|
|
Post by macca on Dec 10, 2019 8:52:45 GMT
There is a lot of excitement and user experience on Hoffman regarding Denafrips ladder DACS. Considering one myself. In the end conventional DACs always are a bit two dimensional. Users are reporting many positive attributes of analogue sound from these products. Anyone getting 'excited' about a DAC is suspect right from the start. Someone tells me they are 'excited' about a DAC my first thought is 'mug punter'. Is it really user 'experience' or is it just user 'fantasy'? How many of them will be selling them on in six months or a year and moving on to the next big thing?
The signal on most of the LPs we own will have gone through a 'conventional DAC' when they were being cut. All that wonderful 3D sound reduced to 2D in a stroke and no way to ever recover it!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2019 9:44:01 GMT
Maybe DACs do all sound similar used for streaming, I wouldn't know. I only use a DAC for CD replay and there is a huge variation in the sound in this application.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2019 11:46:38 GMT
Maybe DACs do all sound similar used for streaming, I wouldn't know. I only use a DAC for CD replay and there is a huge variation in the sound in this application. Users are reporting large improvements in sound with ladder Dacs over bitstream when playing CDs. That is what is important - getting CD to the musicality level of good vinyl playback. |
|
|
|
Post by macca on Dec 10, 2019 11:59:46 GMT
yes but users report all kinds of absolute tosh about all sorts of crazy Sh#t. 'I put my DAC on a fancy isolation platform and the soundstage expanded 5 feet in every direction.' - That sort of thing. If they can imagine that why would I pay any attention to any of their subjective impressions? It's completely worthless feedback.
|
|
Bigman80
Grandmaster
The HiFi Bear/Audioaddicts/Bigbottle Owner
Posts: 16,399
Member is Online
|
Post by Bigman80 on Dec 10, 2019 13:14:37 GMT
Maybe DACs do all sound similar used for streaming, I wouldn't know. I only use a DAC for CD replay and there is a huge variation in the sound in this application. Users are reporting large improvements in sound with ladder Dacs over bitstream when playing CDs. That is what is important - getting CD to the musicality level of good vinyl playback. There is a lot of truth in that. It has been a critism levelled at DACs that they do not convey the same level of musicality as Analogue devices, and yes in the experiences ive had, that could quite easily be true BUT there was a DAC along the way that did have great musicality but measured abysmally. The DAC I am referring to is the very early Chameleon. Trouble is, the better the DAC measures, the less of that analogue magic exists. Which I presume, could mean (as I mentioned with Valves) musicality is directly linked to distortion, of which we know already that vinyl can never be as accurate or distortion free as Digital. There is nothing wrong with enjoying any piece of kit and again, there is no wrong way. It looks to me like quality DACs are enjoyed most by the people that value accuracy and total transparency above all else. |
|
|
|
Post by dsjr on Dec 10, 2019 14:30:55 GMT
Digital conveys pretty much everything that was in the source recording - I think I may say 'period!' on that based on my own experiences.. What digital doesn't do normally, is ADD the nice things analogue (vinyl) people love so much...
Adding measurable distortion deliberately at or on the fringes of easy perception is not really what 'high fidelity' is all about, in its purest sense anyway. To be honest, some amps well favoured here and there, add so much of their own character to get a 'musical involving' tone, adding more at the source probably doesn't matter so much as the amp would swamp it with its own distortions and limiting...
Has anyone here ripped a nicely played vinyl record and then compared the record (giving it time for the vinyl to recover) to the level matched digital dub? usually and level matched, they sound identical (I say 'pretty much' to cover myself). Anyone who's done this usually realises that digital is anything BUT 2-D.
Not many will understand and I'm just going to sound patronising and preachy again if I carry on, but all I can do is ask some of you to try these things. Once you do this properly, it's amazing how many bubbles seem to burst and the whole high end audiophile market is looked at in a very different way. The fact that some expensive to make dacs are almost certainly 'solving' an issue that doesn't exist then becomes obvious.
Had I the money and the space, I'd try to find a Sony 1630 pro processor. Huge great thing with 'bays' to plug the cards into and just the dac to use for CD's as these were what digitised so much of the music I listen to in the first place back in the day.
|
|
|
|
Post by antonio on Dec 10, 2019 15:04:38 GMT
I'm very happy listening to dacs in both our systems. You lads keep going over the same Sh#t that has been on many forums.  |
|
|
|
Post by macca on Dec 10, 2019 15:55:49 GMT
That's because the same Sh#t from other forums keeps getting repeated here. Ladder dacs are 'more analogue', NOS DACs are 'more analogue.'
What does 'more analogue' even mean?
You look at all the hundred odd DACs they have measured on ASR. barely a handful measure so bad you will actually have a chance of hearing it. Otherwise art best the differences will be tiny and really a matter of personal preference rather than 'better or worse'.
