[sorue]

You’re taking this personally. I’m being objective with how I look at it. I can understand your position, since you have purchased this DAC.
After your experience with the yulong, and particularly because you didn’t like how the yulong sabre sounded, let me say it plainly: do measurements tell the whole tale? The yulong sabre measures great, on paper, but what happened? Either the yulong wasn’t measured properly (I doubt that), or there must be something else affecting the sound, that we cannot measure yet.
My point is simple – you cannot tell how something sounds just based on how well it measures. Most modern DACs measure extraordinarily well, but often sound different. Don’t get me wrong, there must be a minimum standard.
 
As for regulators. You can’t calculate it so easily because the noise rejection is not linear. As I mentioned earlier, noise rejection gets poorer as the frequency increases. The proper way of spec’ing noise is volts / Hz. Read this:
http://www.paulhynesdesign.com/page3.html
http://www.paulhynesdesign.com/page6.html
 
For the record, I am not paul hynes. You can find tons of electronic articles on voltage regulators. Google it yourself. Even if I take the most optimistic figure of 9 uV @ 20KHz, it is NOT “ultra low noise” at all. I’ve said this already in an earlier post. Low noise in audio is something in the nV range; uV is hardly low noise.
 
i do agree with mr linnenberg that spdif is an antiquated interface and terrible for audio
 
“And let's not forget that Srajan, an experienced audiophile with good surrounding equipment, gave a clear victory in all areas for the cdp3E over the Weiss DAC2.
So it surely isn't all empty words..”
You realize that’s the only way they can sell the cheaper gear, I hope. This is not specific to the dac in question but in general.
We’ve seen many so-called ‘giant-slayers’ in audio over the past few years. Some of it is true, no doubt, probably more because some expensive DACs are flat-out over-priced, sure. But most of the time you get what you pay for, with diminishing returns at the extreme ends, of course.
 
I see your passion for studying all this and I think it’s a shame that you’re not channeling it towards the right kind of information – unbiased and objective. No matter how you slice it, information on ANY audio manufacturer’s website is almost never completely, 100% objective.

 

[Willakan]

I find criticisms over such small and ambiguous aspects of the design confusing. Sure, if it's a single-ended tube amp you can legitimately complain that could result in suboptimal audio reproduction due to the inherent nonlinearity of such designs, but here we're arguing about v-regs and their effect in a specific design, which you can't really do without access to a lot more information.
 
As for "things that measure well sound different", things that have been carefully confirmed to measure well, used within their operational remit and under volume matched, blind conditions do certainly not sound different.

 

[Linnenberg]

Normally I should not post here, because it could be seen as an advertisement. This post is not for advertising, I just feel the need to correct for certain comments by contributor “sorue”. I hope the administrators do not mind, but it is kind of bizarre when a potential customer “slackman” takes over the role of an advocate, just because of very unfair remarks and comments of another forum user.

“sorue” seems to concentrate on the voltage regulator issue. Our website tries to communicate to a potential customer: “Look, we use very high quality parts throughout; these parts are the best available on the market; they are not cheap, please take that into account when reasoning about the product”. The website is not telling anyone, that we have invented the best regulator in the universe. Instead it is all about value for money in terms of raw material and sound quality. That’s it. No fraud.

As I am a technician, I can’t let “sorue” come away with his kind of street wisdom.

1) Yes, a discrete voltage regulator can easily build with lower noise. “sorue” referenced the “Paul Heynes Design” regulators. They have lower noise. Nevertheless he seems to mess up voltage noise density (measured in V/sqrt(Hz)) and rms noise. For a fictive bandwidth of 20 kHz, such a regulator would show 0,3uV noise in contrast to 9uV for the of the shelf regulator. In pure theory this is 30 times better. The practice looks somewhat different.

2) We are not proclaiming, that we have a patent on using RC decoupling between regulator and circuit. It is just good engineering practice to do so. This reduces the noise residues by a fair amount. Please take into account that we are dealing with a noisy – high frequency clock – environment. 

3) The above or the well known Jung regulator (opamp with pass transistor) is not low drop. You must provide a much larger voltage overhead for each regulator, producing lots of unwanted heat. In a small box like the udc1 this can kill your circuit.

