A 2 dollars DAC can be indistinguishable from a 2000 dollars one

[hifiramr]

erm, the results and the conclusion don't seem to make sense. most of the time, they were able to spot the ALC 889, and then they find out it had lesser gain. Makes the whole thing flawed in my opinion.

If they're saying the realtek chip is good, the proof would be when I find someone implement it in a good DAC. their earlier offerings were atrocious

Hi The proof is myself I have used ASUS Xonar Essence ST & Musical Fidelity M1 dac with my pc also with my player.But after trying lot more I found the realtek chip on board of my pc is excellent than the above.I am not saying any technical speck its simple trust your ears thats it.

Most of the people think the expensive stuff is always good but that is not the truth here.Every dac is not perfect with all source some will be very good on particular source.This is my personal experience and others have
other things to say it depends.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Bit Rate doesn't make much of a difference. Bit Depth does.
File formats like FLAC are used by many because they support tagging apart from the obvious compression features.

Both make a difference. Bit depth may make less of a difference than you think, which is why digital volume control works reasonably well, although purists (including me) avoid it. If there is a bit-depth plugin available for your media player, try it: it is amazing how much one can reduce it before the music suffers noticeably. An interesting experiment.

 

[keith_correa]

<snip>purists (including me)<snip>

Don't! Or else I'll send you the latest FUBAR cable

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I'll send it back.

Unless, of course, it is purple. I luuurve purple cables! :lol:

 

[noknor]

Does it mean that I have wasted money getting a DAC when the onboard sound card would have done the same job?
I guess I will have to wait until the DAC arrives to find the answer!

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

It certainly would have done the same job, yes... but, whether it would have done it better is another matter. Indeed, you'll have to wait and see: do let us know!

 

[maniac_2004]

I had recently brought an O2, this when paired with REALTEK sounds very good.
*.

how did you pair the realtek and o2 ? afaik the o2 is connected through usb ?

 

[cyber_cat]

how did you pair the realtek and o2 ? afaik the o2 is connected through usb ?

Hi, I have used O2 (AMP) not the ODAC.

How many people are brave enough to connect very expensive headphone amplifiers to on-board soundcards :lol:

 

[indialogue]

To me the point of this article was not really that a USD2 DAC chip can match upto a USD2000 DAC system. What was more interesting was this test adds to the proof that the "audible memory" (if there is something like that) of humans can put goldfish to shame - what we think about when we ponder the quality of music reproduction is really our brain filling in the blanks as it sees fit

 

[greenhorn]

TH is respected for it's hardware reviews, but audio might not be it's cup of tea. I wouldn't take a motherboard comparison by 6moons seriously either

All this review says is that 5 people found the two more or less indistinguishable for 5 random songs.


I recall trying to do the philips golden ear test on my onboard IDT Soundcard - and the IDT chip sounds FAR better than any realtek I've heard, and I was having a hard time in the silver ears level itself. Switched to my USB dac - not particularly high end - PCM 2704, and the difference was immediately noticeable

 

[koushikp]

sorry can't agree with the findings...as someone pointed out, who does the listening tests also matter..

well I have a bunch of neighbours to whom sony speakers sound good to hi fi ones, might we conclude that even those are as good? These are guys who have no involvement to the music when it's being played, what will happen if we use them for blind testing? Hi-fi audio is and always will be for the discernible niche market who understand what they are paying for...while there will be snake oil like 3000 rs. hdmi cables and 40k speaker wires, but I know that even my two DACs sound different to each other and I could spot it within 30 seconds...

My first experience with a DAC was the Audinst mx-1 with my Audioengine A2...when I bought the audinst i had no idea or expectation whats it supposed to sound like better or worse..i had bought it as a spur of the moment purchase based on the reco of the pristine note owner primarily as a headphone amplifier...and i remember hearing the A2 first time on that DAC was a revelation....it wasn't blind testing, but I surely no I had no expectation bias, at least no major one...

