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End Game Digital (2023)

ryder said:
Just short note. Although the DAC is important, try not to neglect the front end streamer.
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THIS.
I was using a pimped Node2 with Mutec + external clock into my heavily modded Black Ice DSD DAC and thought I pretty much had digital nailed. That is, until I tried an a/b against a ZenITH 3 direct to the DAC via a Supra Excalibur USB, AND via the Mutec+ clock.
Needless to say, the ZenITH was purchased and the Node, Mutec & clock were quickly sold on. The ZenITH direct to the pimped BI was superior in every way, with Mutec & clock in circuit the sound appeared to become 2D, almost as if the music had been put in a straight-jacket.
 
Purité Audio said:
It will be just as transparent as many, many others but it has some neat features , pleasant aesthetic and is pretty reasonably priced.
Keith
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You keep going on about 'features'...how many 'new' features can there be when 'digital is done'?

Are these new Chinese ones with UK spec transformers unlike your last lot?
 
RossB said:
I'm far from being an expert in digital signal technology, but it seems to me that all of these smaller, specialist DAC makers - Chord, DCS, Meitner, Playback Designs etc - seem to use versions of the same box of tricks. Massive upsampling, mix and match interpolation filters and, frequently, conversion to DSD. I have heard all of these approaches at length, having owned all of the Chord DACs (yes, all of them), and the M Scaler no less than three times, and having spent a week with the Bartok and the Meitner MA3. I also experienced the Playback DSD conversion/upsampling approach with my Nagra Tube DAC, whose digital board is designed by Playback.

My subjective experience suggests all of these approaches are flawed. As always, there are no free lunches in audio or anywhere else, and using technology to produce one "improvement" usually involves a trade off somewhere else. As we know, linear filters measure the best but produce pre- and post-ringing artifacts. Minimum phase filters mitigate this to some extent, but introduce greater post-ringing and other artifacts. Upscaling using the Chord approach - which can be done using Chord's expensive box of tricks, the M Scaler, but can equally be done using any PC - does improve detail but introduces odd tonal artifacts. The same is true of Meitner's and Playback's approach of upscaling and converting to DSD, the latter tending to sound unnaturally smooth and glassy.

Why don't the big chipmakers use these approaches - AKM, ESS, Cirrus, Burr-Brown, Analog Devices etc? They have the resources to do so and I doubt it would be that much more expensive to produce a chip with these capabilities. I suspect they know that there are too many compromises involved and that the result would not sound natural, even though audiophiles are often looking for a distinctive - if unnatural - sound to justify the expense of the DACs.

In my case, having been through so many expensive DACs and remaining unsatisfied, I have "settled" with a Bricasti M3 which, like all of Bricasti's delta-sigma DACs, uses the rather elderly and conventional (and inexpensive) AD1955 chip, but focus their attention on power supplies and implementation. I find this approach sounds more natural than the bespoke FPGA based DACs. I should add that because of the quality of the implementation it also sounds much better than the awful Chinese DAC-of-the month popular on ASR such as the Topping, which I owned briefly.
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Hi Ross, I think you're being a touch harsh on modern dac's, I have owned a cheap Topping, they are what they are, would have gone with an SMSL in hindsight. I now own two dac's, Soekris 2541 and a XiangSheng 05A, both very good value for money. I am lucky enough to have access to a dCS Rossini recently Apex upgraded. I would say this is an excellent dac, the best I've heard, although never heard a Vivaldi or your own Briscati, sounding very natural to these ears.
 
RossB said:
In my case, having been through so many expensive DACs and remaining unsatisfied, I have "settled" with a Bricasti M3 which, like all of Bricasti's delta-sigma DACs, uses the rather elderly and conventional (and inexpensive) AD1955 chip, but focus their attention on power supplies and implementation. I find this approach sounds more natural than the bespoke FPGA based DACs.
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Thanks for the input Ross. I love reading about the long-running trials, tribulations and experiences of others on their journey. Did you ever try any of the R2R based DACs, for example Denafrips or Holo Audio? These all seem to offer an optional NOS mode which would be simpler again from a signal processing perspective than the delta-sigma approach.
 
