[BS5711]

That's interesting. Was this DAC any better in comparison to your other DAC(s)?

It was soft and mellow sounding.

 

[iFi audio]

It was soft and mellow sounding.

Yup, there's something mellow and romantic about vintage multibit DACs

 

[matthia]

It's a little hard to say for sure. Proooobably the Bricasti M1SE.

Do you have plans to come up with a Bricasti review?
Thanks

Matt

 

[GoldenSound]

Do you have plans to come up with a Bricasti review?
Thanks

Matt

If I can get ahold of one I'd love to

 

[matthia]

If I can get ahold of one I'd love to

If you can go for this one:
https://www.bricasti.com/en/pro/mc1.php
It is the MC1 from the professional line, much cheaper than M1 or M1Series2
Basically a M1 but with the better power supply from the M12 and only two filter settings.

Matt

 

[GoldenSound]

If you can go for this one:
https://www.bricasti.com/en/pro/mc1.php
It is the MC1 from the professional line, much cheaper than M1 or M1Series2
Basically a M1 but with the better power supply from the M12 and only two filter settings.

Matt

I've reached out to Bricasti before but haven't heard back. I'll try contacting them again soon.

 

[runningwithscissors]

I can hear very subtle differences. Two DACs in particular that come to mind are an SMSL SU-9 that I had for a brief period and my (current DAC) Yggdrasil Less is More. In very simplistic terms, the SMSL sounded mildly "thin" and the Yggy sounds "fuller" to my ears. I'm sure the folks at ASR would tear my opinion to shreds, but that's how it sounds to me.

 

[theveterans]

I can hear very subtle differences. Two DACs in particular that come to mind are an SMSL SU-9 that I had for a brief period and my (current DAC) Yggdrasil Less is More. In very simplistic terms, the SMSL sounded mildly "thin" and the Yggy sounds "fuller" to my ears. I'm sure the folks at ASR would tear my opinion to shreds, but that's how it sounds to me.

I wouldn’t think that they will disregard your observations right away. They’ll probably say that there’s so many grass on the mids and treble which translates to distortion in the form of sounding fuller to your perception

If you want to hear more than subtle differences, you should audition a pure NOS DAC like Abbas or Audio Note or even Metrum Adagio DACs. They have cunning ability to make the vocals and instruments sound truer than life at the slight cost of tonal accuracy in both extremes of FR

 

[REXNFX]

With a good recording most DAC's sound good. With poor recordings, that have distortion baked into them, high end DAC's sound better as they filter out this distortion.

 

[jamesjames]

I wouldn’t think that they will disregard your observations right away. They’ll probably say that there’s so many grass on the mids and treble which translates to distortion in the form of sounding fuller to your perception

If you want to hear more than subtle differences, you should audition a pure NOS DAC like Abbas or Audio Note or even Metrum Adagio DACs. They have cunning ability to make the vocals and instruments sound truer than life at the slight cost of tonal accuracy in both extremes of FR

I think you're right to focus on difference. It's almost perverse I think to argue that every digital player sounds the same. The real question, if you hear a difference, is whether you prefer it. The opinions of others about (their own?) measurements and 'accuracy' (to what?) are of academic interest only.

 

[castleofargh]

With a good recording most DAC's sound good. With poor recordings, that have distortion baked into them, high end DAC's sound better as they filter out this distortion.

That's not a thing. A DAC doesn't know what part of the signal is music and what isn't.

I think you're right to focus on difference. It's almost perverse I think to argue that every digital player sounds the same. The real question, if you hear a difference, is whether you prefer it. The opinions of others about (their own?) measurements and 'accuracy' (to what?) are of academic interest only.

The real question is whatever it is you're asking. What's perverse is how most people only care about the question they have, and start reading everything posted by others as if it's always answering or failing to answer their question.
Some people care about how they feel in general, and that's fine. It's taste about a personal experience. Debating who's right about that is clearly silly, the same way it's silly to argue about why someone doesn't like the food you like. We're all in agreement up to that point.

The more complicated a topic is, the more likely it is for people to replace a problem with a simpler one and falsely take the simple answer as correct for the original problem. A listening test is a perfect example of that
The more egoistical someone is, the more likely he is to make everything about himself. Me, myself and I we experience our reality, and everybody else either agrees or is wrong. A popular view in this hobby... a very popular one.

