DACs: Do You Need an External Digital to Analog Converter for your Hifi System?

[KEW]

I got one recently in the hopes of improving indifferent computer sound through headphones that I use a lot. It seemed like an impulsive purchase until I plugged it in. Basically, whatever the source, the sound has improved. I would not say that it makes a low bit rate mp3 sound as good as a CD that it was ripped from, but rather that both the mp3 and the cd are better than what they were. DVD sound is also improved. I bought an AudioEngine D1 and am using it with a Macintosh. It was a very worthwhile $170. I definitely recommend this little gadget for computer - headphone sound.

I think it should be pointed out that many (most?) DACs within a computer result in poor sound quality. The issue is not so much the DAC as the fact that after the DAC the analog signal exists within the computer case where there is great potential for interference. In other words, a computer is a situation where you often can benefit from an external DAC. By leaving the signal in digital format until it is out of the case, the signal is much less likely to become compromised.

 

[slipperybidness]

Hi Slipperybidness,

Should I assume your link is in response to something I wrote?
If so what are you responding too and what is the point you are making?

Ken

No, just a general article on high performance DACs (precision DACs, not needed for audio applications).

 

[Ipreferns]

What I'm kind of curious about is, my Yamaha as801 has a built in DAC. But the review of that amp here mentioned the analogue inputs have a better response.

Would I benefit audibly from having a higher end "dual mono" "dedicated power supply" "digital noise in a different box" external DAC?
Say the Rotel or a schiit or marantz?

And I mean, not night and day, but for "critical listening" and overall lower noise?
(I dont hear anything wrong with my DAC)

Thanks!

 

[sterling shoote]

With HDMI appearing to be the future for multi-channel audio connectivity, I think the DAC will more and more be found in the pre/pro. I think Wi-Fi and Airplay will also soon support multi-channel; and then, a source DAC will be moot.

 

[kenwstr]

Agree HDMI is the way to go. From what I understand it is the only digital connection that supports an unadulterated uncompressed losless bit-stream. USB, Coax and Optical involve encoding/decoding procedures at either end. DAC and ADC also involves encoding/decoding processes. Optical has an additional encoding/decoding process at either end due to the change in transmission system. These processes can only degrade fidelity so it is best to minimise them. The only advantage to digital interconnects over analogue is maintaining signal integrity over great distance, but in home HiFi, the signal paths are so short that analogue interconnects give a more faithful performance than digital due to the above mentioned processes. In short, it is best to minimise the number of times a signal is messed with so keep analogue sources as analogue right through the whole system and only have one DAC stage per path, avoiding re-interpolation of the bit-stream. The caveat here is that interconnects degrade over time and require maintenance (cleaning conditioning). If the maintenance is done, analogue interconnects are superior over short distances.

I have realised a few things since my previous post about the HDACC. In my test, connecting the CD player to HDACC via coax, the digital signal here is messed with, not uncompressed. Therefore nobbling the HDACC form the get-go ie GIGO. This explains why the very old AMC CD8a internal DAC initially seemed to have a very slight edge. Now that I have done more listening, the HDACC using an HDMI connection from a properly set up BD player sounds absolutely awesome. If the source is high res audio, the listening experience is like perfect vinyl. The only downside is that HDMI based DACs are expensive.

If HDMI is unavailable, I suspect the internal DAC in decent equipment is the better option as it eliminates the shortcomings of the other digital interconnect options. The exception to this in home HiFi is RF interference is getting into analogue RCA leads. Differences can be pretty subtle and may only become apparent in real time listening tests so not something you will go wow over.

It is just my opinion, I am sure some will disagree.


Ken

 

[mtrycrafts]

...
(I dont hear anything wrong with my DAC)

Thanks!

There is your answer.

 

[PENG]

The HDACC arrived yesterday and I have discovered a few thing different from what I expected. The HDMI version appears to be up to 2.0 compatible at least in some if not all functionality.

It is too early to give a conclusive report but I suppose preliminary impressions are OK provided they a viewed in that light and not taken as gospel truth. It's just today's opinion OK.

I did some setting up and testing, I very likely don't have all the settings optimised at this point in time. Amplifier is Yamaha A700 and speakers are Polk Audio 10B stereo pair. I connected 2 paths from my AMC CD8a to the amp, RCA direct to the amp or coax to the HDACC and then RCA to the amp. This enabled me to listen to CD tracks from the same source, either through the AMC internal DAC or through the HDACC by selecting inputs at the amp. I played some folk music and some Gregorian Brothers guitar tracks. There was practically no discernible difference between the two DACS at 44kHz except perhaps the AMC direct may be slightly fuller sounding. In blind testing, my son consistently picked the AMC over the HDACC. However, such a slight preference could easily be due to unnoticed signal level differences. Note, up sampling the HDACC was not used.