Allan Probin said:
Thanks for the input Ross. I love reading about the long-running trials, tribulations and experiences of others on their journey. Did you ever try any of the R2R based DACs, for example Denafrips or Holo Audio? These all seem to offer an optional NOS mode which would be simpler again from a signal processing perspective than the delta-sigma approach.
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Be careful as to whether or not a NOS mode is actually NOS. Someone (IIRC called Goldensound) did a test and found that at least one Denafrips model’s NOS mode actually wasn’t. There’s a video online.l if you’re curious.

FWIW I thought that the Pontus II I had on trial was OK but that the NOS mode sounded poor - just very shut in with no ambiance and nothing at all like my ( much cheaper) cheap NOS DAC.
 
Allan Probin said:
Did you ever try any of the R2R based DACs, for example Denafrips or Holo Audio? These all seem to offer an optional NOS mode which would be simpler again from a signal processing perspective than the delta-sigma approach.
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Yes, I have had two R2R DACs, a Holo Audio and a Metrum Pavane. They had a similar sound quality in important respects - tonally dense and colourful, and yet a bit slow and lacking dynamics. I infer from other comments I have read this seems to be common for R2R DACs. I can certainly understand why some people are attracted to their tonal qualities, but for me the sense of "slowness" ruled them out. Another case of there being no free lunch in digital - an improvement in one dimension inevitably leads to a loss somewhere else.
 
RossB said:
Yes, I have had two R2R DACs, a Holo Audio and a Metrum Pavane. They had a similar sound quality in important respects - tonally dense and colourful, and yet a bit slow and lacking dynamics. I infer from other comments I have read this seems to be common for R2R DACs. I can certainly understand why some people are attracted to their tonal qualities, but for me the sense of "slowness" ruled them out. Another case of there being no free lunch in digital - an improvement in one dimension inevitably leads to a loss somewhere else.
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Try a better quality R2R, such as the Aqua La Voce S3 or La Scala Optologic, definitely nothing 'slow' in those. I'd probably say the La Scala is one of the best DAC's ever produced, but is blummin expensive now sadly
 
Ross, I presume you moved steadily up the line but did you need to acquire the entire Chord range to deduce that you didn’t like the house sound?
 
Alex S said:
Ross, I presume you moved steadily up the line but did you need to acquire the entire Chord range to deduce that you didn’t like the house sound?
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It was a little more complex than that, of course. And it's not true that I didn't like the house sound. The Qutest is a decent DAC at the price, and the TT2 is in my opinion the best sounding of all of them (without the M Scaler, of course). As I said, the DAVE on its own is also quite good sounding, although is still a little lean and edgy for my tastes. I actually had the DAVE/Blu 2 before the TT2.

I addressed this in a post on a different forum, a section of which I will cut and paste here:

The first time I heard the DAVE and Blu 2 at a dealer a couple of years ago we swapped back and forth with another well-known, reputable high end DAC. The DAVE/Blu 2 sounded so radically different that I thought Rob Watts had discovered some hitherto unknown principle of digital playback and that what I was hearing was a revolution. I wasn't sure I liked it but it sounded so radical that I ordered the DAVE on the spot. But I know now that most of what I heard that day was the Blu 2 upscaler. In that unfamiliar system, it was the Blu 2 producing the massive difference between the DACs, and if I had heard it in my own system that day I would probably have recognised the bright, colourless, forensically lean sound it was producing as grossly unnatural. Unfortunately, like many others, I interpreted difference as improvement, and strangeness as innovation. (Full post here:https://www.stereonet.com/forums/to...ussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=4367614)​
 
@Alex S
Like you, I seem to prefer* players based around the TDA1541 (particularly Naim's first-gen players) - how would you characterise the performance of your Audial DAC in comparison?

(* as in best of a bad lot, as I still haven't found any CD replay that sounds as natural, musical, engaging, involving and ultimately as enjoyable as even modestly good vinyl reply :()
 
It’s a long time since I had the CDS but I really enjoyed it. It was so much nicer than the CDX it replaced. Then I bought the CDS2 in error and replaced that with a Densen 400XS which is a very nice player.

I did all this in chip ignorance and later tried to research why I so liked the CD3, CDI and CDS and concluded that it was the TDA1541 chip with improved power supplies as you moved up the Naim range.

That brought me to Audial. The guy has spent over twenty years working with the chip, builds his dacs superbly well, paying attention to all the right areas (including a properly specified BNC coax) and I just took a reasonably educated punt.

As I’ve said before, with dealers/distributor and an advertising budget the Audial would cost about £6K. With a good transport I suspect it sounds better than the Naims but don’t really know.