4) The DC accuracy of such regulators is not comparable with specialized devices. Since we need 1.85V, 3.3V,5V,24V with tight tolerances, you will run into trouble again.

5) Low noise opamps, like the AD797 can’t be used for very low voltages, preventing their use.

6) Referencing again to the “Paul Heynes Design” regulator you will look at a price tag of 11x 36.- Euro = 396.- Euro.

7) The extended board space, such devices and circuits consume, would again make a project like the udc1 impossible.

I hope everyone can see, that the criticism is based on nothing. I can’t see a reason why we have guys here and elsewhere on other forums trying to damage the reputation of others. Does it make them any happier?

 

[sorue]

Thank you for chiming in.
This sums it up all:
"The website is not telling anyone, that we have invented the best regulator in the universe. Instead it is all about value for money in terms of raw material and sound quality. That’s it. No fraud."

 

[DeadBeats]

I follow sorue logic. You are raving a dac that you haven't yet recieved just by looks, you already did that with the yulong and we know how that ended.
Not saying this one it's not good but I would hold my horses before actually listening it.

 

[Linnenberg]

Quote:

Thank you for chiming in.
This sums it up all:
"The website is not telling anyone, that we have invented the best regulator in the universe. Instead it is all about value for money in terms of raw material and sound quality. That’s it. No fraud."

Yes, that really sums it up. It is all about fairness and retaining the proportions. If you are looking for a 10k or a 40k DAC, go for it, there is plenty to choose from, or if you like to spend half the budget for some shiny regulators, go for it. In any case, there is simply no reason to give amateurish remarks on someone else’s product, residing in a price range, where some intelligent and wisely chosen decisions are essential.

I’ve been in business for years now, and I know that those people, who can afford cost no object gear haven’t got the time browsing these forums. Instead we find real world people and real world components.

Maybe “slackman” is too optimistic, maybe he is not, but what are your motives?

From my side, all is said and done. No more posts here.
 

 

[AVU]

Let's just keep in mind:
 
If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad.
If it sounds good and measures bad, you've measured the wrong thing.

 

[slackman]

Quote:

I find criticisms over such small and ambiguous aspects of the design confusing. Sure, if it's a single-ended tube amp you can legitimately complain that could result in suboptimal audio reproduction due to the inherent nonlinearity of such designs, but here we're arguing about v-regs and their effect in a specific design, which you can't really do without access to a lot more information.
 
As for "things that measure well sound different", things that have been carefully confirmed to measure well, used within their operational remit and under volume matched, blind conditions do certainly not sound different.

Agreed on the criticism.
I'm glad the regulator nonsense is out of the way now.
 
As for things that measure well to sound the same under controlled conditions.
I agree on this too on principle under certain conditions. The conditions being that you'd better have done a LOT of measuring and analyzing.
THD+N and frequency response are very crude measurements.
I'm not an expert here, but there are so many different types of distortion.
 
Take this example.
Lets take a hypothetical perfect ADC connected to a computer recording at a high sampling rate.
Play music with 2 different DACs and record it with the ADC.
Now take the original audio file in the computer, reverse the polarity, and combine it with DAC1 level matched, and again with DAC2 level matched.
You now have 2 soundfiles, 1 containing only the THD+N that DAC1 produced, and one containing only the THD+N that DAC2 produced.
Lets say that file 1 reads -70dB rms and file 2 reads -100dB rms (or peak, it doesn't matter)
Now you could make a quick assumption and say that DAC2 is the better DAC, as it produces less difference with the original file.
But it could be that DAC1 is one of the best DACs in the world, the only thing is that it is an asynchronous USB DAC and it's clock is a little bit slow (or fast), so the audio plays slightly slower and goes out of sync a little with the original file which is giving the difference of -70dB, but is infact much better sounding than DAC2 which produces -100dB rms of difference with the original but this is all inharmonic distortion and peaks of -10dB distortion on certain transients for instance.
 
