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Anyone using Audio Note DACs? Ever since I discovered these non oversampling DACs, I cannot listen to a pure solid state DAC.

I lust after the DAC 4 and even more so the DAC 5 special/sig. Of course now the fifth element must be even better.

There isn’t much user feedback about these DACs. Please share your experience if you’ve heard them or own them. And also in what system? I’m currently running a Naim and Harbeth system with Audio Note DAC 2 as source component.

Good from a technical perspective they are not.

To find out if you like how they sound you have to suck it an see... There's no point in asking.
 
I suppose one could read the measurements & stats all day long, but how many people would buy a dac purely on those without listening to it? I wouldn't!

Heaven forbid if these people were suckered into buying a lowly Topping DAC instead!! Never getting the opportunity to hear the fidelity of an AN in comparison! Poor folk.
 
But it does end with:

"The CD-4.1x is a paradox: does it sound good because of how it measures or despite it?"

Who does it sound good to?
The problem with equipment which has significant own sound (AKA distortion) is that the character of that distortion is not univesally pleasing.
 
A DAC, like an amplifier, is as far as I am concerned there to do its job without drawing attention to itself.

The same is true of the digital sources that supply data to the DAC. I haven’t used LPs for a long time, so have no opinion on record players (no doubt this makes me cloth-eared by some peoples’ standards, but so be it).

Speakers all sound different, which is only to be expected. They are the least-perfected part of the audio chain, so you choose the ones that please you best in the room they have to work in. To apply this principle to electronics seems misguided to me. An amplifier is chosen for its suitability to drive the preferred speakers, and that’s about it... while a good DAC, surely, is one which is undetectable.
 
OMG! what's that in my rear mirror?!

It's the measurement police!

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Whilst I've never heard an Audionote DAC the clue to the units perceived greatness are indeed in the measurements and alluded to in the article...

The lack of a filter, either analog or digital, means that ultrasonic image energy—the "negative frequencies" to which I refer in the title of my Richard M. Heyser Memorial Lecture to the Audio Engineering Society in October 2011, "Where Did the Negative Frequencies Go?"—is present to its full extent in the DAC's output, which in turn means that its time-domain reproduction is optimal. Fig.2, for example, shows the impulse response of the CD-4.1x; it is indeed a perfect, if inverted, impulse.

Perfect time domain response... there you have it!
 
You'll probably find an Amstrad Mini system back in the day would measure better than an AN DAC and AN amplifier - no doubt the AN system would blow the Amstrad into the Weeds :)
 
Whilst I've never heard an Audionote DAC the clue to the units perceived greatness are indeed in the measurements and alluded to in the article...

The lack of a filter, either analog or digital, means that ultrasonic image energy—the "negative frequencies" to which I refer in the title of my Richard M. Heyser Memorial Lecture to the Audio Engineering Society in October 2011, "Where Did the Negative Frequencies Go?"—is present to its full extent in the DAC's output, which in turn means that its time-domain reproduction is optimal. Fig.2, for example, shows the impulse response of the CD-4.1x; it is indeed a perfect, if inverted, impulse.

Perfect time domain response... there you have it!

Forest. Single tree.
 
Reminds me of the Audio Designer who was asked to design a phono stage for one of the larger audio companies. When asked what did it sound like? The reply was "I don't know, I never built it, therefore, I never got to hear it"... :eek:

I prefer to listen to the recording and not the equipment and thus the less equipment own sound / distortion the better. Others may think differently.
 
I think a lot has to do with looks also.
Put a topping in a 10kg box and throw a tube that lights, even though not connected in the audio path and have a listen..
 
I prefer to listen to the recording and not the equipment and thus the less equipment own sound / distortion the better. Others may think differently.

So how do you know that because all equipment has its own sound! More importantly, and this has been discussed at length on this forum, loudspeakers produce magnitudes more distortion than any amplifier, DAC or phono stage will produce...
 
So how do you know that because all equipment has its own sound! More importantly, and this has been discussed at length on this forum, loudspeakers produce magnitudes more distortion than any amplifier, DAC or phono stage will produce...

And in spite of that (loudspeakers producing magnitudes more distortion than electronics) one can still hear differences between electronic equipment. Amazing.
 


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