Unfortunately, experience has shown me that DAC measurements do not correlate with sound quality (a common opinion among audiophiles).
Assuming that by “sound quality” you mean “fidelity”, then yes they do and of course they must, because converting a measurement is the only thing a DAC does. An individual’s perception and preferences of SQ/fidelity is an entirely different thing though. Unfortunately, despite this being a fundamental fact established over a century ago, most audiophiles don’t know or understand this difference, which is why what you stated is “a common opinion among audiophiles”.
The Topping D50S, which I purchased based on solid measurements, sounded awful to me.
Assuming those “solid measurements” were correct, if it sounded awful to you, then either you were doing something wrong with the way you used it or your personal perception is that high/audibly perfect fidelity sounds awful to you. Although that preference is generally rare, it appears less rare in the audiophile community.
One thing I will not abide is a device that makes music sound lifeless and boring.
A DAC has no idea what “lifeless and boring” means or any way of making music sound lifeless and boring. That’s a human perception and DACs obviously don’t have any human perception. The vast majority of DACs just do what their name indicates, convert digital data to an analogue signal (transparently).
ASR rated the Schiit Modi 3 higher than the Yggdrasil, which is just a bad joke.
There are a lot of “bad jokes” in the audiophile community. It’s amazing how a high price point and a lot of marketing apparently makes it impossible for many audiophiles to recognise a bad joke.
Music is extremely dynamic and complex, with many, many sine waves occurring simultaneously and interacting with each other.
No, it’s not. Sure, there are many sine waves interacting and causing a “waveform” but it’s a relatively simple waveform with a rather limited number of sine waves. There are signals far more complex in this regard than music, white noise for example. And, music recordings are not very dynamic, let alone extremely dynamic. Virtually all of them are just 60dB or less.
Sorry bud, you can't judge sound quality based on a static test.
Again, if SQ = fidelity, then yes we can and have been able to for over 80 years. However, if you’re talking about your personal perception/judgement/preferences then obviously not. Obviously we’re objectively measuring the audio performance of a DAC, not the performance of your personal brain/perception.
I know he doesn't listen to music because his headphone reviews are very invalid.
How are they invalid? Clearly Amir does listen to music.
It's shame when folks become fanboys and blindly takes his opinion as absolute truth.
It’s a shame when anyone takes subjective opinions as absolute truth. Obviously though, that is less true of objective measurements.
The best route is to go with clean source and it's easy to test without spending much and using something like pi2aes via I2S to dac against your PC's USB, but fanboys don't bother because Amir knows everything
The best route, or at least no worse than any other route, is just to use USB as is, with a half decent DAC. Most of us “don’t bother” with silly conversions because we have half decent DACs (or better), nothing to do with what Amir knows or doesn’t.
G
