This confirms what I have been thinking. I was just talking to a guy who told me that moving his speakers one inch changed the sound more than any of the filters in his digital source. The filters are supposed to give him any sound he wants. He has not found that sound yet, but by moving his speakers around a bit, he can shape the sound to his liking much more.
Multi-bit DSD versus PCM
- Thread starter amirm
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This confirms what I have been thinking. I was just talking to a guy who told me that moving his speakers one inch changed the sound more than any of the filters in his digital source. The filters are supposed to give him any sound he wants. He has not found that sound yet, but by moving his speakers around a bit, he can shape the sound to his liking much more.
Maybe so, but the key words in your statement are "to his liking". In audio, you can find at least one person, maybe many, who will testify to almost anything. People "like" all kinds of stuff, whether you like them or not. We can build a case for any audiophile belief under the sun with anecdotal testimony we can find somewhere to "substantiate" it.
Not trying to minimize proper speaker placement. I know what it can or cannot do. I also know what effective room correction can or cannot do. There is no comparison, in my view. I think a little bit of knowledge of physics and acoustics bears me out in this, not to mention measurements. Also, I can put you in touch with hundreds of guys who will tell you the opposite of what your guy said. But, that is neither here nor there as it pertains to your own likes or dislikes.
I guess if nothing matters, then the equipment shouldn't matter either. Just buy the cheapest stuff possible, and move your speakers till it sounds good.
No Mike. Dirac's main business is automotive. That is where the technology started. Licensing it for end user use in PC and DSP came later and it is a small side business for them. Vast majority of Diract implementations as such are DSP based.
The PC version came before the Minidsp version. The minidsp version was made for guys with CD players to take advantage of it. If you are using a PC based media player, using the superior PC version is a no brainer. It's not even CPU intensive. You don't put a single extra component in the signal chain this way. And the processing is more powerful. Also 24/192 compatible, where you must downsample everything to 24/96 with the minidsp version. Even worse is the cheap DSP chip does the downsampling if you don't do it in the software. Uli from Acourate has his minidsp version as well on the same hardware and told me his thoughts vs the PC version as well. It doesn't matter what's run on the hardware, it's putting the hardware in the signal chain that's the issue.
Minidsp stuff is cool, but midfi at best. I've used their best stuff, and had discussions with many others who have as well. If you can do the DSP on computer, it's always a better way to do it. Even the owner of minidsp knows it. The external boxes are simply for convenience.
Thanks Fitzcaraldo. Yes, "To his liking" is important because that is what the digital filters are supposed to provide. My only point is that the digital filters are described as providing the user any sound he "likes". Simply hit the switch and get a different sound. My friend hears little difference between his various filters and has not really found one that he likes. Sure this is insignificant because it is only one user's experience, but he is able to change the sound more dramatically with minor changes in speaker position. I'm sure that room correction would be even more influential, as you say. This is related to your point above that the room has a much greater influence on the sound of a system. I happen to think the speaker/room relationship is critical and is a significant contributor to overall system sound.
And I suspect the room, speaker positioning and room correction all are more significant that the differences between DSD and PCM. Anyway, back to the topic under discussion. Sorry for the diversion.
If what he's looking for is an exact replica of his vinyl system, the only way that's possible is by making digital vinyl rips from the phono stage analog outputs. It's very hard to exactly duplicate all of the coloration's and non-linearities of vinyl with digital, without using this technique. When listening to quad DSD, none of the filters are enabled, so what you get is an exact replica of the R2R master tape. But unfortunately the master tape doesn't suffer from the non-linearities and coloration's of vinyl either. So it may not be to personal tastes either.
Did he try disabling the digital filters and going PCM direct? Did this give him the results he's looking for? It seems to me like there was a difference with the filters, unless this was all made up:
Native PCM being fed to the DAC:
"After three ibuprofen tossed back with three cups of coffee for good measure, I wanted to run some experiments to see how the DAC was performing. First, I wanted to hear how the DAC sounded at native PCM rates without upsampling to DSD. Here we learned that the DAC is clearly designed for DSD. The native PCM rates resulted in a collapsed sound stage with a loss of dynamics. In fact, if I had only heard this DAC played at native PCM rates, I would think it is a rather poor DAC."
(Native PCM meaning no HQplayer filters, no resampling PCM to DSD with HQplayer)
With HQplayer filters resampling to quad DSD:
"Ian had mentioned that when we were upsampling to DSD, we were listening to a filter that was designed to highlight transients and cleanliness. He said there was another filter that supposedly offered a more immersive sound stage, with possibly somewhat reduced transients. I wanted to hear it, so he changed the setting in HQ Player.
"This, for me, was musical bliss. Beautiful, smooth, enveloping sound with warmth and yet plenty of detail to keep me happy. I no longer felt any compunction to have the subs put back in the system. I was flabbergasted at how good the system sounded. The analog setup sounded smaller and rather dry in comparison. The digital actually had more liquidity and smoothness than the analog, and the bass of the digital rig was far superior"
Was it only his friend that heard the difference? Maybe it was the ibuprofen.
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Sigh. I will repeat what I posted before:
Under these circumstances, it just doesn't make sense talking about HQPlayer filters being better (PCM --> DSD) vs. no HQPlayer filter (PCM straight). Better on the NADAC, yes probably, but better in an absolute sense -- this remains to be seen.