The fact is that in the human brain, assumptions drive the interpretation of reality. Not the other way around! It's a fundamental notion that most people don't know about or decide to ignore because it doesn't feel nice. I often discuss psychological biases because of that:

J.E. (Hans) Korteling, Alexander Toet, in Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022
Abstract

Cognitive biases are systematic cognitive dispositions or inclinations in human thinking and reasoning that often do not comply with the tenets of logic, probability reasoning, and plausibility. These intuitive and subconscious tendencies are at the basis of human judgment, decision making, and the resulting behavior. Psychological frameworks consider biases as resulting from the use of (inappropriate) cognitive heuristics that people apply to deal with data-limitations, from information processing limitations, or from a lack of expertise. Neuro-evolutionary frameworks provide a more profound explanation of biases as originating from the inherent design characteristics of our brain as a neural network that was primarily developed to perform basic physical, perceptual and motor functions, and which also had to promote the survival of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

A. Wilke, R. Mata, in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), 2012
Heuristics and Biases: A Short History of Cognitive Bias

In the early 1970s, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the term ‘cognitive bias’ to describe people's systematic but purportedly flawed patterns of responses to judgment and decision problems.

But most of the time, when I bring up the potential for psychological bias as one of the possible causes of certain impressions, Some audiophile decides to interpret it as "he just said I was an idiot!" and gets mad at me for the stuff I did not say or imply.
That too is a clear example of people interpreting whatever they want however they want, not even bothering to open a new tab to look up the meaning of what they're getting mad about. The brain is made to pick the path of least effort. It's natural, We probably still exist thanks to it, and that's why it takes actual efforts and methods to go beyond the easy but often false interpretations of reality.

Another popular example is: "just listen".
To one person it means, get the DACs, sit in a comfy chair, listen to one for however long, go get a coffee, unplug stuff if needed for the other DAC. If you never had both DACs at once, just remember how it felt and call it a day.
At the other end of the spectrum there is me, reading "just listen" and thinking, yeah, that's what Floyd Toole and Sean Olive kept saying for decades when using their specially made blind testing room for speakers! Remove all other variables that aren't sound, so that we can finally, just listen.

As for the strawman that is "all DACs sound the same", there is like a handful of people claiming that (they shouldn't as it's impossible they have tested all DACs or even just most DACs before reaching that conclusion). If I just bother to dig a little and ask details, I have yet to cross path with one who wouldn't acknowledge outliers (from horrible products, to some that just roll off the trebles a little too much, to just plain weird designs from people who didn't understand how digital reconstruction works, like good old NOS filterless DACs). And if you add volume level as an audible difference, because of course most audiophiles will never try 2 DACs with accurate volume matching, then there are in effect very many DACs that do not sound the same, and it's quite obvious. It's all about testing conditions and definition of what should count as a sound difference. In my case, I wouldn't pay more for a DAC that's just a little louder, so I instead pay attention to volume matching precisely. But many people did not, and paid for that interpretation mistake with hard cash.

Most people like me who really care about plugs and features in a DAC and almost not at all how they're supposed to sound, will recognize all those possibilities because they obviously have encountered them if they tried to test more than 1 DAC properly in their entire life.
Anytime we reject an empty claim, that's all we're doing. We refuse to give credit to lazy, poorly controlled, never demonstrated, empty claims about audible sound. And while we wait for a demonstration to validate the claim, we stick with the null hypothesis. Not because we think everything must sound the same, but because that's the most common approach to a testable question(scientific method's super basic tool). Assume no impact and create a test that will prove impact (and disprove the null hypothesis). That is the most common, most effective way to prove a difference between anything and something else.

Then someone will come, read that however he likes for simplification, and our conversation will become:

 

[jamesjames]

Well, I actually said 'digital player', not DAC. The DAC is simply one component. The design and construction of the player may give rise to all sorts of noise, distortion, etc, etc. Some incorporate amps, some don't. Some incorporate optical drives, some don't. Players can sound very different for all kinds of reasons. Trying to isolate the causes of particular audible differences can be virtually impossible in the real world.

PS
Just to complete this thought - ran out of time earlier. No doubt there are many who enjoy their own forensic investigations of the audio complexities in this area. Excellent. But measurement isn't simple, opinions vary, and it's wrong (but unfortunately common) to conflate personal preference and observational bias. They are not the same thing.

 

[matthia]

I've reached out to Bricasti before but haven't heard back. I'll try contacting them again soon.

Another DAC worth to be reviewed might be the new Ideon Audio EOS DAC:
https://ideonaudio.com/eos-dac/

Matt

 

[REXNFX]

That's not a thing. A DAC doesn't know what part of the signal is music and what isn't.


The real question is whatever it is you're asking. What's perverse is how most people only care about the question they have, and start reading everything posted by others as if it's always answering or failing to answer their question.
Some people care about how they feel in general, and that's fine. It's taste about a personal experience. Debating who's right about that is clearly silly, the same way it's silly to argue about why someone doesn't like the food you like. We're all in agreement up to that point.

The more complicated a topic is, the more likely it is for people to replace a problem with a simpler one and falsely take the simple answer as correct for the original problem. A listening test is a perfect example of that
The more egoistical someone is, the more likely he is to make everything about himself. Me, myself and I we experience our reality, and everybody else either agrees or is wrong. A popular view in this hobby... a very popular one.

The fact is that in the human brain, assumptions drive the interpretation of reality. Not the other way around! It's a fundamental notion that most people don't know about or decide to ignore because it doesn't feel nice. I often discuss psychological biases because of that:

J.E. (Hans) Korteling, Alexander Toet, in Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022
Abstract



A. Wilke, R. Mata, in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), 2012
Heuristics and Biases: A Short History of Cognitive Bias


But most of the time, when I bring up the potential for psychological bias as one of the possible causes of certain impressions, Some audiophile decides to interpret it as "he just said I was an idiot!" and gets mad at me for the stuff I did not say or imply.
That too is a clear example of people interpreting whatever they want however they want, not even bothering to open a new tab to look up the meaning of what they're getting mad about. The brain is made to pick the path of least effort. It's natural, We probably still exist thanks to it, and that's why it takes actual efforts and methods to go beyond the easy but often false interpretations of reality.

Another popular example is: "just listen".
To one person it means, get the DACs, sit in a comfy chair, listen to one for however long, go get a coffee, unplug stuff if needed for the other DAC. If you never had both DACs at once, just remember how it felt and call it a day.
At the other end of the spectrum there is me, reading "just listen" and thinking, yeah, that's what Floyd Toole and Sean Olive kept saying for decades when using their specially made blind testing room for speakers! Remove all other variables that aren't sound, so that we can finally, just listen.

As for the strawman that is "all DACs sound the same", there is like a handful of people claiming that (they shouldn't as it's impossible they have tested all DACs or even just most DACs before reaching that conclusion). If I just bother to dig a little and ask details, I have yet to cross path with one who wouldn't acknowledge outliers (from horrible products, to some that just roll off the trebles a little too much, to just plain weird designs from people who didn't understand how digital reconstruction works, like good old NOS filterless DACs). And if you add volume level as an audible difference, because of course most audiophiles will never try 2 DACs with accurate volume matching, then there are in effect very many DACs that do not sound the same, and it's quite obvious. It's all about testing conditions and definition of what should count as a sound difference. In my case, I wouldn't pay more for a DAC that's just a little louder, so I instead pay attention to volume matching precisely. But many people did not, and paid for that interpretation mistake with hard cash.

Most people like me who really care about plugs and features in a DAC and almost not at all how they're supposed to sound, will recognize all those possibilities because they obviously have encountered them if they tried to test more than 1 DAC properly in their entire life.
Anytime we reject an empty claim, that's all we're doing. We refuse to give credit to lazy, poorly controlled, never demonstrated, empty claims about audible sound. And while we wait for a demonstration to validate the claim, we stick with the null hypothesis. Not because we think everything must sound the same, but because that's the most common approach to a testable question(scientific method's super basic tool). Assume no impact and create a test that will prove impact (and disprove the null hypothesis). That is the most common, most effective way to prove a difference between anything and something else.

Then someone will come, read that however he likes for simplification, and our conversation will become:

You missed my point, don't worry its way over your head.

 

[gregorio]

You missed my point, don't worry its way over your head.

What point did he miss and what’s way over his head? You stated:

With poor recordings, that have distortion baked into them, high end DAC's sound better as they filter out this distortion.

There’s two huge problems with that assertion:

Firstly, poor recordings are obviously not defined by how much distortion is “baked into them”. Take for example Metal music, which is very reliant on massively distorted electric guitars. Recordings obviously need that distortion “baked into them” otherwise it won’t sound like Metal music, are you saying all Metal music recordings must therefore be, by definition, poor? What about the vast majority of other popular and rock genres which also include electric guitars (and/or other distortion), must they all be necessarily poor recordings too?

Secondly, if the first problem above “missed the point”, for example you didn’t mean deliberately applied and desirable distortion but inadvertent distortion that’s undesirable, how is it possible for a DAC to know the difference, let alone remove it? “Distortion” most commonly refers to harmonic products, how does a DAC know what are harmonic products produced by the sound source itself or harmonic products caused by distortion and therefore what is distortion to start with, let alone what distortion has been deliberately added and what isn’t? If higher end DACs really did filter out the distortion “baked into” recordings, then Metal music recordings wouldn’t even sound like metal music and the vast majority of all pop, rock and other popular genre recordings would sound ridiculous!

G