Will cost-effective DACs / digital kill boutique HiFi
- Thread starter DavidTT
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We've all seen plenty of tear downs of these products, and the boards themselves. What about them could be considered lesser relative to longevity? How are these boards any different from boards made anywhere?
cpt_paranoia
Addicted Member
That's one of my qualms; the obvious glee when they test a 'name audiophile' product and find it to perform poorly. Objective test results should speak for themselves, and crowing has no place on a 'science-based' review site.
My other qualm is that corrections to testing errors are buried in the long threads; I would go back and correct the OP, as that is the basis of the review that most people are likely to read.
I've raised these points with Amirm, but he got rather defensive. Which is a shame.
But, as I said earlier, I much prefer the approach to subjective, biased, sponsored reviews found elsewhere.
"I do realize that I would fool myself all the time, about listening conclusions and many other observations, if I did listen before buying. That’s why I don’t, I bought all of my current gear based on technical parameters alone, such as specs and measurements."
EV3
EV3
Well, there has to be allowance made for the human aspects of schadenfreude when it comes to audio esoterica. I would guess that many on the site are like me, people who are 'recovering' from years of the endless chase within the subjectivist aspects of the hobby. I do take pleasure in knowing that Chinese manufacturers are producing, by far, the best value and, often, best-measuring DACs on the market. It's not because I cheer the Chinese manufacturer, not at all. It's because I feel that this hobby has been preyed upon by unscrupulous and borderline-fraudulent elements for decades now.
The average hobbyist has also fallen into the subjectivist trap, which inevitably leads toward the never-ending gear chase. I'm embarrassed by, for example, how many phono preamps I've cycled through in the last four years, and I am now quite sure that in DB testing I would likely be unable to distinguish between most of them. Ridiculous.
If I can buy a Topping D50s for a couple hundred bucks and use and love it for years and years, knowing that it outperformed many DACs costing literally thousands of dollars, not only can I remain content and keep some of my own dollars, but those dollars are also siphoned from the boutique makers. This is about performance and value, and about not being ripped off.
This hobby should be ripe for a correction of sorts. All of us as hobbyists would be FAR better served to be more skeptical, to force manufacturers to back up their claims, to stop being so damned gullible when it comes to our purchases. I consider hobbyist consideration of cables to be a canary in the coal mine. I'll know we're getting turned in the right direction when I see more open hostility and mocking directed at esoteric cable manufacturers.
The average hobbyist has also fallen into the subjectivist trap, which inevitably leads toward the never-ending gear chase. I'm embarrassed by, for example, how many phono preamps I've cycled through in the last four years, and I am now quite sure that in DB testing I would likely be unable to distinguish between most of them. Ridiculous.
If I can buy a Topping D50s for a couple hundred bucks and use and love it for years and years, knowing that it outperformed many DACs costing literally thousands of dollars, not only can I remain content and keep some of my own dollars, but those dollars are also siphoned from the boutique makers. This is about performance and value, and about not being ripped off.
This hobby should be ripe for a correction of sorts. All of us as hobbyists would be FAR better served to be more skeptical, to force manufacturers to back up their claims, to stop being so damned gullible when it comes to our purchases. I consider hobbyist consideration of cables to be a canary in the coal mine. I'll know we're getting turned in the right direction when I see more open hostility and mocking directed at esoteric cable manufacturers.
Who are you quoting there? Would be nice to know. If it's Amir from ASR, it's a legitimate stance from someone who, IMO, understands the power of bias and expectancy in practice. He openly states, over and over, that his tests essentially validate design, engineering and specifications, and provide specs in lieu of some companies that simply don't provide them.
There are multiple threads on ASR discussing these ideas, and noting, for example, that for DACs the listener could choose almost any DAC that performs above a level of SINAD 96 or so and would be very unlikely to tell them apart in normal listening. The entire idea of a properly functioning DAC is, after all, to be transparent.
That there are those who are so adamantly against such obviously reasonable ideas, and who support manufacturers who sell poorly-performing gear instead of demanding better, tells me much about the current state of dysfunction in the hobby.
There are multiple threads on ASR discussing these ideas, and noting, for example, that for DACs the listener could choose almost any DAC that performs above a level of SINAD 96 or so and would be very unlikely to tell them apart in normal listening. The entire idea of a properly functioning DAC is, after all, to be transparent.
That there are those who are so adamantly against such obviously reasonable ideas, and who support manufacturers who sell poorly-performing gear instead of demanding better, tells me much about the current state of dysfunction in the hobby.
I tell you why I believe your comments about "in situ" testing are wrong. Take an extreme case, like speakers, where you WILL hear a difference. If you conduct level-matched A/B testing of 2 new speakers that you have never heard before, to see which you prefer, your conclusions are not that likely to be very accurate. Sighted or blind it doesn't matter -- if the speakers are comparable at all, you will hear things you like and don't like about each one. Bouncing back and forth between 2 foreign speakers gets confusing -- not as to which is which -- but it's confusing because certain things sound better in each -- what you think is best changes when you are focusing on the bass, or high frequencies, or vocal clarity, or midrange, or flat response, or dynamics, or imaging, or transparency, etc. It just leaves you a bit confused in the moment. Even though you can clearly hear differences, it isn't that easy to interpret which is definitively best for you because you are forced to assess many various facets of the sound separately in that short-term exposure scenario.
