KeithEmo
Member of the Trade: Emotiva
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The short answer to your first question is YES.
Frequency response is just one of several measurements - although arguably the most important one.
This is where it gets somewhat complicated - and where the disagreements tend to start.
In most cases, differences in frequency response as small as 0.5 dB tend to not be especially noticeable.
Some folks will debate endlessly about whether it's possible for a human to detect them...
However, whether they can be detected under ideal conditions or not, they probably aren't important enough to matter.
(If the frequency response zig-zagged up and down by 0.5 dB, you might notice something odd, but that is rarely the case in real life.)
Likewise, while people will argue about the actual threshold for hearing THD, most of us agree 0.004% is very far below what would be audible.
If you look at those pictures of filter impulse response.......
Impulse response is related to frequency response - but not directly - and not always in easily predicted ways.
It is POSSIBLE that, along with the differences shown in those images, one or more of those filters MIGHT also have a significant, and audibly different, frequency response.
However, it's also POSSIBLE that three filters with those very different impulse responses COULD all measure within that spec for frequency response and THD..
You will find that there is significant debate about whether even "obvious" differences in impulse response are actually audible or not.
The most usual claims are that "excessive ringing is noticeable" and that "pre-ringing is more noticeable than post-ringing".
In nature, many sounds exhibit significant ringing after the main sound, while nothing in nature starts ringing before the sound itself....
The debate is about whether the amount of ringing exhibited by DACs (which occurs for very short times at very high frequencies) is audible or not.
Many folks in this forum will insist that "tests show that you can't possibly hear a difference and must be imagining it".
However, many quite mainstream companies, including folks like Dolby Labs, and the makers of a lot of pro audio editing software, consider it to be "worth addressing".
(For example, the latest version of Dolby's professional encoder suite offers options to reduce pre-ringing, and, obviously, DAC manufacturers often offer filter choices..)
Frequency response is just one of several measurements - although arguably the most important one.
This is where it gets somewhat complicated - and where the disagreements tend to start.
In most cases, differences in frequency response as small as 0.5 dB tend to not be especially noticeable.
Some folks will debate endlessly about whether it's possible for a human to detect them...
However, whether they can be detected under ideal conditions or not, they probably aren't important enough to matter.
(If the frequency response zig-zagged up and down by 0.5 dB, you might notice something odd, but that is rarely the case in real life.)
Likewise, while people will argue about the actual threshold for hearing THD, most of us agree 0.004% is very far below what would be audible.
If you look at those pictures of filter impulse response.......
Impulse response is related to frequency response - but not directly - and not always in easily predicted ways.
It is POSSIBLE that, along with the differences shown in those images, one or more of those filters MIGHT also have a significant, and audibly different, frequency response.
However, it's also POSSIBLE that three filters with those very different impulse responses COULD all measure within that spec for frequency response and THD..
You will find that there is significant debate about whether even "obvious" differences in impulse response are actually audible or not.
The most usual claims are that "excessive ringing is noticeable" and that "pre-ringing is more noticeable than post-ringing".
In nature, many sounds exhibit significant ringing after the main sound, while nothing in nature starts ringing before the sound itself....
The debate is about whether the amount of ringing exhibited by DACs (which occurs for very short times at very high frequencies) is audible or not.
Many folks in this forum will insist that "tests show that you can't possibly hear a difference and must be imagining it".
However, many quite mainstream companies, including folks like Dolby Labs, and the makers of a lot of pro audio editing software, consider it to be "worth addressing".
(For example, the latest version of Dolby's professional encoder suite offers options to reduce pre-ringing, and, obviously, DAC manufacturers often offer filter choices..)
Thanks for your explanations!
Yes, it dawned on me that measuring the transducer is bound to smear a large part of potential filter differences, as compared to directly measuring the DAC's output. However, as KeithEmo already hinted at, the transducer's output reflects (the best case of) what we're actually able to hear. Therefore, it could be argued that any difference not showing up in the transducer measurement wouldn't be audible anyway.
All things considered, my thoughts essentially boil down to two questions:
- Is it possible, that two DAC filter settings look pretty much identical in the transducer's FR-graph, yet still sound different? And if the answer to that is "yes", then...
- Is it possible that these two different sounding filter settings are both within specifications of the DAC?
[in case if the Shanling M0: Frequency 20Hz~20KHz (-0.5dB), Distortion 0.004% (A-Weighting, output 500mV)]