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Is there any point in a valve DAC

chartz said:
Tone controls are what we really need.

They use them extensively in the recording booth, along with dozens of op-amps before the music bits finally arrive at your hi-fi.
Oh, and those internet bits also travel through many, many miles of cables, through a countless number of connections… should I continue?
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No you don’t need to continue. We get it - all amps are the same and spending more than thruppence ha'penny on any component is foolhardy in the extreme. After all if £200 worth of 500w class B out of Studiospares is good enough for [inset name of recording studio] where [insert name of famous producer turned eco-bore] recorded [insert classic 70s album without which bake-offs wouldn't exist] then it should be good enough for us mere mortals. Look, the measurements prove it!
 
There is no such thing as a valve DAC (is an intercity 125 a steam train because there is a kettle on board?) and certainly no point to the inclusion of a valve. It is entirely a marketing ploy intended to attract the phools who believe valves are intrinsically better! as we see by certain machines where a ltsy ickle window is provided so you can see the valve/s that have made the machine twice as expensive!
 
chartz said:
Tone controls are what we really need. Evil they are not, contrary to usual hi-fi beliefs.

They use them extensively in the recording booth, along with dozens of op-amps before the music bits finally arrive at your hi-fi – yes, probably even plain 5532 chips!

Oh, and those internet bits also travel through many, many miles of cables, through a countless number of connections… should I continue?

Don’t expect much from that last valve or that last USB or Ethernet cable metre either.
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Good post. Indeed the signal will have been through loads of tone controls in the studio, usually parametric, as part of the recording process and "creative input" of engineers and producers.

The NE5532 is still superb even though it's as old as the hills and dirt cheap. I can remember when they were maybe £8 each in today's money!
 
Arkless Electronics said:
There is no such thing as a valve DAC (is an intercity 125 a steam train because there is a kettle on board?) and certainly no point to the inclusion of a valve. It is entirely a marketing ploy intended to attract the phools who believe valves are intrinsically better! as we see by certain machines where a ltsy ickle window is provided so you can see the valve/s that have made the machine twice as expensive!
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Sorry Jez you you are being quite deliberately misleading here, or at the very least pretending that you misunderstand the question.

Fairly obviously, the digital parts of the DAC are not 'valve' (though I guess power supplies can be). Pretty much all digital these days is good digital, and probably has been for at least 20 years.

The output stage, however is the critical component and is frequently overlooked. Not everyone is happy (as I wrote earlier in the thread) with a 10p - or indeed a 50p - op amp. In this sense, if the output to line level is valve, then it's a valve component 'a valve DAC'. To say it doesn't exist is, frankly, nonsense.

I don't personally believe valves are necessarily any sort of panacea - I use a solid state (FET) preamp for example - but I do believe from my own experience that the route to an optimal sounding DAC is optimisation of the DAC chip output to line level. I'm sure even you wouldn't deny, Jez, that valves can be useful in this scenario?
 
gustav_errata said:
...studio engineers do all the work setting the EQ so that we don't have to, and to use our own tone controls undoes the hard work of the engineer...
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The engineer balanced the sound to sound good on the studio's equipment in the studio's acoustic. S/he didn't know anything about the equipment with which, nor the room in which it would be replayed by the purchaser of the recording.
 
montesquieu said:
Sorry Jez you you are being quite deliberately misleading here, or at the very least pretending that you misunderstand the question.

Fairly obviously, the digital parts of the DAC are not 'valve' (though I guess power supplies can be). Pretty much all digital these days is good digital, and probably has been for at least 20 years.

The output stage, however is the critical component and is frequently overlooked. Not everyone is happy (as I wrote earlier in the thread) with a 10p - or indeed a 50p - op amp. In this sense, if the output to line level is valve, then it's a valve component 'a valve DAC'. To say it doesn't exist is, frankly, nonsense.

I don't personally believe valves are necessarily any sort of panacea - I use a solid state (FET) preamp for example - but I do believe from my own experience that the route to an optimal sounding DAC is optimisation of the DAC chip output to line level. I'm sure even you wouldn't deny, Jez, that valves can be useful in this scenario?
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I utterly disagree and repeat that there is quite definitely no such thing as a valve DAC (outside of early experimental ones before transistors existed and probably huge). To suggest otherwise is, frankly, nonsense. A million transistors followed by a valve and you want to call the item valved!?

In most cases the valve will be simply a cathode follower coming after the op amp, a "valve buffer", and will only reduce resolution and fine detail and add colouration and distortion. If it were truly transparent then its presence would be subjectively inaudible...

The equipment in the studio will usually contain numerous 50p op amps (and quite often some vintage valve outboard) and if they were so bad then the music would be mangled anyway!
 
I used to have a fairly modified Jolida “valve” DAC & pretty decent it was too.
Speaking from a totally non-techy viewpoint, I would assume the selling point of a DAC with valves in, is the notion that the valves make them somehow more analogue sounding, less hard digital character etc etc.
I would say they probably make them sound different, adding a character which some may like, others not so much. Not necessarily more analogue, just different.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I utterly disagree and repeat that there is quite definitely no such thing as a valve DAC (outside of early experimental ones before transistors existed and probably huge). To suggest otherwise is, frankly, nonsense. A million transistors followed by a valve and you want to call the item valved!?