Tell that to the 100's of users who all wouldn't live without it after trying it. It's better on the NADAC because of the ESS 9008 chip. What filters do you think the NADAC uses when you feed it straight PCM? The PCM filters and modulators in the ESS 9008 chip. HQplayer bypasses them, which is the reason for the massive improvement. I have explained this in great detail on this thread already.
How do you think I knew that the results would be like this with the NADAC? Do you think I just flipped a coin and was hoping to get lucky? Have you not noticed that 100% of people who have built the streamer on my streamer thread have reported positive results with every single DAC?
And I suppose the team at Roon are fools too for teaming up with Signalyst and spending 8 months on the integration.
Are you skeptical about the dCS vivaldi upsampler as well? Wasn't it you who's been going on and on about how good the dCS stack sounds? Do you think this is by accident as well?
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Tim,
I've explained how Hqplayer works in detail on this thread already. If what I explained here isn't enough, there's probably 1000 pages on Computer Audiophile explaining it, along with 100's of satisfied users. This isn't hot of the shelf new software. It's been out since around 2009, and has been proven and refined several times since. The period of scepticism is over for most regarding this. But it seems on this forum, it's not very well known.
The bottleneck that people complained about with this software in the past was the rudimentary GUI. Well now that they teamed up with Roon last month, that's a thing of the past. The other issue has been the powerful PC requirements for resampling PCM to DSD. Well a $500 server is all it takes to handle this. Follow the setup instructions, and use the minimum required hardware, and the problems don't exist.
You know, I used to think this was true, but no longer do.
I don't doubt that vinyl imparts some coloration (each cartridge is different for example) and was pretty sure that a properly recorded vinyl rip would preserve the colorations... and it might to a degree, but I am now of the opinion that digital is a lossy medium (or perhaps lossier than analog) in some ways. I'm not referring to file compression but the original event (information) vs captured information.
Digital always sounds thinner. Something escapes during the recording process. Example: when brand new re-issues of, say, Decca classical recordings are released, it is pretty easy to tell if the source was digital or the actual analog tapes. The former sounds clean but thin; the latter does not. Obviously some degree of this is mastering but overall it seems pretty consistent.
What I'm hearing on my NADAC is very satisfying from a detail perspective, but doesn't capture all the information that make the event, to my ears, convincing in the same way as analog. This seems to be related more to high midrange frequencies and up (bass, for example, is very convincing), but things like reed instruments (e.g. sax) and brass (whether in jazz or classical) seem like they're missing substance.
Of course I could be wrong. For that reason I really look forward to the results of the test where vinyl is recorded and then played back.
Anyhow, just my $.02
Are you talking about re-issued recordings on LP or CD?
That difference digital/analog resonates with my experience as well. Sax more than brass though. So far I have found sax (soprano and below) to be a real problem in digital. The difference with analog is striking. Orchestral violin sections seem problematic as well.
Me too.
Well all I can say is that I know the NADAC can't be 100% perfect because I know based on my own experiments that the very finest in DSD can only be had by bypassing the multibit DSD section of the DAC chip. This isn't possible with the Sabre chip. Also the new Sabre chip is a better chip, even if used in conjunction with HQplayer, so there's definitely room for improvement. I also know that a better output stage can be built using discrete components rather than IC opamps like the NADAC uses.
But I still say, even with the known compromises, that if you were to listen to a quad DSD vinyl rip made from the analog outputs of your phono stage, that you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. There is absolutely no way this can be known without the proper gear to do it. Folks who do have the proper gear have done this, and they are not amateurs. They are recording engineers who having been making the finest analog recordings in the world for years, and they can't tell them apart.
The NADAC is designed for 100% transparency. So this means when you feed it crap, you will get crap. However when you feed it wonderful sound, you get wonderful sound. Fortunately HQplayer does help quite a bit even with poor recording as opposed to the filters built into the DAC chips, but it's still not a replacement for good recording/mastering at the studio. Also, you are only using the HQplayer filters/modulators when you are listening to PCM. Redbook and lower resolution PCM isn't the holy grail, even with HQplayer. So you can't expect HQplayer to bring PCM to the same levels as natively recorded quad DSD.
Sounds to me that you would prefer a warmer sounding DAC than the NADAC for everyday listening. But the best solution would be to simply rip your vinyl collection to DSD. If you did that, you would be much more satisfied with the DAC. For this you will require the equipment, plus the time to do it. But it's really the only solution if you want it to match your uber high end vinyl setup exactly.
Another thing is, it's only been the last couple years that the best digital ADC's have even been invented. All the digital stuff from the past was recorded by inferior processes. Once it's done, that's it. You can only make it so good, if it wasn't good to begin with. Same with vinyl, if sourced from digital. The vinyl isn't going to make up for bad digital gear at the recording studio.
Anyways we are entering an era, where studio digital gear is getting better and better. Soon even the worst studios will have killer gear. New ADC chips are coming out that will set new performance levels. It's only going to get better from here on in. But, the music you love from the past has already been recorded. And if it was originally recorded to tape, that's good news, because when new direct from master tape DSD releases come out, they will be better than ever. The only other alternative with music you love from the past is ripping the vinyl. But that only makes sense if the vinyl sounds better than the original master tape. For you, this may be the case.
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Well, according to Madfloyd the problem doesn't go away with the NADAC. I'll hear for myself how it performs.
Well it is a tall order for a $10000 DAC to match a $140000 vinyl rig. But with a good vinyl rip, it might. But we can't expect a DAC at any price to erase flaws that happened at the studio. There's no replacement for a quality source.
