[estreeter]

I'd like to address this to K240MKII and anyone else from the Pro community - 
 
When I go to Sweetwater.com or one of the other sites that sells studio monitors, there are countless warnings to audiophiles and music lovers that the studio monitor isnt a good choice for listening to music recreationally - too revealing. In several instances, I have even seen advice given that such folk should stick to hi-fi speakers, as they are designed to inject warmth and euphony into a recording, 
 
Personally, I dont have a problem with that - as a music lover, I like a little warmth and euphony - but if the audiophile mantra is 'neutrality and accuracy above all else', then surely a DAC like the Benchmark DAC1 hooked up to an active studio monitor from Genelec/Mackie/Adam etc is going to present the mix exactly as the studio professionals intended it to be heard ?? Or is it the difference between navigating a nicely laid out website and viewing the source code for that same site ? Do we really want to see/hear what is going on behind the curtain ? 
 
You'll notice there isn't a single 'fancypants' audiophile product in any of the above - the DAC1 will hook up to most of the active monitors via the same bog stock XLR connectors you have in your studio. No big dollar sand-filled stands, no Stereophile test CDs - just me and your last mix. Nervous ? 

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Nevertheless, I suspect the ODAC will be a really good product.
 
I just think there should be less hype, and more open-mindedness.  Connect two USB DAC's to the same headphone amp or stereo receiver, do a blind test if you can, talk about the sound, I think that's pretty much it, at least in my view.
 

 
This thread, and the other two which were created simultaneously, were all about generating more hype for the ODAC - thats what an 'anticipation' thread is. Why dont we just wait until a few people have actually heard the thing ?

 

[kiteki]

There could be another DAC that's relatively accurate that costs a lot more and through sighted testing, 95% of the time, the more expensive DAC wouldn't be classified as "sterile".

 
I actually didn't mean sterility in a negative way, and didn't you see I wrote high performance?  It's sterile or clincal and very high performance sounding, talking about the AKD-23S-HF
 
It doesn't make any difference which studio the music came from, which was one of the articles which made complete zero sense to me.   For all I care the music can be purely synthetic, a DAC sounds like a DAC, an op-amp sounds like an op-amp, the differences aren't anything like KernelStreaming versus ASIO, or MP3 320 versus FLAC (in either case, I can't hear any difference).
 
This is my experience.
 
1 more time, my posts may come across as anti, but I support the ODAC project on several levels, and I hope it'll sound really up there, I just don't support all the theories surrounding it, that's it.

 

[estreeter]

Using Foobar's ABX, I can tell the difference between FLAC and WAV more reliably than I can tell the difference between FLAC and LAME VBR. I know that makes absolutely no sense, but I've done it repeatedly - in one track, there is a single transient that I hear as 'FLAC' when I am comparing with WAV, but its indistinguishable when comparing with LAME. Perhaps I've just stumbled onto a track that has this one-in-one-thousand 'tell', and perhaps I'm just good at a version of the shell game, After all, there is no difference between WAV and FLAC, right ? 
 
Either way, I dont hear anything in the LAME versions that makes me want to run screaming into the street. 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Using Foobar's ABX, I can tell the difference between FLAC and WAV more reliably than I can tell the difference between FLAC and LAME VBR. I know that makes absolutely no sense, but I've done it repeatedly - in one track, there is a single transient that I hear as 'FLAC' when I am comparing with WAV, but its indistinguishable when comparing with LAME. Perhaps I've just stumbled onto a track that has this one-in-one-thousand 'tell', and perhaps I'm just good at a version of the shell game, After all, there is no difference between WAV and FLAC, right ? 
 
Either way, I dont hear anything in the LAME versions that makes me want to run screaming into the street. 

 
That's a pretty crappy transcoder...

 

[kiteki]

Screenshot your ABX.
 
So one day MP2 is totally transparent, the next day FLAC isn't.  This is why a lot of audio lovers typically go for the most expensive component and call it a day, fake science pressured them into it.
 
=p

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Screenshot your ABX.
 
So one day MP2 is totally transparent, the next day FLAC isn't.  This is why a lot of audio lovers typically go for the most expensive component and call it a day, fake science pressured them into it.

 
Do you know how lossless compression works kiteki?  That's a massive bug.  If it counts as FLAC not being transparent then WAV isn't either because occasionally a computer will copy it incorrectly.

 

[Tronz]

Quote:

Yes, of course it depends on implementation, however, a well implemented ES9018 also has objectively superior measured performances compared to a well implemented ES9023: greater dynamic range, lower noise, lower THD, greater linearity...

Are those higher specs even necessary for an audibly transparent musical playback? No. The ES9023 can be audibly transparent if properly implemented, like in the ODAC.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Are those higher specs even necessary for an audibly transparent musical playback? No. The ES9023 can be audibly transparent if properly implemented, like in the ODAC.

 
It would depend on the situation.  Super low noise floor and distortion will give more headroom for stuff like EQ and digital volume control and some people will need/want more than others.

 

[skamp]

Hopefully someone can make a Foobar component to blind test DAC's.

Just record the output of your DACs, align, volume match, ABX with the foobar component.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/601132/blind-test-onboard-dac

 

[skamp]

Using Foobar's ABX, I can tell the difference between FLAC and WAV more reliably than I can tell the difference between FLAC and LAME VBR. I know that makes absolutely no sense, but I've done it repeatedly - in one track, there is a single transient that I hear as 'FLAC' when I am comparing with WAV, but its indistinguishable when comparing with LAME.

Your FLAC and WAV must be different. Bit compare them. The FLAC is decoded to WAV when running foobar's ABX component (i.e. you're listening to 2 WAVs). Oh, and what's your ABX score on that one?

 

[estreeter]

I think you guys are reading too much into this - how can someone who cant tell the difference between FLAC and LAME magically discern the difference between FLAC and WAV ? Im sure that more extensive testing would reveal that I had, indeed, got lucky with the shell game. The main point I was trying to make is that I enjoy all 3 versions of the same track - isnt that the important thing ?? 
 
(I also have FLAC versions of 256K iTunes AAC downloads, but I'm fairly sure that isnt what happened here. OK, Im 80 per cent sure. Er, I have to go now !)

 

[khaos974]

Yes, of course it depends on implementation, however, a well implemented ES9018 also has objectively superior measured performances compared to a well implemented ES9023: greater dynamic range, lower noise, lower THD, greater linearity...

Are those higher specs even necessary for an audibly transparent musical playback? No. The ES9023 can be audibly transparent if properly implemented, like in the ODAC.

I never wrote that it was audibly better, just measurably better.

 

[kiteki]

Hopefully someone can make a Foobar component to blind test DAC's.

Just record the output of your DACs, align, volume match, ABX with the foobar component.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/601132/blind-test-onboard-dac

 
Hi!  Can you please clarify... you want me to record two DAC's, save the recordings as files, align / volume match (with which program?), and then foobar_abx the files, is that right?

 

[skamp]

Hi!  Can you please clarify... you want me to record two DAC's, save the recordings as files, align / volume match (with which program?), and then foobar_abx the files, is that right?

Yup. I'm not familiar with proper techniques / software for both aligning and volume matching, maybe someone more knowledgeable can point you in the right direction. All I could come up with, was to insert a 1 second sine wave in my recording for track alignment in Audacity (such samples are easy to identify and align), and using wavegain for volume matching (I found out that straight up normalization doesn't work reliably).