[dan.gheorghe]

  The only reason to buy an expensve DAC is for the variety of connection options it has.  Otherwise any competently implemented DAC with a flat frequency response and and sufficiently high S/N ratio will sound identical.
 
Think you hear a difference and  you're unwilling to  chalk it up to the power of suggestion, then spend away!
 
Otherwise buy a properly-designed DAC and Amp with the connectivity you need (which is just about everything on the market of recent vintage), sufficient power to drive the rig you have, and with the form factor you desire, and don't spend any more than you have to, because these products are really just commodities.

Even my mom or wife can pick the sound differences between two DACs and they know nothing about audio or the gear that I use.

  And folks in the hi-fi world continue to wonder why there seems to be a general difficulty in gathering new people into the hobby...

 
And yet I know lots of people that started to enjoy this hobby. Actually I know less people that enjoy or join another hobby of mine: swimming )

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I read the articrle in Tom's hardware.  I think the two most interesting things about it were that the Sennheiser HD 800's which are reputed to be THE headphone most sensitive to and revealing of differences in the playback chain, and the panel couldn't tell the difference among any of the amp/dacs in blind testing, and two, one of the testers owned the mos expensive unit, the $2000 Benchmark DAC2 (I myself have owned a Benchmark DAC1), and he wanted to believe he could tell the difference in a double blind test, yet could not.  In the end he had to admit there were no audible differences among the 4 units.
 
I suppose he could go to golden ear school, so he could become dissatisfied with his present set up, and need to buy a $5k dac. 

 

[cel4145]

I read the articrle in Tom's hardware.  I think the two most interesting things about it were that the Sennheiser HD 800's which are reputed to be THE headphone most sensitive to and revealing of differences in the playback chain, and the panel couldn't tell the difference among any of the amp/dacs in blind testing, and two, one of the testers owned the mos expensive unit, the $2000 Benchmark DAC2 (I myself have owned a Benchmark DAC1), and he wanted to believe he could tell the difference in a double blind test, yet could not.  In the end he had to admit there were no audible differences among the 4 units.

I suppose he could go to golden ear school, so he could become dissatisfied with his present set up, and need to buy a $5k dac. 

Reread their data for the different tests. They sometimes could pick out the Realtek. The conclusion to draw is that the differences were not significant enough for them, not that they could never tell the difference.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

That was a statistical test.  The way statistics work is determined by the statistical significance of the number of times they were able to pick out the Realtek.  The correct pick has to occur a sufficient number and or percentage of times to reach a confidence level that the pick was something other than random occurrence, and the way I read that article no such confidence level test was met--hence their conclusion.

 

[cel4145]

That was a statistical test.  The way statistics work is determined by the statistical significance of the number of times they were able to pick out the Realtek.  The correct pick has to occur a sufficient number and or percentage of times to reach a confidence level that the pick was something other than random occurrence, and the way I read that article no such confidence level test was met--hence their conclusion.

I think they overstated their conclusion to sensationalize it based upon the test results that they shared.

 

[gabriel-dan]

I read the article and to me, it all makes perfect sense. I've also organized double blind test between ODAC + O2, pupDAC+AMB M3 and Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic+ dynalo headamp  and a
 
combination of them, and I or my friends could not tell any difference between them. I know the article is based on a realtek computer DAC but nevertheless. Properly designed DAC's and amplifiers
 
would always sound similar.  

 

[BzzzzzT]

.

 

[goodvibes]

Holy crapola. I'm sure these guys are trying and honest but not hearing a 1.4db increase in the 100hz range? Said no one can here HiDef but later preferred DSD to wave????? This wont be popular but I hate PC and/or usb dac as a source. It really does limit differences but that must be one crapped up PC. There is still enough differences in general or even line stages etc where you would hear something. As far as I'm concerned, no 2 pieces of electronics sounds the same unless there is some significant bottleneck ahead of them.

 

[BzzzzzT]

...

 

[Joe Bloggs]

.

 

[HiCZoK]

I recently decided to give my onboard a try (normally using e10k) and fiio is in drawer now... It did nothing other than being paperweight on a desk.
At least i can't tell a single difference on mackie cr3 and koss porta pro which I use throught cr3 headphone output. Seriously... no difference.
It's alc892 and I did not installed any drivers. man...
Only thing I did is selected "full range" in windows settings and "disable all enhancments"
 
if someone from Poland wants to buy my e10k, pm me :lol:
 
The only thing e10k did was bass boost but it porta pro have plenty of bass as it is !
Btw. I did my best try on being amateur audiophile. I went through a lot of headphones like brainwavz hm5, xonar dg, fiio e10... only to find that cheapest stuff like porta pro and mackie cr3 sound like a dream to me
 
edit:I just think people have a bad taste from ~2004. Realtek was so bad back then, that it sounded underwater like. muffled and crazy bad. But since many years now (my motherboard is from 2012) it's not bad at all and don't even need drivers!

 

[nicoX]

When you first bought a PC you didn't have a soundcard, but where quick to pick one up. Brought much more pleasant audio from the low quality built in chips on the motherboard. Other than that tons of tweaks and EQ settings.
 
When you go on and buy hq satellite speakers and a subwoofer you end up buying an amp/dac. So I got the NuForce Icon. It drove my system good, but the upgrade to Icon 2, really made a major upswing in being able to power everything enough and give a more pleasant sound. You continue to buy hq cables that tweaks the sound to be even more better.
 
There is even a huge difference if I drive my sound through the Icon 2 dac, or just use the Icon 2 as an amp and let my soundcard drive it. The soundcard here does a much better job, but I know there are dacs that will do it better than my soundcard. Other than that I can get even better sound from my dac if I get a hq Audioquest USB cable connecting it between PC and dac.
 
At the moment I don't use the Creative drives because I'm doing some upgrades, yes even the drives make a huge difference.

 

[HiCZoK]

Ok I returned to fiio e10k after a week.
 
Mackie cr3 sounded good and essentially the same on both onboard and e10k but headphones produced hiss on output of mackie cr3.
So fiio e10k is much better for low level noise. And I kinda missed the bass switch