[Omega17TheTrue]

I don't know if it is already pointed out but read this document.

 

[weibby]

The technology of a CD player's DAC and the outboard DAC is almost on par if not better(for the outboard one) -
If you did a say a dual mono/dedicated transfomer for a DAC, can you say that the performance that is reading a HDD 1s and 0s going to be worst off than a CD?
 
CD drives achilles heels is that it is a moving mechanical part which is at the mercy of the lens and motor for consistency..
This is fed into a DAC which outputs a signal.
 
Compare that to a SSD/HDD, do you think that this solution is less superior than a CD drive when it comes to reading and streaming information into a DAC?
Now with Async and USB/Spdif convertors with clocks, thats 2 times the accuracy of the information
 
Logically speaking a computer + DAC should out perform a CD player anytime but it sounds not as good? Why, because there is algorithm embedded into the CD player's firmware which makes the "soul" of the music that audiophiles are looking for. And this is manifested with the audio player - a Tweaked out Jriver/Foobar will still lose out to XXXhighend/HQplayer - same files/same computer/using the same bit streaming - WASAPI
 
Modern day standalone DAC is far more advance in design and have more room to improve with its space/budget for manufacturers..
 
So where do you think the problem lies?

 

[xnor]

Quote:

I don't know if it is already pointed out but read this document.

I've stumbled upon this years ago and I must say that most of it is FUD. It's from the author of cplay (*snickers*). Some of his claims are pathetic or completely unfounded.
 
I get bit-perfect output from a cheap laptop, set up within a few minutes. No special software, configuration or anything weird needed...

 

[xnor]

Quote:

Logically speaking a computer + DAC should out perform a CD player anytime but it sounds not as good? Why, because there is algorithm embedded into the CD player's firmware which makes the "soul" of the music that audiophiles are looking for. And this is manifested with the audio player - a Tweaked out Jriver/Foobar will still lose out to XXXhighend/HQplayer - same files/same computer/using the same bit streaming - WASAPI
 
Modern day standalone DAC is far more advance in design and have more room to improve with its space/budget for manufacturers..
 
So where do you think the problem lies?

Algorithms embedded into CD player's firmware which makes the "soul" of the music? What are you talking about?
 
I don't know what CD players you have in mind here specifically, but they must be very inaccurate devices with crazy amounts of jitter. High fidelity is the opposite of that.
 
Also, you don't need to tweak out any software at all, see my prev. reply.
 
And another problem is that people think they have golden ears...

 

[ramicio]

A DAC is a DAC, I don't care if it's in a CD player, on a sound card, or some external USB thing.

 

[xnor]

Quote:

A DAC is a DAC, I don't care if it's in a CD player, on a sound card, or some external USB thing.

Exactly, and as long as the DAC is not fed a signal with crazy amounts of jitter I don't see a problem.

 

[ramicio]

It's hard to introduce jitter.  It's not like raw PCM data is being fed through a USB cable or a PCI bus.  Jitter is overblown.  I would like to hear this supposed jitter and what it sounds like.

 

[germanium]

True jitter is very hard to quantify. It is usually measured in the analog audio domain which introduces its own distortions which means one must use ones own judgement to determine what is jitter & what is not. One could measure the clock itself though there is some difficulty there as well as most probes for measuring such have thier own built in tme constant (usually a resistor capacitor network built into the probe) though i think that that is more of a problem when measuring a clock that is imbedded with a signal than measuring the clock by itself.
 
Trying to introduce jitter into a test file that would be played back on anouther device is pretty much futile these days as the signal will be reclocked by the new device. Most new DACs are largely immune to time base jitter being introduced at thier imput. Not only does the DAC have it's own clock but the signal is almost without exception converted to an entirely different signal format within the DAC. Usually from 16-24 bit PCM to one bit sigma delta or multi level sigma delta at a much higher sample rate than the original. This would largely eliminate time base jitter that is introduced at the input from effecting the output jitter significantly. One is left with largely just the jitter of the time clock of the DAC itself.
 
I have had a CD player that had massive time base jitter at the clock level before (Denon DCD910)& it definately had a poor sound but unfortunately it was not a good test vehicle to test jitters effect on sound because the DAC was also of very poor quality by todays standards. Itst bit for bit monotonicity (linearity) was very poor with clearly audible distortions at the -60db level that you wouldn't hear on modern DAC until you reached -80db &even then the distortion is quantization noise & not poor linearity in new DACs as these distortions go away with 24 bit input.

 

[Omega17TheTrue]

Haha right a DAC is DAC, a amp is a amp, a headphone is a headphone so why spend more than the cheapest you can find ? Because if you like sound quality you need to spend a lot of money for something made with less compromises but yes science can not yet truly proof that but you ears easily can.
 
Ignorance is bliss for your wallet.
 
The tweaks are free to try anyway.
Quote:

A DAC is a DAC, I don't care if it's in a CD player, on a sound card, or some external USB thing.

 

[sbaker34]

Quote:

Haha right a DAC is DAC, a amp is a amp, a headphone is a headphone so why spend more than the cheapest you can find ? Because if you like sound quality you need to spend a lot of money for something made with less compromises but yes science can not yet truly proof that but you ears easily can.
 
