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In Reply to: RE: I have to disagree with you in part... posted by Sprezza Tura on June 23, 2014 at 07:27:35
Did you adjust the jumpers to reduce the output level by -6 dB? Did you set the volume trim to -14 dB? If you do these two things then the output level will be normal. With these settings I drive my Focal powered monitors at a typical volume control setting of -18 dB, but when I want it really loud and the recording was made at a low level then it sometimes gets turned up to -6 dB.
For comparison purposes with other DACs you can use the digital volume control to even things out. The DAC chip has lots of excess digital resolution compared to the op-amp based output circuitry, so you can easily throw away 20 dB of resolution. Actually, if you run these op-amps at a lower level they will have less distortion as well, but for this purpose it probably won't be necessary to do more than set the volume trim to -14 dB. With these settings my system is dead quiet, with no sound coming out of the speakers at all while playing digital silence, even when the volume control is turned all the way up to -0 dB and my ear is right next to a tweeter.
Also, to avoid high frequency glare it's best to select the slow filter and make sure upsampling is off to disable ASRC to 192 kHz.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
I did all of the above..all of it..minus the jumper adjustment.
Feature wise, it the DAC is a great value, but imo it is a professional tool, like a lab microscope. None of the output stages..volume bypass, analog volume, or digital volume are refined.
BTW, I make no judgements about your system. Focal is used world wide in professional settings, especially active models. I am a believer in active monitoring, lots of advantages there.
I believe if you were to get a good quality ADC and feed it an analog signal and put the resulting digital through your Mytek that you would find that the output would sound remarkably like the input to the ADC. If you haven't done this and haven't actually observed a nice sounding analog signal being reduced to annoying screeches then you are probably ascribing what you don't like to the wrong part of the record-playback chain. There is a lot that can go wrong between musicians and ears.
These kinds of bypass tests are easy to do with tape recorders which nearly always include both record and playback capability. They are not that much more difficult with ADC - DAC loops, but not all audiophiles have a suitable ADC. If you haven't done such a test then you have no basis to ascribe any poor sound to the Mytek.* What you don't like to hear is more likely to be some incompatibility between the recording and other parts of your playback chain, for example your speaker/room/ear interface. Recordings that were made to sound right on a rolled-off playback chain will sound horribly bright on a flat playback chain. Unfortunately, most recordings fit this description, which makes a flat playback chain, however technically "correct", a complete disaster.
The place to fix this is not at the DAC, it's where the problem is likely to exist, namely in the speaker/room interface. Back in the days when it was "high fidelity" and before the "high-end" marketing scam was created there was a fairly simple way to deal with these problems that sufficed to eliminate at least the first order problems: tone controls. However, a bunch of clever scam artists discovered that if you took these away and convinced people that they were bad you could sell endless slightly different components and endless "remasters" of the same recordings by dead musicians, each with slightly different equalization.
Sometimes the problem is just that you are trying to play an excellent recording on a inadequate system and ascribing shrillness to the way our ears work, e.g. the Fletcher–Munson effect. The latest eclassical.com "special of the day" of Petroushka and The Rite of Spring fell into this category. It sounded horribly shrill and thin when played at back hall volume, but when turned up to row 5 volume the recording snapped into focus and sounded realistic. Of course, I have a system that will produce undistorted sound at my listening position at 118 dB, no Quad 57's as I am a fan of Mahler symphonies and not solo harpsichord music. Others on AA have complained that the BIS recordings are shrill and unlistenable.
*If you have the pre-amp version of the Mytek then you can perform analog bypass tests from an analog source and see how the Mytek op-amps are coloring the sound. That would be another way to narrow in on the problem.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Well, let me fill you in.
I have a Tascam DA3000 and a Korg MR2000, both 192/DSD recorders.
I have been archiving master tape dubs off of several reel to reels in primo condition.
I can tell you that the the files sound far more forward, with less soundstage depth with the MyTek as compared to 2 other DACs, and as compared to live tape playback. The other two DACs are far closer to the original event.
The MyTek does has an incredible amount of detail, but the sound does not breathe, spatial cues are far less evident. I stand by what I said, in my opinion, (please note that!)it is a tool for monitoring recordings for flaws, not for enjoyment. Listener fatigue big time.
Speaking of Stravinsky, the Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky recording on Columbia of Rite, to me is stunning on SACD. I once had the LP, and the SACD destroys in regards to dynamic range, tonality, and depth.
If you've done level matched bypass tests, then you could be right and I would definitely accept this if you'd used the Grimm. EMM Labs or Horus ADCs. However, from listening to Bruce Brown's DSD shootout, I found both the Tascam DA3000 and a Korg MR2000 sufficiently lower quality than I rejected both of these converters. I believe the files are still on line at Bruce's website, which is linked from the long thread below. (Of course with a different DAC my converter preferences might reverse. Such is audio, where as my friend Clark Johnsen once put it, "There are no sound standards.")
In addition to exploring the effects of the analog driver stages by using the Mytek in preamp mode, you might also try using software conversion from PCM to DSD. I found the PCM to DSD conversion available in HQPlayer to do an excellent job and preferred the sound quality of all PCM formats converted to DSD128 over playing them directly. After doing these listening tests I have become suspicious as to the sound quality of the PCM upsampling that goes on inside the SABRE chip. (If this is a correct diagnosis, then I would expect similar results with inexpensive or mid-range DACs that use the SABRE chip without outboard bespoke filters.)
There are a few other tweaks with the Mytek that are important to get the best sound. I found it was important to dim the LED lights and to turn off the flashing level meters. Also, I have yet to get good sound of any form out of the Mytek through the SPDIF input, but I never really tried either, just briefly tested it to see if it worked while the unit was still under warranty, using an ancient RCA analog interconnect cable and not even a proper digital cable.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Tony, while what you say theoretically is correct, you are engaging in flight of fantasy here.The Grimm, EMM, or Horus units are for mastering and recording suites that make a living from digital audio. Not for the hobbyist. Let's get real.
Secondly, you may be amused to know that Mr Brown recommend both the Tascam, and Korg units highly. He even highly recommended the smaller, portable MR-2 as a superb budget ADC. He was right, in application, they have far surpassed my expectations. When I A/B the tape and the file playback, the results are very impressive.
FYI, I did the DSD Battle Royale and had a few preferences, but I was not in the least put off by the Tascam or Korg samples, actually I thought all the samples were excellent, hard to say which was "best", but they were all slightly different.
Agree about upsampling to DSD, but also to 176.4 or 192 depending on original incoming sample rate. There are very good reasons why it sounds better. As you have noted in the past, one can do this in the software domain or in the DAC..as far as DSD, PS Audio does that in the new DirectStream DAC..you only need 6 grand to get the benefit. :)
Edits: 06/23/14
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