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Is there any point in a valve DAC

Arkless Electronics said:
Correct.
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I was thinking ( in as much as a phool has this facility? ) that perhaps I should seek your sage advice on other matters if ok? I'm going to the shops later, do you think I should get white or brown bread? And I quite like almond milk with my porridge..do you think I should buy the alpro or the cheaper own brand almond milk? Hopefully we might get a ask jez page? I have a suspicion that jez knows a lot more than he thinks! And this might be the opportunity to tap this great knowledge..
 
the caretaker said:
I was thinking ( in as much as a phool has this facility? ) that perhaps I should seek your sage advice on other matters if ok? I'm going to the shops later, do you think I should get white or brown bread? And I quite like almond milk with my porridge..do you think I should buy the alpro or the cheaper own brand almond milk? Hopefully we might get a ask jez page? I have a suspicion that jez knows a lot more than he thinks! And this might be the opportunity to tap this great knowledge..
Click to expand...

Sounds like yer a veggie to me and therefore have no place in decent company:p:D and don't make a mess weaving that yogurt!
 
I have a valve dac - a Nagra HD DAC which was internally upgraded to a "Tube DAC" at the factory last year. The upgrade replaced the digital boards but the analogue output stage uses a single 12AU7. While it was at the factory, my dealer loaned me a Nagra Classic DAC, which is essentially the same dac with a solid state output stage rather than valve. It really sounded much worse than the Tube Dac, and I was happy when it was returned. The Tube DAC also sounds much better than any other DAC I have owned, all of which have been solid state, many of them very expensive (Chord DAVE, etc).

This is not evidence for the proposition that using a valve in a DAC necessarily makes it better than those without valves. But this particular DAC sounds amazingly good and happens to use a valve.
 
RossB said:
I have a valve dac - a Nagra HD DAC which was internally upgraded to a "Tube DAC" at the factory last year. The upgrade replaced the digital boards but the analogue output stage uses a single 12AU7. While it was at the factory, my dealer loaned me a Nagra Classic DAC, which is essentially the same dac with a solid state output stage rather than valve. It really sounded much worse than the Tube Dac, and I was happy when it was returned. The Tube DAC also sounds much better than any other DAC I have owned, all of which have been solid state, many of them very expensive (Chord DAVE, etc).

This is not evidence for the proposition that using a valve in a DAC necessarily makes it better than those without valves. But this particular DAC sounds amazingly good and happens to use a valve.
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It's very hard not to hear better sound after you paid good money for an upgrade.
 
That's not entirely true. Initially it did not sound as good as I expected after the upgrade. Being disappointed, I even listed it for sale. But over time as it ran in it started to sound better and after a few months was significantly better than it was pre-upgrade (which was already extremely good).

To add to this theme, years ago I upgraded my rather good LP12 (Cirkus, Ekos, Armageddon) with a Radikal, Keel and Ekos SE, and hated the result so much I sold it.
 
DimitryZ said:
It's very hard not to hear better sound after you paid good money for an upgrade.
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Very true...even better when it's not much money...do you run any small d amps? Or dacs that run off 12 to 15 v ? I bought a little thing that goes between psu and dac/ amp a sort of super capacitor for not much money and the improvement is astonishing!
 
Arkless Electronics said:
forums etc are rather like existing in a world where 90% of people believe in Qanon and 5G conspiracies
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If forums are so terrible, and your much-vaunted genius so wasted - why are you here - like, all the time, threadcrapping like the aforementioned incontinent seagull?

Likewise, if you're such a merde-chaude amplifier designer - how can you possibly have failed to establish your own brand?

The people I know who are actually good at this have more work than they know what to do with, and spend most of their time on their mega-yachts counting their roomfuls of gold coins and "entertaining" supermodels - what with hifi being such a hugely-profitable scam an' all..

You keep telling us how clever you think you are, so - in the spirit of objectivity, I naturally have to wonder - where's the proof?

Is it, perhaps, the stuff you allegedly designed for Musical Fidelity? Because I've heard a LOT of their kit over the years, and it was uniformly second-rate at best, so...? Some secret hoard somewhere, perhaps?

Even as a mere bodge-wallah, I'm constantly astonished that you have SO much spare time on your hands to boast about your many achievements - all the technicians I know are as busy as hell and wouldn't go near a hifi forum if you put a gun to their temple, and if they did, certainly would waste their time with empty bragging and alienating most of their potential customers...

And yet here you are, desperately trying to be the centre of attention in as many threads as possible... Bit odd that? No?
 
earlofsodbury said:
If forums are so terrible, and your much-vaunted genius so wasted - why are you here - like, all the time, threadcrapping like the aforementioned incontinent seagull?