The point is, not all distortions are equal.
Some are very benign, like second order harmonic distortion. You can have a lot of this without it being very noticable or getting in the way of the music (tubes have it a lot).
Some are very nasty, like aliasing distortion, or the inharmonic distortion caused by certain types of jitter.
There's quantization distortion, slew rate induced distortion, phase distortion, and many many others.
All with their own sonic signature.
The THD+N figure is probably very telling for class A amps (like the udc1 output stage), but in a DAC much less.
I've not heard 2 DACs in my life that sounded the same (and most of them were on a good listening setup but before I had the very DAC critical listening setup I have now)
When 2 DACs share the same THD+N and frequency response figure, they don't have to sound the same at all.
I've learned this lesson from the Yulong D18 the most.
Measures great (well.. it stated THD+N measurement only for a 1kHz sine, so that's not the same as a full bandwidth THD+N. Maybe there was a catch there..), doesn't sound transparent at all (in fact one of the least transparent DACs I've ever heard. It did do some other things very well though)
Infact, the Yulong D18 and Anedio D1 have about exactly the same published specs I think. Both from actual measurement.
Never heard the Anedio D1 (and don't wish a Sabre DAC anymore after I did some more research into how it really works, not pure, and recognized slightly the "sabre sound" as reported elsewhere), but reviews make it quite clear that the D1 and D18 sound very different from eachother in certain key areas. Now that's from 2 DACs using the same chip and measuring the same in THD+N and frequency response.
 
What I think would be great, is if for instance 6moons had a test rig with advanced analysis software and published elaborate measurements including analysis of different types of distortion of the DACs reviewed.
I'm sure somewhere in the future such a thing will happen. Some paper audio magazines are already doing this to a small extent.
 
Until then we can only try to educate ourselves and look at the design and execution before trying out a DAC (which often means purchase when there's no evaluation period).
Oh and read reviews of course Though they're most often hard to interpret too for various reasons.
 
Btw, I'm not saying that measurements of THD+N and frequency response mean nothing.
A design that measures bad with THD+N has a lot of distortion and or noise, it's a fact. It doesn't mean it's necessarily bad sounding (for instance tube good sounding), but I wouldn't want such a DAC in my (modern) studio.
Frequency response is also telling a lot. If the frequency response is way off you're surely going to hear that. For my studio I want a very flat response.
But I'm not going by measurements a lot anymore personally, so many DACs measure well enough with the simple THD+N and frequency response.
It was a big error that I stared at them too much, tried to pick the best measuring one for the lowest price (and the newest DAC chip) and got expectations from that.
But I've learned from that mistake
 
 
Btw my udc1 shipped today!
That means I'll hopefully receive it on thursday
I'll share my first impressions once I get a listen.
By now I really can't imagine it sounding other than stellar. But should this not be the case somehow, I'll surely let you know too.
My loyalty is only to neutral, honest and transparent audio reproduction.
 

 

[slackman]

Quote:

I follow sorue logic. You are raving a dac that you haven't yet recieved just by looks, you already did that with the yulong and we know how that ended.
Not saying this one it's not good but I would hold my horses before actually listening it.

Well I don't really follow Sorue on the regulator thing hehe
But otherwise, yes I do follow Sorue logic in that you've got to hear it before you truly know if it's good or not.
I was very wrong with the Yulong indeed. Though I didn't do my research then nearly as well as I did now.
I did learn from that I think, really looked into where the non transparency etc could all come from. Read about every stage of digital and analog in DACs (including the diy sites Sorue mentioned)
I'm a bit of an extremist in this I guess, I've done just about nothing else but read about all these things past weeks. Have taken a short holliday from working on music theory.
I'd like to get this right now, so I don't have to worry about it for years to come and can rely on the DAC for studio work.
I've decided to start producing my own compositions, and I wish to be very perfectionistic in doing so. I need a DAC that'll allow me this insight and insight I can trust.
And the udc1 is the most safe bet I could find for not messing things up. Because that's how I look at it. A DAC can only mess up, the perfect DAC (which doesn't exist of course) simply reproduces (reconstructs actually) what it is fed, ideally adding nothing and taking nothing away.
But indeed raving before I hear.
Though I'll be pretty much at a loss at what DAC to get should the udc1 somehow not be the one...
But nehh that's not going to happen haha I'm keeping faith right until this faith is either proven right or wrong by listening.

 

[slackman]

Received the udc1!
Have been listening to it non stop for 5 hours now.
 
