound almost spooky realistic.
Symphonic music sounds amazing with the Grado and the tube amp.
Have you tried Beautiful Audio earpads with them? Grado is under-appreciated, and those foam cushions are part of the reason. My RS1e were not as bright as most Grado, but he switch of earpad made all the difference.
So, can someone explain why my R2R dac sounded like it had wider soundstage? I mean that has nothing to do with positioning of the drivers.
When I first plugged it into my SS amp and R70x I immediately said “this has more sound stage”. I haven’t A/B anything but that’s how I usually go about it, initial reaction then enjoy for a while. It went straight to a Tube amp and that’s where it lives now so I can’t tell what exactly it’s doing.
I just don’t understand the science of soundstage and imaging so maybe my initial reaction was wrong? It’s certainly not something I was expecting, was thinking maybe a warmer sound or something but my brain said instantly soundstage.
So, this is a guess, but perception of soundstage can be increased by adding harmonic distortion, so it’s possible this R2R DAC had more harmonic distortion than whatever DS DAC you were comparing it to, though you wouldn’t know that for sure without measurements. There’s also a lot of reasons that the R2R DAC (or any given device for that matter) might have more harmonic distortion, based on the design and components and so forth, so the answer might not be simple.
Actually realized I should probably expand on this. What seems to be my impression is that R2R DACs do things not necessarily with harmonic distortion but with phase that create the impression of soundstage. What I’ve heard is that R2R boosters think this phase information is in the original recording and is stripped out by the DS oversampling process, while R2R haters will tell you that the R2R DAC is creating the phase information and its a form of distortion. Caveat that this isn’t anything I’ve heard from anyone who’s studied it in any kind of scientific way, so this might just be people talking.
In my experience, the perceptual differences between Delta-Sigma and R2R DACs are modest. I don’t hear R2R as technically superior, but its flaws are preferable.
My main objection to Delta-Sigma is that I often hear whiny, piercing treble artifacts. This sounds like mosquitoes in the ears and gives me headaches. I take this as how these DACs handle high frequencies, soft sounds, or the math of very small floating point numbers.
She’s extremely smart, and not just a pretty…face…
Similar to what you both are saying, I have a theory that delta sigma DACs are objectively more accurate to the original signal, but that ultimate accuracy is not always desired. If the original recording has high treble screechiness, for example, it would be preferred to smooth it out with some distortion at the expense of overall accuracy.
It’s all about the filtering. Using PGGB-RT with Foobar2000 pretty much removes any non linear artifacts in the HF region, and makes the overall sound better. PGGB is among the best Nyquist filters for audio available, regardless of Delta/Sigma or R2R. I’m not a fan of R2R in general.
