Dac Sounds

[Deleeh]

No, it’s not because we live in Europe.
The problem is that we can very quickly travel to another country or regional areas where cultural differences are very different, especially when we travel to another country.
When I travel here in Germany and I am in another state, I sometimes have difficulties to understand their culture, which is normal for them, for me it’s more like "What’s going on here?
Coronavirus was an extreme example.
In some states of each country, toilet paper was bought more than usual, even pasta, flour, sugar, canned food.

In America you travel 500-1000 kilometers/miles and you’re still in America.
And you realise the main culture is there and there are more cultural differences from the state.
That’s why certain basic principles that are there are just normal which for us Europeans would never come into question or hardly at all.Like borrowing seems to be normal for you there which for us would hardly come into question.If then grudgingly.Even among Germans it’s more of a what do you want? Even with the car, that’s where it starts. Even if it’s only a car, it’s Germany’s favourite piece of metal.
It’s easier if you know each other, but even there you need a basic trust.

Personally, I think it’s a shame, I feel the same way as you.
I can occasionally get my wife involved but she has her limits and says openly and honestly that it sounds good but she can’t hear any difference.
When it comes purely to headphones, we are usually in agreement when it comes to the features.
But when it comes to dac’s and amplifiers it’s over.
Friends also wave it off with you’re out of your mind, then wonder at the end that music always sounds great.
But if you go deeper into the matter, then they wave it off.
The funny thing is that when they occasionally show their new stuff, it’s the latest junk that’s being sold.
Where I think if you had come to me I could have given you better for the same money.
The statement is always often also with families, but that certainly costs a lot.
Which doesn’t even have to be the case, but oh well.

Of course my equipment is always growing a bit.
Although I actually said that’s enough now, I still see other great things that I would like to have in my must have and must have collection.
In the meantime I have said that I want to have something from every base, i.e. a good solid state, tube amplifier, hybrid amplifier, Dac, R2R dac and whatever else there is.
Then once bought properly and hopefully have the next decade peace in the equipment.
Am I getting anywhere?
Yes, better than I thought.
A custom hybrid amp is work in progress. That will cost maximum of 600€.
The Feliks Euforia was added.
Aeon R/T closed bought a few months ago,Lcd2C was added at the end of last year.
Singxer Su 2 in April
And a R2R Dac I also have in mind which will take some time.

But the goal would be to make all the equipment compatible with each other with subtle differences.
If you’re in the mood for a change.

But as @nickmimi said, priorities change.
My real preference has changed since I started 3 years ago.
I love planar headphones when they are good, and tube amps.
That’s where I go weak, unfortunately.
But that’s okay.Even when the wife say‘s oh noooo Not aaaggain​:grin:

[Polygonhell]

@Gothique

So yes. I feel like this might be the heart of the subjectivist / objectivist divide for a lot of people. Sometimes it is annoying to hear that the gear you have lovingly collected and enjoy listening to is actually just very average. I can empathise with those who respond strongly even if I think they are misguided.

Yes this is certainly a large part of why it’s so “sticky”, but the whole subjectivist/objectivist thing predates the internet, and pulls in people who are insensitive to cost. The obsession with a single metric thing though is new,

Most people at some point go through the “what the artist intended” phase, and that’s the core of where all this comes from. It’s such a compelling argument, it reduces a lot of grey to black and white, there is a “correct” way for this to sound. I started on the extreme subjectivist side, had heard cables make a difference very early on, I went through my what the artist intended phase later in the early 90’s, spent a lot of money on studio equipment, finally decided it sounded like shit and moved back to it’s about my experience with the music.

A lot of that had to do with the circles I was moving in, at various points, the group you communicate with has a huge impact on the way you think, the internet makes those circles bigger, and the group think is harder to escape.

Cost though is a big thing, I hate to see bad entry level gear recommended by people because I remember when 300 pounds was a LOT of money for me, and how long it would take for me to be able to recover from a misstep.

[M0N]

@Polygonhell

Most people at some point go through the “what the artist intended” phase, and that’s the core of where all this comes from. It’s such a compelling argument, it reduces a lot of grey to black and white, there is a “correct” way for this to sound.

