I’ve found I like building a transparent, revealing sound with my system so I have a base of what sounds pure to my ears so I can the fuck with it with things like tubes
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Gotcha, well that’s not really reality unfortunately so you have to make some compromises lol. Things are already mastered the way they are intended to sound for the most part, and of course having a transparent signal chain to recreate the audio would be nice for sure, but everything will color the sound so you can’t do much lol
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It’s a common misconception that music is in mastered on colorless equipment.
Everything in the listening chain when it was mastered colored the sound, no one has ever heard just the sound of the recording.
The average THD on a headphone will be in the 1% range, and speakers are worse, those swamp any coloration from almost anything else in the chain (probably not the cartridge on a turntable which may even be worse).
I understand the goal of hearing what’s recorded, but as someone on a different forum said today, if you want to hear what the artist intended goto a concert.
For most of us who’ve been around the block with this audio thing, the goal is really to provide a pleasing reproduction of the music.
Complete lie lol, I own all my mastering gear because it gives me a certain sound that I find desirable and work with, also alot of times mastering is done on some hifi setups lol.
also one thing that makes the DAC thing hard for me is that its hard not to think of “bits are bits so if the DAC can get all the bits it will do everything right”… based on having trouble hearing a difference (not in EQ and tone and texture at least) between a dragonfly black and an acers built in DAC. its like its all the same sound waves so as long as the sound waves are being made its hard to think of how it can change
those bits need to be converted into an analog signal.
There are several ways to do that the common cheap solution is what’s called a Delta Sigma DAC, in theory this involves modulating a single bit at much higher frequency than the sampling rate. In practice some of the top bits are directly decoded using a resistor ladder. But to do this the input signal needs to be both over-sampled and filtered (different DAC’s do this differently).
In addition you don’t just squirt the output of the DAC chip onto the RCA connectors at the back, there is an analog filter (to remove the noise the modulation introduced) and there is an amplifier in the DAC.
So even DAC’s with the same DAC chip will sound different.
Most cheaper components pretty much just build the circuit in the manufacturers data sheet, and in some cases expose the various digital filter options the underlying chips provide.
As you move up in price point DAC’s can use custom digital and analog filters, do custom oversampling etc etc.
So yes they can sound different.
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I’ve been looking at alternatives to certain items in the case stock supplies are slow to reup.
Has anyone here heard a hegel amp and if so, what’s your opinion of them.
Good overall for the package, clean technicality heavy amps, worthwhile if you want something clean and good, sometimes music lacks emotion compared to other amps though
cool. Wanted to order a bryston online. All online stores are “In store purchase only” which kind of defeats the purpose of an online store during this situation lol.
so why is it hard to hear a difference from youtube (music or non music), spotify, soundcloud, etc
I assume your asking why it’s hard to hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio, which is a different thing all together.
Compressed audio is designed to sound like uncompressed audio, the differences are subtle.
In order to get high compression rates you need to remove information, otherwise your limited by entropy.
The way audio compression works is it uses a psychoacoustic model to choose information that is least audible given the other sounds playing at the time, the results are very good, so the differences are subtle if the equipment your playing though is poor you probably won’t hear it.
Even with a good listening chain you’ll hear people describe the differences as openness, air, they’re subtle.
Boards like this have a tendency to greatly overstate differences, because the people on them are focused on those subtleties.
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i mean why i couldn’t hear a difference between my old dragonfly black and a stock headphone jack
There might not be very much difference, I haven’t listened to both of those specific DAC’s.
DAC differences are very subtle, and you need to have a good rest of the chain and good source material to really hear them.
There is also the knowing what to listen for.
With DAC’s assuming they aren’t terrible the differences are subtle, it’ll be in bass extension, trebble extension, and the way the space is presented.
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then how do i get a significant different that genuinly sounds beautiful…
i mostly just want to understand why some people love certain things i dont like
also i dont have a ton of money so i wanna make sure every payment is worth it compared to something else
In the olden days, we had these brick and mortar hifi stores where you could go and listen to high end gear.
They are much rarer now, but if you want to hear big differences, you pretty much have to get out of the budget arena (or be very familiar with what your comparing to), with DAC’s I’d go pick your poison from the perfectly good $100 DAC’s then I’d look at something like a Bifrost 2, then you into multi thousand dollar DAC’s, and Diminishing returns apply to all of that.
Different people value different things, spend your money on headphones you like, and pick up anyone of the many quality $100 amps next then worry about a DAC. IMO
None of this is worth stretching financially for.
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sadly im a college student with no job who has to get by off maybe 35 bucks a week so i cant really buy a truly great 200 dollar ampdac… i just buy to feel less sad and have some cool points… nirvana is hard to get to
i just wanna know how do i get a IMMEDIATELY NOTICEABLE sound difference with the headphones that i have… it seems like a DAC is the main thing
Schiit Fulla 3. It sounds decent, still use it, and it gets you away from a sound card for gaming. You can find deals on the Schiit Fulla 2 which is still a decent amp/dac.
Im probably getting the ZMF perf suade pads for my Aiva
I’m set on getting the zmf aeolus soon. That stimulus check is gonna go right to zach lol
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Some really nice beer.
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