Myths in Digital Music...

[venkatcr]

We were discussing a DAC from a company called LessLoss.

dCS is a great company, and I am sure many people would be happy to pray the premium they charge. The dCS Scarlatti uses a proprietary processor and not your regular off the shelf DAC chips. So a price comparison would not make sense here.

Cheers

 

[square_wave]

We were discussing a DAC from a company called LessLoss.

dCS is a great company, and I am sure many people would be happy to pray the premium they charge. The dCS Scarlatti uses a proprietary processor and not your regular off the shelf DAC chips. So a price comparison would not make sense here.

Cheers

DCS is one among the many who have taken DAC design to the NEXT level. There are many more like it. They include some DIY ones too.

The point was about taking some random dac design and proclaiming it as the benchmark against which all other DACs need to compared against for quality and price .

 

[venkatcr]

SW, we seem to be getting into an endless discussion. Let me end this by saying the DAC1 from Benchmark cannot be considered a random design. They were very famous and popular in the professional arena. They were, in fact, considered a de-facto standard there. They did spend a lot of time, money, and energy before they moved into the consumer market.

I have heard the Arcam rDac quite extensively and I do respect it's capabilities. Arcam also took a long time in researching and experimenting, and their product was an instant success. I am writing a detailed review of the rDac along with Asus Xonar STX, and we can discuss some more there.

Though I have a lot of respect for the results of a listening session, personally, a product that has been measured to deliver good results climbs to level 1 in MY acceptance. I also believe that, given a stock DAC chip, there is only so much you can do with the electronic design. I have personal experience with design boards and instructions from companies such as TI, Intel, AMD, etc., when they release new chips. Yes, you can change the op amps, resistors etc. But the cost to value addition ratio in these cases is incremental at best, and it becomes a personal judgement on how much you want to spend.

Let us just leave it as my strong personal belief.

Cheers

 

[square_wave]

Venkat,

De facto standard by whom? Who are these high priests who represent the audiophile community at large?

Lets just say that you belong to a certain camp which adheres to a certain methodology while evaluating audiophile gear. The high priests whom you so adore resides within this camp !

There are other methods too which are very valid. For listening as well as technical. I personally know audiophiles who have bought this DAC1 and sold it within a few weeks time. Does it mean that DAC1 is bad? Of course not! It just means that different folks listen and evaluate differently. If this was not true, we would be all listening to gear peddled by the Audioholic forum
I also do not want to continue this fruitless discussion.

I remember the signature of a past member of this forum while at this discussion. It is very true in hi end audio.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted Albert Einstein.