[ffdpmaggot]

I'm going to bring up the argument that I use for companies like JH audio adding more drivers to their IEMs. If there was no tangible difference, whether as a consequence of the placebo effect or not, they wouldn't add more drivers or chips. Before you start talking about the fact that adding "more" is a convienent marketing trick, its also not a cost effective marketing trick. If these companies really wanted to rip people off, they would forego the extra expense of adding more drivers, and up the pseudo scientific technologies. It's a good deal cheaper to say that you designed your case to have a lead core (one that no one would be exposed to if you don't want to get hit with a class action) that dampens electromagnetic interference, than to add another DAC chip in. Its much more practical to talk about some high efficiency circuit that passively identifies values that are the same in each channel, then processes them as mono with no consequence to the sound than to double up on DACs. Hell, you could charge even more for that because it would be a proprietary "technology". My point is, when you want to rip someone off, you just add random technobabble and up the price, you don't actually shell out to get better / more components.

 

[user02]

^Welcome to the world of marketing.  People that do not take the time to do research or understand technical aspects usually make the simple mistake of equating quantity as quality.

 

[ffdpmaggot]

Quote:

^Welcome to the world of marketing.  People that do not take the time to do research or understand technical aspects usually make the simple mistake of equating quantity as quality.

 
But neither option involves actually improving quality. Both cranking the pseudo scientific technologies in your product up to eleven and adding more drivers/DACs are marketing ploys with no measurable effects. The latter would cost more than adding a neat octagonal pattern to your circuit boards or claiming that your DAC's unique shape increases sound quality greatly. There's no research involved in either. I guess maybe the consumer would be prone to make that decision, but you could appeal to all audiophiles with the former, not just the gullible ones you appeal to with the latter.

 

[Willakan]

The reason they go for these seemingly expensive options is because certain "features" get audiophiles all excited. For example, if I were to sell an amplifier, I would tell the engineer designing it that it must be Class A and fully discrete. It doesn't matter if I could get better results at this pricepoint with good IC opamps and going Class AB - the buzzwords will generate excitement, the reviewers will do the rest ("Class A and no evil opamps at this price - incredible!). Were I to sell it with a "Revolutionary Triangular Circuit Topology" - and this holds true whether this topology was marketing BS or a real innovation - it would get an offhand mention by a few reviewers and most people would ignore it - it doesn't have the same power behind it. Likewise, if I were selling a DAC, I would fixate totally illogically on its jitter levels.
 
Please note this is a hypothetical example, I'm not trying to lay into any companies here, although I don't doubt there are many the above could apply to.

 

[Anaxilus]

I guess rather than spending $65 on a DAC w/ 4 chips I could save $10 and spend $55 on the same thing.  Phew, now I can tell all my friends that I ain't no audiofool.  My IRA is now $10 richer, woohoo!

 

[ffdpmaggot]

Ah I see what your saying now. Thats a shame too, that might very well be seriously crushing innovation in the audio industry. 

 

[Albedo]

To further add some perspective to this madness..
 
Quote -> http://www.dddac.de/ma_dac21.htm

OK, last but not least, parallel DAC's...... Why this? Actually the TDA1543 is not know for its great linearity and great performance. And this is already a huge understatement, haha !! Why use the 1543 then? Simply because it runs on almost 9 Volts and has a current output. This enables us to make directly 2 Volt Output (CD Standard) without any further tricks than connecting a resistor to the output........ Back to the 1543 quality, so it is lousy? yes it is, but thanks to statistical laws we have a way out !! If you run (ANY !!) process many times, after each other or in parallel does not matter, the uncertainty or errors in the output of the process will improve with the function of SQRT(n) where "n" stands for the number of events. This trick can be used for example to get very precise resistors or capacitors by paralleling them. Thanks to the current source output we can easily do the same for the TDA1543.......