Then I played some HD content on the cheap Sony BD player, DHMI passing through the HDACC to the TV. The HDACC handled the HDA significantly better than the Samsung series TV’s internal DAC. Much more detail, expressive and pleasantly smooth and natural musical sound. This is now high end audio quality as good or better than I have experienced before. A definite and very obvious improvement.

Next I compared PCM Stereo against 5.1 using the double sided Fleetwood Mac DVD on the Sony BD player. The 5.1 via the TV DAC sounds thin, lacks sound stage and dynamics but the HDACC played it very well however PCM stereo still seemed to have a crisper clearer edge over the 5.1 data stream.

We tried one of my sons CDs that had guitar used almost like percussion, very little tonality. Upsampling noticeably improved resonance and tonality. Guitars now sounded well “guitary” (his word). So contrary to what many people say, Upsampling does appear to improve music, at least for some things. I was skeptical as how can you put back something that's not there to begin with? Well I suppose it's a fictitious interpolation inserted between the original bits that is somehow just more pleasant to listen too. I don't pretend to understand it but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.

As a preliminary impression, I guess the differences can be pretty subtle depending on the content, source definition etc. It may be hard to define exactly what the differences are but it just seems more pleasurable and immersive.

A note on the AMC CD8a:
I find it very interesting that the HDACC sounds so very similar the AMC CD8a internal DAC at 44.1 kHz output. I suspect though I’m not certain, the HDACC may have the edge with up sampling. I need to compare more tracks. I chose the AMC CD8a about 1997 so for a well-regarded DAC to offer such similar performance in 2016 may say something about AMC. To put the CD8a in perspective, I had listened to every CD player in the HiFi shop in 1997, some were noted for their flat response but lacked dynamic expression across the spectrum, some were expressive in either the top or lower end but the AMC CD8a had it all. Its dynamic musical expression across the full spectrum stood out above everything else I heard and this was the reason I chose it, to my ears, it simply had the most expressive and engaging sound. Though the HDACC is not an obvious winner at 44.1 output, I am very pleased to have an acceptable HD upgrade and CD replacement path.

Regards,
Ken

This link has been posted a few time in various threads. I think you may find it an interesting read.

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Just a couple of points, 1) one cannot overlook the importance of level matching when doing comparison listening tests, and 2) if you are using multiple paths involving RCAs and or especially jack to RCAs, double check to make sure you do not have the L/R channel reversed anywhere in the signal chain. In theory, up sampling in playback should not make an audible difference until the signal gets messed up in the process.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Agree HDMI is the way to go. From what I understand it is the only digital connection that supports an unadulterated uncompressed losless bit-stream. USB, Coax and Optical involve encoding/decoding procedures at either end.

Regardless of underlying media (copper or optical/ coax vs fiber) - the audio protocol is exactly same - SPDIF - I suggest you to actually educate yourself on how it works prior to providing "opinion".
Modern implementations of SPDIF now support lossless audio upto 24b/192khz (depends on dac)

HDMI is the preferred way, but not reasons you've stated - the actual reasons to use HDMI are:
a) If DSD over HDMI is supported - it simplifies the connectivity from SACD to avr
b) HDMI supports audio codecs and audio resolutions which spdif doesn't - like Dolby HD and DTS HD/MA
c)Unlike (unofficial spdif's support for 24/192) - hdmi supports 7.1 uncompressed at 24/192 rate.

...Optical has an additional encoding/decoding process at either end due to the change in transmission system. These processes can only degrade fidelity so it is best to minimise them.

Converting electrical zeros and ones into light pulses and backwards does not affect "fidelity". It's fully digital process which includes error correction algorithm to ensure signal arrive unchanged in any way

The only advantage to digital interconnects over analogue is maintaining signal integrity over great distance, but in home HiFi, the signal paths are so short that analogue interconnects give a more faithful performance than digital due to the above mentioned processes.

You state wrong fact and loosely based on it you claim false conclusion.
Except LP record ALL modern media is digital. Deal with it. DAC are cheap and been nearly perfected. Whatever "improvements" happen in last 10-15 years are made mostly to fix things only dogs could hear.

In short, it is best to minimise the number of times a signal is messed with so keep analogue sources as analogue right through the whole system and only have one DAC stage per path, avoiding re-interpolation of the bit-stream.

