NOS DAC - Marketing BS? - Page 5

What ever technology you believe in is fine with me but let me ask you, do you know what the rest of your system is doing to the signal, are your crossovers skewing phase, is your cd recorded in phase or out etc.. Hence, I would love to sit you down in front of a system with multiple digital sources, some NOS some OS, would you be able to pick out the technology you support on a repeatable basis? Me thinks not.

And there it goes...

I don't believe in technology, I believe in science and what you can prove - not hyperbole, or conjecture. I do know exactly what's happening at every point in my playback systems, I think that's the entire point of forums like this (stevehoffman, hydrogenaudio, etc?) You have an open invitation to visit and ABX my hardware, I think you'd be impressed. For the trouble thou, you have to provide dinner and drinks. Going forward I'd be happy to address any questions or personal requests you may have of me, put lets keep this thread on topic.

I thought that funny, but I think you missed it - I simply gave examples that I hate very few things, except of course, the two obvious. I drew no comparisons or analogies.

Just pointing out that a non sequitur involving the Nazis undermines your accusation of hyperbole. Otherwise I agree with the substance of your argument.

NT

Speaking of questionable rhetorical tactics, why are you bringing up the rest of one's system in a conversation that is strictly about DACs, tubes ol' buddy?

aye, it was funny - and obviously through practice and experience I've noticed Godwin's Law - I just didn't know someone had it on paper - quite funny. Still to the point, it was an attempt at humor but it doesn't help one's argument to bring the old brown shirts up. I guess more than anything it eluded to the fact that I was being a smart ass.

It's easy to rest on the sidelines and throw potshots, so it's only fair for me to explain my stance. NOS DACs occupy that tweako side of the music/technology lover who appreciates the fragile nature of audio reproduction. I guess the motivation behind choosing outdated technology is not necessarily the mistrust of recent advances, but the fetishizing of classic engineering. That's why I keep tube amps even though I know their harmonic distortion is several orders greater than that of solid state technologies. The impurities of the sound are part of the draw, so much so that some recent music genres purposefully go for "lo-fi" recording methods to reproduce the soft-noise floor of vinyl. It's also the reason why I can listen to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" for pleasure.

Forgoing this defense of kitschy tech, I must admit that the majority of my listening involves the best and cleanest digital sources I have. New DACs invariably portray greater detail and less noise, they don't lead to listening fatigue and they don't mask bad recordings. I have to be in a playful mood to experiment with measurably inferior modes of audio reproduction

Hello Anetode. That was an excellent post.

I am not in a habit of talking about DAC coloration and playing with coloration, but here is my take on it (for the benefit of those that like to play with coloration):

It may be of value to realize that when one uses a transparent DAC, and wants to hear tube sound, one can send the transparent DAC signal into a tube amp and hear that amplifier’s tube sound.

A friend of mine uses the DA11 headphone jack for transparent sound, and he has a tube headphone amp that he drives with transparent signals from the DA11 rear panel. That way, all the coloration is due to his selected tube headphone amp. That allowed him to BOTH select and listen to his preferred tube amp headphone jack, and also listens to the DAC directly via the front panel headphone jack.

If a DAC is not transparent to begin with, there is no way to remove the coloration. You add a tube amp and you may have too much coloration, even for those that like coloration. Also, when the DAC has coloration, you can not hear a transparent sound. One can add a "desired coloration" to transparent signal. But one can not remove the coloration if it is already there, too late; the game is over for transparency.

Also, anyone that wants to know about the amount and type of coloration of specific gear should start out with transparent sound. Otherwise, one does not really know what gear is doing what coloration. Certainly the nosiest gear dictates the noise, so if you start out with noisy signal, you will not appreciate a less noisy device. And if two pieces of gear have say similar distortions, the listener may find it "too much" and attribute all of the "too much coloration" to one or another peaces of gear.