In most cases the valve will be simply a cathode follower coming after the op amp, a "valve buffer", and will only reduce resolution and fine detail and add colouration and distortion. If it were truly transparent then its presence would be subjectively inaudible...

The equipment in the studio will usually contain numerous 50p op amps (and quite often some vintage valve outboard) and if they were so bad then the music would be mangled anyway!
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There is no such thing as a DAC that Hi-Fi listeners buy. It is a RDACOSWPS. You see an RDACOSWPS is a Receiver to Digital-to-Analogue Convert to Output Stage With Power Supply - shortened to RDACOSWPS.

Oh, I forgot the box.

Andrew
 
Let’s be clear, this is mostly about output stage if we’re talking valve DACs (but I seem to recall a Russian guy building a DAC with valves elsewhere?). So then it comes down to implementation - I love my Croft Mega Micro pre-amp, but have never heard a DAC with a valve output stage - would I like to? Yep :) I have a few CDPs in my collection intended to test with…when I get the time. I would not dismiss anything until I heard it for myself…sometimes difficult here in Swissieland :)
 
Arkless Electronics said:
no such thing as a valve DAC
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although we all know you are technically correct what almost everyone else in this thread means by the shorthand term "valve DAC" is a simply a DAC with a valve output stage in exactly the same way the difference betweeen the 2 versions of the Rega Isis DAC is the valve output stage in one of them
 
mtbmarkymark said:
although we all know you are technically correct what almost everyone else in this thread means by the shorthand term "valve DAC" is a simply a DAC with a valve output stage in exactly the same way the difference betweeen the 2 versions of the Rega Isis DAC is the valve output stage in one of them
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Higher end Lampizator and SW1X DACs use valve rectification too.
 
mtbmarkymark said:
although we all know you are technically correct what almost everyone else in this thread means by the shorthand term "valve DAC" is a simply a DAC with a valve output stage in exactly the same way the difference betweeen the 2 versions of the Rega Isis DAC is the valve output stage in one of them
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Yes I'm well aware of that. It's still stupid though. The valve follower makes up probably something like 0.01% of all the electronics in the unit.
 
I understand my valve dac (brinkmann Nyquist) is a bit of a pseud, in truth it uses valves in the output stage to adjust sound or as a flavour enhancement , a sort of audio msg.
Love it.
 
Stuart Frazer said:
Not only the output stage, valve rectification too. Higher end Lampizator DACs use valve rectification.
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Valve rectification is another total con. Rectification makes no difference to sound quality. As in not ever, under no circumstances. Evan the "sag" with guitar amp valve rectification can be exactly replicated by the simple expedient of adding resistors in series with SS rectifiers... this is VERY basic electronics... but of course the manufacturers will claim "valve magic" and eagerly spend an extra £30 to make it valve rectified safe in the knowledge that they can now charge an extra £300 for the "benefits" of valve rectification. That's business....

Many claims made by almost all manufacturers these days are a pack of lies intended to part the gullible from their money. Almost all magazines and on line review sites back up the lies and help propagate them. It's a vicious circle of back scratching where the more products and types of products there are, the more chances to sell something and the more copy that can be generated for the mags and review sites who then attract more advertising from the manufacturers... cos in this world everything works, everything is relevant and everything is a VFM purchase so nothing gets a review of "this is not even possible within the laws of physics and no one with an ounce of sense should buy this".

We live in a post truth world unfortunately and almost everyone involved professionally with hi fi realised long ago that maybe only 1 in a 1000 potential customers has sufficient electronics knowledge to see through the constant drip drip drip of lies and that those brave individuals willing to stand up and call out the perfidy for what it is can safely be ignored and left to look an idiot of a King Canute ranting at the tide to turn in, such is the almost complete success of the brainwashing affecting the other 999....
 
Arkless Electronics said:
Valve rectification is another total con. Rectification makes no difference to sound quality. As in not ever, under no circumstances. Evan the "sag" with guitar amp valve rectification can be exactly replicated by the simple expedient of adding resistors in series with SS rectifiers... this is VERY basic electronics... but of course the manufacturers will claim "valve magic" and eagerly spend an extra £30 to make it valve rectified safe in the knowledge that they can now charge an extra £300 for the "benefits" of valve rectification. That's business....

Many claims made by almost all manufacturers these days are a pack of lies intended to part the gullible from their money. Almost all magazines and on line review sites back up the lies and help propagate them. It's a vicious circle of back scratching where the more products and types of products there are, the more chances to sell something and the more copy that can be generated for the mags and review sites who then attract more advertising from the manufacturers... cos in this world everything works, everything is relevant and everything is a VFM purchase so nothing gets a review of "this is not even possible within the laws of physics and no one with an ounce of sense should buy this".

We live in a post truth world unfortunately and almost everyone involved professionally with hi fi realised long ago that maybe only 1 in a 1000 potential customers has sufficient electronics knowledge to see through the constant drip drip drip of lies and that those brave individuals willing to stand up and call out the perfidy for what it is can safely be ignored and left to look an idiot of a King Canute ranting at the tide to turn in, such is the almost complete success of the brainwashing affecting the other 999....
Click to expand...

In short, they're all crazy but our Jez ...
 
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