Digital Drive

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RE: Qualities that depend on the recording

Posted by morricab on November 6, 2023 at 06:44:37:
In my experience, the best measuring DACs, particularly the ones with wimpy power supplies and basic opamp outputs, don't do anything particularly well regardless of the recording quality. If you can't hear the dimensionless soundstage (flat and 2d images) with relatively gray tonal characteristics and lack of dynamics then I guess count yourself lucky. You can hear this regardless of the recording quality...so much for being invisible and only letting the recording come through.

IMO, describing a sound characteristic can be quite objective...it is not that hard to get people to agree on WHAT they hear. What is subjective in audio is how they think it impacts the quality of the sound. People have different criteria for judging what they hear.

There are exceptions. I have several friends that when we all get together we can mostly agree on what something is doing (like dynamics and soundstage when a rectifier is swapped on a tube amp...yes the rectifier for the power supply and it is scarily obvious) and this often leads to agreement on what is subjectively better as we all have pretty similar goals.

I have one friend; however, who often hears things nearly the opposite of what I an others hear...I haven't figured it out yet why he has hears things often differently. That said, he does have a similar Ayon DAC to me and most of his system is tubes (his amp is a Class A Plinius...although he also owns SETs). His preferred SET, ironincally is a rather warm and rich sounding one from Unison Research (the S6), which I find too far down the colored end of the spectrum.

It is clear that people can be trained to use their senses in a precise qualitative, if not quantitative manner. I think of organoleptic detection in chemistry. This is used in the fragrance industry where trained experts in smell can expertly qualitatively identify components and even have a rough quantitative range accuracy for how much of a component is in the mix because smells change based on concentration.

I have another friend, who after exposure to my system, has completely changed his system other than the speakers (and he is thinking about that). He went from a Topping DAC (upper model, can't remember exactly which one...he added an outboard power supply as well) and a Musical Fidelity SS amp to an expensive APL DSD-AR DAC ($7500 new price) that he bought from me and a Chifi tube amp (push pull EL-34...for sure measures "meh" by your's and Amir's standards) that despite the relatively low price sounds really good (a bit overly rich but resolution doesn't suffer much). Now, his system has dimension, dynamics, tone and is still suitably transparent with good low level resolution. Not the last word in any of these areas but a huge step from where he was with the "amazing" measuring DAC and probably "adquate" measuring amp.

We had that Topping DAC over at my place and it was shocking how badly it dried out ALL recordings and flattened them out spatially. Good recordings, great recordings or even not-so-great all suffered.

To be fair, there are expensive ones that do the same. A different friend had the expensive Nagra Classic DAC (like $15K new) and he brought it over and the first thing I heard was FLAT. Images sounded flat, flat, flat. I couldn't believe that such an expensive DAC made such a basic sonic mistake. It's no wonder they discontinued it...and their new one uses a tube output. The guy now has an expensive Mola Mola Tambaqui that doesn't sound so flat in the soundstage but is tilted up in the highs and I find it also unnatural to listen to.

I have had all SS DACs that also soundstaged well, so it doesn't have to be tube output...the tube output ones just do it better in general.