Dac Sounds

General Discvssions & Theory/Vnderstanding
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A general question/discussion I want to preface with the following: I am quite happy to accept that some people can, do and will enjoy the differences I am talking about. I also think that subjective or even placebo differences are as interesting and worthwhile to explore as measurable ones in such a complex subject as how the brain experiences listening to music.

My own opinion is limited by the gear I have been able to listen to and this definitely is limited by my budget. I haven’t been able to listen to anything over about five to six hundred euros and no dacs over about 400.

Preamble done, lets get to the meat of it. I do hear differences between amps and am most aware of them if I pick a good synergy between music genre and amp signature. The right pairing sounds better. Headphones I very much hear and some music will sound terrible to me if I pair the wrong headphone. They add interesting layers to the amp sound, minimizing or emphasizing parts of it and each headphone/amp pair brings out different aspects of the music for me to hear.

Dacs though… the differences I hear are so small as to disappear unless I am actively trying to hear the dac with concentrated active attention and A/B ing. Given that I am using them as a tool to listen to music I am rarely listening with this degree of intensity. Given this, does it actually matter? Am I better off having one good lower cost dac (I would count my JNOG1 as that) and passive switches rather than multiple dacs? If I were to save up and eventually be able to afford say an Ares II am I really going to hear the difference? Enough that it is worth such a significant investment?

My broader questions are these. How do you experience these differences (if you hear them)? How much of a difference do the different parts of your chain contribute to what you hear and how does this have an effect on your enjoyment of music? Given that, how does this influence your buying decisions?

I also note I more curious as to how you all approach these kinds of questions than I am in my own specific situation so even if you have nothing specific to say regarding my own dilemma please do chime in!

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I personally think this is why. Admittedly the majority of the cheaper dacs sound fairly similar to each other, with some differences but really not enough to differentiate themselves. The moment you start getting up to the let’s say 700 ish range is where things start to really change and the options for dacs really increases

Of course I think that having higher end headphones and amps helps with this too, but I really think this idea of dacs not really mattering that much is because of how homogeneous the entry level dac scene is with few exceptions, you basically are buying for features and slight differences but realistically most of them will work. But once you step up to that higher end range, I’m almost positive you might change your mind on the importance and worthwhileness of a nice dac

Again though this is coming from someone who’s went all in on dacs, a fair amount of them lol, but that’s because they’ve become the most impactful and meaningful upgrades I can make for my chain at this point. In the budget scene it’s easily a better idea to place more importance on the amp, for the midrange stacks I think it becomes about equal or still slightly amp leaning, but when you get to the meat of the high end it’s pretty much equal or the dac becomes more important, up from there it’s all in the dac imo

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Hello,
Yes, this is an open contribution with an open exchange of blows from you, as you will find out later that opinions are very far apart.

The main core of the community is divided into 3 camps.
The first camp goes fully into measurements that are often seen in the ASR forum.
For them, these measurements are very important.
The second camp goes more for what is heard and buys what has proven itself and has proven itself in the community.
The third camp simply enjoys the music, regardless of the Dac.

While for one Dac is Dac, and for others a science, the main core tends to be more the implementation where is decisive and in my opinion the most important factor.
There are plenty of them, the biggest example is often found in low budget dacs found on Ebay.

The other side is again the choice of components where important.
Capacitors, power supply ect…
Personally I find Class A Dac’s superior to Class D Dac’s because of the interference and often the bad power supply.
The Cambridge Audio Dacmagic100 for example is a candidate.
And makes an additional investment necessary for a power supply replacement.

As you can see, it already starts there whether a Dac is good.

There are differences between the Ess, Akm, Cirrus Logic and Burr Brown chips.
Examples of this are, for example, my experience with the Fostex series of older generations.
The Hp A3 with the old Akm chip and the Hp A4 Balance with Burr Brown, I found the Hp A3 much fresher, livelier and less colourful in sound.