Might as well address that here too, I had an answer to someone elsewhere that I think is also applicable here, but I’ll tweak it

Intent

What the hell did the artist intend? It’s not like you can go and ask them, as I’d guess they really can’t fully explain their intent through words. There’s really no way of knowing, there’s so many factors that go into it. The closest you might get would be “what did the mastering and production engineers intend” and even that’s a long shot. One big problem is the question of was intent ever realized in the first place, it’s a game of compromises, who’s intent took priority more? The artist themselves? The recording engineer? The mastering house? The label? And more. And let’s say to take out variables, the music was entirely created throughout the entire process by the artist, did they actually have the skills and tools to realize their internal intent? And then we get into the actual process and idea of how things are produced and how there are limitations there. Which will take awhile to talk about. Basically just assume that true intent is a lost cause at this point

Lets say you are over that and want to shoot for “what the final mastering engineer heard,” well ok, to recreate that, you would need the exact same room, same equipment, and exact same ears and brain to hear that with yourself, which you can see most likely isn’t reasonable to do. That’s not intent either, that’s just getting as close as to hearing what they might hear. And another question would be do you really want to hear that anyways? You have to keep in mind that a large amount of music is recorded for the common person on their common setup, so the final product is optimized to sound good on that lower end gear. It could have sounded excellent if it were geared for playback on higher end gear, but then the common person wouldn’t enjoy it as much. And yes, as soon as you actually have to record that music, some intent may be lost, but that all depends on the artist and how they feel, which you can’t really know anyways. I commonly hear people say “oh well some people record and work on somewhat cheaper studio gear so it’s useless to go higher end than that” which to me is a stupid take, because is it not just both interesting and cool to hear more than potentially the people making the music did??? Sure you might notice more things skipped over or missed because of that, but to me that’s a deeper connection to the music regardless.

Getting more into studio gear, people commonly think studio gear = cleanest as possible or “uncolored” when it’s really quite the opposite. Studio gear can be the most colored gear you can find out there, some pieces may be clean, but the majority isn’t from my experience. It exists to add coloration and distortion most of the time, but in a desirable way. Typically playback systems are on the more clean side of things, but they aren’t really systems designed to have the music sound it’s best, rather to inform the people working on it what changes they are making more easily, so if you are going for true to life accuracy I personally wouldn’t look towards studio playback gear either, because some real life accuracy is sacrificed for responses and characteristics that emphasize flaws or artificially dissect what’s being worked on or present music in a way that is more easy to work with, not a way that is more convincing overall. Or at least that’s what I find most of the time. You just have to keep in mind that the mastering engineer or final person touching the audio (and honestly throughout the whole process this is happening) isn’t intending for the music to sound good on his setup, his job is to make the music sound good on most average setups, which means appealing to the lowest common denominator the majority of the time (yes audiophile labels will be different, but we are talking most music here), so by recreating a studio setup, you still aren’t getting true intent imo. Also have seen some associate studio gear with better value, and personally haven’t really seen that, how the market works over there isn’t really all that different from high end audio, and also you see both high and audio and pro gear merge together in the high end anyways so it really just feeds into one in the end imo.

So now that hopefully it’s been realized that “artist intent” is a far away lost cause, what do you shoot for now? Personally the most rewarding way to go is to shoot for whatever brings you the most enjoyment, if that’s towards full realism, if that’s toward pleasing deviation, if that’s toward a studio reference, or whatever else that’s what will typically bring the most rewarding experience for the hobby. Whatever you feel connects you to the music more and wants to continually suck you into this hole of a hobby. Trying to make somebody else’s setup work for you or create a setup around goals that can never feasibly be achieved is really getting into wasted effort.

@Polygonhell

Cost though is a big thing, I hate to see bad entry level gear recommended by people because I remember when 300 pounds was a LOT of money for me, and how long it would take for me to be able to recover from a misstep.