It is very difficult to separate the cause of noise and distortions (coloration) when you listen or measure more then one piece at a time, and folks reach erroneous conclusions very often. Say one is looking for a tube sound they like. If the DAC has coloration, when they change to a transparent DAC, to a DAC with more coloration or less coloration, whatever they though before is instantly all different. Just too many variables make it virtually impossible to properly pin down control or understand what is going on. If one want to make an intelligent and well controlled decision about gear, it is best to minimize the variables. And if one ever wishes to hear transparent headphones, one must go for transparent DAC and transparent headphones.

Personally, I am not for coloration, I am for transparency. What I said above does explain much of the conflicting views and opinions I come across in hi-fi. There is a big lack of systematic approach, and many folks just pile up a bunch of gear, each with its own “signature”, and then they make an erroneous observation. Say (for a very simplistic example!) that one piece of gear lacks some bass. Now you get a new piece of gear, and it has too much bass. The cancel each other and one may conclude that the new gear makes things great, but in fact the new gear has a problem – too much bass. You upgrade or change the other gear, and you have too much bass... But folks often will declare that the new gear is great. Someone else with a different setup will of course have solid grounds for disagreement. I can go on and on with such examples…

Having read that, I would think that folks would realize that there is a lot of value in having a transparent source, not just for my camp (those that want transparent sound), but also for those that like to play around with tube sound, transformer sound and what not.

Regards
Dan Lavry
Lavry Engineering

Dan,

Enjoyed reading your explanation on the reasons why you opt for transparent sound instead of coloured ones.

I downloaded the manual of DA11 it did not mention what DAC chipset you chose for your DAC. Can you tell us what chipset you use and the reasons why?

Cheers.

Ttan98 - Dan's designs are uniquely his own. He designed the DAC in his systems, as well as the entire circuit.

indeed. I had the good fortune to be in several design teams thru the 80s and early 90s creating signal processing hardware architectures and data conversion systems for a variety of pro audio equipment (digital recorders, consoles, effects equipment). several D/A designs based on the ubiquitous TDA15xx series.

from my experience (which involved much close contact with the Philips designers), it was clear that there was essentially no intent for the devices to be used without digital filtering / oversampling before the 15xx IC. Frankly, I don't recall any pro industry 15xx designs which used no oversampling.

the options provided (2x 4x 8x etx) were to allow for different degrees of cost-effectiveness in system solutions; IC process technology of the day (ie level of integration) didn't allow for such filtering to be included in (what were intended to be low-cost) chips. rather, the end-equipment designers had options to use different degrees of complexity for the digital filtering, some which could be integrated in other chips, others which had to be standalone designs due to the "processing horsepower" required for the filters.

of course, those amounts of processing and filtering look quaint today.....


i related a small anecdote about what we did for linearization of some of these old 15xx-based designs in post 54 of this thread: SH Forums

DA924 it was

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On the 'objective facts' part, I just want to make sure I understand the implications of this argument lest I falsely think it's too dogmatic of a stance.

I shouldn't prefer the Red Wine because of the engineering approach. It should be an inferior product, offering an inferior experience and if I or others or even the manufactuerer, prefer that product and the experience it offers we're basically in error or have preferences out of line with objective quality and merits of the Lavry?

This does seem to fly in the case of the if it sounds good it is good creed and I do have a tremendous amount of respect for the person who manufactures Red Wine. I guess if these are objective facts I should then conclude his approach has serious flaws and the red wine product is at best a great implementative of a comparatively poor product?

Maybe that's misinterpreting things but this argument very much reminds me of those between solid state and tube amps or vinyl and digital media - each side with its technical reasons for their particular superiority.

Personally, I can appreciate both solid state and tubes both vinyl and digital - maybe one really side is technically better - I don't know - but I do know what i prefer - and when any side claims 'objective facts' I'm not quite sure, especially if it does go so far as to create an implication that those facts mean that one side is objectively superior.

Joreth - I find it difficult to respond to you based on the fact that all of your posts are conjecture or opinion in a thread discussing facts. Your only intent seems to attempt to defend the design concepts of RWA, something you have yet to do on a technical level (i.e the entire point of this thread - there are already plenty of threads discussing what NOS dacs sound like, opinions notwithstanding).

I'm curious thou, where did you listen to the 924? Who's was it? What gear did you use? (cables, headphones, transport / source, pcm type, recordings?).