Another example is the Matrix Audio Ipro Mini 2S with Ess chip, which has a higher quality and more solid construction.
I didn’t like it at all on headphones, it sounded much too cold, sharp in the treble range and extremely listener-fatiguing.
But on the stereo a real monster, there the box blossoms everything full of details, warmth, full-bodied sound that it is pleasant to listen to.

In the end, much depends on personal preference, regardless of the chip the Dac has installed.
There are enough who celebrate a Topping E30, while others have spent more money on more expensive Dacs.

Another example is here again from a personal point of view.
Singxer Su 2 combined with Singxer Sda 2C spent almost 1000€ for this setup in direct comparison with the Little Dot dac 1 which costs 300€ and is much older.
The Little Dot is hardly worse than the Singxer pairing.
The two are pretty much on a par with each other.
The Little Dot is a bit livelier, fresher and a bit more musical in my opinion.

Here, too, I come to the conclusion that the implementation was very successful at the end of 2010.
Technically, it may not be up-to-date, it doesn’t play Dsd, no Mqa, the Usb port is limited to 16/48.
Which is not tragic.
The Singxer plays Dsd has 6 filters, the Little Dot only 2.
And the Singxer can still use the I2S port.

If we disregard all the technical details such as Dsd Mqa ect… Both are on a par and personal preference decides in the end here too.

If you deal with different types of conversion like Delta Sigma,R2R without oversampling ect…
Well, I have a personal theory that people who grew up with records as an example will most certainly prefer the R2R Dac.
Because of the analogue sound it is supposed to reproduce.
But there is also a part that can do without it the other way round.
But also because most are controlled by the audio industry.
Where the trend is less towards analogue and more towards digital = clean.
Which is a bit of a pity, because we like to listen to music to remember the good old days.
So in the analogue time.
And when we take a modern Dac in our hands we hear things that we didn’t hear before, or we thought oh wow what a great violin, but it’s a harp.
But in both types of conversion of the Dac’s the implementation is important again.

As a conclusion to the personal experiences I have made.
An older generation Dac, if it has been implemented well, is just as good today as a current one if you can do without the technical bells and whistles.
It would also be possible, if you have the knowledge, to equip an older Dac with current parts and thus breathe new life into it.

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Would agree, implementation can make a world of difference

Good point, if you pick up an even more budget “vintage” or pretty old dac, they do sound pretty different to modern budget dacs and have more personality to them imo, they offer different things than the current type of dacs out there in the budget to lower midrange section. Now it seems like every single budget dac has to meet some stupid measurement standard and that along with the feature set are more important factors than the final sound, but they’ve kinda been forced to do that because in the budget scene the idea of measurements being everything has polluted that space so much that people won’t buy something that doesn’t measure at the top

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Agree with @M0N here, though I’ve not experienced nearly the extent of high end DACs. Moving from the SMSL SU-8 to the Cayin iDAC-6 Mk2 was a clear step up in really everything. It helped that it moved more toward my preferences and that I moved up in amps at the same time to the iHA-6.

The next move was to the V280, which I ran off of the iDAC for a while before picking up the Soekris 1541. That was again noticeable increase in separation, depth, and texture, but a bit more lean as well.

Fast forward a bit through a few other amps, including V281, XI Formula S, and XI Broadway, and I moved more portable and picked up the L&P P6 Pro. That was honestly the biggest jump in sound quality I think I’d experienced up to that point and still is since that’s as far as I’ve gone. It’s one of those things that you just can’t unhear and it’s hard to go back unless you’re just looking for a specific signature or something fun.

I have no doubt I could continue having those epiphanies if I get back into desktop gear and go higher with source gear.

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Yes, I find the trend with the measurements totally misleading for the community.
Sure, inbalacend are a bit annoying but often forgivable if it only affects when you turn up the volume and forget about it right away.
Usually caused more by the amp than the dac.
I find interpolation far more irritating.

