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What makes a DAC better than another - Page 2

post #16 of 21
10/14/10 at 6:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by regal View Post




Every heard of phase distortion?   If you see a DAC with a razor flat frequency response odds are good that it has a lot of phase distortion in the treble.     


We are aiui typically rather insensitive to phase distortion and you do not get that much anyway from a DAC, you are talking about delays of some ns whereas we tend not to notice it till it gets to several microseconds.(Lipshitz) and at higher frequencies the ear is much less sensitive anyway.

 

Quote:Dr Floyd Toole
 It turns out that, within very generous tolerances, humans are insensitive to phase shifts. Under carefully contrived circumstances, special signals auditioned in anechoic conditions, or through headphones, people have heard slight differences. However, even these limited results have failed to provide clear evidence of a 'preference' for a lack of phase shift. When auditioned in real rooms, these differences disappear.."(The piano note demo shows that if you accept a broad definition of "contrived" you can get more than a "slight" difference).

 

 

If you look at Stereophile's DAC measurements there are many expensive products with flat FR, viz deviating by no more than say 0.25db from 20 - 20K - perhaps we have different definitions of flat, sorry if that is so, certainly a .25db drop off at 20k would seem trivial to me as it is in an area of very poor sensitivity.

 

 

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post #17 of 21
10/14/10 at 6:51am

 

Originally Posted by nick_charles View Post


We are aiui typically rather insensitive to phase distortion 


We're on a headphones forum, and headphones distort it like hell to project their headstage anyway.

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post #18 of 21
10/14/10 at 7:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by leeperry View Post

 


We're on a headphones forum, and headphones distort it like hell to project their headstage anyway.


The discussion *here* is DACs which tend to be rather better behaved  than speakers or headphones

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post #19 of 21
10/14/10 at 8:09am

 

Originally Posted by nick_charles View Post


The discussion *here* is DACs which tend to be rather better behaved  than speakers or headphones


My point was that considering we're primarily using headphones, there's no need to lose sleep over a non-linear phase response...That's what messing w/ professional EQ plugins has taught me.

 

And we're not in the science forum, so I guess anyone can say whatever what he fancies w/o showing hard proofs...like saying that a flat FR on a DAC means a fubar'ed phase response, hehe.

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post #20 of 21
10/14/10 at 8:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by leeperry View Post

 


My point was that considering we're primarily using headphones, there's no need to lose sleep over a non-linear phase response...That's what messing w/ professional EQ plugins has taught me.

 

Ah, okay

 

And we're not in the science forum, so I guess anyone can say whatever what he fancies w/o showing hard proofs...like saying that a flat FR on a DAC means a fubar'ed phase response, hehe.

 

I can make myself invisible and fly and my urine cures leprosy

 


 

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post #21 of 21
10/14/10 at 9:13pm


If phase response were not important then why do the old CDP's with a perfect frequency sweep but a brickwall filter at 20khz sound so bad that we had to engineer oversampling?
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by nick_charles View Post


We are aiui typically rather insensitive to phase distortion and you do not get that much anyway from a DAC, you are talking about delays of some ns whereas we tend not to notice it till it gets to several microseconds.(Lipshitz) and at higher frequencies the ear is much less sensitive anyway.

 

 

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