State-of-the-Art Digital

morricab

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While this is one of the best waveform reconstruction measurements I've seen (along with dCS, MSB and a handful others), and even though I'd insist it's one of the few measurements that won't merely point to potential flaws (there's at least a morsel of positive correlation), by no stretch of the imagination does it tell us how a DAC sounds, I mean, without undue sarcasm, check these out:

View attachment 72513 View attachment 72514

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
Yes, and the Weiss 202 sounds like crap...seriously it is not a good sounding device. Sure is a pretty waveform though...
 

morricab

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I guess the problem is in the realm of SOTA DACs, those graphs all look impressive, and yet people love the one and hate the other, so much for the relevance of measurements… :rolleyes:

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
Precisely what I told you many posts...and waveforms ago o_O.
 

acousticsguru

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Yes, and the Weiss 202 sounds like crap...seriously it is not a good sounding device. Sure is a pretty waveform though...
Just tried to give a fair description of its sound and couldn't think of a positive attribute. Was close to typing "correct" and thought better of it - what the heck is that adjective supposed to communicate about an audio product that'll literally make a listener turn his attention to something else or turn the system off? Now, if we ever want to discuss nerd or geek products, that would be at the very top of my list…

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 

acousticsguru

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Precisely what I told you many posts...and waveforms ago o_O.
What I said. With the one difference that you missed which was that I meant that IF there's any measurement AT ALL that'll give a morsel of positive correlation (not "truth", let alone certainty), this would be the one. What I meant was: if this won't do, no measurement will (but that's always my belief: they're a means to an end, as such important for the designer, if virtually meaningless to the user).

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 

morricab

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Huge, holographic 3-D sound stage, lifelike, dynamic and engaging sound with truly wide-band bass and treble extension, digititis-free without any "softness", instead an in-your-face "You Are There" kind of realism, with in absolute terms (not compared to other DACs of the same era, but e.g. the owner's opera singer wife who was not only present in recording, but also in person) a slightly "ghostly" lack of density or palpability and barely noticeable grain (at realistic playback levels, near-impossible to hear any grain at more moderate levels) on the one hand, a flat (dynamically as well as in terms of soundstage height or size), clinical, lifeless, downright boring if not depressing presentation on the other hand. This was the first of a whole series of DAC comparisons I wrote about in parts on these forums at one point, in the course of which the Weiss owner relegated the DAC202 to his holiday cottage.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
Ok so you heard what is wrong with the 202 as well...dreadful really. I would not agree with your assessment of the Delius though. My friend had this DAC for many years...was never more glad than when he removed it finally from his system. Elgar was better but still easily bested...not on the bench but in the ear...
 

morricab

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What I said. With the one difference that you missed which was that I meant that IF there's any measurement AT ALL that'll give a morsel of positive correlation (not "truth", let alone certainty), this would be the one. What I meant was: if this won't do, no measurement will (but that's always my belief: they're a means to an end, as such important for the designer, if virtually meaningless to the user).

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
No, I disagree...jitter is one measurement, that all else being equal makes a big difference in digital sound.
 
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acousticsguru

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Ok so you heard what is wrong with the 202 as well...dreadful really. I would not agree with your assessment of the Delius though. My friend had this DAC for many years...was never more glad than when he removed it finally from his system. Elgar was better but still easily bested...not on the bench but in the ear...
On the bench, the Delius isn't all that great if you ask me, and yes the Elgar sounds better thanks to a Class A output stage versus the Delius OpAmps (also, the Elgar may not have a SPS, although I'm not 100% sure), and I described some of its deficiencies above, but really, sonically, it was at the opposite end of the spectrum of the Weiss or the Chord DAVE, with some other DACs, such as Playback Designs somewhere in-between. Of course all the comparisons were blind and perfectly leveled in volume by our engineer friend Rudolf, at the disadvantage one might add of the Delius, whose output had to be digitally lowered for all these comparison the get the volume levels within 0.5 dB (blind tests are completely useless otherwise, IMHO).