Apart from that, it also poisons the approach of having two healthy ears.
Where you can decide for yourself whether it suits you or not was based on any measurements.
There are also mistakes in production, as we saw with the Topping E30, for example.

Expensive Dacs! I’m still cautious about that - I’ve never heard a really good one, except for one of the Macintosh devices that was also connected to the tube amplifier and sounded brilliant.
I also think that with expensive Dacs, implementation is important apart from the exclusive parts used.

On the subject of amplifiers, I’m personally out of the solid state amp.
My love has meanwhile become the tube amp.
Also because you have a bit more influence to adjust the sound to your needs.
Which would also be possible with the solid state with an equalizer.
But the tube amp just gives me that certain something that I love to hear.
Implementations are probably important there, too, regardless of whether it’s a tube or not.
In addition, components come into play, as I saw with the Little Dot 1+ after the repair, high-quality capacitors on the power supply and amplification have made another step forward with the Burson Op amp V5i.

Certainly, the tuning at the end is still important with the pairing of Dac+Amp in the chain, in addition to the headphones/speakers.
But there again, your own preferences are the decisive factor.
While others hate it, others like it.
But it’s the same with other things in life.

In the end it makes it easier if you know what you like and have an idea of how it should sound to you.
It’s different than when you’re a beginner and you don’t know where you’re going.

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That is very possible indeed! The problem then becomes that it is very hard to imagine what kind of difference it will make. You may as well try and describe the flavour of a meal I know but with an added spice I have never tasted! It makes it hard to understand what costlier dacs are doing when your experience doesn’t include them. What are they giving you that cheaper ones do not? Can you even answer that lol?

Hi Deleeh! Yes indeed it is one that can often cause a lot of angst. I had hoped to avoid that by phrasing it the way I did but you never know on the internet :slightly_smiling_face: Personally I think of these things as both a science and an art, as many things to do with human senses are. Chemistry can tell you what is in a meal but only experience personal preference will tell you if it will taste good. It’s interesting to read your different dac experiences, thanks. Do you have much experience of that step up from lower cost to mid cost dacs that Mon mentions? How did you experience that?

That’s a very interesting statement. Not just because it gives an indication of the change in quality that you hear but also because I love that the only ways we have to describe these things are by necessity slightly poetic. They tell me everything and nothing and I always enjoy that! Did it change how you experience the music? How it made you feel?

One of the things I find fascinating is that it seems that what one pays for is variation, imperfection, in a way. What costs money is a hand crafted sound and a clean, flavourless (in the sense that all the options sound the same) sound is easy to come by.

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Short answer everything, but a longer answer can elaborate more lol. So first of all you might figure out what texture actually is, because that’s something almost entirely absent in most lower end dacs. Spatially you gain much more depth and placement accuracy to where you can now more realistically visualize the stage. Dynamically you start to notice more microdynamics overall and how they aren’t smothered or absent as previously. Timbre takes an overall step forward and gets more believable. Speed and separation improve but more importantly get more organic and natrually presented. Overall presentation is much more convincing and has less things competing with each other. General smoothness tends to improve without sacrificing any technical ability or adding too much detriment. And I could go on, but basically you start to get the smaller nuances that really end up making music sound like music. Those changes might not seem that large, but they can make a very large impact for someone who is a good listener

I actually did a smaller write up of what I feel are some of the major differences you get for your money in my dac comparison thread, but of course things are generalized as hell so it really depends on what you go for and the rest of your gear in chain

So I’d actually disagree a bit there, what is easy to come by is a lifeless sound (aka basic implementations without much care to final sound), which is a flavor in itself, something that might be neutral but is colored by it’s apparent lack of technical ability. But true flavorless is exceedingly difficult and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that, that would to me mean basically real life music. Because flavor or coloration doesn’t only lie in signature, it also really lies in the more intangible aspects of things that end up changing how sound is portrayed

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This generally is a hard thing to describe, it used to be when people bought at dealers, and dealers had store fronts, that when you started in Hifi usually you would hear high end systems at the same time you purchased entry level ones, so you understood at least simplistically that what you were getting at the entry level was a compromise (not yo say not great sounding), and where you could go.

