Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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RE: I stand corrected

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on September 3, 2014 at 07:47:08

In Reply to: RE: I stand corrected posted by Sprezza Tura on September 2, 2014 at 18:51:45:

The Mytek is somewhat quirky. Its weakest point is the high output levels, but these are fixed by changing the jumpers for the IV resistors. The next weakest feature is the use of the stock filters that come with the SABRE chip, particularly when playing at 44.1 kHz, but all of the filter issues go away when operating at DSD128. Next comes the OP amps that buffer the IV circuit and also include the analog volume control. Since I have removed the first two problems (by changing jumpers and converting to DSD128 in my computer) this is the main issue that I have with the DAC. The first step is to avoid using the analog volume control. There is a bypass relay which takes this out of the circuit when you use the digital volume control. This eliminates most of the euphonic mid-fi distortion. There is another bonus, which is that the remaining op-amps are now being driven at a lower level and they are much more linear. The downside of this is that one loses bits of digital resolution and there is more noise. However, the SABRE chip is a 32 bit DAC and I run it around -6 to -22 dB for most playback, hence I am not losing any digital resolution, nor am I losing much noise from the DAC chip which is at -129 dB. The gain staging in my system (which uses active speakers driven at balanced pro audio levels) is such that I can not hear any sound out of any of the drivers, even if I hold my ear right up to them, regardless of volume control setting (when playing 24 bit files that have digital black or dither noise).

The Mytek is a Swiss Army knife of features and has a difficult user interface that is not understandable by inmates who are computer challenged and who stubbornly refuse to RTFM. It was quite competitive at the time I purchased it. However, I doubt very much that I would enjoy much better sounding music were I to replace it, or at least, this would be about the last part of my system that I would plan to upgrade.

In general, if I had $5000 to blow, it would be on purchasing more recordings... That is about as far as I would go in any event. It makes no sense to spend more money on a DAC then was spent on the ADC that captured the original analog signal. And as to those expensive front panels, these are for those laggards who haven't figured out that life is not about having more and shinier stuff than one's neighbors. I am not in the least bit interested in Veblen goods.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

Edits: 09/03/14

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