shabta said:

You seem hell-bent on proving the point that you don't understand the difference between bashing a technical solution and insulting someone (notice how your resorted to name calling in the quote above). Those two are not equivalent. Some people who like Planars think and post how Dynamic headphones are inferior based on the technology employed, that is totally ok. However, It is a false equivalency between someone calling out DS designs as inherently flawed one the one hand and suggesting that someone raises "suspicions" and is just putting on a "big commercial" for expressing their belief that a technology is flawed on the other hand. 

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You missed the point. The point is the bashing of Sabre/D-S DAC chips, and that the bashing is I suspect being used just to market or advertise the non-Sabre/DS DAC chip. In other words, I didn't start this. In fact I'm not criticizing just for the sake of it, I'm presenting arguments, and that is---how can you say/bash the DS DACs for being digitally glary when you didn't even bother to test (making sure other things are equal during the test, and not hearing different DAC units with different filters and implementations) if it's caused by the digital filter used, which is my suspect.

Look at the Yggy, it doesn't use the standard filter with lots of pre and post ringing. So how can we be sure that the non-digitally glary sound coming from it is primarily due to the AD chip and not the filter or "non-filter" used?

nicolo said:

The AD chip wasn't originally designed for audio. It's designed specifically for military applications. Which means that Mike and others would have had to create their own filters along with other custom code modifications.

Here's an idea: if you are nice to Schiit and if you are open to signing an NDA to emulate such "standard" digital filters for comparison purposes, they may even accept your proposal. After then you can compare away to your heart's content.

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Yes, that would be great. But better proposition would be to use their proprietary filter on the Sabre/D-S DAC chips. If my suspect is right, their filter would remove the glare, hence its not the D-S DAC chip that's to blame.

I understand though that the different DAC chips involved could make the two scenarios impossible.

baldr said:

Just for clarification:  Schiit makes 4 DACs priced from $100 to $850.  They all contain d-s DAC chips.  There's also one for $2300 - it is multibit.  To restate:

1.  D-S tech is cheap and easily executable by morons.  Which qualifies me at a minimum as an verify experienced moron.

2.  Multibit tech with optimal DSP is expensive, requires years to execute, and not suitable for development by imbeciles.

3.  Because of this slow development, Schiit would offer this tech as available to existing users of our upgradable products without screwing them.  (Gungnir and Bifrost)

4.  Expensive (multi-thousand $) D-S DAC design is a very poor value due to its inherent economy.

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Is it possible to create an optimum digital filter/DSP that will remove the glare for the sucky Sabre/D-S DAC chips?

Edit: Or is it better to just use more expensive non-D-S DAC chip to save time and brain matter to develop a digital filter/DSP to remove the glare?

How about you read the thread from the beginning and try to understand where the OP is coming from ? This thread started as pcm vs dsd, not sd vs r2r. Even Currawong said it.
 
How about trying to get an idea how DAC chips actually work, and the radical difference between the mathematical results of each chip ? You must know that DS chip actually approximate their results which means that they are inherently innacurate right ? Are you familiar with the GiGo principle in IT engineering ? You can't save the signal with filters if the dac isn't giving you the right answer in the first place, can you ?

Hi and sorry but from what i understand the superior sound from the Yggy is not only due to the absence of digital glare, clearly a very good thing.
I guess that is superior also for dynamics and rendition of the virtual soundstage. And we all know how exciting are these other two factors. 
No that i like the digital glare ... but i would trade a little of it for an exceptional 3D effect. 
I mean, the glare could be linked to the filter, but the other two to the new and high end dac chip used ?
Thanks,  gino 

frenchbat said:

How about you read the thread from the beginning and try to understand where the OP is coming from ? This thread started as pcm vs dsd, not sd vs r2r. Even Currawong said it.

How about trying to get an idea how DAC chips actually work, and the radical difference between the mathematical results of each chip ? You must know that DS chip actually approximate their results which means that they are inherently innacurate right ? Are you familiar with the GiGo principle in IT engineering ? You can't save the signal with filters if the dac isn't giving you the right answer in the first place, can you ?

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I'm not an EE, but from what I understand (and I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong on this), the stuff you're saying is in the digital filtering process (oversampling) to remove the noise, not in the DAC chip itself, although I understand that the DAC chip always have stock standard digital filters. This is why I'm saying the culprit is the digital filter process (to remove the noise), not the D-S DAC chip or digital to analogue conversion process itself that went before.

Nope, the results from the dac chip itself are an approximation, that's the way the Delta-Sigma process works. Oversampling is a trick used to reduce the range of the approximation, but it's still inaccurate, only to a lower extent.

frenchbat said:

Nope, the results from the dac chip itself are an approximation, that's the way the Delta-Sigma process works. Oversampling is a trick used to reduce the range of the approximation, but it's still inaccurate, only to a lower extent.

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And the other chips aren't or are better approximations? Do we have evidence on that?

I already pointed you towards the right track some posts ago. Do some research on Dac accuracy, it's part of the specs, and expressed in LSB INL.
 