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Broadly, I agree, except that the assumption that your neighbours would not hear the difference may well be wrong. They might, even on their non-hifi speakers. The difference would be in whether it matters to them or not.

I didn't get into this article, even though I appreciate its intention. For starters, I think they needed a sample of more than two. However, out of those two, iirc, one was a person with hifi experience.

 

[jai1611]

sorry can't agree with the findings...as someone pointed out, who does the listening tests also matter..

I'd agree, especially after reading the story about Joshua Bell playing at a subway station and no one noticing! Not everyone cares about music, let alone sound quality etc.

Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

 

[koushikp]

edit...sorry posted here what i meant to be a pm..

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

the story about Joshua Bell playing at a subway station and no one noticing!

That is relevant to what people think about classical music, who they might have heard of, and whether or not they had time and mindspace to listen at that time. It is not relevant to what they can or can't hear.

 

[jai1611]

That is relevant to what people think about classical music, who they might have heard of, and whether or not they had time and mindspace to listen at that time. It is not relevant to what they can or can't hear.

It just illustrates that someone needs to care enough to listen. You use someone who has no interest in audio reproduction to do a test of audio equipment, do you think this person is really going to pay enough attention to try and spot differences ?

I have the same issue with display systems - I once had a demo of some projector + screen setups across price points up to 22l and couldnt see what the fuss was about while the person I was with couldn't stop talking about it all day.

 

[vijwilso]

Hi The proof is myself I have used ASUS Xonar Essence ST & Musical Fidelity M1 dac with my pc also with my player.But after trying lot more I found the realtek chip on board of my pc is excellent than the above.I am not saying any technical speck its simple trust your ears thats it.

Most of the people think the expensive stuff is always good but that is not the truth here.Every dac is not perfect with all source some will be very good on particular source.This is my personal experience and others have
other things to say it depends.

The improvement in 100$ DragonFly DAC is obvious when compared with "realtek chipset in PC | Nexus 7 analog out | Panasonic BR".
It has better edge definition of the instruments , instrument body & separation , timbre quality and quality of the Bass . In case of the mb audio out, everything is mixed up . It is day and night . This is with the Amplification -> FS speakers.

However , when compared with the Bose head-phone , the difference is subtle.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

It just illustrates that someone needs to care enough to listen. You use someone who has no interest in audio reproduction to do a test of audio equipment, do you think this person is really going to pay enough attention to try and spot differences ?

If they sincerely engage with the test, then yes, it is very probable that they will be able to spot the differences.

But the most interesting thing here is that it has been completely forgotten that the test subjects were music listeners

Our tests involve two listeners: a moderate enthusiast, Listener A, accustomed to ~$3000 in audio gear, and a more serious enthusiast, Listener B, used to ~$70,000 in audio gear.

So, even "listener A" had spent as much or more on audio than many of us here, and "listener B" had invested far more than the vast majority of us ever will.

Although I have never studied either philosophy or logic, I'm interested in arguments. I used to be interested in them in management meetings just as I'm interested in them in hifi discussions. How easy it is to introduce an assumption that the test subjects were not music listeners, not audiophiles, and how easy it is to then say that their findings are not reliable. The snag is that it isn't true. But it's convincing, and I had to go back to the article to check.

But still, my criticism remains that two is an unconvincing sample size. Five might have carried weight, and twenty might have been convincing.

In fact, I'm not sure that two is even a valid statistical sample (never studied statistics either). Is it any more reliable than tossing a coin?

 

[greenhorn]

There is also the line of reasoning that Willingness to spend while usually correlated to, does not necessarily indicate the ability to discern high fidelity

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes, there is, but in this case, that would be on the basis that you don't agree with the guy's conclusions, yes?

Indeed, we are free not to agree ---and for me its the sample size thing again, if we limit (justified or not) to high[er] end audio, then we have a sample of one. Useless!