[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?

 

[Head Injury]

No, you're not the only one who believes that.
 
I'd agree with your engineer friend though, speaking from a small amount of experience and a lot of trust in science.

 

[mikeaj]

Features and connectivity aside, there's genuinely nontrivial ways to improve DAC performance, better DAC chip designs coming out, etc.  You can indeed easily have a noisy DAC that can be easily distinguished from a less noisy DAC, or some low-end DACs with significant distortion.  (as you mentioned)  For purposes other than audio playback, high-end DACs are quite important.  There's some hard design going into some of them.
 
I'm not so sure about DAC journies for audio playback though.
 
With audio cables, it's pretty trivial to get something that works properly, so I would put it in a different category.  The "default" cable option is going to be very good, while the "default" onboard audio option's DAC may not really be.

 

[seacard]

Quote:

Features and connectivity aside, there's genuinely nontrivial ways to improve DAC performance, better DAC chip designs coming out, etc.  You can indeed easily have a noisy DAC that can be easily distinguished from a less noisy DAC, or some low-end DACs with significant distortion.  (as you mentioned)  For purposes other than audio playback, high-end DACs are quite important.  There's some hard design going into some of them.
 
I'm not so sure about DAC journies for audio playback though.
 
With audio cables, it's pretty trivial to get something that works properly, so I would put it in a different category.  The "default" cable option is going to be very good, while the "default" onboard audio option's DAC may not really be.

Of course, I don't really mean to suggest, and he certainly did not say, that cables and DACs are both equally easy to get right, and I think he would agree that there are plenty of poorly-designed DACs out there, and not as many poorly-designed cables.  And, I should point out, it's not like he owns the cheapest electronics in the world.  He had two pricy Bryston amps, what looked to be a pretty expensive CD player, and a $2500 Usher preamp.  (In addition to some $50,000 speakers.) 
 

 

[liamstrain]

I agree with your friend, with one caveat. It is more difficult to build a well designed dac, than a cable - and thus the variation we see in the market. Some are better than others at some things, with some features, at some price. It's a balancing act. I do not know of any "perfectly transparent" dac - certainly not on a budget. 
 
edit: we seem to be in agreement. 

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

I agree with your friend with the caveat that some laptops and poorly implemented integrated audio have issues with hissy static sometimes. Besides that, though, as long as you have a DAC that isn't making weird noise, there's very little room to go up for a very high cost. 

 

[Tetsuma]

Bring on the DAC blind experiments.
Or is that banned site-wide on Head-fi?
And have they already been vigorously experimented with in such a way?

 

[Prog Rock Man]

There is a blind compariosn DAC test here
 
http://www.stereomojo.com/Stereomojo%20Six%20DAC%20Shootout.htm/StereomojoSixDACShootout.htm
 
which is consistent with other blind comparison test results where price and spec no longer applies. So the cheapest DAC gets into the final and nearly wins.
 
There is a blind ABX test of two DACs here
 
http://home.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_cd.htm
 
which is consistent with other ABX tests in that no one can tell the difference.
 
These results suggest the engineer is correct and a decently made DAC will do as well as any other DAC. But in the real world where people are influenced by price, style, image, looks and reviews, DACs do sound different.

 

[JRG1990]

Quote:

I agree with your friend, with one caveat. It is more difficult to build a well designed dac, than a cable - and thus the variation we see in the market. Some are better than others at some things, with some features, at some price. It's a balancing act. I do not know of any "perfectly transparent" dac - certainly not on a budget. 
 
edit: we seem to be in agreement. 

 
A perfectly transparent dac is one with no audiable defects, jitter , noise , disortion etc , once you get into the £100+ $200+ price range all dacs start to sound the same.

 

[Tetsuma]

Quote:

There is a blind compariosn DAC test here
 
http://www.stereomojo.com/Stereomojo%20Six%20DAC%20Shootout.htm/StereomojoSixDACShootout.htm
 
which is consistent with other blind comparison test results where price and spec no longer applies. So the cheapest DAC gets into the final and nearly wins.
 
There is a blind ABX test of two DACs here
 
http://home.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_cd.htm
 
which is consistent with other ABX tests in that no one can tell the difference.
 
These results suggest the engineer is correct and a decently made DAC will do as well as any other DAC. But in the real world where people are influenced by price, style, image, looks and reviews, DACs do sound different.

Cheers.
 
The StereoMojo test wasn't as interesting as I thought it may have been. Nor did the competing DACs go as cheap as i'd have liked. 
While $4,700 vs $700 going out at 5-1 respectively is rather intriguing (their comments mostly).
Between all those DACs there was generally an overwhelming preference towards one or the other. Would you be comfortable saying a well designed DAC should be equal despite that?
I'm not in a position to argue against a trained electrical engineer, but it seems more plausible than cables and voodoo.
 
That being said, my DAC experiences have been rather underwhelming.

 

[JRG1990]

The test was to blind test differences between dacs, the listeners knew the dac was being changed each time im sure if they were to tell the listerners the dac had been changed when it hadn't there would have been the same differences it's probley purely placebo expect with the tube dacs, because they knew the dacs were being changed and were expecting differences, notice how most of the time all the subject comments contradict each other.

 

[seacard]

Quote:

The test was to blind test differences between dacs, the listeners knew the dac was being changed each time im sure if they were to tell the listerners the dac had been changed when it hadn't there would have been the same differences it's probley purely placebo expect with the tube dacs, because they knew the dacs were being changed and were expecting differences, notice how most of the time all the subject comments contradict each other.

Unfortunately, we'll never know.  Obviously, it would be useful to see whether all the subjects heard differences despite the same DAC being played, but since that variation wasn't run, I'm not sure we can draw anything out of this experiment.
 

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Bring on the DAC blind experiments.
Or is that banned site-wide on Head-fi?
And have they already been vigorously experimented with in such a way?

http://www.matrixhifi.com/marco.htm - there is a DBT between The Behringer DEQ2496 and the Benchmark DAC1 - summarized as
 
A la vista de los resultados, esta vez mas concluyentes de lo habitual, podemos afirmar que NO EXISTEN DIFERENCIAS SONORAS entre El Benchmark DAC 1, un conversor tan ensalzado por ciertos profesionales del sector, y el muy modesto en precio Behringer X, pero gigante en prestaciones y calidad sonora, tal y como veníamos anunciando desde hace tiempo en Matrix-HiFi.
 

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

The test was to blind test differences between dacs, the listeners knew the dac was being changed each time im sure if they were to tell the listerners the dac had been changed when it hadn't there would have been the same differences it's probley purely placebo expect with the tube dacs, because they knew the dacs were being changed and were expecting differences, notice how most of the time all the subject comments contradict each other.

Theu do not seem to have done careful level matching either, I can trivially tell my CD players apart from the fact that one is much louder than the other !
 

 

[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.