|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
65.19.76.104
In Reply to: RE: An insolent provocation .... if a usb dac is very well design (and built) the pc quality should not matter posted by beppe61 on December 10, 2014 at 00:12:52
I agree with you that this is how things should be. However, they are not this way because of the direction the market has taken.
I blame the reviewers for this sad situation. They review DACs using fancy digital front ends. If a DAC sounds good under those circumstances they give it a good review. However, they shouldn't do this. If they used the cheapest computers to review DACs and panned any DACs that didn't sound good under those circumstances the manufacturers would be forced to provide a suitable level of isolation.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
You blame reviewers? In my camp, Async USB is affected by the computer source due to common-mode noise. Some USB ports on computers are better than others in this regard, and better power supplies probably help here. USB common-mode filters help a lot. Galvanic isolation fixes it.
If the USB port on the computer is really poor, there may be high error rates too. Gordon has supposedly measured these. I cant seem to get the same result when I make the measurement though. Errors seem to be rare, but maybe I just have really good computer USB ports. I stay away from Dell and others that are notorious for cheap I/O infrastructure.
Reviewers are low hanging fruit..an easy target.
I don't take reviewers seriously enough to assign them blame.
They are literally the blind leading the blind in most cases.
I actually agree with you on this one. Their systems are equally poor too. There are a few exceptions though.
It was discussed so many times before that it's not even funny anymore, but just a thought:
Is it possible that reviewers, based on their experience, realize that there's no DAC in existence that would make crappy transport sound good? And, accordingly, they try to achieve the best sound possible, using the BEST transport available to them - just as regular audiophile would do?
I wouldn't mind seeing a paragraph in a review, devoted to evaluation of performance of DAC with the worst source possible, just to see how well it rejects the egregious nasties fed to it. Elsewhere on this page, Beetlemania quoted CA review of Ayre DAC, something along the lines of "5 refrigerators..." - which is great, but even then, Chris C. doesn't pursue evaluating actual sound quality in that setup.
Anything beyond one paragraph would be just feeding the irrational side of the reviewer - and of the readers alike.
Hi and thanks a lot for the very interesting advice
First i have to say that i am not in the position to judge seriously the quality of a digital sourse having a very low level set-up
I can also say that lately the average quality of the digital source seems to me quite good. I like even the sound coming from a Panasonic BR player. So my system is hardly high rez (and maybe also my ears).
But i am in the process to try a usb to spdif converter and try it with different digital PC sources (laptop Apple and Windows, desktops) just to hear for differences.
And i like the idea to be able to use the pc with this interface and a nice vintage dac.
But i have understood that while the asyncronous usb transmission has a very interesting potential is not easy to do it rightly.
Thanks again
Kind regards,
bg
Uh no. Your notion is rather absurd.Let's examine what you say...if we extrapolate reviewers should use garbage home theater amplifiers to review SOTA speakers.
I blame reviewers for parroting absurd claims by manufacturers and spreading lame buzzwords, but NOT for using high quality front ends.
Your statement holds no water.
MANUFACTURERS are the ones who should design and test their DACS with piece of shit front ends. Not reviewers.
Edits: 12/10/14
Your analogy is bogus. A digital source is not in the analog signal path of the playback chain, unlike an amplifier.
It should be the responsibility of the manufacturers, editors, and reviewers to educate non-technical consumers. Unfortunately 30 years after the introduction of digital audio most of these people remain ignorant of the technology, or if knowledgeable are locked by business connections to a marketplace that amounts to Veblen goods for rich assholes, not tools for musicians and music lovers.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
If they SHOULD but likely many or most do not, then I would think that's all the more reason reviewers should.
I agree. The DAC should be designed so that it sounds the same regardless of the source of the data it is using (assuming the source can at least provide the data at the required rate).This leaves two jobs for the DAC (as far as receiving the data):
1. It should be able to overcome any timing problems with the incoming data (i.e. it has no dependency on the speed at which the data is being transmitted)...otherwise known as buffering.
2. It should be reasonably well isolated from the notoriously noisy USB connection.With such a DAC, the computer, the software, and the storage device(s) (and connections to them) should be irrelevant. On the other hand, if you are using a DAC that seems to sound better depending on what software you use, or which brand of computer, or storage device, or USB cable...you've got a bad DAC.
Edits: 12/10/14
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: