[Deolum]

Well ok i have no clue about speakers.

 

[bigshot]

So use a DAC with it's own supply then?

Run the laptop on battery power not plugged in.

 

[Poganin]

Someone can hear the movement of the his computer mouse using a Topping E30 DAC. The DAC gets the power from a PC USB port. How is that possible if only 0 & 1 bits?

I had this very problem when I connected a tube amp to my desktop DAC (Aune S6) connected to my PC over USB over a "supposedly" special, DAC-dedicated USB circuitry on the motherboard. With headphones connected to the tube amp, moving the wireless mouse caused high-pitched noise in the headphones. After some testing I narrowed the source of the problem down to the USB cable: disconnecting it made the mouse whine disappear, but obviously it wasn't an acceptable solution. Replugging both the DAC and the amp into the same power strip eliminated the whine, too. (The DAC had been on the same strip as the PC, previously). Ground loop, I guess?

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Yes. bigshot is the most intelligent headfi member I have ever encountered. He is always well thought out, logical, and right.

This is outrageous man. I thought you were talking about me for a minute

Welcome back dude! Where ya been? How's the gear?

 

[340519]

Horse sense.



Not as long as it's performing to spec. Digital audio is generally audibly transparent, meaning that it can reproduce sound better than you can hear. As long as something is playing back a lossless file properly, it should sound the same as any other component playing back properly.

How can you live in Hollywood and be so down to earth?

 

[340519]

This is outrageous man. I thought you were talking about me for a minute

Welcome back dude! Where ya been? How's the gear?

lol sorry bigshot takes the prize, and great thanks. The gear is great but I overpaid for my dacs.

 

[dematted]

I hear pretty obvious differences between even entry-level dacs with my ECP DSHA-3F and Pendant. And I don't really have much expectation bias - not expecting to like one more than another, or anything like that. They just sound different. You probably do need higher-end gear to tell some of the differences between dacs.

And no, I haven't done a blind test. Don't really care to buy the equipment I need to conduct one. I'm happy enough knowing I hear differences between different components. In fact, I've even found myself "missing" dacs before that I just had on loaner tours, because they made such an obvious difference to my system and it sucked to send them away.

So yeah, while dacs make less of a difference than amps or transducers, on a revealing enough chain, they certainly do make an audible difference. Sometimes a fairly big one.

 

[Whazzzup]

If dacs didn’t matter, if they all reached a level of acuity that we couldn’t tell the difference, we would all use cheap phones as a dac. Even phones sound different. Rockwell dacs don’t sound the same as android which don’t sound the same as schiit dacs or as chord dacs sound. Now does it really matter, I do think we can get caught up in it but fostex, v moda, or iPhone provides different experiences, which one one prefers depends.

 

[redrol]

If dacs didn’t matter, if they all reached a level of acuity that we couldn’t tell the difference, we would all use cheap phones as a dac. Even phones sound different. Rockwell dacs don’t sound the same as android which don’t sound the same as schiit dacs or as chord dacs sound. Now does it really matter, I do think we can get caught up in it but fostex, v moda, or iPhone provides different experiences, which one one prefers depends.

I *think* we are talking about the actual DAC chips here. Headphone outputs can be very different and also sounding.

When I say I DAC sounds the same I mean a line level out.

 

[sander99]

I *think* we are talking about the actual DAC chips here. Headphone outputs can be very different and also sounding.

Maybe not so much the actual chips but indeed often there seems to be a mixup in many discussions between DACs and DAC/Amplifiers in one box.

I hear pretty obvious differences between even entry-level dacs with my ECP DSHA-3F and Pendant. And I don't really have much expectation bias - not expecting to like one more than another, or anything like that. They just sound different. You probably do need higher-end gear to tell some of the differences between dacs.

And no, I haven't done a blind test.

Expectation bias (and other factors other than the actual sound that can influence what you hear) can not just be switched off. Everyone is influenced by them. Expectation bias also doesn't need to be the result of a consious idea about one technology being better, or more expensive being better or anything like that, the following scenario is also possible: for whatever reason, the first time you listen to A and after that to B you think you notice some difference that maybe wasn't really there but maybe your attention shifted a little bit or by coincidence you noticed something with B that you just hadn't noticed with A although it was there, and that can cause expectation bias that makes you hear the same difference when switching back and forth between A and B again.