Yep. There are great pieces at affordable prices, but there are also bad ones too, a whole lotta bad or meh ones actually because people have figured out it’s easier to push those bad products to the entry level market because of how things work and how uninformed and inexperienced people are. So it does drive me nuts to see sometimes really just garbage being push for no real reason. And this is one of the things that also propagates some of the misinformation around audio too. The real snake oil and snake oil salesman lie in the lower end of the market, not the higher end lol

[Salguson]

@Polygonhell

Most people at some point go through the “what the artist intended” phase

I find this whole concept rather stupid in the light of hifi gear/playback. in my opinion artist intend is to bring emotion/message from him/her to listener. That emotion is hidden in the music itself and if the gear you have/like plays that in the most pleasing way for you on cheap free earbuds than that’s it.
With that said if the highest possible quality of recording on the gear that matches you preferences enhances enjoyment of the music you love, than that’s what people should do and artist would be happy.
i don’t believe that artists compose music with intend of specific playback quality/characteristics in mind, except with what M0N said that it should sound good also on consumer gear.

[Gothique]

I completely agree with the points made about artist intent. Short of sitting down with the original artist and their sound engineer and producer and going through the music with them you can never really know. They might not even want to tell you even if they can. Interpretation is an important part of art. Artists of any kind rarely explicitly explain their work because there is no real point to doing so. Does it matter that most of the art more than a century old sitting in galleries is black with age and varnish and looks nothing like how it did when new? Does the fact that restoration is by necessity an act of interpretation mean that art is not like it originally was even after the varnish is refreshed and the colours renewed matter? One might as well say that unless you were stood next to the artist at the moment they finished the last brush stroke it is not the ‘true’ experience. What I love about this is that it means that my interpretation and experience can be just as valid and meaningful as anyone else’s. What makes me want more detail, more fidelity, more depth from audio gear is not the search for a truth but that the more you can hear, the more there is to hear. Long time ago I wrote a master thesis about the compositional method of John Cage and it opened my mind up to the idea of music as a living, changing artwork rather than a static, fixed thing.

Then we get to how the listening technology affects the music. Harpsichords being able to play multiple notes at once changes music forever. Crooners came about as early radios couldn’t deal with loud, high pitch sounds. Electric blues and early metal are absolutely perfected for the nature of vinyl playback and modern pop lacks bass because teenagers listen on tiny little phone speakers. It’s a fascinating evolution and one of the things I think pure measurements miss out on. The act of listening changes the music which changes how we listen and on and on. Haven’t even started in on how cultures change it.

Ah, music is just awesome

I feel like I’ve learnt a lot. I have a much better idea, I think, than I did when I posted my question, about what dacs arre actually about beyond the simple conversion of 0s and 1s into a wave.

[case-henry]

Why is it that the measurement crowd (and I’m not suggesting that measurements have no place) never acknowledge that people have ears??? Things sound different to different folks and most people have preferences on the sounds they like to hear. I know that a lot of people (Mon for example) don’t like ZMF Aeolus headphones at all. Yet to ME, they sound wonderful. I will grant you that I like my Verite better, but it is in a very different price range. The sounds that please us are often personal, measurements are for “one size fits all” type people IMO.

[M0N]

@case-henry

Why is it that the measurement crowd (and I’m not suggesting that measurements have no place) never acknowledge that people have ears???

Because they want “objective” data and therefore it can’t involve humans, their goal is to find what looks the best to a machine, not sounds the best to a human (of course there are people who are actually reasonable with measurements, but they aren’t the majority anymore)

@case-henry

The sounds that please us are often personal, measurements are for “one size fits all” type people IMO.

I mean measurements just aren’t for people, at all. Said this on another thread and that’s just generally how I view measurements at this point

@M0N

IMO measurements are actually subjective most of the time given how they are used. Because you can have measurement data that you take (actually objective, let’s ignore measurement methodology for simplicity lol), but the moment you interpret that data and say higher sinad = better or whatever, you now have voiced a subjective opinion on objective data. IMO it really is just a waste to try and objectify a hobby that is almost purely subjective. Go try and objectify art while you are at it. Nothing wrong with trying to use objective data to explain what you are hearing, but there is a problem to use objective data to determine what you hear. Use measurements to back up your listening, not listening to back up your measurements if you have to bring it up

Although this thread isn’t exactly about measurements it’s good to mention that, since measurements are constantly used to try and convince people there’s no benefit from going higher with a dac

[MazeFrame]

@case-henry

Why is it that the measurement crowd (and I’m not suggesting that measurements have no place) never acknowledge that people have ears???

