This where the audiophile “magic fairy dust” comes into play.
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i just wanted to know how to make music sound better… using an equalizer is annoying and i feel i need to amplify the trebel and mids since my headphones have a bit too much bass that it muddies some of the vocals. i mostly just want something that says “ok here is some pretty stuff”
Unless a DAC is deliberately engineered to colour the sound then most are transparent I think. I think headphone amplifiers make more difference as if you have hard to drive headphones then a beefy amplifier with a lot of headroom does make a big difference and is necessary to make the most of headphones. Even there if you have very easy to drive headphones you probably don’t need an amplifier. I think some objectivists obsess over numbers to the point where it just becomes another form of subjectivism. If you do a level matched double blind test of a DAC (or amplifier ) it’s quite eye opening as I find differences tend to get much smaller. I think if you get brain overload and an anxiety attack discerning differences in a level matched double blind test then it indicates that even where differences can be discerned they are basically irrelevant.
I can say level of detail retrieval is noticeable with some DACs comparing delta sigma to multi-bit dacs.
Yeah once you enter r2r/multibit/fpga land it gets pretty nuts lol
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i’d mostly need to know if things will actually sound better with a sub 200 dollar dac since i dont even notice much a difference and i wanna be able to hear what FLAC and other formats really give you so i get big audiophile penis points
Geshelli will be QUITE nice in the sub $200 range. SMSL-SU8 I’ve heard amazing things if you can wait for a run of it on Drop for $185. After that, you won’t hear much difference as M0N says, mostly because the analog after the chip is where you hear the difference. Topping is a no brainer too in that range as well.
Just when it comes to R-2R/Multibit… it’s hard to find good and cheapish solutions.
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sadly i have to deal with the space of a bed barely the width of my body with one elbow open
Schiit Hel
maybe… i’ll figure it out
There are many ways to gimp a DAC.
A few options:
- fuck up the VHDL for the FPGA (if one is used)
- Wire one channel backwards
- stray capacitance in resistor network (don’t ask me how I know)
- Unstable power supply
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Also missing your impedance matching for buffer drivers. Stray inductance too causing a resonate ringing in the analog portion.
My FAVORITE FPGA failure of all time was when the Xilinx Virtex 5’s just came out, the processor I built for the test boards kept failing for some reason. Cause? issue with the silicon and when we were done compiling gate arrays we found an issue where some address bus lines were failing because 4 bits were ties together. THAT was a pisser to find and send to the manufacturer. You know those chips were never cheap to begin with.
Ladder dac’s have tolerance issue with all their resistors, which means they are lower volume and have weird yield issues even at the high cost.
And the #1 worst way to gimp a DAC, taking it a part and shocking it for an EOS/ESD failure. You don’t need a grounding strap when taking this stuff apart but you can’t be a moron either.
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Been spending some time listening to the DACs I own. I’m in the market for a DAC but waiting to a good deal on a more upscale multibit one to come along, so no rush.
Topping D10
iFi Nano iOne
Geshelli Enog 2 (used in balanced mode)
Bel Canto DAC2 manufactured in (2003)
Despite it being 17 years old, the Bel Canto DAC sounds best to me, markedly better than the Topping and the iFi and moderately better than the Geshelli. The wide world of DACs is a funny place to be. I do look forward to a modern R2R now that I’ve learned to listen or maybe just have more resolving equipment to actually be able to discern differences between the DACs I have.
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