[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shike /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yeah? Prove it. With measurements.

I'll be waiting for that one myself. The Benchmark is essentially flawless. Better than flawless, actually, as it is engineered to drive noise, distortion and jitter to well below the threshold of human hearing and deliver a signal that is, within the limits of human ears, dead flat. There are plenty of DACs that cost more. Much more. There are DACs with fancier faceplates. There are even DACs with valves in their output stages (time to put one hand on your wallet). You may prefer the sound of these DACs, like some prefer the sound of old horn-loaded speakers and their colorations. But better? Only in a world where we have somehow confused tone production with re-production, where there are no real standards because the fuzzy world of subjectivity has changed the audiophile objective to the highest possible fidelity to what we've decided we like.

I suspect that's where the "plenty of DACs" that are better than a Benchmark live. Now, there are plenty of DACs that are audibly as good as a Benchmark, and quite a few of them are substantially less expensive, but that's another conversation.

P

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phelonious Ponk /img/forum/go_quote.gif Only in a world where we have somehow confused tone production with re-production, where there are no real standards because the fuzzy world of subjectivity has changed the audiophile objective to the highest possible fidelity to what we've decided we like.

That sounds like my world, and I like it here

 

[wiisus]

What about noise floor? Is there a difference in amps when it comes to this?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Covenant /img/forum/go_quote.gif That sounds like my world, and I like it here

And if you enjoy it, more power to you. The problem I have with romantically colored audio systems is that while they may make the '87 digital masters of The Beatles catalog, or even the horrors of Springsteen's "Magic" more palatable, even kind of nice, truly exemplary recordings lose a lot in such systems. Give me the glasses that let me see what's there, not the ones with a bit of Vasaline on each lens. I'll suffer the warts on the ugly chicks, just give me the beauties with transparent clarity. And that's about enough tortured metaphors for one evening.

P

 

[Billyk]

Wowsers did this thread go off into the ozone...
I would suggest that perhaps the OP should get a set of songs that are well known to him, get good copies in a lossless format (because it's PC based) and listen to them a lot. Then change his rig back to what it was before.
I would think that after that exercise, the differences or lack thereof would be apparent.
I am sometimes surprised at what does and doesn't make a difference. I use a disk called the Chesky Ultimate demonstration disk. I like to use it because it describes what the particular tracks are trying to show-off in regards to things like depth, transparency, etc so that helps me focus. I can then listen for what's different about a certain setup.

One thing I recently noticed is the difference the player I was using and then the output type had on the sound of the disk I mentioned above, also my new favorite disk Raising Sand. My equipment stayed the same, just the way I fed the source to it. I used a Dell 820 laptop with Vista 32, Senn HD515, CTH amp, Bantam DAC.
I used .WAV files throughout. Windows Media Player was quite poor and sounded muffled at best. Foobar with the DS output brought a bit of clarity to the music, I could hear the sounds of the instruments in a more defined way and they occupied a defined space. I tried WASAPI next and it brougth more of the same, just a bit more. Finally I used ASIO4ALL, this has become my choice for this combination of gear. I heard some things that I had not heard before on one of the tracks what had been a thump became someone knocking on their acoustic guitar.
Just got some new live music from Buddy Guy at the Gathering Of The Vibes on July 27th of this year, very nice recording. I put it through the above set of different settings and with WMP I could hear the crowd talking and with the final Foobar ASIO4All I could hear what the people in the crowd were saying.

I guess this is my roundabout way of telling the OP to fiddle with the output and player and use music you know well. I hope you hear what you are looking for. BTW the Bantam dac costs about $35.00, he CTH was $150.00 and the 515's $65.00 (gotta get some new cans!!)

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phelonious Ponk /img/forum/go_quote.gif The problem I have with romantically colored audio systems is that while they may make the '87 digital masters of The Beatles catalog, or even the horrors of Springsteen's "Magic" more palatable, even kind of nice, truly exemplary recordings lose a lot in such systems.

