yeah, i mean… when you think about… $200 is going into a dead simple DAC with the ENOG… where as with the D90 you are paying for a DAC along with DSD, USB, a nice OLED screen, nicer housing, and a ton of input options. So, IMO, the pure difference in DAC performance not being too wide makes sense.
That’s also what I like about the lavry as well, just raw performance with enough features to get the job done, no unnecessary stuff
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Actually I think my best dac now has even less features than the lavry lol, so less features = higher tier dac confirmed?
The more functions something has, the less it performs at each of those functions.
This is why washer-dryer 2-in-1s are worse at both functions. Also part of the reason we opt for dedicated amps & dacs over what’s integrated in the motherboard to begin with. Equipment with a single, dedicated function tends to do that one function really well.
That’s not to say it can’t perform super well at each of them, but you’ll be paying a premium for that. True if all you care about is PCM audio then I’d bet the Geshelli is all you need – but I’m looking to dabble in other things and don’t want any problems down the road.
You’re paying extra to ensure that it performs just as well at each function as a dedicated PCM device handles PCM.
I figure you need the more expensive approach when trying to support all these kinds of different functions.
Not speaking as an audio know-it-all, obviously I’m not or I wouldn’t be here asking basic questions – but I just know this as a basic fact of life and lots of product buying. I won’t buy a washer-dryer 2-in-1, they suck, and we wouldn’t be here talking about this kinda stuff if onboard audio was good enough.
yeah, Was just letting you know my very subjective, personal experience is all… as I lived with the D90 for a couple of weeks to help you make a decision. =) The decision is ultimately yours of course. The D90 is a very nicely built and well performing DAC, IMO… FWIW.
Too bad the Enog is spidif only. i need a usb connection. Has he ever said why he doesnt equip it with a usb port?
Yeah… I think it was because he’s a small operation and USB requires driver support… and can become costly to support from a business side.
You can get a cheaper USB to spdif converter for like 50 bucks and they work just fine
Yeah but its still limited to Spidif which is 44.1hz 16 bit? i got audio files much higher than that. i think i’ll just wait till he includes a usb port
Spdif goes up to 24/192
I can confirm 24/192
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But what about my huge library of DSD music?!
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convert it to PCM? lolz
You can do on the fly D2P conversion
damn the enog is spdif only? that changes my plans a bit… looks like ya boi is going to buy a LS DAC (if thats any good) along with a G stack sometime this year lol
I work with video encoding often and my understanding is that any sort of conversion totally defeats the purpose of using the original format – that in-general, conversion of a lower format to a higher format does nothing but make the audio file pointlessly larger.
The best analogy I have is the quality of photos and video – sure you can force a 720p video to be 1080p, but all you’re really achieving it is making it look blurry while increasing the filesize.
You can’t add resolution where there is none. Thus I see no sense in converting DSD to anything else. If you’re not going to play it back in DSD, just find the MP3 or M4A versions of the file wherever the artist uploads them (iTunes uses M4A). I also don’t understand any place that offers DSD or MQA audio when the source that the composer provided was an MP3 320 anyway – you’re best off getting the MP3 320 source and just playing it back directly.
The less conversions between you and the original source, the better. You want the original recording.
That’s what kind-of confuses me about Tidal – are the MQAs that Tidal has taken from a lossless source from the author, or are they just converting MP3s to MQAs? Because if it’s the latter, it’s just dumb and pointless.
I suppose the topic gets muddy when you start talking about really old audio – like music that was only ever released on vinyl way back in the old days – I suppose you’d try to find a golden untouched vinyl and use the best equipment you can to record and convert it to lossless PCM and DSD. I really don’t know if audio studios somehow have digital orignals of things like the Beatles or not.
But yeah, generally speaking, there’s no point in converting something from a lower format to a higher one – only from higher to lower to meet technological/logistical restrictions.
But dsd directly converts to 24 bit 88.2 khz? So I am confused by this statement
You are comparing a lossless format to a lossy format, the lossless format will sound better if it’s actually lossless. Just find a CD of the music. Most artists also offer flac downloads now too
Correct
They are taking lossless Masters and doing a bit of remastering and also converting them or a different format (let’s ignore mqa for now, I am personally not a fan, I think a red book cd sounds a fair bit better than mqa, mqa is just DRM for music imo)