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>Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all on my head but I mean listening to a £20000

>Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all on my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day... You were listening to £20,000 worth of amps and speakers, and you were most likely in an acoustically treated room. Also, novelty is almost always euphonic when it isn't overtly bad. This fact is often neglected. You hear something you didn't hear before and your brain immediately tells you that it sounds better, even if it doesn't actually represent higher fidelity. Actually making an objective judgement requires a careersworth of experience, or a test lab and the skills to use it. For example: you were listening to vinyl, which is covered in delicious noise and warm harmonic distortion, and is mastered differently. Highly euphonic, very novel if youve only ever heard the CD version before, but definitely not higher fidelity. BTW higher end DACs do sound better, but the rest of your signal chain needs to be really good for you to notice it. It's often to do with better phase accuracy between the left and right channels, which affects the soundstage, or stereo image. If your speakers/amp have loose timing however, you'll never be able to tell.

sanoli 11y ago
> higher end DACs do sound better This hasn't passed the blind tests either. A good, 100 dollar dac (a schiit or an odac) will sound just as good as a 1000 dollar dac.
- JonnieCache 11y ago
  Higher end DACs. My fireface 400 has many DACs in it and it cost £549 new when it came out, in 2007. It sounds obviously better than the ~£80 USB soundcards and various built-in DACs in laptops. I've done A/B testing. (I didn't buy it for the converters btw, I bought it for the features and the build quality, which are unmatched.) Forget about spending £1000s though. I'm sure that ODAC thing sounds better than the RME, I saw that test where it was identical to the various industry standard units.
  - neltnerb 11y ago
    Designing the circuitry around the DAC to provide ultra low noise reference voltages, to fully isolate ground loops, and provide a fully linear response (AC coupled, but linear in the relevant range) is not trivial even for 12-bits. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but lots of people do it wrong. Trivial sounding things like using a cheaper capacitor in the low pass filter or not finely regulating your power supply voltage can put audible noise onto things. Worse of course if the sound card is integrated into a computer due to the opportunity to pick up much greater ambient RF noise from other components, although that is less of a problem now than it used to be back when I could hear my hard drive kicking up on my speakers... In any event, I'd absolutely believe that the quality between a $100 DAC assembly and a $200 system is enough to be noticeable. More than that and I'm very skeptical. So I guess I don't really disagree with your statement, but I think that in current dollars $100 isn't necessarily enough to pay for solid underlying engineering and good components.

sanoli 11y ago

> higher end DACs do sound better This hasn't passed the blind tests either. A good, 100 dollar dac (a schiit or an odac) will sound just as good as a 1000 dollar dac.

JonnieCache 11y ago
Higher end DACs. My fireface 400 has many DACs in it and it cost £549 new when it came out, in 2007. It sounds obviously better than the ~£80 USB soundcards and various built-in DACs in laptops. I've done A/B testing. (I didn't buy it for the converters btw, I bought it for the features and the build quality, which are unmatched.) Forget about spending £1000s though. I'm sure that ODAC thing sounds better than the RME, I saw that test where it was identical to the various industry standard units.
- neltnerb 11y ago
  Designing the circuitry around the DAC to provide ultra low noise reference voltages, to fully isolate ground loops, and provide a fully linear response (AC coupled, but linear in the relevant range) is not trivial even for 12-bits. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but lots of people do it wrong. Trivial sounding things like using a cheaper capacitor in the low pass filter or not finely regulating your power supply voltage can put audible noise onto things. Worse of course if the sound card is integrated into a computer due to the opportunity to pick up much greater ambient RF noise from other components, although that is less of a problem now than it used to be back when I could hear my hard drive kicking up on my speakers... In any event, I'd absolutely believe that the quality between a $100 DAC assembly and a $200 system is enough to be noticeable. More than that and I'm very skeptical. So I guess I don't really disagree with your statement, but I think that in current dollars $100 isn't necessarily enough to pay for solid underlying engineering and good components.