Again, only real analogue source is LP records and soon to die AM/FM radios. Using pure direct mode in most cases will provide same result. However you do have one point - If the source if digital, and it's likely is, in most cases IT IS best to stick to pure digital route and use only 1 dac in system (one in avr)

The caveat here is that interconnects degrade over time and require maintenance (cleaning conditioning). If the maintenance is done, analogue interconnects are superior over short distances.

Yes, copper connectors DO oxidizes from air and requires occasional cleaning, regardless of signal - digital or analog. Again - your second statement is false.

It is just my opinion, I am sure some will disagree.
Ken

Ken, you're entitled to have an opinion, even a wrong one, but if I may recommend - do actually educate yourself from scientifically proven sources and not sites like Audiostream.

 

[kenwstr]

This link has been posted a few time in various threads. I think you may find it an interesting read.

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Just a couple of points, 1) one cannot overlook the importance of level matching when doing comparison listening tests, and 2) if you are using multiple paths involving RCAs and or especially jack to RCAs, double check to make sure you do not have the L/R channel reversed anywhere in the signal chain. In theory, up sampling in playback should not make an audible difference until the signal gets messed up in the process.

Ta for that, While I have spent many hours over months researching, I had not come across this one. I have read about half the article so far but must finish it later. I am well aware of point 1 and take care with with level matching as best I can. Unfortunately it is difficult to get it exact in real time with home stereo and no metering. Point 2, always do make sure L/R is correct. Yeh. Up sampling..., I fail to see how it could improve anything. It can only add artifacts not present in the source signal but I decided to play with it a bit anyway. While I have messed with this, I don't think I have commented either way so far.

Ken.

 

[kenwstr]

CLIP
Ken, you're entitled to have an opinion, even a wrong one, but if I may recommend - do actually educate yourself from scientifically proven sources and not sites like Audiostream.

That seems a bit over the top to me. I have in fact invested considerable time and effort researching all this. However, it is an industry full of myths, commercial interest and bald faced lies. So what am I do do? The bottom line is to identify what works best. Try to eliminate the obvious nonsense, verify with my own listening tests but even that is full of pitfalls. It is very difficult to do true isolation testing and eliminate bias. Most of us just don't have the resources to do it properly but I do the best I can with what I have. I don't think the effort I have made here deserves such an attack.

Ken

 

[gzubeck]

Regardless of underlying media (copper or optical/ coax vs fiber) - the audio protocol is exactly same - SPDIF - I suggest you to actually educate yourself on how it works prior to providing "opinion".
Modern implementations of SPDIF now support lossless audio upto 24b/192khz (depends on dac)

HDMI is the preferred way, but not reasons you've stated - the actual reasons to use HDMI are:
a) If DSD over HDMI is supported - it simplifies the connectivity from SACD to avr
b) HDMI supports audio codecs and audio resolutions which spdif doesn't - like Dolby HD and DTS HD/MA
c)Unlike (unofficial spdif's support for 24/192) - hdmi supports 7.1 uncompressed at 24/192 rate.


Converting electrical zeros and ones into light pulses and backwards does not affect "fidelity". It's fully digital process which includes error correction algorithm to ensure signal arrive unchanged in any way

You state wrong fact and loosely based on it you claim false conclusion.
Except LP record ALL modern media is digital. Deal with it. DAC are cheap and been nearly perfected. Whatever "improvements" happen in last 10-15 years are made mostly to fix things only dogs could hear.


Again, only real analogue source is LP records and soon to die AM/FM radios. Using pure direct mode in most cases will provide same result. However you do have one point - If the source if digital, and it's likely is, in most cases IT IS best to stick to pure digital route and use only 1 dac in system (one in avr)


Yes, copper connectors DO oxidizes from air and requires occasional cleaning, regardless of signal - digital or analog. Again - your second statement is false.

Ken, you're entitled to have an opinion, even a wrong one, but if I may recommend - do actually educate yourself from scientifically proven sources and not sites like Audiostream.

Generally I enjoyed your mow down session except one. All dacs are the same and theyve been perfected. I think there are some areas for improvement. The differences might be small but there are some differences. The question is do you want to pay for those differences?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Generally I enjoyed your mow down session except one. All dacs are the same and theyve been perfected. I think there are some areas for improvement. The differences might be small but there are some differences. The question is do you want to pay for those differences?

