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Have dacs changed so much in 10 years.

tuga said:
It's worth quoting a post the late Charles Hansen (Ayre) made some years ago at CA:

The thing that I see over and over and over in this thread is an irrational belief in the importance of the DAC chip itself. Just about everything affect the sound of an audio product, but when it comes to DACs, I would rank (in order or sonic importance the general categories as follows:

1) The analog circuitry - 99.9% of all DACs are designed by digital engineers who don't know enough about analog. They just follow the app note. The specs on the op-amps are fabulous and digital engineers are inherently seduced by the beauty of the math story. There are minor differences in the sound quality between various op-amps, but it's kind of like the difference between a Duncan-Heinz cake mix and a Betty Crocker cake mix. 99.8% of the op-amps are used a current-to-voltage converters with the inverting input operating as a virtual ground. This is probably the worst way to use an op-amp as the input signal will cause the internal circuitry to go into slewing-limited distortion. http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4311648/Op-amp-myths-ndash-by-Barrie-Gilbert

With discrete circuitry, the only limit is your imagination. You are free to adjust the topology of the circuit, the brands of the parts, the active devices, the bias current in each stage - anything you can think of. Think of this as going to a world-class patisserie in Paris and seeing all the different things that can be made.

2) The power supplies - 99.9% of all DACs use "3-pin" power supply regulators, which are pretty much op-amps connected to a series pass transistor. Everything in #1 applies here.

3) The master clock - jitter is a single number assigned to measure the phase noise of an oscillator over a fixed bandwidth. It is far more i important to know the spectral distribution of the timing variations and how they correlate to audible problems. 99.9% of all DACs use a strip-cut AT crystal in a Pierce gate oscillator circuit. It's pretty good for the money but the results will depend heavily on the implementation, particularly in the PCB layout and the power supplies (#2).

It's hard to rank the rest of these so I will give them a tie score.

4) The digital filter - 99.9% of all DACs use the digital filter built into the DAC chip. About a dozen companies know how to make a custom digital filter based on either FPGAs or DSP chips.

4) PCB layout - grounding and shielding, impedance-controlled traces, return currents, and return current paths are all critical. For a complex digital PCB, 8 layers is the minimum for good results.

4) The DAC chip - almost everything these days is delta sigma with a built-in digital filter. Differences between different chips is one of the less important aspects of D/A converter designs. Both ESS and AKM have some special tricks to reduce out-of-band noise, which can be helpful, but not dramatic.

4) Passive parts - the quality of these can make a large difference in overall performance, especially for analog. Not many digital engineers sit around listening to different brands of resistors to see what sounds best.

These are just a few of the things that make differences in the way that a DAC will sound.
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Great quote tuga, thanks.

This provides a nicely detailed explanation as to why my Audio Synthesis DAX Discrete is still, to my ears, the b*llocks.
 
cporton said:
I've just replaced a Denafrips Ares II (new - £865) with a 2007 Linn Klimax Renew DS at £890 second hand... so 17 years apart.

Not even close... staggeringly better in all respects (all IMHO of course).

Chris
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Brilliant and it doesn’t particularly surprise me. As others have said. it’s a pretty mature technology and the chipset is only part of the equation.
 
cporton said:
I've just replaced a Denafrips Ares II (new - £865) with a 2007 Linn Klimax Renew DS at £890 second hand... so 17 years apart.

Not even close... staggeringly better in all respects (all IMHO of course).

Chris
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Interesting. Is this a like for like comparison, in other words using the same digital source into the Linn and not its streamer section?
 
I think the biggest change is that you can now get crazy good performance, close to SOTA, for £150. This running from the 'noisy' 5v USB of a PC....
When all distortions are typically 0.0005% or better in cheap & readily available kit we are clearly dealing with a very mature technology, and it's job done.
 