First impression on the first notes:
SHOCKING!
The sound dropped my jaw. Had a little tear down my cheak even haha. (I don't know what from exactly, all the new sound impressions I guess lol)
 
A completely new sound again..
Like having different speakers from a different brand..
It's really ridiculous how big the differences between DACs are.
(and a testament for my K+H O300 speakers that they show this so clearly like a chameleon.. they keep surprising me)
 
Upon listening I switched to analytical listening right away, trying to hear what the udc1 does right and what it may do wrong.
Impression now after 5 hours listening:
HONEST, pure, analog sound. Very filled out sound, not thin in any way whatsoever. Fantastic detail in a completely unobtrusive way. Not analytical.
Not hyped in ANY way. Extremely non digital (like 100% non digital, really. It sounds analog. Read again: it sounds 100% analog! REALLY)
It sounds like tape without the tape effects, like vinyl without the cracks etc. Only where I've never heard a truly stable analog source while the udc1 is completely stable.
Bass, mids and treble are the best I've ever heard. Dynamics fantastic! Finally not hyped (probably distorted in other DACs) initial attacks / transients), gives wonderfully natural dynamics.
About the analog sound, I mean GOOD analog, not cheap or mid level analog. Not "round" or "muddy" or "veiled" or focused only on one part of the spectrum, etc.
 
However, the catches.. (for me atleast) the sound is slightly tilted down (not much though), the transparency/contrast could be higher (not a bad treble thing though, treble is best and fastest I've ever heard), and there is a very slight (pleasant) distortion (doesn't sound like "distortion", more like overtones, like a tube but less) so it could be cleaner in this way.
No hiss I could hear though (put ear next to the tweeter and could only hear my very slight powered speaker hiss from the K+H O300)
All these catches sound like good class A "catches".. I've heard them before years ago (almost 10 years now I think) back when I had a vinyl based system (high quality, total system including speakers was about 30.000 euro, I once was a bit rich with an Internet company I started, money long gone though..)
 
It's the best DAC overall that I've ever heard by a long distance from the rest. (I've heard other DACs do certain things clearly better though)
And it makes clear how badly other DACs mess up! Like really.. common!! Other DACs get your act together, why do you all mess up so bad??
 
For people who wish a DAC for listening pleasure and don't have a too warm system already, I can recommend it strongly.
For me for studio use.. I'm not completely convinced yet. Have a lot more listening to do.. I'd ideally like more transparency and contrast and less analog (however good sounding it is) / more clean (all related if I'd have to make a guess now).
It could surely see it work for me though if I'll decide to keep it.
 
Ok so that's the initial impressions after 5 hours.
So take it with many grains of salt!!!!
Off to do a lot more listening. Will post more of a real review later.

 

[slackman]

Pfff.. I have commitment fear.
But I think I will end up keeping her.
The sound just comes from such an amazingly good sounding place. I'm already attaching personal emotion to the udc1, love
Ohyeah and I forgot to say in my initial impressions that the sound is just HUGE.
 

 

[slackman]

Ok now have 10-11 hours on it
Can say now that it has a non fatiguing sound haha.
 
This DAC does something right that other DACs do wrong.
It does relaxed sounds correct, in a totally natural way.
I don't know whether or not to call this a form of warmth.
 
For instance the Yulong D18, which has a "warm" smooth sound, does not do this, it comes from a very unnatural place to me.
The D18 has more of a "smoothness cloud" over it combined with a form of lesser quality analog warmth coloring, but underlying it has a digitally modified sound somehow which is not relaxed (this is also part of where the smoothness sound comes from with the D18 I think, as the smoothness things doesn't sound very analog. Btw the D18 did sound cleaner of distortion than the udc1 does to me, this I liked).
So it's a very different way of "warmth".
edit: ohyeah one more thing. where the D18 had a part of its sound that sounded "dead" to me in a way (like a flat beer), the udc1 is very much ALIVE!
 
The udc1 is sweet, totally loveable seductive natural sweet with a tone that is just pure quality.
I've not heard such quality of tone other than hooking up a high quality analog synth directly to the speakers amp (thinking my old Moog minimoog or Wiard modular)
Of course these quality tones are in music a lot, but somehow all my previous DACs could not render them convincingly.
 
