What are the objective measurements for a DAC?

Equipment / Electronics / Gear / Accessories DACs
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Before I found Hifi Guides I lurked a bunch of forums looking for a good community. This place tends to be the best of all worlds
Good mix of technical and music focused listeners for both Head and Speakers, and across the budget range
Headfi’s too Headphone Focused
SBAF can be very “YOU DON’T WANT TO SPEND 5K ON CABLES, WHY???”
Audio bacon is “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THIS 5k CABLE YOU FUCKING POSER”
ASR is like “This wave graph makes sure that my 15 dollar no name amazon dac is better than the 2 grand you dropped on you dac amp combo and god help you if you question that.”

So yeah immersion, is not something I personally recommend lol

From what I’ve gathered, I think he runs a rather prestige Corporate AV installation company (he made some claims to his background involving windows OS development, so I just looked it up randomly and there was a person with the same name and credentials running an AV company), doing things like sound panels for high end office spaces, projector/Video systems and High end PA stuff. Its not like his livelihood is based around ASR, so I’m not sure why he puts up with it

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I don’t want to get into “him” vs “the forum”, though I see why there is that perspective. I do think “getting more into it” might add a lot of nuance and prevent some of the strawmanning, but I hate the turn this thread has taken since I was asked about my view of the balance, and I regret my answering that question at all at this point. I knew the “asr” answer had come up already, as is inevitable given the question in the thread title, and am usually better at shutting up in these sort of circumstances.

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:moneybag::moneybag::moneybag::moneybag: Is the simple answer, but that can be said for anyone running a dedicated review or audio community

Neither do I, but when it’s brought up it’s going to happen eventually

It probably would, but I doubt it would change my view on things in the end simply because the times that I’ve given it the chance it has ended up biting me in the ass, so at this point for myself at least it would probably be a wasted effort as I wouldn’t give it the most fair chance even if I thought I was

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Totally didn’t mean to imply I was interested in changing your views. Apologies if it comes across that way. As Adrian Belew said, “The deeper I talked the worse I got in!”

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No problem, not trying to do the same either, just sharing my experience as you are sharing yours, no worries

That statement pretty much becomes true to anything you can apply it to lol, wish it wasn’t the case

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To answer the thread title:

  • Clock Rate, as in how many cycles the DAC setup/chip does in one second
  • Clock Jitter, clock timing variation
  • Sample Rate, Sampels taken per second/time division
  • Over Sampling Rate (can be 0), comparisons taken between output and input signal
  • VRMS, how “hot” the output signal is
  • S/N R, Signal to Noise Ratio
  • S/N-D R, Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio
  • Monotonicity, The “directness” of the analog signal reaching the desired level
  • THD, Total Harmonic Distortion
  • Dynamic Range, Total Voltage swing of the output

My 2 Cent on the above “things you can measure”:
Do you know what half of them are?
I don’t mean have you heared of the acronym. I mean do you know why that number being what it is is important?
Else you might aswell measure how much water the device displaces, weigh it and rate DACs by density.

“High numbers” only work when you know what that number means.

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Now that’s an interesting idea for a review channel. I’d simultaneously love / hate watching somebody dunk a bunch of Lampizators.

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Will it blend lol

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First off, I wanted to say sorry for making a thread and feeding the derailment a bit. I dont want to get into an us or them either.

Im sorry if it wasn’t clear. This was my actual question. I understand what all of these terms mean because of the ASR breakdown. I made the thread to ask how these effect sound, and what else effects sound that cannot be measured. I am sorry if that wasn’t clear.

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That’s the biggest problem, do the measurements actually correlate to good sound, and to me imo they really don’t. I’ve heard excellent measuring dacs that sound amazing, and excellent measuring dacs that sound pretty bad, same thing with poor measuring dacs that sound great vs poor measuring dacs that sound poor, it’s really something that looking at measurements like sinad aren’t really going to tell you much about how they sound, only how they look on paper. But that’s just what I’ve found over time, experiences will differ from person to person of course.

Pretty much agree with this, nothing wrong with having an objective focus on sound, but once you start to sacrifice sound quality for better numbers on paper is where it goes too far

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This comment is the best TLDR for most measurement related discussions.

Giving my 2 cents here, but full disclosure: I’m an Engineer and Electronic HW designer, so this skews a lot of my opinion.

Yes, measurements (or at least current measurements) aren’t everything. We still don’t know how to correlate some perceived sonic characteristics to classic electronic measurements. That said, I really like the current “push for measurements”, at least from what I’ve been feeling for the Hi-Fi market. Granted, I’m not a market analyst but that’s what I perceived the last two or three years compared to previous gear. I think “newer” companies like SMSL, Topping, Geshelli and JDS Labs, are pushing designs forward, and clearing up a lot of “audiophile smokescreen” along the way.

Statements like “this sound more clear” or “this has larger soundstage” are harder to measure, and therefore it is hard to make a company accountable for stating one thing or another. But unless you’re making a wrong measurement, you cannot say “my amp is low noise” and measure a terrible noise floor. It also helps with consistency and quality control, as you don’t need to weigh on just someone’s opinions on 'this is good" to know if a product is working properly or not.

I could go on and on here on a lot of stuff, but basically: measurements aren’t everything, but I think not having them is very bad. Don’t need to extrapolate them, but I think we should push them as somethings manufacturers should look into it.