Is there an optimum? I am sure there is, but I was not so crazy to try all possible variations of "n".... I tried in a prototype 3 DAC's in parallel and this was a major improvement. The low level detail, known from high bit systems was really improved. Listening to the 8 DAC version, it comes very close to SACD.... not bad I think (again an understatement... So how many is realistic? well for each doubling of improvement, which equals 1 bit extra of linearity we need to multiply "n" with 4 !! so with 8 I get one and a half bit extra, which actually is already very good. If I want now 4 bits better performance I need to put 4x4x4x4=256 DAC's in parallel. This will consume 12A supply current and dissipates 100Watt. Feel free to do so, but it seems a bit unpractical to me, not even mentioned the circuitry needed to drive the 256 TTL inputs !!! Why did I mention 4 bits? Well, according to the datasheet, the 1543 is aprox 12-13 bits effective. A PCM63 by the way is also not much better then approximately 15 bits effectively. All the rest is marketing So the choice for 8 is purely based on a combination of maximizing "n" and keeping things within reason technically.........

Can you actually measure the improvement? Oh yes, no problem ! below, from left to right the 2 results of 1 DAC and 3 DAC, which is almost 1 bit improvement. Both Measurement at optimum. You might think, the difference is low, but this is exactly (3dB is 0,8 bit) what helps the low level detail to play at less distortion !!

 
This approach is also used to other, more modern NOS DACs and I have to admit that I'm torn between the Duo and the Quad -> http://www.nosminidac.nl/price_list.html as other nut cases in a dutch review of the Metrum DACs seems to "hear" a difference between the Duo and the Quad. 
 
Science at the current state do not seem to take into the account the subconscious processing speed @ 1,000,000,000 bits per second, what's the sense of just listening to music with only the conscious part @ less than 100 bits per second?
 
Well, one does not have to worry about jitter...

 

[anetode]

Quote:

Science at the current state do not seem to take into the account the subconscious processing speed @ 1,000,000,000 bits per second, what's the sense of just listening to music with only the conscious part @ less than 100 bits per second?

I understand that you're exaggerating, but that rhetorical question is just full of it. "Subconscious processing speed"? What is that supposed to mean, exactly? And why should it be measured in bits?
 
Brain processes are surprisingly slow, synaptic transmission may take anywhere from a millisecond to whole seconds. When compared to the speed and accuracy of modern signal generation and analysis hardware, the human brain is like a snail riding a bycicle.
 

 

[Albedo]

Well, for the sake of making it more tangible I presume, but honestly I really don't know. Let's say that the ability of absolute pitch (which exist in us all as a precognitive trait) is like speed reading -> http://www.spdrdng.com/category/posts/posts/conscious-vs-subconscious-processing and this processing speed is not constant -> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24030/
 
Bottom line.. we all possess the ability of absolute pitch, but do we trust it?

 

[khaos974]

 
But neither option involves actually improving quality. Both cranking the pseudo scientific technologies in your product up to eleven and adding more drivers/DACs are marketing ploys with no measurable effects. The latter would cost more than adding a neat octagonal pattern to your circuit boards or claiming that your DAC's unique shape increases sound quality greatly. There's no research involved in either. I guess maybe the consumer would be prone to make that decision, but you could appeal to all audiophiles with the former, not just the gullible ones you appeal to with the latter.

Adding more DACs *does* result in a measurable difference, namely 3dB less noise.

 

[user02]

How is that done?  I know there is a novel approach to canceling out noise.  I don't recall if it was common or differential mode noise cancellation.  It would require dual amplifiers, but I don't know if would require two DACs per channel.  
 
Quote:

Adding more DACs *does* result in a measurable difference, namely 3dB less noise.

 

 

[khaos974]

How is that done?  I know there is a novel approach to canceling out noise.  I don't recall if it was common or differential mode noise cancellation.  It would require dual amplifiers, but I don't know if would require two DACs per channel.

Simple signal theory, adding random noise from n devices increases the noise by a factor sqrt(n), and increases the signal by a factor n. Hence the S/N ratio is increased by 3 dB.

Caveats:
- DACs are not totally independent, so the noise wouldn't be totally random.
- If the SNR is already off the charts (say 120dB for example), an improvement would be hardly noticeable.
- We are still limited by thermal noise.

But all in all, it does result in measurable differences.