Cables and DACs - Page 2

Good point so the basics of a good blind test weren't even covered.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 

 

NO EXISTEN DIFERENCIAS SONORAS

I don't speak Spanish, but I'll guess that reads "no difference in sound exists" 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by liamstrain 

And of course something even *slightly* louder than something else will be easy to describe as livelier, with better separation, less muddy, bigger soundstage, etc... really careful level matching is extremely important.

And before anyone says anything like "but my louder cables sound muddy!", sometimes I actually perceive quieter as less muddy. It depends on the balance of bass and treble, I think. On tracks with lots of bass and reverb I'd wager quieter volumes sound clearer. You hear less of the reverb and bass decreases in volume faster than the mid-range thanks to loudness curves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

I don't speak Spanish, but I'll guess that reads "no difference in sound exists" 

Google translate gave me:

In view of the results, this time more conclusive than usual, we can say there is no difference between the Benchmark DAC SOUND 1, aconverter so exalted by certain professionals, and the very modestprice Behringer X, but giant performance and sound quality, as has long been announced in Matrix-HiFi.

It would be interesting to know what cables and DAC he uses...

Quote:

Originally Posted by seacard 

I had an interesting, and a somewhat depressing, conversation today with a famous engineer and speaker designer.  This guy knows more about electronics and electrical engineering than I can ever hope to forget.  Conversation turned to cables at one point, and I told him that I was not a "cable believer."  He was of the same mind, and we talked about companies that charge hundred, or thousands, of dollars for cables.

 

Eventually, conversation turned to DACs.  When I told him about my DAC upgrades and journey, he laughed.  How, he asked, after what you told me about cables, can you be a DAC believer?  I mumbled my way through some potential reasons, but he would have none of it.  At the end of the day, he said, DACs and cables fall in the same category: as long as they are well designed, they should be transparent.  Any DAC, as long as it is engineered correctly and has a flat frequency response, low noise, low distortion, and a few other things, will sound the same.  He did allow for the possibility that a DAC might sound different if it is intentionally distorted in a way that makes it sound more pleasing, or with accentuated highs and lows, and that it's possible that one might prefer that DAC.

 

So now that I've licked my wounds, I wanted to ask on here: am I the only one who thinks (thought?) that cables don't matter while DACs do?  Or do most of you put cables and DACs in the same general category?

It's just a matter of different levels of diminishing returns. You get several thousand miles past the point of diminishing (read: no) returns with a $10 RCA cable. You have to spend a bit more on a DAC and there are lots of crap ones out there, but why exactly should I expect my DACMagic to sound different from a Benchmark, let alone the Benchmark different from a $15k dCS converter, seeing that they all measure suitably far beyond audibility?

What the Stereomojo test shows is that when comparing withotu knowing exactly what you are listening to, the 'influence factors' of price, image etc go out the window and sound differences become smaller than with sighted tests.

That tells us as we remove the 'influence factors' sound quality differences start to disappear (until they vanish with ABX). So we must conclude the differences we hear in sighted tests are caused by the 'influence factors'.

great thread i agree with what many say about DAC's being more complicated, and after a certain point changes are hard to hear.

Going from my ipod's Cirrus Logic to a Wolfson..is not day and night. BUT THE DIFFERENCE is right there..un mistakenly there. i

Quote:

Originally Posted by bowei006 

great thread i agree with what many say about DAC's being more complicated, and after a certain point changes are hard to hear.

 

Going from my ipod's Cirrus Logic to a Wolfson..is not day and night. BUT THE DIFFERENCE is right there..un mistakenly there. i

I would argue that problem lies with the rather bad output stage of the iPod. I've experience the same thing with my ipc as well when comparing against a V-dac and a Ibasso D6. 

I think the problem here is that when you are listening to a dac its not really just the dac you are hearing , its the analogue output stage and these can be of different qualities.

Years ago i did a blind test with some mates of our MP3 players (they are just little dacs + storage)  and we could not tell the difference between the ipod classic, touch , cowon i7 BUT we could ID the Sony one as it was so in your face it sounded like the music was playing a fraction too fast. 