See, I tend to take the opposite approach. I don't mind the "tinted lens" effect as I find it doesn't detract much from the really excellent recordings, while helping out considerably with the poorer recordings. Its sort of a "lesser of the two evils" scenario.

You can either have bad recordings sounding horrible and excellent recordings sounding amazing, or you can have bad recordings sounding decent to good, and excellent recordings sounding very good. Considering how mixed my music collection is, I tend to prefer the latter scenario.

To use your metaphor, I'll date the pleasantly pretty girl rather than the stunning bombshell, so long as you keep the warty ones away from me

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Covenant /img/forum/go_quote.gif See, I tend to take the opposite approach. I don't mind the "tinted lens" effect as I find it doesn't detract much from the really excellent recordings, while helping out considerably with the poorer recordings. Its sort of a "lesser of the two evils" scenario. You can either have bad recordings sounding horrible and excellent recordings sounding amazing, or you can have bad recordings sounding decent to good, and excellent recordings sounding very good. Considering how mixed my music collection is, I tend to prefer the latter scenario. To use your metaphor, I'll date the pleasantly pretty girl rather than the stunning bombshell, so long as you keep the warty ones away from me

Ah...but see you can see the stunning beauties in all their glory and still airbrush the warts off of broomhilda. You just need some decent EQ.

P

 

[Ntropic]

Wow. In the first 36 hours of this thread, we reached page 3 (15 per page). In another... 12 hours, we reach page 6.

However, for future reference, I'd like to note a few points. Some people didn't read through the entire thread (I don't blame them. I skimmed through the arguments at best.).

1. I am using Foobar through ASIO4All.
2. I am using familiar pieces of music, varying between classical (baroque, if I'm honest), rock, and electronica. Some are FLAC, some are indie released 192kbps MP3s. Largely FLAC.
3. I can hear the difference between onboard and through my D2. It's just not huge, nor is it unappreciable.
4. I understand that amplifiers aren't supposed to change my sound signature.
5. I just figured that the DAC in a desktop (or netbook for that matter) couldn't begin to compare to a proper one in a DAC/amp. I don't own any sound cards to compare onboard to as well.
6. No, the amplifier has not been fully burnt in.
7. Yes, I would like to buy your very good condition AT A900Ti for $200USD shipped to Canada.
8. No, I do not have $200USD to give you.
9. Opera 10 is out. If you're interested. I missed having a dictionary. Yay red lines.

Quote:

I don't know why it is that someone sees that Wolfson made the DAC chip used and assume that the results will be good.

Point #5 would be my response.

Quote:

Just in case the OP is still reading this thread, as someone who has owned an Audigy 2ZS and various Pico's and used both to drive headphones direct, you won't experience a "night and day" difference going from one to the other.

And from onboard to Audigy 2? Also, I'm glad you've contributed your relevant experience here. It's refreshing, to say the least. At least the thread has confirmed that my upgrade path lies in headphones, and probably not in DACs or amplifiers. Not until I get a chance to demo or audition them at a meet/store. That'll be the final confirmation.

Quote:

IMO, the only "night and day" upgrade in this hobby is going from stock earbuds to your first serious headphone.

Agreed.

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ntropic /img/forum/go_quote.gif And from onboard to Audigy 2? Also, I'm glad you've contributed your relevant experience here. It's refreshing, to say the least.

Onboard (at least the onboard of my Thinkpad SL400) suffers the same digititis that the ZS does, but it also suffers from bad frequency extension. Deep bass is rolled off and muddy, and the highs are scratchy and glarey.

So in order of progression:
Onboard: Bad frequency extremes and digititis.
Audigy 2ZS: Frequency extremes considerably improved, still suffering from digititis.
Pico Dac/Amp: Frequency extremes further improved, but only marginally. More considerable improvement in naturalness, eliminating much of the digititis fatigue.

All to my ears, in my oppinion, etc etc

Edit:
Quote:

At least the thread has confirmed that my upgrade path lies in headphones, and probably not in DACs or amplifiers.