On the other hand, if you have 1 of those pairs of speakers installed for years and you've listened to that setup for years over a huge variety or material, you know what it sounds like intimately. When you put in new speakers to replace them, you will know which is better -- you form an initial impression that is usually fairly accurate off the bat because of your intimacy with the old speakers -- but regardless of whether your initial impression was right, over time you can form a long-term impression over the entire array of music you listen to and you will know which is best because you are listening to music as a whole and not facets of sound quality that short-term testing requires. With long-term intimacy as a baseline -- and you will know over time definitively which is best (for you).
What I just described with years (or at least months) of intimacy with a given system is the typical case at home. A/B testing for new foreign speakers that differ doesn't deliver a reliable conclusion about which is "best" (for you), sighted or blind. That is true (in my experience) for something that is not subtle (speakers) -- why anybody thinks that A/B testing is the gold standard for something that IS subtle, like DACs, is beyond me.
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It seems to me that none of the major players in audio make stand-alone DACs. They make headphone DAC/Hi-Rez players, but not tabletop box DACs. You'd think the market would be saturated, with names like Onkyo, Sony, Denon, Technics, TEAC, all of them making a DAC-in-a-box. Add value with Bluetooth and smartphone connectivity, run the whole show with an APP.
Instead we have Topping and that other Chinese maker and Schitt.
There hasn't been that one DAC yet which get's - what I would call - the Audiokarma seal of approval. A DAC that's cheap, easy to find and buy, punches waaaaay above its price range, and everyone here can agree sounds great.
Instead we have Topping and that other Chinese maker and Schitt.
There hasn't been that one DAC yet which get's - what I would call - the Audiokarma seal of approval. A DAC that's cheap, easy to find and buy, punches waaaaay above its price range, and everyone here can agree sounds great.
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If two sets of speakers are so close that you 'get confused' while conducting blind testing, than it would be very likely that both are very close in performance. If they are that close, choose the one that pleases you, or that looks better to you, or that costs more, or less, or whatever floats your boat. There is no argument that subjectivity has no place in our lives and decision-making. That's the red herring in your argument. Nobody cares what you choose to own for the long term, and that in no way is what the ASR types advocate for.
Wouldn't you like to know that the products you consider are well-engineered? Well designed? That they meet some objective performance criteria, that they do what the maufacturer says they do? Further, are you a hobbyist who has fallen prey to the magic cable industry?
Wouldn't you like to know that the products you consider are well-engineered? Well designed? That they meet some objective performance criteria, that they do what the maufacturer says they do? Further, are you a hobbyist who has fallen prey to the magic cable industry?
So external stand alone DACs are not a legitimate means to listen to high resolution music then? What's your point?
WobblySam
Well-Known Member
Again, I'm old and confused - the message header contained "cost effective". I'm not real clear on how "cost effective" relates to true HiFi. Sure, there's always been plenty of cheaper stuff to buy - most of us in the hobby started that way. As finances allowed, our appetite for higher fidelity increased in concert with our experience and expectations. "Cost effective" was something reserved for bulk toilet paper, Shasta soft drinks and laxative. Anyway, that's just the opinion of one old, out-of-touch stereo hobbyist.
Cheers
Cheers
lico
Super Member
Well teac does.
It's obvious that you didn't read or absorb a single word I said. I never said the speakers sounded the same -- that is the exact opposite of what I said. What I said, is that when you are listening to two foreign speakers (that sound different), in a short-term listening test, you can't help but focus individually on many different aspects of the sound individually (I listed 8 examples of sound characteristics). If they are roughly the same quality of speakers (not that they sound the same), each speaker will fare better in some categories and worse in others for those 10 or so individual areas. You can hear all of those differences in all those different areas easily, it's just that summing up those 10 areas into determining which of those speakers will sound best long-term in your home with all the different types of music you listen to is very difficult (especially when you only have a handful of different tracks you use to evaluate them in a short-term test).
On the other hand, when you are intimate with speakers in your own home from months or years of listening to every type of music you like, and then you swap in a new speakers, it is very easy to determine which is better, at least in my experience. You don't even need to A/B. I just went through that with new speakers that I expected to blow away my 20-year-old speakers. I knew right away the new speakers were worse, and confirmed it over weeks. I never needed to A/B test, I did put my old speakers back in after a couple of weeks and it confirmed what I had learned, but I didn't need to even go back to know. You may not like that approach, which is your right, but to call it crap is crap.
You should know that most of the people preaching "science" have no science background at all. None. They are extrapolating off of a handful of third-party experiments and applying them universally to every piece of equipment that exists. That extrapolation is totally unfounded and is the opposite of science. Most of them don't have any experience either, because of their "science" and irrational fear of subjectivity (despite the fact that subjectivity plays a role in everything we form an opinion on -- only in audio is subjectivity "poison" that "scientists" say precludes value in experiencing anything ever).