Likewise, if you're such a merde-chaude amplifier designer - how can you possibly have failed to establish your own brand?

The people I know who are actually good at this have more work than they know what to do with, and spend most of their time on their mega-yachts counting their roomfuls of gold coins and "entertaining" supermodels - what with hifi being such a hugely-profitable scam an' all..

You keep telling us how clever you think you are, so - in the spirit of objectivity, I naturally have to wonder - where's the proof?

Is it, perhaps, the stuff you allegedly designed for Musical Fidelity? Because I've heard a LOT of their kit over the years, and it was uniformly second-rate at best, so...? Some secret hoard somewhere, perhaps?

Even as a mere bodge-wallah, I'm constantly astonished that you have SO much spare time on your hands to boast about your many achievements - all the technicians I know are as busy as hell and wouldn't go near a hifi forum if you put a gun to their temple, and if they did, certainly would waste their time with empty bragging and alienating most of their potential customers...

And yet here you are, desperately trying to be the centre of attention in as many threads as possible... Bit odd that? No?
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I think Jez is a valuable member of this community and has plenty of customers.

And he is expressing an opinion that is pretty widely shared.
 
Is there any point in a valve DAC?

If it makes your music more enjoyable to YOU then that would be the point. Some tube DACs I like some I don't - some SS Dacs I don't like while other SS DACs I don't like a bit less.;)
 
It's actually highly ironic that those who accuse people who claim to hear improvements in SQ from a particular bit of kit of conformational bias are themselves exercising their own conformational bias!
I buy let's say, a valve buffer amp... plug it in, listen, find the change in sound pleasing and say as much on this forum. Then some smart-arse pops up telling me that the SQ 'improvement' is either all in my mind as I'm trying to justify to myself the value of a new purchase or is actually as a result of a degradation to the 'true' sound of the source material. This normally comes with a good dollop of 'science' and a side-serving of a patronising 'I've been listening to/making/selling amps since you were in short-trousers'. Apparently all valves do is add colouration and distortion... maybe, just maybe that some people may actually like that particular sound signature applied to their system and it increases their enjoyment of listening to music.
I find it quite odd that I can post about liking the sound of a bit of kit and be simultaneously told that I must be imagining any change to SQ and that of course there will be a change to SQ!
All hifi has its own sound signature, I've never heard any of Arkless' amps but I would imagine that they have their own 'sound'. Are they 'better' than the offerings from X, Y or Z's amplifier manufactures offerings? To some maybe, to others maybe not.
Ultimately our hobby is based around subjective opinions and only I can hear my own ears, to be told that my ears are 'wrong' is at best a bit odd!
 
It has been repeatedly stated in this thread that there is no such thing as a "valve DAC" since the digital to analog conversion could only be done in silicone.

This is not correct. Although there have been very few specimens built, the results of this project are excellent:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/valve-dac-from-linear-audio-volume-13.308860/

I build the smaller variant that works with DSD input only - it's great! No DAC chip in there.
 
Greyandy said:
It's actually highly ironic that those who accuse people who claim to hear improvements in SQ from a particular bit of kit of conformational bias are themselves exercising their own conformational bias!
I buy let's say, a valve buffer amp... plug it in, listen, find the change in sound pleasing and say as much on this forum. Then some smart-arse pops up telling me that the SQ 'improvement' is either all in my mind as I'm trying to justify to myself the value of a new purchase or is actually as a result of a degradation to the 'true' sound of the source material. This normally comes with a good dollop of 'science' and a side-serving of a patronising 'I've been listening to/making/selling amps since you were in short-trousers'. Apparently all valves do is add colouration and distortion... maybe, just maybe that some people may actually like that particular sound signature applied to their system and it increases their enjoyment of listening to music.
I find it quite odd that I can post about liking the sound of a bit of kit and be simultaneously told that I must be imagining any change to SQ and that of course there will be a change to SQ!
All hifi has its own sound signature, I've never heard any of Arkless' amps but I would imagine that they have their own 'sound'. Are they 'better' than the offerings from X, Y or Z's amplifier manufactures offerings? To some maybe, to others maybe not.
Ultimately our hobby is based around subjective opinions and only I can hear my own ears, to be told that my ears are 'wrong' is at best a bit odd!
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It's human nature when you feel you have the true facts about something and other people are choosing something else - they are delusional. So they get a bit of a kick out of making you feel like an idiot if you choose the technologically less advanced machine (which in this case is tubes or in other cases Vinyl over digital. passive preamps VS active preamps etc).