Tis is true to a point. The headphones themselves will give you your largest return on investment, but as the headphones improve, the shortcomings in the rest of the chain become more evident as well. You get to a point where a headphone upgrade actually becomes an overall downgrade in musical enjoyment, when you start trying truly revealing/high end headphones out of sub par amps and sources. System synergy is largely a balancing act like this, where we're constantly eliminating the weakest link at any given point of time. But when you're just starting out, that weakest link is almost universally the headphones themselves.

 

[Ntropic]

Quote:

when you start trying truly revealing/high end headphones out of sub par amps and sources.

Yes, but I'm doing my best to avoid that. Besides, by truly revealing/high-end, you're talking on the order of RS1/W5000/SA5000 and that sort of stuff, right? Or even at the level of K271S/A900/D2000? I don't ever intend to go quite as high as $500. I'm tempted by A900Ti's or one of the AT woods, but I'd be reluctant to ever spend so much on one piece. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead. A700s, maybe MS1/000.

Head-Fi t-shirts: I've got wood... for my woodies. (W5000 picture)

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ntropic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Besides, by truly revealing/high-end, you're talking on the order of RS1/W5000/SA5000 and that sort of stuff, right? Or even at the level of K271S/A900/D2000?

RS-1/W5K/SA5K still isn't "truly" high end, but that's when flaws in system synergy start to show up, yup. Particularly SA5000/HD800 can be brutally honest about source shortcomings.

Quote:

I don't ever intend to go quite as high as $500.

You say that now

 

[Ntropic]

Maybe an explosion of posts will occur tomorrow again. My first 100+ post thread, maybe.

Quote:

You say that now

I say that now only because I'm a university student with limited disposable income. Maybe I'll have more if I can land a co-op job. I'm sure I'd be tempted to move up the ladder if I had thousands of dollars that don't need to be put in the savings account... Here's to my transcript. May you impress employer after employer enough to have my application saved from the paper shredder.

 

[SmellyGas]

Anyhoo. I think I made my point. I'm glad that some people here are able to understand my reasoning, whether or not they agree. On the other hand, I'm really not surprised that some people completely missed it. I just don't have the time or the patience to respond to what are clearly NOT good counterarguments.

If anyone truly has a logically sound and supportable response, please PM me. (Note: "go get your hearing checked" and similar don't meet these criteria.) Thanks.

 

[meatwad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AtomikPi /img/forum/go_quote.gif However, one could make the argument that once one reaches a performance threshold of the limit of human sight - around 60 fps - further upgrades are pointless. That is, once I get 60+ fps consistently from one card, getting 120 fps from another is pointless since I can't see the difference.

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. this type of nonsense is all over the internet and it just isn't true. just because one person "can't tell the difference" doesn't mean that you've reached the threshold. it has entirely to do with the viewing material, the equipment, blah blah.

anyway, see this article and this article. I will pull some points from them.

1. If this old United States Air Force study is any clue to you, we've only scratched the surface in not only knowing our FPS limits, and coming up with hardware that can match, or even approach them.

The USAF, in testing their pilots for visual response time, used a simple test to see if the pilots could distinguish small changes in light. In their experiment a picture of an aircraft was flashed on a screen in a dark room at 1/220th of a second. Pilots were consistently able to "see" the afterimage as well as identify the aircraft. This simple and specific situation not only proves the ability to percieve 1 image within 1/220 of a second, but the ability to interpret higher FPS.

2. The Human Eye perceiving 220 Frames Per second has been proven, game developers, video card manufacturers, and monitor manufacturers all admit they've only scratched the surface of Frames Per Second. With a high quality non-interlaced display (like plasma or a large LCD FPD) and a nice video card capable of HDTV resolution, you can today see well above 120 FPS with a matching refresh rate. With some refresh rates as high as 400Hz on some non-interlaced displays, that display is capable of 400 FPS alone. Without the refresh rate in the way, and the right hardware capable of such fast rendering (frame buffer), it is possible to display as cameras are possible of recording 44,000 Frames Per Second. Imagine just for a moment if your display device were to be strictly governed by the input it was receiving. This is the case with computer video cards and displays in a way with adjustable resolutions, color depth, and refresh rates.

