[bellsprout]

i think i feel dumber...

 
Quote:

Think of it like your music is a picture.  An amp will make the reds redder, blacks blacker, etc.  Increased saturation.  A DAC will bring the image more into focus.  You'll see more blades of grass, more texture on the skin.  The two work together to get you more out of the image than what your source can give you on its own, but in different ways.

 

 

[baglunch]

Wouldn't have thought it possible... 
 
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i think i feel dumber...

 
 

 

 

[ImperialX]

 
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I think if you get a high quality DAC that the difference will be the same as when you upgraded your amp.

If you have a bad DAC it doesn't matter if you upgrade your amp, it will still sound horrid.

 

[Tilpo]

If you have a bad DAC it doesn't matter if you upgrade your amp, it will still sound horrid.

True, but then you're talking >$20 DAC's.

A DAC must be really cheap in order to audibly sound bad. Some guy even made measurements of very cheap DAC's (<$50), and they were all pretty good, not straying too far for inaudible distortion.

 

[ImperialX]

Quote:

True, but then you're talking >$20 DAC's.
A DAC must be really cheap in order to audibly sound bad. Some guy even made measurements of very cheap DAC's (<$50), and they were all pretty good, not straying too far for inaudible distortion.

This is true, My Music Streamer II is quite cheap and it handles the HD800 (which is one of the pickiest headphones in existence) without much problem.
 
However you'll be surprised by the amount of people who skip the DAC when the onboard audio is horrid.

 

[Divvy]

With my HD800, K701 and HD650, I can't tell a difference beyond a shadow of doubt between any DACs, whether they're integrated PC ones or fancy-looking 1000$ boxes. I can't even tell a difference between amps. Only an unamped output is evident and even then it's a marginal difference compared to the differences between how the headphones sound.
 
Blind listening tests aren't in favor of audible differences in DACs either. I'm in complete agreement with Erik.

 

[xenochimera]

hmm my onboard audio is very noisy and hissy, external dac removed that problem, probably the only change i noticed.

 

[ImperialX]

 
Quote:

With my HD800, K701 and HD650, I can't tell a difference beyond a shadow of doubt between any DACs, whether they're integrated PC ones or fancy-looking 1000$ boxes. I can't even tell a difference between amps. Only an unamped output is evident and even then it's a marginal difference compared to the differences between how the headphones sound.
 
Blind listening tests aren't in favor of audible differences in DACs either. I'm in complete agreement with Erik.

I can't tell the difference between my $149 HRT Streamer and $1000 dedicated DAC boxes. That I agree with. However, I CAN tell the difference between my HRT Music Streamer II from my onboard sound on the MacBook Air. There is no hissing on the former.
 
So yes, a DAC is important if you don't have a decent sound card, but you don't need to spend much on it. 

 

[obzilla]

I've had half a dozen DACs now. Some sound impossibly similar. Some sound exceptionally different. It depends on the DACs and downstream chains being compared, but the short end of it is that the DAC is your source, and sources matter. Each one is the foundation (or secondary, the recording is the true foundation) of your chain, and it winds up leaving, to some extent or other, its signature on the final sound signature of the system.

 

[Tilpo]

I've had half a dozen DACs now. Some sound impossibly similar. Some sound exceptionally different. It depends on the DACs and downstream chains being compared, but the short end of it is that the DAC is your source, and sources matter. Each one is the foundation (or secondary, the recording is the true foundation) of your chain, and it winds up leaving, to some extent or other, its signature on the final sound signature of the system.

Would you be willing to setup an ABX session with a different person, especially with the dissimilar DAC's.

I'm not trying to offend your judgement, it just seems like an interesting experiment.

 

[obzilla]

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Would you be willing to setup an ABX session with a different person, especially with the dissimilar DAC's.
I'm not trying to offend your judgement, it just seems like an interesting experiment.

Perhaps once I am done evaluating the 2 I recently picked up. I plan on doing a lot of non blind listening this week to write up some notes on the two. Perhaps after that I can talk my girlfriend into swapping cables while I am blindfold. No promises though, she doesn't exactly have a ton of patience for this stuff.
 
And no offense taken, this is the internet... anyone who gets offended on the internet needs to go outside more often.
 
Would you be willing to invest in a couple of recommended DACs to do some ABXing yourself?

 

[sonq]

With my HD800, K701 and HD650, I can't tell a difference beyond a shadow of doubt between any DACs, whether they're integrated PC ones or fancy-looking 1000$ boxes. I can't even tell a difference between amps. Only an unamped output is evident and even then it's a marginal difference compared to the differences between how the headphones sound.
 
Blind listening tests aren't in favor of audible differences in DACs either. I'm in complete agreement with Erik.

Interesting. Which $1k DACs have you tried against your pc sound card?

 

[ImperialX]

 
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hmm my onboard audio is very noisy and hissy, external dac removed that problem, probably the only change i noticed.

 
To be honest this is the first impression I got when I first got a USB DAC...not the SQ.

 

[eugenius]

Short answer: no.
Long answer: yes.

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

With my HD800, K701 and HD650, I can't tell a difference beyond a shadow of doubt between any DACs, whether they're integrated PC ones or fancy-looking 1000$ boxes. I can't even tell a difference between amps. Only an unamped output is evident and even then it's a marginal difference compared to the differences between how the headphones sound.
 
Blind listening tests aren't in favor of audible differences in DACs either. I'm in complete agreement with Erik.

 
I don't trust my ear to ABX to test one DAC from another DAC with a few colored exceptions (DAC Magic for example is always an obvious component in a mix) and I don't doubt that many real ABX tests between DACs are inconclusive.
 
I'm not sure its fair to say there's no difference between DACs if they can't be reliably ABXed either though.  I know the same argument can be used for cables, but there's a little more basis for it on DACs.  What I've found often enough, based on DAC, is that I will get fatigued or bored more easily by the end of an album than by another.  So swapping a cable and saying "which DAC do you hear now?" I'd plainly state before starting that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  But after 40-70 minutes of listening, I bet I would find myself more fatigued of listening or more bored in the content with some useful consistency listening to brand X for most albums compared to brand Y.   And from that we could probably build an unusual ABX session spanning months. Different chips and different power topologies will have both different noise floors and different levels of precision/quantization-errors.  That's a measurable enough effect for instrumentation, and a cumulative effect for the brain.
 
I think the differences of a DAC work more in the subconcious thought of hearing than the overt differences of different speakers or amps or tubes.  There's subtle imperfect rounding errors that make it through that doesn't change the tonality in an obvious way but I think affect the ear or the brain or both in different ways.