Do all modern dacs sound the same when converting 16 /44.1. Or are there some better than others.
It's interesting that musicians which should have little hear loss have detected easily the motherboard. I'm pretty sure we are not egal in sensitivity and maybe 1or 2÷ can can be more sensitive to subtle differencesHi Standin!
Just last week the results were published of a well designed scientific test of over 100 experienced listeners to answer exactly your question. The discussion HERE. It is LONG...in 3 parts, but not too hard to understand, and certainly worth the read if you are serious about finding the answer to your question.
RANT: I am disappointed and frankly surprised by most of the answers you have received so far. You ask an excellent question and have received mostly responses that are either techno-babel nonsense or totally subjective. The techno-babel is nonsense because you can argue digital theory all day without ever addressing the question "can you hear it". The simple answer is that if a DAC is defective or poorly designed you can hear that at 16/44, but almost no people can otherwise. Those that statistically can here differences between DACs of widely varying quality (like a high end OPPO vs a Noisy Motherboard DAC) still make more wrong guesses than right.
The other subjective opinions offer what is perhaps good advice (I really like the build quality and features of the RME DACs too) but say nothing about whether it will sound different (without its sophisticated DSP EQ settings turned on) than a $99 Sanskrit 10th. It almost certainly won't. That is, it will not play back 16/44 noticeably more accurately or sound different. But if you want additional features like an excellent digital tone control, you got it.
@GGrochThe article was interesting and what is shown is also that while majority cannot easily discern the sounds some where more sensible and could discern. And that was not necessarily the audiophile ones.
RANT: I am disappointed and frankly surprised by most of the answers you have received so far. You ask an excellent question and have received mostly responses that are either techno-babel nonsense or totally subjective.
For people like me that are more sensitive it prooves that it's not placebo to have some preferences. And that we don't know yet what parameters make this preference. So reviews here may be incomplete for such people that are more sensitive.
On conclusion it's writtenOf course that's nonsense. If you bothered to read the Archimago article and were able to understand it, you would have seen that there was only a single outlier among the DACs.
Remember that science is based on empirical observations to confirm or reject results. Consider these test results as "data points". Nothing here is dogma. In time, perhaps the conclusions may change with further systematic testingI wonder if Amir can stick a tag equivalent to the "Technical Expert" one on people who are clueless about audio science, but are happy to spew nonsense anyway. Maybe "Dunning-Kruger"?
Hi Standin!
Just last week the results were published of a well designed scientific test of over 100 experienced listeners to answer exactly your question. The discussion HERE. It is LONG...in 3 parts, but not too hard to understand, and certainly worth the read if you are serious about finding the answer to your question.
RANT: I am disappointed and frankly surprised by most of the answers you have received so far. You ask an excellent question and have received mostly responses that are either techno-babel nonsense or totally subjective. The techno-babel is nonsense because you can argue digital theory all day without ever addressing the question "can you hear it". The simple answer is that if a DAC is defective or poorly designed you can hear that at 16/44, but almost no people can otherwise. Those that statistically can here differences between DACs of widely varying quality (like a high end OPPO vs a Noisy Motherboard DAC) still make more wrong guesses than right.
The other subjective opinions offer what is perhaps good advice (I really like the build quality and features of the RME DACs too) but say nothing about whether it will sound different (without its sophisticated DSP EQ settings turned on) than a $99 Sanskrit 10th. It almost certainly won't. That is, it will not play back 16/44 noticeably more accurately or sound different. But if you want additional features like an excellent digital tone control, you got it.
Do you have ideas of the reason? I don't think noise is the reason because noise in the records of real music is generally much higher than -104 db. Then noise of the recording masks noise at -104 db. I believe precision of clock can make differences also what do u think? Also the mitherboard may have an output that has less power to drive the amp ( or impedance mismatch). And the oversampling filter could be less precise. Do you think measuring sine wave show the precision of a resampler? Maybe we should measure if the output frequency obtained is exaxtly 1khz or mybe is 1.001 khz. Do such test exists to measure precision on the freqency?Okay, I can answer the question definitively. No, not all DACs sound the same playing 44.1/16 audio. Does that ease you in you rant?
And about that noisy motherboard wasn't the noise at - 104 db? I'm wondering if that is the reason.
I just tried DeltaWave. With default setting, compared with the original 1644 files, clicked "Match", waited for it to finish, then selected File > Save Delta Wave... then here are the waveforms, track 1, 2, 3, 4 are file A (AsRock mainboard), B (iPhone 6), C (Oppo), D (Sony SACD).Okay, I can answer the question definitively. No, not all DACs sound the same playing 44.1/16 audio. Does that ease you in you rant?
And about that noisy motherboard wasn't the noise at - 104 db? I'm wondering if that is the reason.
Do all modern dacs sound the same when converting 16 /44.1. Or are there some better than others.
For people like me that are more sensitive it prooves that it's not placebo to have some preferences.
I don't think it is a small frequency shift. Yes you can test for that. Pretty common for devices to be plus or minus 100 ppm on speed. As for what it might be I'm working on it and will report if I see something that looks like it is the reason.Do you have ideas of the reason? I don't think noise is the reason because noise in the records of real music is generally much higher than -104 db. Then noise of the recording masks noise at -104 db. I believe precision of clock can make differences also what do u think? Also the mitherboard may have an output that has less power to drive the amp ( or impedance mismatch). And the oversampling filter could be less precise. Do you think measuring sine wave show the precision of a resampler? Maybe we should measure if the output frequency obtained is exaxtly 1khz or mybe is 1.001 khz. Do such test exists to measure precision on the freqency?
I've been busy and haven't used Deltawave on Arch's files yet. I'm going to get to that maybe later today.I just tried DeltaWave. With default setting, compared with the original 1644 files, clicked "Match", waited for it to finish, then selected File > Save Delta Wave... then here are the waveforms, track 1, 2, 3, 4 are file A (AsRock mainboard), B (iPhone 6), C (Oppo), D (Sony SACD).
How about your results?
PS: iPhone and Oppo use minimum phase filter, AsRock and Sony are linear phase.
Crowd Chant:
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Wild World:
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Ok i can do it. Well just send me files with accoustic instruments and good dynamic range. I've no ideo of the threshold of thd i can hear neither if it's the factor that is most important to my preferences.You haven't proven you're more sensitive though You need to do a controlled test first before you can make statements like that.
PS do you have Foobar? I can prepare some files for you with noise and distortion added that you can then use to test yourself against the originals using Foobar's ABX comparator. You just need to send me your preferred test track(s) and the levels/types of noise/distortion you think you can detect and I can do the rest.
Ok i can do it. Well just send me files with accoustic instruments and good dynamic range. I've no ideo of the threshold of thd i can hear neither if it's the factor that is most important to my preferences.
Maybe we could start with a level and redo the test until i detect a difference. We could do the same test with a file converted to 48khz to see i i can detect effect of the frequency converting . And same test with different filters
If i made test with shuffle on my portable player is it ok? (Click next then listen to see how i like it compared to the one before and then looking number of the track)
Thank you