All DAC's sound the same. - Page 6  

Actually the early gen IPods were measured by Stereophile and with lossless files they measured as well if not better than several boutique CD players, the performance was so good in fact that Wilson used them (hidden) in speaker demos at CES and punters believed that they were listening to $20K CD players and not one golden eared listener noticed that they were actually listening to a DAP. It is trivial to test whether the iPod and Udac are very different,  just connect the line-outs and record a couple of samples then you can use Audacity or CEP to compare them, run a few DBTs or even do an invert and subtract which will show just how different they are...the biggest single cause of perceived differences is small level differences, I have done many DBT tests of digital items and when level-matched startling differences become much less pronounced
 

 

see the thread, read the thread starter post, happily unplug my dac so i can sell it for extra cash

 

listen to music with onboard soundcard

 

poker face  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

plug my dac back while having poker face ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

From my understanding, isn't the analog part of the digital-to-analog converter the important part? Wouldn't more attention paid to this end improve sound? Isn't this why Audio-gd (among others) has crazy power supplies and filtering on their high-end DAC's? And, has the OP listened extensively to "high-end" DAC's to be able to make his opinion valid? No offense, but comparing a inexpensively engineered internal soundcard to an inexpensively engineered external soundcard doesn't make for much of a comparison.

Edited by tim3320070 - 6/27/11 at 11:40am

 

Quite stunning, I don't know how that is possible. Maybe early generations were exceptional or Stereophile did not use the headphone jack (which, as bigshot suggested, is rather horrible). Anyhow, I completely disagree with the statement that my 4th gen iPod sounds comparable to uDAC-2 over RCA. Even the headphone jack on my Asus Eee does better than the iPod in most aspects..

It really isn't difficult or expensive to create a clean preamp.

The important conversion is the point where the electrical signals become physical sounds. Good speakers and headphones can be infinitely more important than the quality of electronics. Solid state amps all pretty much perform well.

Perhaps the files on your ipod are clipping because of an EQ setting. If a track is normalized up to 100% that can happen very easily.

 

you're right and the author of the first post in this thread makes rather strong but nonsense claims: "anything over the Fiio E9 is also just hype, overpriced, placebo". 

 

what about multiple Fiio E9 owners in this thread, why do they agree that the thing is good for the money as a mid-low hifi, but far from perfect? Are the flaws they describe imaginary placebos induced by low price? 

 

I am still trying to understand why you posted a statement that is contradictory to most opinions in the thread specifically devoted to Fiio E9 which I actually read after seeing your post -- can you explain please?

 

I could not find a single claim that the device is perfect or anything that would tell me that anything over it must be a placebo. Most people tend to agree that E9 is good for the money, but this is something entrirely different.

 

 

Edited by nick_charles - 6/27/11 at 12:54pm

I have the NFB12 and anyone who says their phone outperforms it has something wrong with their NFB12 (I have a Galaxy S phone).

 

 

It would seem that it's quite the other way around, Audio GD usually criticized for poor digital interfaces and praised for analog stages, on this site at least..

 
Please let us know what kind of a cellphone was that, it must be rather extraordinary to outperform NFB-12 rated 300mW @300 ohms! I am certainly willing to get one.. 

http://dl.project-voodoo.org/RMAA/reports/nfb-12-galaxys-voodoosound-load-hd650.htm

 

 

 

I have a nice little cmoy amp for when I want to use big headphones with the line out of my iPod, but I don't use it a lot because I would rather listen to speakers if I can. The little cmoy does the job as well as fancier headphone amps because amps are all fairly clean. It's not about "good for the money". It's whether it does the job or not. Either you need a headphone amp or you don't.

The measurements Nick linked to for the NFB12 wouldn't concern me too much. The difference in quality there still isn't into the range where it would make a real world audible difference. In general, charts like that are deceptive. Most folks don't know what a dB sounds like. They just look at wiggly lines and figure that better is better. In practice, however inaudible differences are inaudible.

Most modern DACs and solid state amps sound exactly the same, regardless of the mosquito hair differences that show up as mountain ranges on charts like that..
Edited by bigshot - 6/27/11 at 1:38pm