Well sound science as long as it’s not personally attacking, has a point of discussing ideas,myths,claims, and hypothesis. I do wonder about claims in dac or amp construction do they lead to be closer to the original analogue sound or are these about preference. I’m no engineer or techy, but chord has pursued a type of dac architecture that makes claims about how they are converting bits to output that is superior in wave conversion. Well we know the chord sound and the site does generate its share of chord fan which flashes poms poms in this regard. Since I know little technical info I too could sit fascinated by Robb elaboration on filters, pulse arrays, taps, output stage, digital volumes etc and have no idea still. In a bigger sense what’s with r2r versus Robb’s design, why the thought that Robb is pursuing the real strategy of conversion as everyone else pursues old dated pursuits. I want to beleive too but consider some things as well in the pursuit as inaudible as well. I wanted to start a thread kinda on these debates and step back and let the brains of head fi mull it over. In the rarefied air of high end dacs we have three manufactures pursuing different paths and other than intent, do they separate from eacother in the same goal of conversion as one is superior in that regard, or is it preference then we take the idea of transparency out and introduce tone and preference then we can ignore price and pursue what we like. Or does it matter at all.....in that case even tho I prefer chord dac like TT to fostex say hpa8, is that technically speaking or just what I like.
The manufactures are total dac7, la scala formula xhd, and chord Dave. All are in the 15-25 g range, each have taken a different approach in architecture for example la scala no digital filter and a focus on superior electronics, Dave uses wpa....each has tremendous respect although few consumers have heard each, as they are limited in availability. Or do we go to schitt and follow a huge lower pp cause really it doesn’t matter.
Sorry for the diatribe but this is why I clicked on this thread. Even I am becoming somewhat jaded in claims from the inception and chord poms poms have kinda given me the warning sign. With upgraditis praying on us, I tested a variety of chord products and have my own preferences that didn’t include these upgrades. So carry on but is it true Virginia? Is there no Santa clause?
the fundamental difficulty with calling something better than something else is that we don't really have a mean to classify variables between each others. here is an easy example of what I mean:
let's say 2 devices are absolutely identical save for one being 0.05dB flatter in FR at 20Khz and the other having 0.0001%THD instead of 0.0012% for the the flatter device. how do we decide which one is the best device? objectively it's not that simple to just change units. and subjectively, well neither is likely to be audible anyway.
when almost all the variables are clearly superior, then that's easy, we pick the one with the clearly superior fidelity if we're focused on that. a job well done. but often it's not that easy.
so instead people tend to focus on a philosophy. one will say "time domain is what matters rhaaaaaaaAAAAAA!" some other guy will say "humans often base their preferences on the frequency domain houhHA!", some dude will say "negative feedback ruins music, Yippee ki yay". one will cater to all the dudes who have developed a sort of xenophobia toward digital. to them it's the modern day witchcraft and they'd love to also kill it with fire like in the 'good old days'. so a DAC designer will sell them discrete stuff because it's kind of sort of analog if you think about it very very fast. a few years ago(dunno if many still do that now), a few fools would just go "filters kill the sound, mehhhhhhHHH, Nyquist is wrong" and then go on to make garbage DACs with crippling levels if aliasing and non linearity. and the most amazing was that even absolutely stupid design choices like those, often sounded just fine.
those stuff will always exist and the better the fidelity of the average DAC will become, the more we'll see only that type of marketing. and there is an endless list of philosophies like those with followers who will argue that oversampling 9 times is right but 12 is wrong, some will go with how oversampling at any value kills the original sound. some other group will say that you can oversample but you need the special way to do it... you can pick any topic and spawn a war about it, then all the people on your side will want your device because you're the one who cared to solve that specific non issue with the most care.
IMO instead of BS philosophy, what shows a good DAC is a good list of measurements of the output signal. I personally couldn't care less how fidelity is achieved. if it needs the blood of crying babies, I expect the manufacturer to procure the material. I don't care to be told why they use that and how they kidnap the kids. but that's just me. some other guy will love to learn about all the intricacies. and a third one will just get the expensive stuff because he can, without even reading the specs to know why it's expensive. we all have our own circumstances.
but I would agree that it's hard to know what is good and what isn't. if I was interested in always trying to get a better device with better fidelity(real one, not marketed fidelity), I honestly don't know where I would go. that's the price to pay for a hobby mostly focused on subjective reviews. I haven't seen much reason to believe that Chord gears are doing anything wrong. but they're also not really famous for being cheap. that's about all I have to say about them. having a gazillion taps is probably not how the DAC world will find its next revolution, nor why something will sound good or not. but if he does it without ruining everything else, I'm cool with that. again, I don't really how or why high fidelity is achieved, so long as it's achieved.