The mids take center stage of attention (not that the bass or treble is lacking). This is correct to me, the mids is where the music is.
The Linnenberg "slogan" on their website rings very true. "No opamps. Zero feedback. Just music." Just music is what you hear.
I really feel like I'm spinning records I get that same "vibe". Haven't had that in yeaaars. Love it.
Only it sounds better and is way more convenient from the computer haha.
 
But still.. I have to complain. Hard to fully please
Had I wanted this DAC purely for home listening then no problem, would be completely sold, pleased, and not look at other DACs again for ages.
But for studio use I miss some analytical listening.
It does allow analytical listening in many areas, you will have to be the initiator for the analytical listening yourself, as the udc1 does not force analytical listening upon you by itself.
But there is some part of the sound that does not allow easy analytical listening. The part that gives harshness for instance. I can't really hear/guess what will sound harsh on other DACs.
I find it very hard to describe, but there is some part of sound that is underrepresented on the udc1 I think. You don't miss it at all when listening to the udc1.
But it's a.. hmm how do I call it.. when a piano tone is struck there is part of the sound that has a "clearness" to it. A "solid" clearness. It is as much a "dynamic" as it is a "tone".
You also hear it a bit in a very clean recording of a classical choir. I think that it's underrepresented on the udc1, which may also be causing it's "sweetness" partly.
With a very clean recording of a classical choir, I hear a little distortion (as I reported in my initial impressions post). Again, this distortion is not anything remotely nasty, it's sweet overtones.
But it does take away from the "clearness". And while the udc1 is so very natural sounding, it loses some "realism" / "convincing reality".
I'm not saying it doesn't sound real, it does do reality, but it could be better.
(edit: to avoid confusion, this is the same thing as the "transparency" I referred to in my first impression post)
 
I'm wondering how much of the sound comes from the class A zero feedback output stage.
Perhaps adding feedback could give a more analytical sound with more convincing realism, probably at the cost of other things.
This is pure speculation btw! I am not a designer and I have no real idea how adding feedback would influence the sound.
But hypothetically, if it did what I described above, then I'd love a switch to toggle the feedback in and out.
It would be the perfect DAC for in the studio too then. (hell I'm going to ask Mr. Linnenberg if such a thing would be possible
 

 

[BoogieWoogie]

Why you keep buying HiFi dacs when you want pure transparency for mastering is beyond me.. I mean the studios aren't dumb, just get a Halo metric HN2 and be done.

 

[slackman]

Quote:

Why you keep buying HiFi dacs when you want pure transparency for mastering is beyond me.. I mean the studios aren't dumb, just get a Halo metric HN2 and be done.

Well.. yes DACs that have been named "studio DAC" will not have the non transparency.
But DACs are DACs. And there should be plenty of non studio DACs as well that are truly transparent.
I've just had bad luck / bad insight / made bad choices in this regard.
 
But I'll still keep looking at the new HiFi DACs.
There's simply more choice here, and quicker to adopt things like asynchronous USB, and there are better prices to be had in HiFi designated DACs.
Wish I had the money to simply buy an expensive "studio mastering DAC" (somewhere between 3000 - 8000 dollars), but I don't.
And still think such a sound should be possible to be had for around 1000-1500 dollars. I'll keep searching.
 
BTW, have decided to send back the udc1..
Really feel sad about this as it's such a pleasure to listen to music through it.
Maybe one day I'll have more money again and can afford to get it again, to use it next to another analytical / transparent studio DAC.
 
 
edit: I'm not sure which DAC you're referring to with "Halo metric HN2", did you misspell it?
You mean a Metric Halo DAC I assume? I only need stereo DA from my computer.

 

[project86]

Slackman: I enjoy reading your posts. They are sort of a trainwreck, but of the fun variety!
 
Seriously though, I am all for you posting your "stream of consciousness" style impressions. Some people probably identify with your style much more than mine, so all types of reviews/impressions are good to have around. I don't know that I agree with every single one of your conclusions (specifically about ASRC not removing jitter....) but for the most part we are on the same page. 
 
I'll say again that I don't think the ESS Sabre chip has a specific "sound" and that you might as well try any potentially good DAC that appeals to you. It doesn't matter if it sports a chip from ESS, TI, Cirrus, AD, or whatever. There are plenty of examples of good, bad, and mediocre designs using each of those chips so no reason to limit your choices. 
 
What do you have your sights set on next? Any ideas?