Hi
@Rob Watts how useful is this single tone test compared to multitone (which better represents music?)
May
better represent music, but as a whole it does not. When was the last time, any music had as much bass voltage, midrange voltage and treble voltage all at the same time? try never!
Usually music is all Bass, and from there the levels drop massively, what you see on a spectrum analyser is a weighted display, in reality it would be all bass, and very little after that.
Are you saying that none of your DACs show any measurable noise floor modulation even with multitone tests?
@GoldenOne measured Dave's multitone and it interestingly shows a similar shape as ASR's multitone for Dave (noise and/or distortion higher in bass frequencies)
The single tone seems not practical, when you think about music ?
These plots are bettered by many DACs today (APx555 measurements)
For clarity,
Noise Floor Modulation is a different phenomenon. it has nothing to do with noise floor, or noise amount. It is a situation, when noise floor dynamically dances with music, what ever the steady state levels were.
Going back to your graphs, are the levels bettered by many DACs? let's see:
- to begin with it is misleading publishing a graph and claim, there it is, cast in stone!
However, let's look at ASR's results. You provided one graph that shows something, fine, here is another from ASR:
Compare them, do they look alike?
When ASR measures and produces some graphs, as evidence to prove one thing, should they re-measure the same device to prove another issue, the graphs may not match, sometimes!
I am not accusing ASR of cooking their results, NO, some measurements can not be recreated, there are many variables, many settings and conditions on the measuring equipment.
Look at the graph with minimal noise floor, there is a tiny spike at what I reckon is 60Hz (mains hum?), but it does not exist on the other graph! but then it reappears on multi-tone tests.
It seems that DAVE has one, single 4th order distortion spike at -142dB on one graph only, and the rest are indeed at roughly -150dB, yet
that has been picked on as evidence.
I leave it to you to search for Goldensound's recent noise-modulation result on DAVE.
Bottom line! DAVE is now 7 or more years old, designed probably a few years prior, ask yourself, even taking the worst case scenario, Is it still neck and neck with Toppings new TOTL product that has just been released??
Worst case scenario!
And that is just from a handful of measurements - if you ever get a chance, try listening to them side by side.
I have, and still do! I have a Topping DX7 pro (not the latest plus) and my Hugo2 is honestly superior. You think I am biased? why should I be? I already have both, love them both, the Topping is very good, but Hugo2 has the upper hand.