I was thinking recently on how to describe what was special about the truly great systems I’ve heard over the years, and it’s very much that they simply do everything well (and still don’t sound alike), you can have a system that sound fast, impactful and relaxed at the same time, one with extraordinary treble extension that doesn’t sound bright etc etc.

For the most part what people describe with higher end DAC’s, and higher end electronics components generally tend to focus around Bass reproduction, Resolution and Staging. This holds true up to insane expenditure levels.
But it isn’t really a useful description because often the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole.

DAC’s are one of those things it took me a while to work up to justifying the expenditure, I used to talk to @M0N about it as a clearly not logical valuation, if I were buying a turntable I’d start looking at much higher costs than I used to think about for DAC’s, so why would I expect a DAC that costs > 50x less than I’d consider a reasonable expenditure on a turntable to be competitive.
I farted around bought a number of entry level DAC’s, I can hear the difference between them, but I’m not sure it was enough to care about, in the end I said “fuck it”, and bought a Schiit Gungnir (pre Bifrost 2), and the difference was startling.
If a $800 (used) DAC was that much better than a $200 DAC, then my mind immediately went to well what does a $3000 DAC sound like or a $10000 DAC or a …

Now again all of this requires balance, DAC’s are not a panacea, they work in systems, you need comparable expenditure in Headphones and Amps before you dive headfirst into expensive DAC’s, and value is always a very personal thing.

But until you hear it, it’s hard to understand and when you do it’s hard to convey.

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That’s a better way of putting it, thank you. I did word that poorly in hindsight. I was thinking of it as not literally flavourless but functionally - in that it is what most people think of as pure since low cost gear seems to be the ones that sell most strongly on measurements and are what most people have heard?

That’s exactly the point I am at now which is what got me thinking about this. In the end I don’t think there are definitive answers but I do find it really interesting to hear what you all think as we all come with different knowledge and experience and crucially different ears!

This is what makes me keep coming back to food comparisons. I cook a lot and I can tell by one taste what a dish is missing and roughly how much of it is missing. My partner will ask me to check when she isn’t sure. I don’t have better taste buds than her I just have more experience cooking as I am slightly older and have cooked more complex things more often. I cannot explain to anyone without sufficient cookery knowledge how I know what to add to a dish to improve the flavour because the words I can use are really an approximation of what my senses are processing. I suppose by having this kind of conversation with people more widely experienced than myself I am hoping to have an insight into the things you can’t really explain? That’s why I want to ask if it changed how you felt about the music you hear.

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Yep, it’s the same why people associate tube amps as overly rich, gooey, sloppy and slow or mushy, and technically lacking but fun, when in reality a lot of higher end tube amps really don’t sound that way whatsoever and can vary a ton (I’ve had tube amps that are more analytical and technical than a lot of my solid states lol, all depends), but when you’ve only been exposed to things like a darkvoice 336 or little dot mk2, you get that impression. But if you tried a lot of the higher end sub 1k tube amps you’d realize they really aren’t like that, even moreso if you go higher.

I think it’s really just a case of you don’t know what’s missing or what could improve until you actually try it. As your palette expands and you become more experienced with what’s out there, things really change. You start to notice flavors and textures, and ways of putting together a meal that you now start to value quite a bit after you’ve had it, and realize without some of that things just aren’t as impressive or satisfying

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I can enjoy music on a $10 set of earbuds directly out of my phone. The fact is I enjoy listening to music.

I do however listen differently (more actively) on decent gear and I enjoy it more on higher level gear.

I’m a very “active” listener, in that if I’m listening to music, usually that is the activity I am performing.
I do background listen, but if for example I’m doing something at work that requires my attention, I don’t listen to music at the same time. To a lot of my peers that makes me odd, but to me doing both of those at the same time distracts from both of them.