3. Thus, the big misconception that our eyes can only see 30 frames or 60 frames per second is purely due to the fact that the mainstream displays can only show this, not that our eyes can't see more. For the time being, the frames per second capable of any display device isn't even close to the phrase "more than meets the eye".


However, what I just posted, this is not science. I want to find the USAF study data. But even then, the ability to see 1/220th of a second is different from being able to discern 220 distinct frames in a single second. It has to do with what you're looking at. You can look at a 10fps movie of a slow-moving fog, and it will look smooth to you because the differences are so tiny frame-to-frame, and the brain does its own "smoothing" to this. Similarly, your brain might "skip" some frames if the differences are so minimal. I'm still looking for more concrete evidence, as this is a subject I am interested in a great deal. As a gamer, and just curiosity.

These aren't the best examples out there, I wish I could find some more scientific articles that do better than just "word-of-mouth proof". Think of it this way: you don't have to believe what I'm saying, because it's just my word; I have no scientific data to back my statements up. But why should I believe the threshold of human eyesight is a mere 60fps? Do you have any "PROOF" of this? Probably not.


Sorry to get off topic, but I HAD to pipe in on this one, because I VERY STRONGLY believe that the limits of human eyesight aren't anywhere near as low as the 30, 60, or 100FPS figures that get tossed around in discussion.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

I don't know why it is that someone sees that Wolfson made the DAC chip used and assume that the results will be good. Point #5 would be my response.

I think this comment was a response to my listing a Wolfson DAC, integrated into AVi ADM9.1 active speakers, in my equipment list. It is a false assumption. I don't assume that the use of a top-of-the-line Wolfson DAC chip will achieve good results. I understand that the manufacturer's instructions to implement that chip can be ignored or screwed up in execution as could the quality of analog output stage. I reached the conclusion that it is good in the 9.1s by the way the system sounds and the way its DAC/Pre stage measures.

Quote:

At least the thread has confirmed that my upgrade path lies in headphones, and probably not in DACs or amplifiers. Not until I get a chance to demo or audition them at a meet/store. That'll be the final confirmation.

DANGER!!! DANGER!!! Perhaps the worst place to listen for the subtle differences between electronic components in at a meet or in a store where A) Sales people and enthusiastic audiophiles are telling you how to listen (like you really need instruction), what you're going to hear, what you just heard. These venues are teeming pools of psychological bias. I've suggested this before, but here we go again:

One thing that really can make an audible difference is getting the digital to analog conversion out of the noisy environment of your computer. This depends on the computer, of course. Laptops tend to be quieter than desktops, Macs quieter than PCs (broad generalizations acknowledged). So I'd start with an inexpensive outboard DAC with good specs, and when I say inexpensive, I'm not kidding. The M-Audio Transit, at $99 would do. So would many others. Shop around. This is your reference. From here on out, don't buy anything without a trial period/liberal return policy. Get it home, in your system, away from outside influences and set it up so you can switch back and forth between the component being tested and your reference. Preferably without being able to see which one you're listening to.

If you can't hear the difference, you know what to do. If you do hear a difference, weigh it against the component's cost. If it isn't earning its keep, send it back and try something else. I wish I would have used this methodology from the beginning. I would have saved a lot of money and got to a great-sounding system a lot sooner.

Oh, and one caveat regarding headphones being the primary upgrade path: When you get to inefficient headphones like the big Senns and AKGs, some very small amps, like portables and the amps built into computers and portable sources simply don't have enough power to drive them. Audiophiles point to all kinds of weird sources for the phenomenon (power supplies, current, voltage...) but it's really pretty simple. If you're using a lot of the amp's power to simply get to listening volumes you like, peaks in the music are probably driving the amp into clipping. And clipping has all kinds of audible repercussions. So a general rule of thumb is to stick with efficient phones for portable amps and sources, plug the big power hawgs into something with lots of headroom. The headphone jack of most receivers, vintage and modern qualifies, by the way.

P