The measurement crowd also fails to realise that the individual components making up their amplifiers are characterized with a number of curves, not single numbers.

Example: AD5532 graphs on page 12 and 13

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Edit:
When you are not just someone who is into metrology, then measurements when done by sane people are done to compare the Device under Test (= DUT) to some predefined performance figures.
When your DUT matches or exceeds the expectations, then it is objectively good.
When your DUT fails to meet criteria deemed important, it is objectively bad.

Doing “higher number better” is either:

1. A competition, like a car race
2. Marketing wank

[Andy77]

@NickMimi

sit in a very dark room and “watch” the music being played. Wrap your head around THAT comment and come back to me later. .

Agreed. I think my ability to hear, listen critically and understand what I’m hearing is the single best take away from my hifi experience. Even cheap ear buds sound better to me now than they did 3 years ago because my listening skills enhance the experience.

[Veritas]

@NickMimi

sit in a very dark room and “watch” the music being played. Wrap your head around THAT comment and come back to me later. .

I started wearing a blindfold now from @Littledrummerboy 's recommendation. Teleports me every time.

[Andy77]

I’ve started taking LSD when I listen. Teleports me every time.

[MazeFrame]

@Andy77

I’ve started taking LSD when I listen.

Wonder what happens when you combine that with stoner rock or some psytrance…?

[Andy77]

Haha! These days I prioritize a good night’s sleep.

The couple time that actually did happen it was the early 90’s and Phish was the thing, if I recall.

I think I also recall a bad experience that involved The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. But I can’t be sure.

[Littledrummerboy]

Eyyyy dope it helped! I know u closed ur eyes before but having the blindfold close em for u def works!

[esmse]

Again a bit late to the party but the first DAC I’ve heard that made me realize what a more expensive DAC can do was the Chord Qutest. You should be able to audition that in Belgium, maybe ask a loaner for the weekend with a dealer, its not unusual, music is a personal preference thing so they won’t be offended if you don’t buy. At least you’ll have some idea of what can be achieved and where higher DACS will go. Qutest goes for around 900 EUR used, I have not heard the Ares II, but compared to the Bifrost 2, the Qutest is more about changing presentation and the intangibles. A good deal in EU is also the Rega Dac, 200-400 eur used, warm side of neutral, good alternative for BF2/Ares II I think and pops up regularly.

[Gothique]

Interesting suggestions, thanks @esmse I’m not sure if shops here would be into lending things. Is it common thing where you are? It sounds like a great idea for them to offer. I’ve not heard of the Rega before. I found them sold via some Dutch shops and interestingly they are priced about 40 euros cheaper than the Ares II is from the licensed dealer in Germany. If they are more common second hand and at that price then it would be a very interesting alternative.

[Polygonhell]

Brick and mortar shops will generally “lend” gear out if they think they can sell it, or your an existing customer.
One thing worth noting is that DAC’s are going to be way easier to demo at a dealer, take your amp and headphones with you and let them know you’ll be doing that and need space.

[PABastien]

I first learned the difference between dacs whe I auditioned the hugo 2 and focal dac and the focal dac sounded like death and hugo didnt
The implementation and execution was so significantly improved that I just started researching the next step up and d
Got the hugo TT2

[Souldriver]

Only getting to this thread now but I wanted to note a few things before bed.

Synergy: just like implementation, this is a make or break. The difference between good and great synergy alone can be immense. While bad synergy is damning.

Artists Intent: go listen to Metallica’s St. Anger album. I recently went through all my music and got all my devices loaded with all my music again. No matter what device this album pops up on its shit. It doesnt matter what the artist, recorder, mixer, studio, whatever intended it is thin, stringy dry, unbalanced shit. I would spend more money running away from that intent than chasing it.

[Gothique]

One of the things you guys don’t have to put up with is going into any kind of technology related shop and having them talk down to you. I once had an argument with a dude half my age in a shop about which hard drive I wanted to buy. I went in with a bloody model number lol. I had to get him to get his supervisor to sell me the one I wanted! It’s not always but often enough that on the whole I avoid brick and mortar shops as so I don’t get annoyed lol