But how and why you listen and what you get out of listening is a very personal thing.

I saw a recent study using brain MRI’s that suggested that significant number of people don’t have any significant response to listening to music, I’d have taken the fact everyone would have some response as a fact before that.

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I totally agree with @M0N . In my experience, I didn’t notice many differences in the dacs I heard under $1,000.00 USD with the exception of the Bifrost 2 and Soekris dac1321. Above that price range, you start to notice differences (although with delta sigma dacs, the differences still aren’t too drastic until you spend a bit more IMO).

So you aren’t alone in what you experienced. Many dacs under $1,000.00 have similar designs and implementations and retail price vs R&D costs definitely is a limiting factor in this equation.

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Hello,
To answer your question.No.
I already had the Rme Adi 2 in the house, which was the most expensive one so far.
Everything else was a Fostex Hp A3 that I owned myself but gave away.
Fostex Hp A4 Bal sent back again.
I still have the Cambridge Audio Dacmagic100, but it will leave me.
Matrix Audio Ipro mini 2S remains in the stereo chain.
And Singxer Sda 2 will also stay, as well as the Little Dot dac 1.

I just didn’t like the Rme, even though it has an Akm chip which I prefer, I personally didn’t find it well tuned and see the device more for studio applications than for hi-fi.
What was impressive was the technical gadgetry it contained.
Loudness in dac’s would be quite good if it’s a dac/amp otherwise the function would also be good to see in headphone amps in the stand alone variant.
Since you are subtly raising a cut-off point that would sometimes be important for headphones.
You can hear the difference in stereo systems that loudness sounds more pleasant in the ear.
I don’t think an Eq is necessary if the Dac/amp or is well tuned.

Often you are always smarter when you have bought dacs that you don’t like later.
If I had known that the Little Dot Dac was quite similar to the Singxer, I would have preferred to spend the money on an R2R.
As is so often the case, you are always smarter afterwards.

The only good system I’ve heard was Macintosh, where everything was just right, even if technically they like to colour the sound a bit, it sounds right to my ears at that moment.

That could also be a difference between the cheap and expensive Dacs.
While the inexpensive ones are perhaps more unsophisticated, the expensive ones do the opposite.
And then they sound more right to the ears.
Often you miss something in the cheap Dacs where you think it could be more powerful.
But it’s similar with cheap headphone amplifiers.
In the end, it depends on other factors.
Apart from the implementation combination
of the Dac and the amplifier, or the tuning of the Dac/amp.
There will probably never be a headphone that will emphasise everything in the right place.
With dac’s and amplifiers too, probably.

The Macintosh system I heard with a Denon D5200 sounded phenomenal there.
The realisation only came when I listened to the Denon on a headphone amplifier that sounded bright, glaring and sharp in its tuning.
On the Macintosh system I came to the realisation that if you take the time to tune them, even headphones like the Denon will shine.
But of course such a system costs money - and not too little.

Of course you want to have something like that if you are willing to pay for it.
That is up to each person.
The decision is up to you.
As you can see, you can create a great system with inexpensive Dacs and equipment, maybe even with used equipment to reach your goal.

If you already have a dac that is cheap and can reach the midrange, it is already worth a lot.

The point about neutrality, unfortunately there is not much to hear about it but there are a few manufacturers like Singxer with their Su 2&6, Matrix Audio spidf2 which are a kind of Dac where the goal is to galvanically isolate Usb against jitter and many other technical things that are helpful with cheap Dac’s in combination.
And are also very good on a stereo system if it has a coax input.
But I haven’t been able to hear much difference in good implementations.
On the Singxer Sda 2 it made a difference and on the Little Dot Dac I found it minimal, but I noticed more of a house sound from the Su 2.
I thought for a moment that it was more than 10 years old and didn’t need such a thing.
But I haven’t really thought about it yet, it was more the first thing I noticed when I listened to it.

