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DACs: Cheap vs Expensive

Pondoro said:
I would be happy to participate in a "Great Midwestern DAC Fest." I cannot host. But I would bring my $100 DAC. We could listen to several DAC's - blind in the morning, while drinking coffee, sighted in the afternoon, while drinking beer, wine or bourbon. Besides my cheap DAC I would bring more beer or wine than I planned to consume. And coffee - I can and will make coffee via French press, pour over, vacuum device or using an ancient Revere Ware drip machine.

I am happy to do this masked or unmasked.
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Hmmmm….. Interesting idea, if for no other reason to hang out and listen to some tunes. Whereabouts in the Midwest are you located?
 
Guido57 said:
Considering "Midwest" covers a lot of ground.....
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yes, sure does. Kansas City all the Way to mid Ohio.

might be more interesting if some high priced DACs were also included. Secondly would take a pass on 16/44.1 playback. Its already a given that is inferior. Why not try some 24/96 or 24/192 files?
 
mcgjohn said:
yes, sure does. Kansas City all the Way to mid Ohio.

might be more interesting if some high priced DACs were also included. Secondly would take a pass on 16/44.1 playback. Its already a given that is inferior. Why not try some 24/96 or 24/192 files?
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I'd keep 16/44.1 in the game. It’s a given that SOME hi res music sounds better than their Redbook counterparts, but the reverse is also true. There's several 16/44.1 examples that - at least to me - sound better than the hi res remaster.
 
whell said:
Hmmmm….. Interesting idea, if for no other reason to hang out and listen to some tunes. Whereabouts in the Midwest are you located?
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Ohio. I’d drive a ways to hang out and listen. I agree it would require an expensive DAC or two. If I drive four or five hours, spend $120 on a hotel, but get to hear some really expensive DACs and some cheaper ones as well that would be an awesome weekend.
 
I fully endorse blind testing.

I bought a twenty dollar bluetooth receiver about the size of a deck of cards from Ebay.

I plugged it into the AUX jacks on the back of my Marantz receiver.

Next I went to WWW.WWOZ.ORG on the very same Samsung S8 phone that I'm typing this message on.
I clicked on "LISTEN NOW".

After linking my phone to the deck of card sized gizmo, my stumbling around blindly was rewarded by some great sounding audio coming out of my speakers.

Reading a thread like this does bring me to the realization that there are many things upstream that are beyond my control anyway. This "signal" is coming to me by WI-FI from a landline service provider and what is the quality of the "transmission" coming from my radio station?

Hell, we may not even be talking about the same thing....that's flying blind for ya.

So, blind or blunt, there ya have it. I did it blind and I too can be blunt about it.
 
funny, in the 90s when there was no internet, nobody was worried that his DAC wasnt good enough. A CD was considered the perfect sound and thats it. All the budget went into speakers and an amp. its just now, that anybody can use Google and live out his insecurities by playing the endless game of number-comparing. If this person or this product has +10 more than me (THD, SNR, whatever) there must be a difference.
 
The weakest link in my audio chain might very well be the territory between my headphones.
It's been decades since I've had my hearing tested. Lacking any audio engineer training, I must settle for merely what "sounds good" to me.
That's probably a pretty low threshold evaluation but it keeps things real for me. That's why I read threads like this...to hear what I've been missing
 
Manuel78 said:
funny, in the 90s when there was no internet, nobody was worried that his DAC wasnt good enough. A CD was considered the perfect sound and thats it.
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You must have been living in a different 90s to me. I lived in the one where there were plenty of hifi magazines, and they all reviewed CD players, and argued over which sounded better... and whether Bitstream or MASH was better than multi-bit DACs...
 
cpt_paranoia said:
You must have been living in a different 90s to me. I lived in the one where there were plenty of hifi magazines, and they all reviewed CD players, and argued over which sounded better... and whether Bitstream or MASH was better than multi-bit DACs...
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yes, quite so, I had forgotten about that... :-)
 
You guys are amazing, many interesting views indeed! One slightly different question:

CD vs PC+DAC as source

I have no CD player so I cannot do a direct comparison. Those who have, would there be real differences? Is one audibly better than the other?
 
Yeah it depends. PCs are a very strong source of common-mode noise due to having a switching supply. But nowadays some CD players have SMPSUs too, albeit much lower power ones.
 
mozcho said:
You guys are amazing, many interesting views indeed! One slightly different question:

CD vs PC+DAC as source

I have no CD player so I cannot do a direct comparison. Those who have, would there be real differences? Is one audibly better than the other?
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I listen to music with a CD as a source or, alternatively, from ripped files. I rip to FLAC. I’ve never noticed a difference, but I’ve never directly compared. I do one or the other, not back to back.

I use a Schiit Modi as an external DAC with one PC and an ASUS sound card in another. Both were noticeably better sounding than the built in sound chip that came free on the PC.
 
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Myself down to a Schiit Modi3+ and Schiit Bifrost 2.
I like both.
Frankly-I could live with either one.
Some of this is really system synergy-if you read between the lines.
Frankly-sometimes something simple as cleaning up your power supply, using the right cables, USB cables can make that difference-and actually the dac you didn't like-really does not sound so bad if you implement it right in your system.
I have not heard this from Schiit lately-seems they use to poke fun at better cables/power supply etc.
Bottom line-in my experience-using good cables, including USB cable-with their dac's makes them sound better.
Just my experience-a lot of the latest dac's-even the budget ones-seem to have the best of both worlds. Better resolution along with musicality.
Pretty cool stuff.
 
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Good buddy of mine sent me his old Musical Fidelity V-DAC, a bunch of different cables (all types) and an Apple Airport Express WIFI base station. I have to admit I'm not sure just how I'm going to implement these just yet, as I don't think I have any Audio inputs left to connect it to.
After reading more commentary from members here, I am very curious to see just what he and you guys are raving about. Maybe I'll have to use it on my iMac monitors first since that typically is my digital music source. Otherwise color me stumped.
 
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