How far have DACs moved on?
- Thread starter neilmack
- Start date
oldius
Manchester City, dogs, family and food.
I replaced a high-end modern DAC with a vintage high-end DAC because it sounded better in my system. Now, I only have red book so it could be argued that my old DAC could have been given the opportunity to play high-resolution files, but I wonder how many are seduced by modern DACs despite the fact that they only stream red book themselves. One thing is certain, my vintage DAC is massively over-engineered and was a fortune at launch. I haven't heard better but I have no real desire to change it now.
Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
Dac 202 was the finest measuring piece of kit John Atkinson had measured, still a very fine dac, the original ones were FireWire.
Keith
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
I use an ancient DPA Little Bit DAC and it's seen off modern units from Rega and Audiolab so no things haven't moved on much.
The true gains have been in access to super-low jitter transports and async USB, as well as streaming technology at low prices. When streaming FLAC my Raspberry Pi is at 5% CPU load, being controlled by my phone. Amazing really.
Put a modern digital front end with a vintage DAC and you’ll find not much has changed at all...
Put a modern digital front end with a vintage DAC and you’ll find not much has changed at all...
mandryka
pfm Member
And what is this vintage DAC?
clivem2
pfm Member
Simon, can you expand? You're one of the first to say that digital means that cables can't make a difference as digital either works or it doesn't. I'm not being funny....just trying to understand your PoV.
tuga
Legal Alien
Only a handful of boxes convert Redbook to analogue as is. Most CD players and DACs oversample.
The reason for this is that Redbook requires a reconstruction filter and filtering is best done at a higher sample rates than that of Redbook.
The performance of the internal Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter in most DAC is not as good as what can be achieved with a high performance upsampler like the MScaler or a music file player/processor like HQ Player.
On top of this, contemporary processing power is much higher and this means that one can use more effective filtering and noise shaping algorithms using 64-bit or higher processing.
And because most DAC chips perform best at their highest admissible sample rate and bit depth it makes sense to upsample.
I prefer to use a NOS DAC and upsample and filter with software on a computer. And because the D/A chip in my DAC (PCM1795) is a Sigma-delta modulator I prefer to have control over the PCM to DSD conversion so I do it with the software as well.
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tuga
Legal Alien
This is wishful thinking.
John Phillips
pfm Member
I think this is true for a good vintage DAC. But the good ones are the ones that make it to being vintage.
I think the biggest change since I worked briefly on DACs in the late 1980s is that inexpensive ones now achieve a very high standard of technical perfection, a standard that used to be only achieved by expensive ones. Partly because test kit to measure such small imperfections is now much cheaper and more available.
And if approaching technical perfection doesn't sound good to anyone, that's fair enough and there are now modern DACs designed to have distinctive sonic signatures.
sq225917
Bit of this, bit of that
Clive, I'm not laying the difference in sound at the cables, rather at the end to end interface system.
Firewire is balanced and buffered data over a high level interface, it doesn't share data bus or voltage rails with other parts of the PC, it's a total ecosystem.
At the time there was only a hi face as an async USB to spdif converter to compare against firewire on the 202. It came nowhere near.
The conclusion being that the Weiss and macbook firewire data path was better than mac hiface to spdif input. I dont know where the mac to USB to spdif fell short or even if it was just the 202 had a better firewire than spdif setup internally, I suspect it was to do with the 2x spdif voltage that the hiface used.. What made no difference though was swapping USB cables in that setup. Or swapping firewire cables. Using other spdif cables did make a difference longer, over 2m was better.
Clive, Ive never stated that digital is perfect, my view is that if well engineered, that it should be. Grossly flawed, nonspec cables can make a difference. If one side of the interface is flawed then all bets are off, the system is broken. I use certified USB and cat5 with end to end shielding and well implemented interfaces, no boutique raw cable will improve upon that.
For example, if you need to split data and 5v in USB to achieve good sound you have a broken interface.
It's a simple viewpoint. Correctly specced cables cannot be improved upon when used with a well implemented Interface.
Firewire is balanced and buffered data over a high level interface, it doesn't share data bus or voltage rails with other parts of the PC, it's a total ecosystem.
At the time there was only a hi face as an async USB to spdif converter to compare against firewire on the 202. It came nowhere near.
The conclusion being that the Weiss and macbook firewire data path was better than mac hiface to spdif input. I dont know where the mac to USB to spdif fell short or even if it was just the 202 had a better firewire than spdif setup internally, I suspect it was to do with the 2x spdif voltage that the hiface used.. What made no difference though was swapping USB cables in that setup. Or swapping firewire cables. Using other spdif cables did make a difference longer, over 2m was better.
Clive, Ive never stated that digital is perfect, my view is that if well engineered, that it should be. Grossly flawed, nonspec cables can make a difference. If one side of the interface is flawed then all bets are off, the system is broken. I use certified USB and cat5 with end to end shielding and well implemented interfaces, no boutique raw cable will improve upon that.
For example, if you need to split data and 5v in USB to achieve good sound you have a broken interface.
It's a simple viewpoint. Correctly specced cables cannot be improved upon when used with a well implemented Interface.
davidjt
pfm Member
I was impressed by the performance of the little Topping D10 - for the money it's extraordinary.
Having said that, my music laptop has just expired and I've had to go back to playing CDs . I recently 'converted' to full range speakers and class A monoblocks, and the old player has never sounded better. Apparently there aren't many Bel Canto CD1s about - whether it qualifies as a Classic I've no idea but it's Burr-Brown 1792 chip seems to have been implemented by someone who knew what he was about.
Having said that, my music laptop has just expired and I've had to go back to playing CDs . I recently 'converted' to full range speakers and class A monoblocks, and the old player has never sounded better. Apparently there aren't many Bel Canto CD1s about - whether it qualifies as a Classic I've no idea but it's Burr-Brown 1792 chip seems to have been implemented by someone who knew what he was about.
oldius
Manchester City, dogs, family and food.
oldius
Manchester City, dogs, family and food.
Sorry mate, I have absolutely no idea what this means.
clivem2
pfm Member
I'm certainly not a usb cable tweaker. I'd agree that the issues are at the interfaces though others will resolutely say that if digital works without dropouts it has to be perfect. I'd concur that if usb cables need a special config then there's a problem elsewhere.
337alant
Negatively Biased
I have had a few different DACs and ended up with a M2Tech Young about 4-5 years ago ?, anyway since then I havent tried anything that has bettered it in my system
A couple of months ago I loaned a Chord Hugo (Mk1) from fanthorps with an intent to buy it and my expectation bias was that it would trounce my Young DAC, but after 2 days of listening I concluded that the young was better and returned it
I was actually disappointed after reading so much about this DAC and watching all the videos on YouTube I actually really wanted this DAC and wanted to find a reason to justify spending 2K on it but at the end of the day the young was more musical to my ears, the chord was good but more sterile sounding like my Sabre DAC
All tests with Async USB
Alan
A couple of months ago I loaned a Chord Hugo (Mk1) from fanthorps with an intent to buy it and my expectation bias was that it would trounce my Young DAC, but after 2 days of listening I concluded that the young was better and returned it
I was actually disappointed after reading so much about this DAC and watching all the videos on YouTube I actually really wanted this DAC and wanted to find a reason to justify spending 2K on it but at the end of the day the young was more musical to my ears, the chord was good but more sterile sounding like my Sabre DAC
All tests with Async USB
Alan