That surely shows that these devices can be voiced in a certain way?

I think your talking about bulit in headphone amps opposed to low level output, the output impendance of a headphone amp can have a big affect on the sound.

yes , there is that difference.

Suppose it goes back to the line of thought that a good amp should be 100% transparent , dont think i have ever heard a completely transparent amp.

i have two dacs , an aune mk2 and a hrt streamer , i cant hear a difference to be honest, usb or spdif on the Aune sound the same to me.

I am pushing 40 and my ears aint what they used to be though!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JRG1990 

I think your talking about bulit in headphone amps opposed to low level output, the output impendance of a headphone amp can have a big affect on the sound.

I'm on the DAC = cables side of things and a believer of SO MANY other things you can do to improve sound quality before splurging on either of these.

However what really always bugged me was the way people describe them in terms of "bright", "warm", and what have you. That suggests severe frequency response differences. I remember on old school head-fi the buzz was all about the DAC1 being too bright and "sterile and clinical" sounding. Dunno if that still holds true but consider: if you measured it and it did happen to have a skewed frequency response compared to another which was closer to flat, then IMO it is simply flawed. You might like a "warm" sound better, as posted in the OP it's very well possible they can engineer the sound towards this because it's more receptive towards some people. But it's still flawed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by seacard 

I had an interesting, and a somewhat depressing, conversation today with a famous engineer and speaker designer.  This guy knows more about electronics and electrical engineering than I can ever hope to forget.  Conversation turned to cables at one point, and I told him that I was not a "cable believer."  He was of the same mind, and we talked about companies that charge hundred, or thousands, of dollars for cables.

 

Eventually, conversation turned to DACs.  When I told him about my DAC upgrades and journey, he laughed.  How, he asked, after what you told me about cables, can you be a DAC believer?  I mumbled my way through some potential reasons, but he would have none of it.  At the end of the day, he said, DACs and cables fall in the same category: as long as they are well designed, they should be transparent.  Any DAC, as long as it is engineered correctly and has a flat frequency response, low noise, low distortion, and a few other things, will sound the same.  He did allow for the possibility that a DAC might sound different if it is intentionally distorted in a way that makes it sound more pleasing, or with accentuated highs and lows, and that it's possible that one might prefer that DAC.

 

So now that I've licked my wounds, I wanted to ask on here: am I the only one who thinks (thought?) that cables don't matter while DACs do?  Or do most of you put cables and DACs in the same general category?

The way  you have written the above confuses two separate things:

1. The idea that DACs can or should be "warm" etc - which really is bs

2. The idea that all DACs matter - yes, there are good DACs and less good. Although these days I'd hope bad ones are few indeed. A Sansa Clip has a great DAC, and a whole Clip costs about as much as a bottle of Aardbeg.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astroid 

yes , there is that difference.

 

Suppose it goes back to the line of thought that a good amp should be 100% transparent , dont think i have ever heard a completely transparent amp.

i have two dacs , an aune mk2 and a hrt streamer , i cant hear a difference to be honest, usb or spdif on the Aune sound the same to me.

 

I am pushing 40 and my ears aint what they used to be though!

 

You can't "hear" a completely transparent amp because you hear through speakers or phones. The way you determine an amp's transparency is to test it electronically - or possibly with a blind listening test an amp that is known to be transparent. And yes, there are amps and DACs that test as being completely transparent for all human purposes - i.e. any distortions are below the level at which human hearing could detect them. The Benchmark Pre is one example.

..I suspect that "practically transparent" is attained at quite a low price for amps these days, but DACs even more so. In fact, I think the best portable players - the Cowons and Sansas - may have already passed the point where they're almost impossible to tell from hardware like the Pre while using the best portable headphones. Just look at the test results some of these players show for noise and distortion levels - the Clip+ tests out to having only about 0.05% distortion even at maximum volume; who is going to hear this? And if you look at its square wave results, they're much closer than any headphone can manage. I'd love to see a Clip blindtested against a "high end" DAC + amp.