I mean yes and no, personally I’d still call a 2k DAC high end, it can just go a lot higher
I don’t know if I’d base perspective off this thread lol. The title for this thread is misleading at best, 4/5 words listed in that title are a lie, the only truth is that it has dacs lol. It isn’t short, it’s more than just high end, and it’s only somewhat a comparison. But I wrote the title before I wrote the rest of the thread, and never bothered to change it lol
A few questions on synergies… I understand that with 15 dacs, 12 hps, 10 amps, a few sets of speakers you get into 1000 permeations possible and the usefulness of comparisons get lost.
So to keep it general… Lets say your fav is the Aries Cerat and the most detailed is the Mola… Do headphones in general start to become the limiting factor/bottlekneck in the chain? Where the Phi TC and Susvara can no longer scale… You would need step up to some $100k+ Pairs of towers to get any incremental benefit?
I know you may not be a “stax guy” but do you think the 009 / 007 and a kgss and bhse would be able to take advantage of the details/technicals of these dacs more than planars/dynamics?
I would disagree, having more chains allows one to get a much better grasp on potential synergy and get better insight into how the dac actually performs, by allowing for more data points and different experiences to help one to mentally nail down what the dac is doing on it’s own
The aries cerat is more detailed than the mola mola from my experience, but ok continuing on
Yes, this is really reaching the limits of how far these headphones can scale, moving up any further isn’t going to be worthwhile for headphones I think. I do already know I am hampering the true ability of some of these dacs restricting it to headphones, but that’s also exactly why I wanted to evaluate only with headphones, to see how things would end up coming out
Sure, those are very revealing of the source chain and picky about that, I think they can scale just as much as some of the other headphones (I do think the 009 would do a better job of that than the 007). But do I think they would be able to scale much higher than stuff like a 1266/susvara or mysphere/utopia? No actually, it all depends though on the chain and also what your priorities are, but from an overall sense I don’t find the 009/007 to be on a massively higher scaling level from more traditional planar or dynamic
I agree with your take that more data is better but that becomes more valuable to a specific person’s situation. My point is that with a 1000 permutations of combinations in your comparison that synergies become nearly impossible to nail down for all… It’s akin to boiling the ocean…
I liked how you handled it though where you gave 3 different chains per dac to show people the flavor of what the chain produced so they people could attempt to follow in your footsteps.
That’s fair
Those were generally what I tended to use with them, but yes I tried to make it a bit more reasonable to follow
Removed, may be rewritten at some point
I know the Amber 3 won’t really hold a candle against the GG2, but it gives me a lot of confidence that the designer really knows what he is doing and trickles down his findings. It allows me some insight in what a high end DAC can do and fortunately fits all of the traits that I prioritize. I also appreciate the attractive Trade-in program and everything combined has turned me into a fan.
I’ve been impressed with most of lampizator I have had or heard, I had a Big 7mk2 and traded up to the golden gate 2, has been pretty worthwhile for sure, and a solid jump each step up. And while the amber 3 doesn’t really touch any of these dacs, it still is damn sweet and very compelling for it’s price (it’s not really made to touch any of these dacs anyways, but it does get the trickle down tech from them)
I really appreciate you providing the glossary, too. Some of those terms I’m still working on understanding. I can read the words but it doesn’t always click. “Texture” was an example for me. I never really understood what texture meant in a sound sense until I heard good examples of it. Now that the connections are in my brain, I can hear it much more easily. The next one I need to work on is probably tonal density. Do you think terms like “full”, “rich,” or “thin” are used to describe tonal density? Or are they more frequency response terms?
That’s a big problem lol, some of this stuff there really isn’t any easy way to explain until you hear it yourself (goes for almost everything in this hobby anyways). Texture is a tough one since it’s fairly absent on most midrange to lower end gear, and you only get a taste of it when you start to move to entry high end level, then it starts ramping up from there
Those can be used, although that can also tie into other aspects depending on how it’s used. I don’t think it’s all that much of a frequency response or tonality term (but I have seen people use it this way), since you can have a pretty full sounding analytical signature, or a leaner or thin warmer signature. But typically people do associate fullness with warmth and thinness for brighter leaning things. But it doesn’t have to be that way
All good points. I think confusion also arises because there is a lot of overlap in the terms. For example, good timbre requires good resolution, and appropriate level of dynamics, and enough speed & control to get the driver to behave appropriately. Then timbre gets even better as texture improves, and so forth. And then all of that has aspects that exist in the time domain. So it seems that describing an audio piece as good at ____ also requires it to have some level of competence in ____, ____, and ____.
Yes, but you can still have specific characteristics shine more than others even if the recipe is all there. Like how you can have a dac with very fast perceived speed but actually not that resolving, or a dac sound organic but not realistic (but typically you don’t have a dac that sounds realistic but not organic), or have good texture without having good large scale control. All depends, lots of things that go into it. I just have to find somewhere to separate characteristics since it’s lazy to just say it all boils down to time domain, even if that’s what I personally think in the end.
Everything ends up feeding into each other. I’m sure it’s a game of compromises designing a dac, so generally I’d assume that designers have to make a choice for their priorities, and the designs they come up with may maximize specific aspects over each other, even if those aspects are all linked, so it’s not a guaranteed bet that if one dac can pull off one aspect it will naturally lead to it being as fluent in the other
Lol . Fair enough. Sound is a time dependent physical quantity to begin with, which makes music a time-dependent artform. So yeah, getting the time domain right is job 1 for a piece of audio gear.
Thinking about the upcoming Spring 3…
Right now I have the RME DAC >> Burson Soloist >> ZMF VC
Would the Soloist be able to take advantage of a DAC of that caliber?
Any insights appreciated, thanks in advance!
Hmmm, I think you could still benefit from a dac of that level, although the bottleneck would become the amp at that point, but if you planned on upgrading the amp later on you would be set there. If I base the spring 3 potential performance off the Holo may but downscaled a bit (since I haven’t heard the spring 3 yet), I do think that the soloist would definitely benefit, but it wouldn’t also reveal that dacs true capabilities compared to higher end amps. Would be a big jump over the rme either way
Just to check this is a soloist 3xp correct?
Nice, appreciate the reply! Yes, 3XP…
Yeah, I’ll probably upgrade the amp eventually but for now I’m set with the Soloist.
I really enjoy the VC but sometimes it sounds a bit sharp at times…I’m assuming it might be the RME.
Rme can do that, what opamps are you running in the burson btw? As if you are running classics they did get a bit more sharp than the vivids from memory. But the spring should take care of that otherwise, and also bring substantial all around improvement (I’d say mainly in spatial recreation since the rme is somewhat flat sounding, dynamically since the rme isn’t the most impressive in that front, and then timbre since that’s another weakness of the rme, will also shift the signature to a bit more neutral warmer smooth overall)
Thought so…I primarily ran with the default Vivids but I did just get the Classics yesterday to satisfy my curiosity…
Really? I find that the Classics smooth over the treble and sounds much warmer than the Vivids…
Thank you for the input, that’s really helpful!
Gotcha gotcha
So I found that the classics were smoother and less prominent in upper treble, but in lower treble were more forward and prominent than the vivid, which could potentially cause sharpness in that region, so it’s shifting where it’s more forward
Np
Hmmm, I see. Well I honestly haven’t tried it with my VCs yet since I just got the Classics…been trying it with my other headphones. But the sharpness on the VC I was hearing had the Vivids installed.
Btw, have you ever paired the Soloist with a high-end pre-amp using headphone power amp mode? Using the RME was definitely no good…makes me wonder what a top-notch pre-amp could do using that mode.