The actual production quality of the music matters way more then the type of lossless format. You can have a 16 bit 44.1 CD that sounds better then a dsd if it is mastered better on the CD
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awesome! Z says any good DAC is fine to pair with an amplifier. and this DAC is balance for only a 150 bucks! and it looks just like the 789! so Iām going to pair this with mine which is coming in November. going to look so cool!
Is this a proper upgrade over the ODAC? I will use the unbalanced output to connect to my amp that powers my speakers. And Iāll probably get the 789 down the road too.
Yes and no, as it is going to be a sight bit better, but imo I would only consider it if you want balanced as its not that big of an improvement
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Just got my Grace Sdac Balanced and i must say i really like it. One thing that surprised me is it seems to create more soundstage. I thought all DACās would sound the same given some minor differences. But this is different from my Schiit Modi.
I got it plugged in to my Schiit Magni through the unbalanced port via 3.5 to RCA as i dont have my 789 yet. Not only does it seem to give more soundstage but it has an effect on my Sendy Aivaās. On the Modi i had to EQ the treble down and sometimes even the bass. But on the Grace DAC i dont! So thats very interesting.
Over all it has really good sound. Iām enjoying it a lot listening to Simple Minds. it does seem to lack body a little bit, if that makes sense.
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Iāve got one of these headed my way for my work set up. Nice to see some positive feedback. Really came down to wanting something simple and preferring the look of this over the enog2.
I changed my mind about this DAC since i got Amazon Music HD. I noticed a lot of tracks i played on it sound like im listening to this music through a dome. Bass sounds a little weird. cymbols crashing sound domed. I dont know if its trying to be āwarmā or somthing. I dont think this is a good DAC.
this is windows screwing up
Amazon HD is a nice idea, but as long there is no wasapi or Asio supportā¦ itĀ“s a lottery
i dont think so, from what i heard wasapi or Asio does not make that much a difference in sound. Also i think Amazon music may be using Wasapi or Asio cause i cant use my APO equalizer with it running.
you canĀ“t pick a driver or ext. DAC with Amazon HD
and you donĀ“t get the full 24/192 - in your DAC, you get displayed 16/44 for example
so youre saying when i play Amazon Ultra HD im just getting 16/44?
sorry but yes
You need to change the setting in the windows audio panel.
Every external DAC defaults to 48/16 as far as I can tell, you just need to select itās default output rate.
Itās in the advanced device options.
My SDAC will do 96/24 and my Jot 192/24 in amazon music and both show that way when I configure them manually to 192/32 and 96/32 respectively.
I donāt have a windows box here right now, or Iād send out an image.
from what I read, this helps on paper, but does not help the sound
16/44 is good enough - CD quality should be ok
donĀ“t believe Amazon HD is all real-remastered highrez files at the moment
I believe itāll be decoded on the computer without exclusive mode (though I may be wrong there), but I believe it will get sent over the USB at the higher rate PCM. And since decoding is a purely mathematical operation there should be no difference.
There is no way to tell for sure on the SDAC, since I have no way of determining what signal itās receiving.
Someone with a DAC that displays what itās receiving could confirm.
Sometimes setting your dac in Windows can improve the sound because of windows and how it passes through the volume mixer compared to asio or wasapi which set the bit depth and sample rate to what is played and it bypasses windows audio. If you use Windows directsound (aka not asio or wasapi) what sample rate and bit depth you set will be locked to those rates and upsampled by windows
You are correct that there shouldnāt be a difference, but sometimes this does improve the sound depending on the USB implementation of the dac and how windows decides to screw with the sound
I can with the SMSL SU-8 it is displayed
I honestly havenāt looked at the windows audio stack in a long time.
Upsampling can obviously impact audio quality, as could mixing, but Iād be surprised if the latter werenāt very well implemented in windows at this point. I know they have some very good sound engineers in the DX and Windows teams whose job it is to ensure this.
I guess itās theoretically possible for windows to induce additional jitter into something itās streaming over a USB connection, but it would have to try pretty hard. The nature of USB2 means that the client/DAC has to buffer at least two USB packets, and Iād expect they buffer significantly more than that, so windows would have to significantly delay audio going out to the device, and I wouldnāt expect it to do that.
Donāt get me wrong I wish Amazon would use exclusive mode and client side decoding, but I doubt itās a night and day difference, I occasionally find myself restarting a song on Amazon Music because I donāt like the way it sounds, and discover it didnāt play the 96/24 version, but Iām not about to claim I could pick out the difference between the 44/16 and 96/24 versions in a blind test.
Windows DirectSound API so polished for the most part, but there are still some issues that persist with it that causes some degradation of quality. Also by bypassing directsound you are bypassing volume control, so you donāt lose quality to digital volume as well
Itās not, but it does sound a bit better
What you are more likely hearing is a potentially different master for a high res version, so it would make sense if itās fairly noticable. Also it depends on how Amazon handles the 44.1 vs higher res streaming
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how does this compare to the enog 2 pro