Subjectivity is involved in everything we make a judgment on -- audio is the only place where "scientists" insist we cannot place any value in what we hear. Cable preferences probably very often are affected by subjectivity -- there is no question about that because cable difference are extremely subtle at the very least. That said, extrapolating a few well-known blind tests of gold-infused-platinum diamond-encrusted cables against zip cord examples into "cables can never make a difference" is the opposite of science. DACs are subtle too. The cheapest DACs sounds pretty great in my experience -- that doesn't mean nothing can sound better. The fact that subjectivity can play a role is obvious and undebatable, but it is a extreme unscientific extrapolation to say everything is subjective and that the physical doesn't matter.
What is it about listening makes you think it precludes looking at everything else???? In my opinion, anyone serious about audio should look at data AND listen to evaluate any equipment they buy. Failure to do either is ridiculous, but if I had to choose one over the other -- I'd choose listening a thousand times over data. In science, analytical models are never ever perfect for predicting anything related to human senses -- real science always combines imperfect analytical and imperfect physical test results, with proper weighting of each, to determine what's best. The school of thought that analytical always trumps physical is a "logical sounding" invention by non-scientists that doesn't exist in real science.
Modeling is awesome! It is also hugely flawed. Computer modeling for designing a car suspension, for example, is a thousand times better than what any human can do because computer models can sample every road condition, every tire and wheel combination, every load condition, over a gazillion miles, and it can model spring rates and damping rates and the impact of everything. Everything can be computed by exact models whose behavior is precisely dictated by physics that have been written in stone for hundreds of years. No human engineer can evaluate anything at that computational level. That said, when they are done with all of their "perfect" analytical modeling and measurement, humans do the final evaluation and humans do the final tweaking of those parameters, which will vary a lot from the computational result. The reason they need to do that is because, despite physics equations being undisputably true, it's humans who drive cars and analytical modeling and measurement does not provide a perfect picture of what humans feel when they drive the car in real-life environments. Humans are also the ones who use their audio systems to listen to music, in wildly varied real-life environments -- the thought they should NOT listen to those systems for evaluation, but instead rely solely on the results of analytical models and measurements in lab conditions -- is the polar opposite of science.
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Lots to unpack there. Before I engage you with one more post, answer me this:
Do you subscribe to the belief that cables make a difference in HiFi, beyond the minimal threshold required to carry a signal?
Do you subscribe to the belief that cables make a difference in HiFi, beyond the minimal threshold required to carry a signal?
This why I call it the "Shell Game". It's just like going to fair and trying to win a stuffed pink teddy bear. You try to follow the clues while the hands are moving back and forth and try to guess which shell it's under. That's what the ABX guys are doing. Trying to confuse the brain what's what. Then you get the ever present "no difference found" and they gleefully "rule" that "you can't detect a difference!" Then later when you listen long form and get used to the system and change...sure enough...you can hear certain aspects that change. After that, you could then take that knowledge to the ever present Shell Game and probably win the fuzzy bear. But of course, the flat earth guys are long gone and not coming back any more at that point.
The "shell game" has never been proven to bring clarity to differences that are obvious. But they never can point to any test of their one and only test.
And it goes around and around....
EV3
I think that when people say a $100 cable sounded better than a $30 cable, subjective bias is very often playing a role. That said, cable differences can make a difference. Differences in resistance is meaningless -- they are all so ridiculously low that it doesn't make any difference. Differences in inductance and capacitance in cables do make a difference, whether they have sonic benefit or not. For example, some high-capacitance speaker cables can cause some amplifiers to become unstable -- whether that has sonic benefit or deficit or no impact -- the cable is materially causing the amplifier to operate very differently. I won't comment on whether that type of scenario sounds better or worse or the same, because there is no universal answer (and I personally don't know), but it's difficult to imagine an amplifier operating so differently not having some impact on sound. Also, that makes it clear that the speaker cable can interact with individual amp designs -- some will become unstable and some won't in that example -- speakers have differences in inductance and capacitance also -- so concern about "proper pairing" is not unfounded (even if it's not a concern for 99% of mainstream cables/wires/amps/speakers).
Any significant inductance or capacitance can act like a tone control. I'll give you an example. I built a mega guitar cable using extremely low capacitance Mogami cable -- this cable is meant for VERY long commercial runs, not the 6-foot cable I was building. I had to use "bigfoot" 1/4" jacks to fit the cable. I expected the cable to sound amazing, hopefully, but certainly not worse. Guess what? That cable sounded worse than my cheapest 1/4" cable. All normal cables have normal capacitance and guitar equipment is designed around that expected capacitance. My ultra-low capacitance cable sounded too bright because there was no normal capacitance to taper off the highest frequencies -- there was a harshness to the sound that didn't exist on the cheap guitar cables. Guitar is different than audio (guitar just needs to sound pleasant rather than accurate), but the impact of increasing or decreasing capacitance is the same and it can be audible.
Do most commercial cable and speaker wires sound largely the same? Almost definitely. Do ALL of them sound the same no matter what -- no, and there is no reason to expect them to when you look beyond resistance.
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