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 

acousticsguru

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No, I disagree...jitter is one measurement, that all else being equal makes a big difference in digital sound.
You continue to miss my point about the positive and negative correlation of measurements. The Weiss is extremely low-jitter - what does that tell you?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 

morricab

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On the bench, the Delius isn't all that great if you ask me, and yes the Elgar sounds better thanks to a Class A output stage versus the Delius OpAmps (also, the Elgar may not have a SPS, although I'm not 100% sure), and I described some of its deficiencies above, but really, sonically, it was at the opposite end of the spectrum of the Weiss or the Chord DAVE, with some other DACs, such as Playback Designs somewhere in-between. Of course all the comparisons were blind and perfectly leveled in volume by our engineer friend Rudolf, at the disadvantage one might add of the Delius, whose output had to be digitally lowered for all these comparison the get the volume levels within 0.5 dB (blind tests are completely useless otherwise, IMHO).

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
We did find that both Delius and Elgar sounded better when run at whole integer rates (88.2 or 176.4) rather than 96 or 192 (using Purcell upsampler).
 

morricab

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You continue to miss my point about the positive and negative correlation of measurements. The Weiss is extremely low-jitter - what does that tell you?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
I said all else being equal...
 

acousticsguru

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We did find that both Delius and Elgar sounded better when run at whole integer rates (88.2 or 176.4) rather than 96 or 192 (using Purcell upsampler).
Now that's interesting - we didn't. In particular upsampling RBCD. The integer upsampling from back in the era sounded analytical to me (and when I first met Andrea, another early and long-time Delius/Purcell owner, interestingly he told me the exact same thing). The same isn't true of the modern dCS products of course.

I'm wondering if what you heard were the post-RoHS era Delius/Purcell (the later ones, if not all as there were early post-RoHS units in grey as well to my knowledge, all black units, no grey front plates, often with a stainless steel volume knob)? I was offered those when my pre-RoHS units couldn't be updated to DSD playback and upsampling - despite a very fair offer to do so, as I didn't like the sound (technically sober, non-involving, not my cup of tea at all).

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 
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microstrip

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You continue to miss my point about the positive and negative correlation of measurements. (...)

Exactly - the positive and negative correlation of measurements is the source of our postings about measurements.
 

microstrip

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I can't tell a difference in the waveform reconstruction, same symmetrical filter, by the way:

View attachment 72510

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
Nice. Can you tell us what is the source of these measurements? It would be of interests if they have other measurements and explain how they solved the crossover problem.
 

acousticsguru

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While I love measuring things it many times misleads is to false conclusion. Having extremely low distortions to some makes for a dry sound .
jitter in its many many forms is a factual measurement can be directly correlated to better sound. but to add a little confusion how do you guys feel about playback formats.
same files be it red book or hi Rez. flac to AIFF
and of course flac no compression even add in wav. But I’m not a big wav fan.
any ideals on any of the formats. I’m curious in it’s observations.
So as not to ignore what I think is a legitimate question, secretly hoping none of my engineer friends is reading this (express carriage to the loony bin, LOL!), but I for one do hear a difference between WAV (fuller-bodied, most realistic), AIFF (a bit soft and mushy) and FLAC (a bit less realistic, as well as more wearing, i.e. "digital"). Admittedly, the differences I hear are such that I'd bet no more than a friendly wager, and would likely fail, but enough to use the one and not the other when it comes to PCM playback.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
 
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Al M.

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Nice. Can you tell us what is the source of these measurements? It would be of interests if they have other measurements and explain how they solved the crossover problem.

I posted the link in #957, thread page 48 (sorry, I'm on phone, easier to point to the post). They do have a good number of other measurements (best to look at the balanced output measurements, which is the output most use, including myself).

Mike Moffat does not disclose how he solved the zero-crossing problem (he did not use sample-and-hold, which he says sounds bad). As far as I know, DAC chips with that characteristic prominently show it already at 0 dB, not just at -90 dB, like in those measurements. Thus, Moffat brought the distortion already *way down* in version 1, with version 2 being the icing on the cake.
 

Al M.

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ack

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You're right, it does look near-perfect. Still can't comment on the DAC, nor the improvement over the earlier version, as I simply don't know it. ;)

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
Well, I own the Yggy2 and I've had the Vivaldi 2.0 in here along with others, all driven the same way. Perhaps the Vivaldi needs its entire stack to sound its best, but as a standalone, it needed help. But this thread is about the state of the art...
 

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