[SoupRKnowva]

Quote:

Once again you are making assumptions about what people have or have not heard, and what experience people do or do not have. 

 
Im merely going by what my eyes have seen, most the people posting impressions of the odac arent comparing it to anything. And the two people that i have seen compare it to other higher end gear, like anaxilus and Brat, both said it was pretty average, which is about when the soap boxes of objectivity get rolled out...
 
Oh, i guess lots of people have been comparing it to the Bifrost, but that isnt exactly high end either.
 
 
I dont know if you dont get this...but im not saying its a bad dac, i have even said that it is most likely a great value. My argument is that it isnt the best dac ever, which is what you are trying to say

 

[Audiodoc]

While it is true that the ODAC is a USB only DAC and lacks features like spdif, optical inputs, wifi etc., one has to admit that such a compact and value for money circuit is extracting the last bit of juice that the actual chip is capable of.

I have the ODAC as well as many other DACs upto $400 however the former is the most transparent of them. Although I may enjoy the coloured signatures of the latter for certain genres of music however that is a personnel preference.

One more aspect that is not much discussed on head fi is the variability of human auditory acuity. With increasing age the 20 hertz to 20 kHz audio spectrum gets shrinked to say 50 hertz to 12 kHz. A senior headfier may hear things differently than a young one. So one should not comment very aggressively about anything until he has passed an audiometry test followed by blind subjective testing keeping all the other variables (source materials, interconnects, amplifiers, headphones) common.

I would like many more objective DACs based on other DAC chips from Wolfson, analog devices, cirrus logic etc which yield results comparable to there published specifications. Then one may blind test to check whether one hears any differences if present.

Certainly the ODAC is not the end of the road of measurable performance however it may be so with regard to auditory perception by listeners. The former statement should be tested by unbiased blind testing with higher end DACs. After all what fun is it if your system can play upto 50 kHz when humans cant hear the same.

 

[lukeahale]

I would be very happy to continue this debate, but the direction it is going is only going to lead to this forum being moved to Sound Science to die like many others have, so, call it a cop-out if you wish, but I am done arguing.  This debate is never going to die, so why bother?

 

[ChicaneBT]

Quote:

 
My main argument is that many of you seem to be standing up on your soap box of objectivity, with little to no experience. 
 
Its totally fine that you are happy with what you have, as i said im sure its a solid dac for very little money. But that doesnt mean there isnt better.
 
it also doesnt mean that you can bring down other people, just because they happen to have better equipment. I know everyone wants to believe that they can get the best of the best for 150 dollars, its a cute dream, but that is really all it is.

Your main argument is not valid. Why? Because you don't know, it's just a thought of you. Which is not necessarily a problem, but it in this instance it definitely is because it's your main argument.
 
There can be better, but at what price. In the last few post people don't say there is nothing better, they refute the opinion that the ODAC is a bad DAC.
 
Benchmarks show the ODAC is on par with the DAC1 Pre. Unless you can refute these findings their is no basis to make a claim like you make in your last sentence.
 

 

[lukeahale]

Quote:

 
I dont know if you dont get this...but im not saying its a bad dac, i have even said that it is most likely a great value. My argument is that it isnt the best dac ever, which is what you are trying to say

Well, if you will perhaps look back, I myself have never claimed I believed it to be the best dac ever. 

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Quote:

Certainly the ODAC is not the end of the road of measurable performance however it may be so with regard to auditory perception by listeners. The former statement should be tested by unbiased blind testing with higher end DACs. After all what fun is it if your system can play upto 50 kHz when humans cant hear the same.

 
oh its definitely not the end of the road for objective measurable performance, even the DAC1 has better measurements, which Nwavguy will readily admit. But look at something like the Anedio D2, built and designed as a high end DAC, but it was built with by a very engineering focused company, just reading through their website gives that impression. Not to mention the extreme measurable performance of the dac, im not sure any dac can beat it in measurements. Some come close though.
 
I do agree that there is a bit to much audiophile tomfoolery out there, specially in dacs. i think there are high end dacs being made by people who dont really know what they are doing. But there are also, very engineering focused companies that also make very high end dacs, such as Lavry, EMM, and Weiss(which makes the dac that brat uses) and i would include Anedio on that list. 

 

[ChicaneBT]

Quote:

I have the ODAC as well as many other DACs upto $400 however the former is the most transparent of them. Although I may enjoy the coloured signatures of the latter for certain genres of music however that is a personnel preference.

With what kind of music genres you don't like the ODAC?

 

[Audiodoc]

Treble rich tracks (mostly badly recorded stuff, oldies and Compressed heavy metal tracks). The revealing / transparent nature of the ODAC makes listening to them quiet fatiguing. The HM601 DAP with its warm presentation and high frequency slope is quite forgiving in this regard.

For downloads from HDtracks ODAC sounds great but some 24/96 tracks from some other sources have a audible noise floor. Again a side effect of the ODAC transparency.

I tested some silence wav files and the ODAC was dead silent even at very high volume. Tested with multiple head amplifiers EHHA, FiiO E7 , E9, DIY A1, FiiO E 11.

 

[lukeahale]

Quote:

Treble rich tracks (mostly badly recorded stuff, oldies and Compressed heavy metal tracks). The revealing / transparent nature of the ODAC makes listening to them quiet fatiguing. The HM601 DAP with its warm presentation and high frequency slope is quite forgiving in this regard.
For downloads from HDtracks ODAC sounds great but some 24/96 tracks from some other sources have a audible noise floor. Again a side effect of the ODAC transparency.
I tested some silence wav files and the ODAC was dead silent even at very high volume. Tested with multiple head amplifiers EHHA, FiiO E7 , E9, DIY A1, FiiO E 11.

I am in 100% agreement with this, though personally I find it has moreso increased my avoidance of lower quality music, more than to want more colored/less transparent equipment.
 
Actually, I really wish there was a way to put an EQ between the different programs I use and the ODAC in Windows, I bet I could use that to solve a lot of the issues with those type of tracks... anyone have an idea?

 

[ChicaneBT]

Quote:

I am in 100% agreement with this, though personally I find it has moreso increased my avoidance of lower quality music, more than to want more colored/less transparent equipment.
 
Actually, I really wish there was a way to put an EQ between the different programs I use and the ODAC in Windows, I bet I could use that to solve a lot of the issues with those type of tracks... anyone have an idea?

 
You mean an EQ for everything that's running on your computer?

 

[lukeahale]

Quote:

 
You mean an EQ for everything that's running on your computer?

Yup, I would absolutely love to find something that could serve as a system-wide EQ.  Sadly I have not found such a thing to exist.

 

[Baxide]

I use the EQ in Mediamonkey for that.
 

 

[ChicaneBT]

Quote:

Yup, I would absolutely love to find something that could serve as a system-wide EQ.  Sadly I have not found such a thing to exist.

I actually don't know which EQ's are good. I used to use one on my old computer to lower the bass of my pc speakers sub. You could try to Google it, search here on Head-fi and if you're not sure yet ask it on the forum .

 

[tzjin]

EQ'ing with ODAC? Blasphemy.

 

[ChicaneBT]

Haha