The dac chip chosen by MM is accurate to 1ppm IIRC.

diamondears said:

You missed the point. The point is the bashing of Sabre/D-S DAC chips, and that the bashing is I suspect being used just to market or advertise the non-Sabre/DS DAC chip. In other words, I didn't start this. In fact I'm not criticizing just for the sake of it, I'm presenting arguments, and that is---how can you say/bash the DS DACs for being digitally glary when you didn't even bother to test (making sure other things are equal during the test, and not hearing different DAC units with different filters and implementations) if it's caused by the digital filter used, which is my suspect.

Look at the Yggy, it doesn't use the standard filter with lots of pre and post ringing. So how can we be sure that the non-digitally glary sound coming from it is primarily due to the AD chip and not the filter or "non-filter" used?

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As I'm sure you have noticed I haven't been here in the thread throwing gushing compliments at MM's PR skills, regardless of where I stand on that issue his technical knowledge and ability to articulate it into amazing sounding DACs has been established without question. I may not like how MM comes across in public (and I'm sure he couldn't give two pinches of coon crap about that) but if MM says it is the totality of the design that should be good enough for you, for anybody. Why would he lie? Do you really believe they are so desperate for money that Schiit needs to use trickery to market their products? The idea is preposterous, Schiit has built their success on the sound of the products, and if MM has put his many years of un-paralleled skill and experience into this design I think that should tell you a great deal. And at this price point you think they are grabbing money? That just doesn't stand up at all. In the world of boutique priced DACs they could easily have asked more and gotten it. I think your going to end up chasing your tail around and getting mud all over yourself. Why not admit you may have jumped to conclusions and wait and hear for yourself?

purrin said:

Because obviously Mike Moffat, the father of the standalone DAC, who has been doing this for 35-40 years is stupid, and knows far less than armchair DAC designer consumers who seem to who know it all.

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In schiit faq style:

And the audacity of them not charging 5 digits! How stupid can they be! This goes against the principle of paying top dollar for top performance! This is totally absurd.

theblueprint said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Theta-Pro-Gen-5-DAC-digital-audio-converter-excellent-condition-/191571715283?nma=true&si=QE6XorYamh0tT8svueWl0TYgPhQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Okay, so who bought a Theta GenV for $1750? 

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And that after even the masters of 'ceremony' in this thread stated they wont pay more than $3-400 for such a device. That ebay link is a statement more powerful and telling than 100 pages in this thread.

Wanna know if the r2r hype is real ... that's your answer.
Wanna know if the hype already passed ridiculous thresholds .. that's your answer.

When people take their wallets to 'wonderland', something is clearly wrong in the(ir) universe.

The Theta Gen V / V A cost a lot of money in their day. Adjust that to inflation and one will find it is within today's MSB pricing range. Yes, even 20 years later £1100 is not a bad price for great technology, (more than) competitive with anything today's R2R, but no longer made and only available in limited and decreasing quantities.
 
If NOS tube prices are any indication, expect the prices for the great R2R DACs of the hey-day to go only one way.

So you think Mike's whole life work, spending many years, thousands of hours, and countless long days and nights to painstakingly develop an elaborate custom platform for the AD5791, because it isn't designed for audio applications, was an elaborate ploy just so they could market the Yggy as an R2R instead of a D-S DAC? And then once they finally succeeded, they only charged a minimal cost considering the bill of materials? Lol

How many ways can I put this?
 
Most (hifi) manufacturers are a business. I mean that making money is waaaaaaay more important than providing value for money, in the form of sound per pound (I'm a Brit, remember) for their customers. The profit margin is king!
 
They do this by charging as much as possible for something that cost as little as possible, for them to make.
Capitalism at work; all normal so far. Yes?
 
This results in us buying items for $1000s that cost $100s to make.The rest is overheads and profit margins.
They can do this because of:

1. marketing,
2. dressing a sows ear to look like a silk purse,
3. the complicity of the 'hifi' media and
4. the naivety/gullibility of Joe Public.

 
As someone around here is so fond of mentioning how important the filter is; tweaking the filter will have enough of an effect, that'll make the difference (in sq).
The main part is the converter chip, and, as I understand it, a D-S chip is about a quarter of the price of an R-2R chip. So, that's maybe $25 vs $100. When the parts budget is a total of $200, that's gonna make a difference.
So, if a manufacturer has a parts budget of $200, (for a dac that'll sell for $2000+), why would he want to increase the parts cost (alone), by 100%, for maybe a 20-30% increase in sq? He'll save that for the $5000+ dac (if he's feeling generous).
 
Thankfully, some of the people in the industry appear to be hobbyist, music lovers first, and businessmen second.
 
People that prefer the sound of multi-bit do so for different reasons; there are different factors, usually multiple, about the sound quality that they prefer; it's not just about digital glare. But if you can't tell the difference, or you think that D-S, or the filters used with D-S, sounds better, then lucky you.