[Magick Man]

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.

That test shows me that there can be an audible, albeit subtle, difference between DACs. It's a very small sample, and can't be considered "proof", but it does point in that direction. Interesting that the tube pre-amp was crushed coming out of the gate.

 

[Magick Man]

I received a Bifrost yesterday and have spent many hours in the last 24 A/Bing it with my Titanium HD. I cannot find a difference.

Well, the Titanium HD has a very good DAC, just like my Xonar. The DAC in my old Audigy, however, was crap and seemed to pickup distortion from anything.

 

[astroid]

The tastiest DAC i have seen is :
 

 

[Magick Man]

Anyone else cringe when you hear about someone buying $300 cables for their $400 headphones? I mean, it's their money and they can do what they want, but geez. :rolleyes:

 

[Draygonn]

Anyone else cringe when you hear about someone buying $300 cables for their $400 headphones? I mean, it's their money and they can do what they want, but geez. :rolleyes:

I cringe when I see noobs doing this. Their first nice headphones and they think they need to recable it.

Back in the DAC world, I bought a Squeezebox Touch and have installed Touch Toolbox 3.0 (no hardware mods). When it was stock there was a difference between it's analog outs and the Titanium HD. After modding I don't see a difference. The Touch is presently running itself (not connected to a computer) and grabbing the music from a USB thumbdrive. Supposedly running it this way degrades the sound quality. I don't find that to be the case. People are recommending $200 power supplies for the $300 Touch.

 

[proton007]

AFAIK an audio DAC is the dedicated DSP (bessel filter) + Analog Converter.
The filtering *can* make a difference depending on the tuning. But most of these solutions are pretty standard and off the shelf, so I don't expect a lot of change there.
Now if someone decides to do some more processing with this analog signal, then yes, it can make some difference.
 
The question is this, the analog we get out of a dac is just the converted analog signal straight from the chip? Or the processed signal ?

 

[Chris J]

Anyone have any comments on DACs with selectable filters, e.g. Cambridge DAC Magic,  AudioLab MDAC?

 

[stv014]

Quote:

Anyone have any comments on DACs with selectable filters, e.g. Cambridge DAC Magic,  AudioLab MDAC?

 
The filters most likely sound the same unless they affect the audio band significantly enough (e.g. treble roll-off). But a blind test of various filters (linear vs. minimum phase, different amounts of ringing, etc.) could be created so that anyone can try and hear if there is a difference.

 

[Chris J]

 
Quote:

 
The filters most likely sound the same unless they affect the audio band significantly enough (e.g. treble roll-off). But a blind test of various filters (linear vs. minimum phase, different amounts of ringing, etc.) could be created so that anyone can try and hear if there is a difference.

 
Fair enough, but I was hoping an owner of a DAC with selectable filters would throw their opinion into the ring.
 
I have a CD player with 44.1 kHz and 96 kHz sampling switching, the difference is damn close to negligible.