Robert said:
I think the biggest change is that you can now get crazy good performance, close to SOTA, for £150. This running from the 'noisy' 5v USB of a PC....
When all distortions are typically 0.0005% or better in cheap & readily available kit we are clearly dealing with a very mature technology, and it's job done.
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Unfortunately supposedly vanishing levels of distortion or other measurements doesn't always equate to good sound. And £150 won't get you more than an opamp output stage
 
I have a mission pcm 7000 cd player from the late eighties, an Arcam delta black box 500 dac from the nineties and a Loxjie D40 pro dac which is almost brand new.
The, same music comes out of them all and sounds good. But, it's pretty easy to hear that the Loxjie is cleaner, more dynamic and quite a bit more detailed than the other two. It's not as cool I admit, but if sound quality is your priority.... Things have improved a lot over time.
 
Robert said:
I think the biggest change is that you can now get crazy good performance, close to SOTA, for £150. This running from the 'noisy' 5v USB of a PC....
When all distortions are typically 0.0005% or better in cheap & readily available kit we are clearly dealing with a very mature technology, and it's job done.
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Basically this. That's what 10 years of DAC development has done. You can now get the technical performance of a DAC that would have cost hundreds if not thousands 10 years ago for a fraction of the price.
 
Flapstick said:
Wonder what sort of numbskull pays £10k for effectively a small D to A chip produced by the millions, somewhere in Asia, in a fancy, oversized case.
One born every minute I guess.
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So are you saying that a £200 DAC that uses the same chipset as a £10k will sound the same?
 
andrewd said:
Interesting. Is this a like for like comparison, in other words using the same digital source into the Linn and not its streamer section?
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The Linn just has an Ethernet connection and I use it as a Roon Endpoint.

I used an iFi Audio ZEN Stream as a Roon Endpoint to connect to the Denafrips DAC.

Then I compared the same music on both 👍

Chris
 
cporton said:
The Linn just has an Ethernet connection and I use it as a Roon Endpoint.

I used an iFi Audio ZEN Stream as a Roon Endpoint to connect to the Denafrips DAC.

Then I compared the same music on both 👍

Chris
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Thanks. It is difficult to draw any conclusions about the relative performance of the DAC component, but it is good to know that the Linn performs well as a streamer/DAC combination. Seems like a bargain for what you paid.
 
JezmondTutu said:
So are you saying that a £200 DAC that uses the same chipset as a £10k will sound the same?
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Simple comparison based on retail price can be misleading.

Accounting for price elasticity of demand, a £10k DAC that sells only 200 examples during its product lifetime and a £200 DAC that sells 10,000 examples could both benefit from the exactly same levels of non-recurring engineering cost, sales overhead cost and recurring production cost. So yes I think they could quite plausibly sound the same.

That does not mean they are comparable of course. Successfully marketing a £10k DAC may in practice demand that more of the same recurring production cost must be spent on good-looking casework, leaving less for good design and components that matter. So it could actually turn out rather counter-intutively. As usual: "it depends ...".
 
John Phillips said:
Simple comparison based on retail price can be misleading.

Accounting for price elasticity of demand, a £10k DAC that sells only 200 examples during its product lifetime and a £200 DAC that sells 10,000 examples could both benefit from the exactly same levels of non-recurring engineering cost, sales overhead cost and recurring production cost. So yes I think they could quite plausibly sound the same.

That does not mean they are comparable of course. Successfully marketing a £10k DAC may in practice demand that more of the same recurring production cost must be spent on good-looking casework, leaving less for good design and components that matter. So it could actually turn out rather counter-intutively. As usual: "it depends ...".
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Sorry but I just don’t believe a £200 DAC will ever sound the same as a £10k DAC. If a DAC’s performance hinged just on the chipset used then yes it would sound the same. But it doesn’t

Jez
 
With such varied circuitry, age and performance I don't think it's possible to group various old dac product together. A Wadia never was the same as a Krell, a Levinson, Perpetual Technologies, Chord, and even less likely to be now they're full of aged components.

All that said, people need to try a level matched, blind test to check their assumptions and bias. Stuff has to be really grossly different before it becomes audible.
 
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