Just going to leave this picture here of my rack so @ragecandy can laugh at me and my audiophile ways.
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Damn, I need to build a rack like this. Really dig the looks
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DAC do sound differently, just like amps sound different as well. sometimes it’s slap you in the face difference, sometimes it’s a more nuanced, roll it around in your mouth different. what helps confuse the issue is how much stuff is coming out of China that sounds very similar.
a perfect example of different would be tube DAC vs. R2R DAC vs. solid state DAC.
oh, and don’t forget the headphone…sometimes you just don’t get the synergy it needs. granted, the amp is often a big part of that, but with the DAC in the chain, it has influence as well.
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Chord DACs also have a different signature.
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no doubt…and they are solid state…and even then, depending on the work done, the same chipset can sound vastly different between brands.
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LOL here we go! I just had to share this. Honestly, for the most part, I agree with the presenter.
I’ve been through a few dacs in my speaker system over the past 10 years. The extremes were Holo Audio May L3 (for 4 years) to now Fosi ZD3. For me and my hearing there just isn’t enough difference to warrant the spend. I feel $ are vastly better spent on speakers/headphones/iems and/or room acoustics as these can be massively different. Notice I didn’t say better rather different.
I don’t agree with this idea of a scam. We scam ourselves more than anything. We convince ourselves of ideas, beliefs, etc. If one person spends $50k on a dac and believes it sounds better (and they’re not jeopardizing their financial health although no one should care but the individual) then more power to them. If another says their $150 dac sounds great…so be it. While in my experience they don’t sound identical the differences were ‘lost in the noise’ as they say
I would like to add, I just don’t get this almost religious disagreement regarding the topic with polar opposite views (I also don’t subscribe to religion but that’s another matter, maybe). The hardware is so tangental to what I feel should be the goal of enjoying music. I do and have enjoyed trying different hardware but not at the expense of the joy of music.
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the influence of a DAC is more nuanced than an amp, so not as immediately discernable. but as you gain an ear with your headphones, speakers and such, you may also find yourself wanting to more finely tune to hit the sound preference you’re chasing. it’s there though and probably something a person that does a lot more critical listening than for pleasure, would want to play with.
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The idea that the implementation has no impact and every DAC with the same chip sounds the same is demonstrably false. Even if you put aside the various filter settings and so on of the chips, each DAC has its own output stage which is doing amplification. I built a preamp recently and I changed a single capacitor in the gain stage and it changed the sound of the preamp. You can’t tell me that different output stages don’t sound different.
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Yes, I thought about that later. Things within the device will matter for sure. When he said “a well designed implementation” I took it at face value, but in retrospect I think that is a broad characterization.
At the end of the day people are gonna do what they are gonna do. I have never listened to a “high end” DAC and probably never will. It would be very useful if I could, as it might provide a different perspective. In the meantime, I am happy with what I have.
I put that argument to bed when I changed from a Topping E30 to
a Bifrost 2.
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it’s most definitely going to be more obvious / noticeable as you step up the quality…but it’s still going to be very nuanced, not earth shattering like Marvin’s big KA-BOOM!
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