It's a DAC. it converts a file of digits into voltage variations. That's it. Why do people expect miracles from them? Why do people get 'excited' about them? It's like the wing mirror on your car - a simple tool that does a straightforward job.
I mean there are people out there who actually think they can hear pre or post ringing! And then they go back to their turntables with orders of magnitude more distortion and pronounce them as 'more analogue'. Sheer fantasy.
|
|
|
|
Post by sq225917 on Dec 10, 2019 19:17:57 GMT
X is more musical than y pretty much always means more distorted than. I've never heard of a musical bit of kit, carts excluded, that measures better than a claimed less musical piece of kit. It's just cobblers, brands trying to push product churn upon you.
If you want high fidelity, buy it, if you want an effects, box buy it. Neither is righter than the other.
|
|
|
|
Post by dsjr on Dec 13, 2019 15:37:02 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by sq225917 on Dec 13, 2019 17:54:14 GMT
But is it musically satisfying Dave.
|
|
|
|
Post by dsjr on Dec 13, 2019 20:14:43 GMT
Nah, 'course it isn't!  The music it's decoding though.... |
|
Bigman80
Grandmaster
The HiFi Bear/Audioaddicts/Bigbottle Owner
Posts: 16,399
Member is Online
|
Post by Bigman80 on Dec 17, 2019 6:40:58 GMT
Seems Steve Guttenberg is a fan of Denafrips:
|
|
|
|
Post by dsjr on Dec 17, 2019 9:35:28 GMT
That rings alarm bells immediately Can it be got in the UK and how much is it? Biggie will smile at this link. below is measurements and brief subjective appraisal of a HEADPHONE AMP which tests out better than most cheaper and many so called audiophile dacs I think. I link to this to show how far proper audio design has come making distortions all but inaudible and yes, the cost of it reflects small scale manufacture rather than mass produced in the tens of thousands... It appears te chap behind it is also 'Neurochrome.' www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/tom-christiansen-audio-hpa-1-headphone-amp-review.10416/See, I can't trust my particular ears at all as they change so much and have caught me out so often, so in the first instance I'd look here to something like this if I was after such a device. |
|
Bigman80
Grandmaster
The HiFi Bear/Audioaddicts/Bigbottle Owner
Posts: 16,399
Member is Online
|
Post by Bigman80 on Dec 17, 2019 9:49:59 GMT
That rings alarm bells immediately Can it be got in the UK and how much is it? Biggie will smile at this link. below is measurements and brief subjective appraisal of a HEADPHONE AMP which tests out better than most cheaper and many so called audiophile dacs I think. I link to this to show how far proper audio design has come making distortions all but inaudible and yes, the cost of it reflects small scale manufacture rather than mass produced in the tens of thousands... It appears te chap behind it is also 'Neurochrome.' www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/tom-christiansen-audio-hpa-1-headphone-amp-review.10416/See, I can't trust my particular ears at all as they change so much and have caught me out so often, so in the first instance I'd look here to something like this if I was after such a device. Lol, Yes it can, for about £550 so I read. Then Tax etc, so certainly not cheap! As for the HPA-1, yes. He's a smart cookie that TC. I am a huge fan of his work and if I used headphones, which I don't, I'd be all over it. |
|
|
|
Post by dsjr on Dec 17, 2019 10:42:38 GMT
Someone suggested it might make a good two-input active preamp, used from the headphone output...
|
|
Bigman80
Grandmaster
The HiFi Bear/Audioaddicts/Bigbottle Owner
Posts: 16,399
Member is Online
|
Post by Bigman80 on Dec 17, 2019 11:11:18 GMT
Someone suggested it might make a good two-input active preamp, used from the headphone output... Its got an Alps blue!!!!! Oh no. no, no |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2019 11:18:33 GMT
Someone suggested it might make a good two-input active preamp, used from the headphone output... Its got an Alps blue!!!!! Oh no. no, no Have you sought help with this?  |
|
Bigman80
Grandmaster
The HiFi Bear/Audioaddicts/Bigbottle Owner
Posts: 16,399
Member is Online
|
Post by Bigman80 on Dec 17, 2019 11:44:32 GMT
Its got an Alps blue!!!!! Oh no. no, no Have you sought help with this? I don't need help lol, everyone else does lol |
|
|
|
Post by macca on Dec 17, 2019 12:21:38 GMT
That rings alarm bells immediately Can it be got in the UK and how much is it? Biggie will smile at this link. below is measurements and brief subjective appraisal of a HEADPHONE AMP which tests out better than most cheaper and many so called audiophile dacs I think. lol, they measured the DAC in an LG smartphone on ASR and that tested better than a good chunk of the audiophile DACS too. But the penny's still not dropping for a lot of people. |
|
