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Originally Posted by anetode /img/forum/go_quote.gif
It's easy to rest on the sidelines and throw potshots, so it's only fair for me to explain my stance. NOS DACs occupy that tweako side of the music/technology lover who appreciates the fragile nature of audio reproduction. I guess the motivation behind choosing outdated technology is not necessarily the mistrust of recent advances, but the fetishizing of classic engineering. That's why I keep tube amps even though I know their harmonic distortion is several orders greater than that of solid state technologies. The impurities of the sound are part of the draw, so much so that some recent music genres purposefully go for "lo-fi" recording methods to reproduce the soft-noise floor of vinyl. It's also the reason why I can listen to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" for pleasure.
Forgoing this defense of kitschy tech, I must admit that the majority of my listening involves the best and cleanest digital sources I have. New DACs invariably portray greater detail and less noise, they don't lead to listening fatigue and they don't mask bad recordings. I have to be in a playful mood to experiment with measurably inferior modes of audio reproduction
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Hello Anetode. That was an excellent post.
I am not in a habit of talking about DAC coloration and playing with coloration, but here is my take on it (for the benefit of those that like to play with coloration):
It may be of value to realize that when one uses a transparent DAC, and wants to hear tube sound, one can send the transparent DAC signal into a tube amp and hear that amplifier’s tube sound.
A friend of mine uses the DA11 headphone jack for transparent sound, and he has a tube headphone amp that he drives with transparent signals from the DA11 rear panel. That way, all the coloration is due to his selected tube headphone amp. That allowed him to BOTH select and listen to his preferred tube amp headphone jack, and also listens to the DAC directly via the front panel headphone jack.
If a DAC is not transparent to begin with, there is no way to remove the coloration. You add a tube amp and you may have too much coloration, even for those that like coloration. Also, when the DAC has coloration, you can not hear a transparent sound. One can add a "desired coloration" to transparent signal. But one can not remove the coloration if it is already there, too late; the game is over for transparency.
Also, anyone that wants to know about the amount and type of coloration of specific gear should start out with transparent sound. Otherwise, one does not really know what gear is doing what coloration. Certainly the nosiest gear dictates the noise, so if you start out with noisy signal, you will not appreciate a less noisy device. And if two pieces of gear have say similar distortions, the listener may find it "too much" and attribute all of the "too much coloration" to one or another peaces of gear.
It is very difficult to separate the cause of noise and distortions (coloration) when you listen or measure more then one piece at a time, and folks reach erroneous conclusions very often. Say one is looking for a tube sound they like. If the DAC has coloration, when they change to a transparent DAC, to a DAC with more coloration or less coloration, whatever they though before is instantly all different. Just too many variables make it virtually impossible to properly pin down control or understand what is going on. If one want to make an intelligent and well controlled decision about gear, it is best to minimize the variables. And if one ever wishes to hear transparent headphones, one must go for transparent DAC and transparent headphones.
Personally, I am not for coloration, I am for transparency. What I said above does explain much of the conflicting views and opinions I come across in hi-fi. There is a big lack of systematic approach, and many folks just pile up a bunch of gear, each with its own “signature”, and then they make an erroneous observation. Say (for a very simplistic example!) that one piece of gear lacks some bass. Now you get a new piece of gear, and it has too much bass. The cancel each other and one may conclude that the new gear makes things great, but in fact the new gear has a problem – too much bass. You upgrade or change the other gear, and you have too much bass... But folks often will declare that the new gear is great. Someone else with a different setup will of course have solid grounds for disagreement. I can go on and on with such examples…
Having read that, I would think that folks would realize that there is a lot of value in having a transparent source, not just for my camp (those that want transparent sound), but also for those that like to play around with tube sound, transformer sound and what not.
Regards
Dan Lavry
Lavry Engineering