DAC's - My Biggest Weakness - Let's Talk Ep. 4

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v_____AMPS AND DACS_____v
v_____Speakers_____v

MY GEAR

[fuffy]

Josh, being honest with your audience is the key to building your credibility. People like me will never be able to try all of the gear that you will, so we have to rely on our trust of you and your opinions. Admitting you have gaps, and asking people to help fill them, builds respect and a sense of community. So, my take on DACs? Same as in amps. Clean and uncolored reproduction of the source material. Always. Headphones should be the primary EQ in the reproduction chain. That's my opinion, anyway. DSD vs PCM? Don't waste your time on DSD. Almost all DSD recordings are converted to PCM for editing before being returned to DSD for consumption. Why bother? Besides, regardless of measurements, even the best ears have trouble telling 320kbps MP3 from FLAC anyway, so don't make yourself nuts worrying about infinitely small measurement differences you can never hear. Just my $0.02. :-)

[x-techgaming]

Room acoustics is a huge topic. Thankfully headphones eliminate it, which is one reason headphones are so great.

[JohnSmith-oebw]

A good Dac, is a good Dac. The difference you hear will be influenced way more by the head/earphone and amp, than the D/A conversion. Either the converter does it's job well, or it doesn't. If it does, you'll get a smooth, jitter free playback. If it doesn't, it will sound rougher and digital (but in a slight way). I swear, people get sucked into DAC talk, like they're the most critical part of the signal path. They're important to the package, yes, but EQ and headphones have a greater influence on the end sound.

[bjorvigp]

Transparency and honesty is key. Even if I (sometimes) disagree with your opinion I will always respect you for sticking to your principles. Keep doing what you’re doing, Josh. It’s a pleasure to watch your videos.

[antoinep]

Background technical knowledge is great, and a rewarding part of the hobby, but you’ve got to trust your ears. I struggle to hear any difference between using the DACs in my iPhone/iPad and my portable Amp/DAC (both using the same amp).
A/B testing with a really high-end DAC would be interesting, but in all honesty if I had spare money I’d be buying better cans, cans with a different sound signature, or a more powerful amp before investing in an expensive DAC.

[thomaswachter]

My confusion started when I contacted a very well known DAC manufacturer and asked one of the reps if he could tell me if one of their products would sound better than going out of the headphone jack on my PC. He said he didn't know if it would sound better. Well, I guess that was all I needed. I appreciate this man's honesty.

[donunus]

To my ears even the best cans without a decent dac sounds incomplete. All the inner detail is plastic/artificial compared to a good dac which makes instruments have a realistic timbre due to its more natural tone/harmonics etc

[nofacedetected]

I feel like dacs are kind of like "if they're good you won't notice them." I definitely think dacs are a weak point in my understanding, but it seems that some audio engineers like to test dacs based on if they produce noise or some sort of weird freq response change when throwing sine curves at them (look up the reviews that say that schitts dacs are bad and you'll find the website I'm thinking of). I think once you start talking about four figure set ups like the hd800s or something you can afford to dive into dac performance, but it seems like the worst value for performance by far in an audio set up. The fact that the signal box I use to convert spidif to rca for my tv set up and the micca origen both seem to resolve 16bit files equally to my ear seem to show that. It seems like it's the last bottleneck for quality; you need a good source file, it to be loud enough with a nice enough amp, and on a decent set of cans or speakers for it to make or break the experience. Of course that's my opinion, but I definitely feel like it's the easiest and safest peice of a set up to be ignorant on.

[dannez]

I'm currently using the DAC built into my audio interface (Audient ID-14) right now. Although, due to not using the mic pre amps and wanting a more powerful headphone amp. I've decided to go with a dedicated DAC/AMP setup. The AMP I went with is the SMSL sAp-ii, cheap and cheerful. My DAC is still on the way from Massdrop, its the SMSL SU-8. the thing that Ive looked for most in a DAC is usability and features, then I look at reviews later. The SU-8 I chose was perfect for me because SMSL has a good reputation, it is powered externally NOT usb power (this is important because I will also have it hooked up to my ps4 and don't want to have to have the computer on when I'm playing PS4), it has a remote and it hooks up to my studio monitors with balanced XLR outputs.

My point is I base my purchase on features of a DAC, THEN I will suss reviews and see if theres anything WRONG with it. Although the SU-8 was a bit of a gamble so I hope it pays off.

[brandonburr]

Stumbled on this oldish video of Josh's I somehow missed. It's refreshing in this hobby where somebody admits they don't know much and wish to learn more about something. You see so many online, in forums, in the country entry section that claim to know just about everything and that their opinion and what they know it gospel. Those some of the ones to avoid. Their are some in this hobby that are no doubt smart but sometimes it comes across as being aragant. Not a good thing for this hobby if your trying to bring more into it. A lot of gear these days claims to measure well but it's not always about that when it comes to how it performs. That said I can see where somebody new getting in this hobby and learning about dacs could get confused. You have to weed out some of the marketing bs some companies are trying to feed you as well. All the high resolution in the world (24/192, 24/176/, dsd, 2 times dsd etc) don't matter much when most of the music out is only mastered in 16/44 (good old red book). All the high resolution music has been promised since the late 90's and early 2000's and they still have yet to provide anything of note. Companies use those formats to push and sell their gear. To to make matters worse, these days a lot of modern recordings in regular standard red book are compressed and don't sound good. So if they can't get that right you can forget about anything higher in resolution. By and large when interviewing artists it seems most don't care to record in higher resolution sadly. End of rant 😀

[edg]

My go to DAC is the smsl sanskrit 6th gen. The thing is flawless in my opinion

[memberrrberry]

Are you gonna get your hands on the massdrop hd58x jubilee??

[edwarddodge]

If you can hear the difference in amps you can hear the difference in dacs.

[remixx]

So glad you made this video!! I guess I’ve been trying to find this “wholly grail” of what piece of equipment will finally allow me to hear all these imaging and sound staging that I keep hearing about like hearing horns 5ft in front to the top right and drums 8ft left center etc. I don’t hear any of that and I just tested a DragonFly DAC. absolutely zero difference.

[quintuplebanned]

Great video, great channel....the best

[Juanixtec]

My Go DAC is an Aune X1s 10th Anniversary

[constantinosmistillioglou]

Stop this, , , what's up guyyyyz!

[Bluebair]

I know personally that I hear audible differences when using my samsung s8's dac, or the isolated dac section of my ifi micro black label. My samsung is a good sounding dac for a phone, but it lacks the punch, bass extension, and clarity/detail retrieval that I can get out of my ifi.

[Just.May_May]

I have owned 7 different standalone DAC's over a few year period and was always on the side of "They All Sound The Same" until I purchased a Chord DAC.

[TheFrugalAudiophile]

Amplification will probably be my biggest gap. I understand the basic idea, but I’m fuzzy on the details.