At least I don’t have any real format anxiety and can play vinyl, CD, SACD and stream in accordance with the music I have available and want to listen to.
 
RossB said:
I'm far from being an expert in digital signal technology, but it seems to me that all of these smaller, specialist DAC makers - Chord, DCS, Meitner, Playback Designs etc - seem to use versions of the same box of tricks. Massive upsampling, mix and match interpolation filters and, frequently, conversion to DSD. I have heard all of these approaches at length, having owned all of the Chord DACs (yes, all of them), and the M Scaler no less than three times, and having spent a week with the Bartok and the Meitner MA3. I also experienced the Playback DSD conversion/upsampling approach with my Nagra Tube DAC, whose digital board is designed by Playback.

My subjective experience suggests all of these approaches are flawed. As always, there are no free lunches in audio or anywhere else, and using technology to produce one "improvement" usually involves a trade off somewhere else. As we know, linear filters measure the best but produce pre- and post-ringing artifacts. Minimum phase filters mitigate this to some extent, but introduce greater post-ringing and other artifacts. Upscaling using the Chord approach - which can be done using Chord's expensive box of tricks, the M Scaler, but can equally be done using any PC - does improve detail but introduces odd tonal artifacts. The same is true of Meitner's and Playback's approach of upscaling and converting to DSD, the latter tending to sound unnaturally smooth and glassy.

Why don't the big chipmakers use these approaches - AKM, ESS, Cirrus, Burr-Brown, Analog Devices etc? They have the resources to do so and I doubt it would be that much more expensive to produce a chip with these capabilities. I suspect they know that there are too many compromises involved and that the result would not sound natural, even though audiophiles are often looking for a distinctive - if unnatural - sound to justify the expense of the DACs.

In my case, having been through so many expensive DACs and remaining unsatisfied, I have "settled" with a Bricasti M3 which, like all of Bricasti's delta-sigma DACs, uses the rather elderly and conventional (and inexpensive) AD1955 chip, but focus their attention on power supplies and implementation. I find this approach sounds more natural than the bespoke FPGA based DACs. I should add that because of the quality of the implementation it also sounds much better than the awful Chinese DAC-of-the month popular on ASR such as the Topping, which I owned briefly.
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Your subjective experience is what it is (personal preference) but how you correlate that with the technology seems a bit confused.


To start with, all (but one or three) currently available off-the-shelf D/A chips convert to DSD. The Redbook 16/44.1 PCM signal is DSP'd for oversampling (usually by 8x) and then goes through the on-board ΣΔ modulator. So much for the mythical bit-perfection...


Using FPGA and particularly off-board upsampling allows the use of a lot processing power and thus far more developed and better performing algorithms which can potentially improve the reconstruction of the original analogue signal, lower jitter, lower noise floor, lower IMD.
Some off-the-shelf D/A chips provide an option to bypass the DSP and SDM (ex. PCM1795 or the AK4493EQ - diagram below):

Fy4u4BN.gif


SCF stands for Switched Capacitor Filter which is the D/A conversion stage.


The big chipmakers you mentioned above - AKM, Cirrus, Burr-Brown/TI, Analog Devices, etc. - do produce ASRC (Asynchronous Sampling Rate Converter) chips but as mentioned earlier they are enable to provide the processing power of an FPGA let alone a PC and use 'crude' algorithms.
ESS chips resample internally after the SDM.
 
Woodface said:
I really like my Innuos Mini with LPS, just sounds great. Would like to listen to a Zenith at some point but will upgrade speakers first as I have an irrational urge to upgrade my ATC 40s to 50s.

I think it’s wise to keep Dac separate from streamer in some ways but Linn do seem to have cracked it with the DSM range.
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Upgrading from 40As to 50As is not an irrational urge in my experience. It’s a night and day difference.
 
Woodface said:
I’ll be the judge of that;)
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Good luck! I hope you like it. I’m on the 100As now. They are substantially better than the 50As, but the improvement between the 40As and 50As is bigger than the improvement between the 50As and 100As, IMO.

I apologise for mentioned all this in a DAC thread.

To get on topic: I recently upgraded from a Node/RME to a used Auralic Vega 2.1 and Leo GX 2.0 external clock. I’m extremely happy with the upgrade, but obviously it cost a lot of money.

I haven’t heard the Rossini yet, though I assume that’s where I will go next. It could take a while though…
 
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