It's like black coffee - I can drink black coffee but I prefer it with cream - you are "adding" something to the coffee which is the "neutral" base. The cream, and for some people sugar, is required to make the coffee go down easier or at all

Since there is no real "accuracy" in audio all the arguments to me are silly. If you like the sound of a tube system better then why does it matter what the reason is? Is it added distortion? Is it retaining what is on the disc that SS misses? And some of the measurements guys fall prey to the same problems. Take Bryston - Bryston has distortion and a noise floor so low that no human being anywhere can detect it. The flavours of the month right now are the Benchmark AHB2 and cheap units from Topping - the best measuring SS ever blah blah. But the Brystons are already so low no human can detect and that was 20 years ago! The fact that Benchmark and Topping are considerably lower in distortion is meaningless but to hear the current objectivist - they are so much better (audibly so apparently) and yet none of these people NOT ONE has conducted a DBT comparing the units to a Bryston from 20 years ago. And heck - the Brystons have way more power too!

And way back then when I compared Bryston to a tube amp in A/B comparison the tube amp won. The blind test conducted by Martin Colloms at Stereophile also found that a $100 tube amp on the used market beat $3,000 SS amplifiers (even the designer of said $3,000 SS amp chose the tube amp when he could not rely on his bias that SS technology is superior - it may be but his ears say otherwise.

The one positive is that any tube amp/DAC and mediocre measuring speaker owner can purchase "elite" measuring systems for cheap.

Buy a Topping Pre90 and second-hand Benchmark's AHB2
Then flip through Stereophile and if you don't know too much about speaker measurements just look at the comments at the end and if it says something like "Overall, the _____ measured performance reveals superb speaker engineering on the part of ____"

In the above case, the B&W 705 speaker fits the above quote - I auditioned them many many times over the years and with top of the line Bryston, Rotel, Krell, Mark Levinson, Meridian, Classe, YBA, Sim Audio - all of which measures quite well in their own right.

It's easy to put excellent measuring equipment together - indeed, Stereophile even said the older 705 measured better than the new one. So buying used gets you superior measurements. Now build that "awesome measuring system." Then, build one of the "tube" systems that people bought when they sold their B&W, Bryston and Benchmark etc. Then compare them in the same room at the same volume - blind - and hear what happens. You don't have to convince anyone else - none of these people have done this. I have been talking to a guy on a forum - he is 70 and all he talks about is the measurements - he has never auditioned a SET amp in his life - yet he knows everything - another guy heard something at an Audio Show for 12 minutes of music he didn't bring and now is an expert. What can you do? You aren't convincing them with words and they won't listen to the stuff blind and level matched. You see they demand that YOU listen blind and level matched but none of them bother - they go to an audio show SIGHTED and listen and draw conclusions because "if there's a tube it must suck" - bias goes both ways.
 
earlofsodbury said:
If forums are so terrible, and your much-vaunted genius so wasted - why are you here - like, all the time, threadcrapping like the aforementioned incontinent seagull?

Likewise, if you're such a merde-chaude amplifier designer - how can you possibly have failed to establish your own brand?

The people I know who are actually good at this have more work than they know what to do with, and spend most of their time on their mega-yachts counting their roomfuls of gold coins and "entertaining" supermodels - what with hifi being such a hugely-profitable scam an' all..

You keep telling us how clever you think you are, so - in the spirit of objectivity, I naturally have to wonder - where's the proof?

Is it, perhaps, the stuff you allegedly designed for Musical Fidelity? Because I've heard a LOT of their kit over the years, and it was uniformly second-rate at best, so...? Some secret hoard somewhere, perhaps?

Even as a mere bodge-wallah, I'm constantly astonished that you have SO much spare time on your hands to boast about your many achievements - all the technicians I know are as busy as hell and wouldn't go near a hifi forum if you put a gun to their temple, and if they did, certainly would waste their time with empty bragging and alienating most of their potential customers...

And yet here you are, desperately trying to be the centre of attention in as many threads as possible... Bit odd that? No?
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What a horrible post.
 
RichardAusten said:
It's human nature when you feel you have the true facts about something and other people are choosing something else - they are delusional. So they get a bit of a kick out of making you feel like an idiot if you choose the technologically less advanced machine (which in this case is tubes or in other cases Vinyl over digital. passive preamps VS active preamps etc).

It's like black coffee - I can drink black coffee but I prefer it with cream - you are "adding" something to the coffee which is the "neutral" base. The cream, and for some people sugar, is required to make the coffee go down easier or at all

Since there is no real "accuracy" in audio all the arguments to me are silly. If you like the sound of a tube system better then why does it matter what the reason is? Is it added distortion? Is it retaining what is on the disc that SS misses? And some of the measurements guys fall prey to the same problems. Take Bryston - Bryston has distortion and a noise floor so low that no human being anywhere can detect it. The flavours of the month right now are the Benchmark AHB2 and cheap units from Topping - the best measuring SS ever blah blah. But the Brystons are already so low no human can detect and that was 20 years ago! The fact that Benchmark and Topping are considerably lower in distortion is meaningless but to hear the current objectivist - they are so much better (audibly so apparently) and yet none of these people NOT ONE has conducted a DBT comparing the units to a Bryston from 20 years ago. And heck - the Brystons have way more power too!