My personal goals for the future are already set in the direction of R2R, but I haven’t yet decided which device it should be.
Soekris has a bit of a delivery problem at the moment,
Denafrips Ares 2 would be interesting as a starter.
But for a bit more money there are candidates that are again above the Ares 2.
Let’s see where the journey takes us.

At the end of the day, you decide for yourself what is good for you, hardly what others say. A lot of things are hyped too much and it’s a good decision if you know your own preferences.

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Agree with almost everything everyone’s saying here. So +1 to all of this.

Just to add in, I’m relatively new to the DAC world so you could say my experience is “fresh off the boat.” This is exactly what I experienced making the jump from an RME to a Spring 3. I was having a hard time explaining the difference to make it easier to understand for other people, aside from the improved timbre, dynamics, spacial recreation, etc…

I think the reason why it’s hard to explain is that we think that a DAC will “change” our headphones such as making it brighter, smoother, punchier, whatever. Although you can tell differences within comparing other higher-end DACs, looking at the bigger picture they don’t really change how our headphones sound like how an amp or a different headphone can to our ears. If you look at it from a different angle, DACs seem to be about information and presentation (how the music is being played back and presented to you).

Once I thought of it this way, it became much easier to digest the differences, at least for me. Don’t know if others share the same train of thought as me, but at the end of the day you’ll just have to try it out for yourself.

You mentioned that you cook a lot. So I guess a similar analogy would be plate presentation. If the plate or dish doesn’t look good to you then you’ll probably won’t enjoy your meal as much as you had originally thought. You can look at it as headphones = different dishes, amps = quality of ingredients, and DAC = presentation of food. All are equally important and contribute to a satisfying meal.

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This is the best discussion/explanation/comparison of dacs I have seen. Even tho most levels are beyond my budget it is a fascinating read and highly informative. Thanks to all, and especially to @Gothique for posing the question
in an open-ended way. Indeed it is both science and art…technical aspects and the poetry to describe them. AND a matter of Taste and level of discernment!

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Great comparison with the plates, you couldn’t have explained it any better.:+1:

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That’s very much how I have thought of it. I suppose because it fits with the experience of amps and headphones which is already a familiar one at entry level?

This analogy is perhaps the most enlightening I’ve ever seen for me personally, thanks! I’ve always had trouble placing what effect to look for in a more expensive dac, to understand what kind of effect it might give and this works wonderfully for me. I think it gets at the subtle but important impact those with the listening experience have tried to explain. I need to re-read all the other comments with this in mind now, I think.

I am so glad to have found somewhere I feel able to ask complex questions, knowing that they will be treated in the spirit they are asked and will get thoughtful and interesting discussion.

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For me, yes. That jump in sound quality made it that much easier to be immersed in the music, much in the same way a live performance is experienced. My sonic goals are always closer to realism…is it believable to my ear to where I could close my eyes and imagine the space the recording took place, and everything sounds (my perception of) natural, as it would in real life.

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There’s also something about the specific way that DACs change the music that makes it difficult for me to A/B them against each other, since the differences are things like clarity and space and blackness and timbre.

At least for me, it’s /much/ easier to hear the differences in DACs if I have a long listening session with one before switching to the other. I imagine as I get more experience, I’ll be able to hear the differences more quickly/easily, but this is what makes the differences jump out for me when comparing. (However, this could also just be something about how my specific brain works, since the way I typically listen to music is over more extended sessions.)

Also, for what it’s worth, my progression was from an SMSL DAC to a Bifrost 2 to an Exogal Comet (paid roughly double when making each jump) and the differences were pretty noticeable to me, but whether it’s worth the expense depends a lot on what you enjoy and your finances and whatnot. I personally really like the electronics side of things: I upgraded both my DAC and amp to multi-kilobuck levels and I’m only now looking at TOTL headphones, lol.

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