Ignorance is bliss for your wallet.
 
The tweaks are free to try anyway.
Quote:

A DAC is a DAC, I don't care if it's in a CD player, on a sound card, or some external USB thing.

Could a cheaper amp like a Fiio E5 or headamp 4 hurt audio quality to be worse then without one or will it just not be as good with your 400$ headphones as a 400$ amp would be?

 

[hedrick]

The reason software is an issue is because playing audio doesn't just copy bits. Some computations have to be done, and they can be done well or poorly. This is true for both computers and CD players. CD's are at 44.1 KHz. A lot of equipment, including some of the DACs use other frequencies (e.g. 96 KHz) internally, which means there has to be conversion. Digital volume controls also involve computations. And some software does things to "enhance" the sound. Each of these steps can be implemented well or poorly. Depending upon the configuration sound can get transformed back and forth between 44.1 and 48 or 96 several times.
 
Fortunately newer OS's and player software have gotten better, so often this isn't a problem anymore, but it sure used to be, and if your system is old enough it might still be. Here's an article from Benchmark giving details: http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/wiki/index.php/Computer_Audio_Playback_-_Setup_Guide. You'll notice that the most serious problems are for old versions of OS and iTunes. But this will give you a sense of why people say that software matters. Unlike many of the postings here, their article shows actually measurements. You can see that for some configurations, there is quite serious distortion introduced, but it's not hard to get quite good results. (And no, the results don't depend upon the quality of the motherboard, except for sufficiently serious problems that you'd see it in your normal computer use as well. The one phenomenon that does seem real is jitter, but it's not hard to control for.)
 
However at the moment by biggest issue is the quality of the original recording.

 

[davide256]

Folks, a lot of irrelevant stuff going on in this thread.
 
1) Computers are capable of processing  an audio stream  to a degree of precision we can't hear from the source
2) however most computers have multitasking Operating Systems... they try to do many things at once (jack of all trades, master of none....) 
3) A CD player is dedicated to only 1 thing and thats convert CD surface data to an analog or digital output.  But they
are "hard coded", what you get out of the box will not improve with age... a PC is soft coded so software can improve over time
4)  most of the PC case environment issues go away if you use digital PC output
 
The battle is getting your PC to behave as close to a dedicated CD player as you can... every unneeded process  causes cycle stealing and jitter is audio fidelity's worst enemy.. And thats only the first half of the battle.... if you now have an unjittered stream ready to exit. you have to insure that the signal leaving the PC has integrity. Analog is very difficult to do in the small footprint and environment of a PC soundcard...asynch USB  vs serial USB seems to work well for digital.

 

[germanium]

Computers do not add jitter to the signal. All data is burst tranfered on the busses to any periferal such as the sound card without any timing reference. Only information as to where the samples are positioned relative to each other is passed, not timing. This data is then buffered at the soundcard & released acording to the local on soundcard clock reference. Up to that point there is no timing reference. Consequently software cannot effect jitter, nor can the mulitasking nature of the operating system effect jitter. The only thing the computer can effect is the delivery of data to the soundcard. Too much latency will cause dropouts due to lack of data, it will not effect jitter as the signal before it reaches the soundcard buffers has no timing reference. As long as the data arrives to the soundcard in time for it to be streamed to the DAC from the buffers there is no loss from the inner workings of the computer. The signal needs to have a timing reference before there can be any talk of this phenomenon called jitter. This brings use down to the quality of the on card clock reference which on the Xonar Essense cards is quite good.
 
I agree there is for too much misinformation being passed by people who have no practical knowledge of the inner workings of the computer or in some cases know better but have some majical dejittering program they want to market that is supposed to clean up this nonexisting mess that they say comes as a result of reproducing sound on a computer.

 

[xnor]

Quote:

Folks, a lot of irrelevant stuff going on in this thread.
 
1) Computers are capable of processing  an audio stream  to a degree of precision we can't hear from the source
2) however most computers have multitasking Operating Systems... they try to do many things at once (jack of all trades, master of none....) 
3) A CD player is dedicated to only 1 thing and thats convert CD surface data to an analog or digital output.  But they
are "hard coded", what you get out of the box will not improve with age... a PC is soft coded so software can improve over time
4)  most of the PC case environment issues go away if you use digital PC output
 
The battle is getting your PC to behave as close to a dedicated CD player as you can... every unneeded process  causes cycle stealing and jitter is audio fidelity's worst enemy.. And thats only the first half of the battle.... if you now have an unjittered stream ready to exit. you have to insure that the signal leaving the PC has integrity. Analog is very difficult to do in the small footprint and environment of a PC soundcard...asynch USB  vs serial USB seems to work well for digital.

That's a lot of "irrelevant stuff" / misinformation right there.

 

[Omega17TheTrue]

Well it all depend of what you plug them before/gear/usage etc...  but this is another subject.
 
Quote:

Could a cheaper amp like a Fiio E5 or headamp 4 hurt audio quality to be worse then without one or will it just not be as good with your 400$ headphones as a 400$ amp would be?