And way back then when I compared Bryston to a tube amp in A/B comparison the tube amp won. The blind test conducted by Martin Colloms at Stereophile also found that a $100 tube amp on the used market beat $3,000 SS amplifiers (even the designer of said $3,000 SS amp chose the tube amp when he could not rely on his bias that SS technology is superior - it may be but his ears say otherwise.

The one positive is that any tube amp/DAC and mediocre measuring speaker owner can purchase "elite" measuring systems for cheap.

Buy a Topping Pre90 and second-hand Benchmark's AHB2
Then flip through Stereophile and if you don't know too much about speaker measurements just look at the comments at the end and if it says something like "Overall, the _____ measured performance reveals superb speaker engineering on the part of ____"

In the above case, the B&W 705 speaker fits the above quote - I auditioned them many many times over the years and with top of the line Bryston, Rotel, Krell, Mark Levinson, Meridian, Classe, YBA, Sim Audio - all of which measures quite well in their own right.

It's easy to put excellent measuring equipment together - indeed, Stereophile even said the older 705 measured better than the new one. So buying used gets you superior measurements. Now build that "awesome measuring system." Then, build one of the "tube" systems that people bought when they sold their B&W, Bryston and Benchmark etc. Then compare them in the same room at the same volume - blind - and hear what happens. You don't have to convince anyone else - none of these people have done this. I have been talking to a guy on a forum - he is 70 and all he talks about is the measurements - he has never auditioned a SET amp in his life - yet he knows everything - another guy heard something at an Audio Show for 12 minutes of music he didn't bring and now is an expert. What can you do? You aren't convincing them with words and they won't listen to the stuff blind and level matched. You see they demand that YOU listen blind and level matched but none of them bother - they go to an audio show SIGHTED and listen and draw conclusions because "if there's a tube it must suck" - bias goes both ways.
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I design with transistors, mosfets, jfets, op amps and yes valves. Often a hybrid combination of these devices chosen for the attributes they can bring to a specific stage due to their electrical characteristics. BJT's for their large transconductance, triode valves for reasonable linearity combined with high input impedance and moderate output impedance, mosfets where I want a high DC input resistance combined with fairly high transconductance and fast switching speed, jfets for high input impedance with low noise, pentode valves where I want high voltage gain with good internal isolation of input and output nodes and with high output impedance etc etc. Each device type also has its negative attributes, hence I would not use it for a specific stage, whilst for some applications any of the named devices would work pretty well overall but be likely to show advantages or disadvantages in specific areas and hence the choice of device is more of a grey area.

Now the above is actual hi fi... ie electronics... and is a million miles away from the likes of your web site (nothing personal, all such advertorial sites are as bad. I had a look at "Whats Best Forum" and it was hilarious!) where, by and large, people who don't know a resistor from a radish, never mind how an amplifier works, write peons of purple prose praising £1000 USB cables and mains leads which very definitely have no effect (not in this universe with these laws of physics) whatsoever on pages plastered with glossy links to advertisers of things like £1000 USB cables... if any electronics is mentioned (ie whats under the cover, that which IS hi fi, which makes it work) is ever mentioned on such sites it's usually complete bollox which is totally wrong and/or meaningless techno babble of "some of the right words but not necessarily in the right order" often straight from the mouths of the marketing depts of the advertisers!

I do "get it".... it's a whole industry trying to make a profit from selling electronics to people who know little or nothing about electronics and don't really care or want to know either... such things as transconductance and reverse transfer capacitance are "here be dragons", hence it can (and is) made up as they go along!

Placebo and nocebo effects are so strong that people have been known to throw up thinking they are suffering the side effects of a powerful drug when in fact they had the sugar pill... add expectation bias to that and the ever relevant tale of The Emperors New Clothes and we have a scene where people with zero knowledge of electronics believe things like mains cables break the laws of physics and not only have an effect but a favourable one at that...
Since 'It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled' (Mark Twain), we get to the ridiculous level hi fi has now reached in which people who have been taken for a ride and bought things that have no effect will swim through vomit to defend the snake oil sellers who sold them it!
 
RichardAusten said:
Since there is no real "accuracy" in audio all the arguments to me are silly. If you like the sound of a tube system better then why does it matter what the reason is?
Click to expand...

That's a deeply flawed premise, from which multiple errors in your long post originate.
 
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