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Forward in the budget range but backward as you move up in price range imo. The whole measurement push has been really good for those in the around 100 buck range, with the options getting better and more plentiful every year, but this being said, now you have amps and dacs in around the 500 buck range which are from the same companies that measure marginally better and are a marginal upgrade from their hundred buck offerings and get pretty easily trounced by competing options in terms of sound quality, so the value per dollar of these measurement focused amps falls off a cliff once you get past around 200 imo

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Mind if I ask what you think are some of the best sounds from $500 dacs/amps? All I see recommended are the SU-9 and A90 in that price range and they are measurement kings. Maybe I see the rebbel class A mentioned once or twice but its pretty damn rare.

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Hard to argue with your experience when I’m still very new to that, but I will say this comes from what I experienced with the Element and what i’ve seen/read with products like the Erish and JNOG. Also, that read from Head-fi posted about the Jotunheim 2 by Jason Stoddard was really great, I can relate a lot with them as someone from the R&D area.

But again, I look at this more from my perspective as an Engineer than from my experience as an Audiophile.

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I really don’t think the a90 is worthwhile honestly (same with the su-9), if you want the same performance of the a90 for 300 less, try out a magnius, if you really gotta have those numbers. I would also say that imo the asgard 3 outperforms both pretty easily for the same price, so there’s that. But in the 500 range, I would look into stuff like the rnhp, lake people g111, monolith liquid platinum, hagerman tuba, feliks echo, and the list can continue, it would depend on what headphones you have for what amp you really want to look for, as you continue to move up in tiers of headphones synergy plays a larger and larger role in things.

For dacs, it’s a bit harder imo to get in that 500 range, I think there is a major performance gap when it comes to dacs, stuff in the 250-700 range generally tends to not be worthwhile, so stuff like the e30, modius, earmen donald, zen dac, liquid spark dac, el dac ii, and so on is great for around under 250, but stuff in the 500 range tends to be a marginal upgrade to those said dacs, to get to the significant dacs you want to be spending around the bifrost 2, ares ii, dac1421, etc to get a major leap in dac performance, and you also want to make sure the dac synergyzes well with the amp

Those are great amps, geshelli and jds labs do a great job at balancing objective performance with good subjective sound quality, and are also priced appropriately. The key is not going overboard where you sacrifice sound quality for numbers (imo stuff like topping, thx tech are main offenders here). Very excited for the jot 2

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If people want a “fun” read you can look at the ASR thread where geshelli announced their erish and that it measures just as good or better than the A90 and the topping guy fliiiiiiips.

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“I would not even make something like that for a DIY project”
Did someone get tought by Nvidia on how to do marketing?

Also: People running into the 120dB wall. Time to get some big-boy measurement gear and learn the fun of routing coax measurement leads. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well if there is A and B products that “basically” can do the same thing but price difference is 5 x.
Specially when tested they both perform well. I could see me being mad also, if my product could not give any more toys that would explain the price difference. :slight_smile:
Or performs more worst than it should.

Like here is a Fiat Panda that performs like a Ferrari, what price. Like 10k. waaaaaaaaa!?!?!

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TBH, I didnt realize the magnius had the same power output as the A90, but anyways, my impression was just that th A90 is so recommended because it does everything quite well. Not great, and it certainly isnt an overtly colored source (maybe also part of the reason for the req), but over all just makes a great all arounder. That said, I guess for the price you could pretty easily get a SE and balanced amp seperately for cheaper.

Isnt the asgard unbalanced though?

The G111 and the tubes I have heard of, but ill have to look into the RNHP. Ultimately though it seems like you prefer an overtly colored source with all of the tube recommendations? I havent even started looking into tubes yet tbh. Is your take kind of that a clean sound can be done so cheap that there isnt a reason to look at the higher end to peruse that?

Lol, that is already happening with tesla

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I guess it could be called that, but honestly it just does nothing that makes me thing it’s worth 500 bucks

Yes, does that actually change anything when it comes to sound quality?

Not really, the hagerman tuba with stock tubes is somewhat mid forward, but with the right tubes it’s a pretty dead neutral tube amp that really for most that come from lets say a darkvoice would be surprised to learn it’s a tube amp. For the feliks that is a warmer more smoother laid back but still technically capable, that one is a noticeably colored sounding amp. All depends on the headphone you have for what the most appropriate amp is for your goal. Regarding the coloration comment, looking at coloration of a single component is pointless, if your goal is to avoid coloration it’s a wasted effort and it’s not attainable. Coloration isn’t determined by one component, but by the entire chain. Let’s say you have something like a violectric v280 which is a bit more neutral but warmer smoother wider leaning amp, and a soekris dac1541 which is more bright and analytical source, aggressive, more deep than wide, both on their own are pretty noticeably colored, but when you combine the two you actually get a pretty dang neutral sound out of them if neutrality is your goal, so if you are trying to aim for a specific target (like neutrality), you want to view everything in your chain as a whole instead of trying to look at single components to actually have the end result be what you are after (including the cans as well lol)

Another side note is that I would argue the a90 is actually fairly colored, not in frequency response, but in it’s excessive smoothness and dullness, which leaves stage rather flat and smaller minute detail smoothed over and meh timbre, which to me is just as colored as an amp with a bit of a bump in a specific frequency range but accurate spatial recreation and dynamics. But I guess it all depends on your view on the idea of something being colored, to me if something is colored it means it deviates from what you would hear in real life for a certain way which would include pretty much everything from fr, timbre, dynamics, impact, spatial recreation, presentation, etc

It would be nice if coloration and synergy didn’t play a role, and if all dacs and amps were truly transparent and like a wire with gain, but unfortunately that’s not the case, it’s an unavoidable evil, but you can manage it with proper pairings to reach whatever sonic goal you are shooting for

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