Perfection is absolute while DAC is my definition an approximation device. What I am saying is not that DAC has been perfected, but they are good enough for humans not to notice the difference (if all else is equal). This holds true pretty much since dithering has been added to 1-bit dacs.
Now dac are still improving and getting reference level dac does take a bit of extra, but maybe not as much as you think - this one for example is about 99.9999 near perfect:
https://www.jdslabs.com/products/46/standalone-odac-rev-b/
while this one adds few 9s but cost "a bit" more:
https://benchmarkmedia.com/products/benchmark-dac3-hgc-digital-to-analog-audio-converter

Does later one measures better than prior in lab equipment? - Yes it does, but can you tell between them by ear - I bet you $100 - in properly setup blind test - you won't, not a chance.

Due to massive amount of r&d companies like D&M and Yamaha already invested into their equipment - their internal dac is really good

 

[mtrycrafts]

R.... DAC are cheap and been nearly perfected. Whatever "improvements" happen in last 10-15 years are made mostly to fix things only dogs could hear.
....

If I had a dog, I would want Fido to enjoy that recording, wouldn't you?

 

[mtrycrafts]

... It is very difficult to do true isolation testing and eliminate bias. Most of us just don't have the resources to do it properly but I do the best I can with what I have. I don't think the effort I have made here deserves such an attack.

Ken

Well, For your purposes, I bet you would not need such lab level isolation, etc.
If you are able to level match components to 0.1 dB spl at the speaker terminals which is a 1% voltage variation, you are halfway there. Blinding is your next step and rapid switching is the other step, regardless what some might say about long term listening.

 

[connor ross]

My Onkyo tr sx had cirrus 12/192 is that good enough to play vorbis through Spotify and FLAC,ALAC via pcm from laptop, crome cast?

64in Samsung 3d,samsung blueray, ps4,wii,hp laptop,roku,cromecast,overair,

 

[xyzzy]

This article very incorrectly states that DAC are now a mature technology and all are generally good enough. It's like saying beer brewing is mature and Budweiser is a good enough beer and we don't need other beers. Author is clueless on high-end audio. You also can remain clueless on digital audio if you listen to this guy. If you are reading this in a quest for better sound then do not listen to this guy.

 

[everettT]

This article very incorrectly states that DAC are now a mature technology and all are generally good enough. It's like saying beer brewing is mature and Budweiser is a good enough beer and we don't need other beers. Author is clueless on high-end audio. You also can remain clueless on digital audio if you listen to this guy. If you are reading this in a quest for better sound then do not listen to this guy.

Thanks for providing data to backup your claims. Your post has been discussed till the cows came home. The forum has a search feature, try it

 

[xyzzy]

Thanks for providing data to backup your claims. Your post has been discussed till the cows came home. The forum has a search feature, try it

I use this instrument probably unknown to you called "ears". They are used for hearing sound and is your most reliable source of sound info if you practice how to use them by listen to lots of audio equipment. If audio sound is important to you I suggest you try your ears out as an alternative to searches for writings from other people who are also unaware of this instrument known as "ears". I have done this for the past 30 years. You might try discovering and using them too. Good luck getting away from staring at a monitor and developing some real "sound" experience.

 

[everettT]

I use this instrument probably unknown to you called "ears". They are used for hearing sound and is your most reliable source of sound info if you practice how to use them by listen to lots of audio equipment. If audio sound is important to you I suggest you try your ears out as an alternative to searches for writings from other people who are also unaware of this instrument known as "ears". I have done this for the past 30 years. You might try discovering and using them too. Good luck getting away from staring at a monitor and developing some real "sound" experience.

Good I've got 20+ years on your ears then. Do you know how long auditory memory is? Have you ever been part of a blind study where you have to rely on your ears?. So basically your the only person on the forum that has ears? Maybe if you weren't trolling and actually took the time to understand and evaluate acoustics properly... oh never mind your trolling

 

[Pogre]

I use this instrument probably unknown to you called "ears". They are used for hearing sound and is your most reliable source of sound info if you practice how to use them by listen to lots of audio equipment. If audio sound is important to you I suggest you try your ears out as an alternative to searches for writings from other people who are also unaware of this instrument known as "ears". I have done this for the past 30 years. You might try discovering and using them too. Good luck getting away from staring at a monitor and developing some real "sound" experience.

Where's your evidence? Methinks somebody spent a lot of money on tech and now feels the need to defend said purchase... Don't feel bad. Marketing is compelling and everyone is prone to the placebo effect.

Unless you participated in a double blind study where you have nothing but your ears to rely upon, then you have no leg to stand on here.

*Maybe if you turned down the douche factor in your posts you might actually be able to have a discussion and learn something.