 

[dematted]

It's very possible that I had some degree of expectation bias, yes. However, I hear such significant differences between dacs that I find it very difficult to imagine they can be chalked up wholly to various kinds of expectation bias. Often times, I find that what I hear in a dac is actually the -opposite- of what my expectations are, both explicit and implicit. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that it is because I'm having a different auditory experience than the one that I thought that I would have.

I don't really understand what the impetus is to deny the validity of people's subjective experiences. It's very much akin to the behaviorists of the 1950s, who thought that because various conscious states were not able to be acclimated within contemporary science, it was better to just discard them or analyze them in terms of complex sets of behaviors. But we all know how that theory ended up (in the trash-bin of history, really). Merely because measurements cannot fully explain the differences between people's experiences of various audio gear doesn't mean people aren't having genuinely different experiences that can't be reduced to or explained by expectation bias and placebo. It might very well be that our current understanding of audio measurements and the like is not sufficiently sophisticated. Sound "science" is hardly a complete science.

We have to remember that when we're listening to music, the most important thing that we have to go by is our experience - measurements can inform, and at times check our experiences, but audio is ultimately about the experience we have listening to music, and measurements are ultimately nothing but a handmaiden meant to guide us to the most fulfilling, interesting experiences. And indeed, I would contend that any science which purports to forsake the empirical experiences that it is ultimately accountable to ceases to be much of a science at all.

 

[Whazzzup]

I *think* we are talking about the actual DAC chips here. Headphone outputs can be very different and also sounding.

When I say I DAC sounds the same I mean a line level out.

Well then. way More to control for then. Only line level out tested chord versus fostex and yes there were differences. But I suspect it goes back that different chips and different implementations of analogue and digital components within dacs, effect what we hear. Sabre chips sound different than burr brown chips but is it the chips, or implementation or both.

 

[CoryGillmore]

It's very possible that I had some degree of expectation bias, yes. However, I hear such significant differences between dacs that I find it very difficult to imagine they can be chalked up wholly to various kinds of expectation bias. Often times, I find that what I hear in a dac is actually the -opposite- of what my expectations are, both explicit and implicit. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that it is because I'm having a different auditory experience than the one that I thought that I would have.

I don't really understand what the impetus is to deny the validity of people's subjective experiences. It's very much akin to the behaviorists of the 1950s, who thought that because various conscious states were not able to be acclimated within contemporary science, it was better to just discard them or analyze them in terms of complex sets of behaviors. But we all know how that theory ended up (in the trash-bin of history, really). Merely because measurements cannot fully explain the differences between people's experiences of various audio gear doesn't mean people aren't having genuinely different experiences that can't be reduced to or explained by expectation bias and placebo. It might very well be that our current understanding of audio measurements and the like is not sufficiently sophisticated. Sound "science" is hardly a complete science.

We have to remember that when we're listening to music, the most important thing that we have to go by is our experience - measurements can inform, and at times check our experiences, but audio is ultimately about the experience we have listening to music, and measurements are ultimately nothing but a handmaiden meant to guide us to the most fulfilling, interesting experiences. And indeed, I would contend that any science which purports to forsake the empirical experiences that it is ultimately accountable to ceases to be much of a science at all.

The problem is these differences disappear in blind testing. Take away your visual stimuli which is feeding your expectation bias and pretty much all properly functioning and properly powered electronics sound the same. I don't know of any tests conducted where even professional audio reviewers could discern DACs in a blind test. Blind testing has been the bane of electronics and cable manufacturers for decades now.

 

[dematted]

The problem is these differences disappear in blind testing. Take away your visual stimuli which is feeding your expectation bias and pretty much all properly functioning and properly powered electronics sound the same. I don't know of any tests conducted where even professional audio reviewers could discern DACs in a blind test. Blind testing has been the bane of electronics and cable manufacturers for decades now.

Yeah, I'll need to see evidence to believe that. I've seen plenty of blind tests where people distinguished between DACs, though!

 

[Whazzzup]

Blind testing, lolz. The way things all sound the same is blind hearing.