The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.

Angsty said:
The Apple dongle measures pretty well, objectively. After owing a few DACs, I’m of the opinon that there is not much audible difference above a certain level of performance.

www.audiosciencereview.com

Review: Apple vs Google USB-C Headphone Adapters

This is a review, detailed measurements and comparison of Apple's USB-C adapter to the current and last version of Google Pixel headphone adapters. The Apple adapter costs just $9 including one day shipping for free. The Google dongle costs $12. Not that any of these are large by any stretch...
www.audiosciencereview.com www.audiosciencereview.com
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Yeah I’m going to throw it out there that this site hates my DAC with a passion and it sounds great. I’m in the very much not a fan of their approach camp.
 
I admit, I’m kinda loosing faith in the objectivist point-of-view that we can measure everything and determine what it all means.

I recently replaced an older but good DAC (Mytek Liberty) with one that doesn’t measure as well (Denafrips Pontus II 12-i), and I heard a difference. I also enjoyed that difference. I added a DDC (Denafrips Iris) and heard a smaller, but still noticeable and enjoyable difference.

For years, decades really, I listened to digital music (CD’s and rips). When I put together a decent (IMHO) analog rig so I could play records that are out of print, i noticed it again sounded different. And more enjoyable. And objectively that shouldn’t be the case. CD’s and the Nyquist theorem were supposed to be all we could need.

I laughed at cables, especially expensive power cables. Then, when I actually tried one and saw (it was on my AppleTV 4K) a difference, I was thrown off. I’ve upgraded all my cables, and placebo/nocebo effect or confirmation bias, sighted test, whatever, I’ve noticed changes and enjoyable differences with them.

Same with amps, especially phono preamps. And not just tube vs solid state, but differences amongst and between solid state gear.

The item that truly, completely blew me away though was a blinded speaker comparison of two extremely well engineered speakers that both measured brilliantly. I thought I’d hear a difference, but that the differences would be small. It wasn’t. I could repeatedly hear the differences between the two, even when I was in different seats. The speaker i ended up preferring through your the test wasn’t the one I wanted it to be. The M2 measures better than the Ultima Salon2, but I proffered the Salon2. As did the majority of the other attendees.

I believe in science. I believe in engineering. I don’t believe in magic, or dragons, or green markers making a CD sound better. But “Measurements Über Alles,“ I can’t say I believe in that anymore either.
 
Joe Mac said:
Yeah I’m going to throw it out there that this site hates my DAC with a passion and it sounds great. I’m in the very much not a fan of their approach camp.
Click to expand...
A measurement is just a measurement; it does not tell you if you will enjoy a device or not. I do think some people calling themselves “objectivists” place far too much emphasis on measurements as the determiner of enjoyment.

That said, the Apple dongle is a decent performer, especially at its price. However, I would not use it to drive high impedance headphones- it won’t perform well there.
 
I mean that review says it performs well for its price and better than the android counterparts. It doesn’t say it performs at the level of a chord product. What I get from that review is that it’s gonna struggle with phones that require juice, in fact it looks like it may struggle with your Sennheisers @duke86fan . It looks like it just transfers the data and that’s it. So it’s really gonna depend on how it drivers the headphones//speaker. Furthermore, it isn’t going to offer more resolution than Bluetooth. Therefore you aren’t going to get the full range of your headphones either.
 
SnowmaNick said:
I admit, I’m kinda loosing faith in the objectivist point-of-view that we can measure everything and determine what it all means.

I recently replaced an older but good DAC (Mytek Liberty) with one that doesn’t measure as well (Denafrips Pontus II 12-i), and I heard a difference. I also enjoyed that difference. I added a DDC (Denafrips Iris) and heard a smaller, but still noticeable and enjoyable difference.

For years, decades really, I listened to digital music (CD’s and rips). When I put together a decent (IMHO) analog rig so I could play records that are out of print, i noticed it again sounded different. And more enjoyable. And objectively that shouldn’t be the case. CD’s and the Nyquist theorem were supposed to be all we could need.

I laughed at cables, especially expensive power cables. Then, when I actually tried one and saw (it was on my AppleTV 4K) a difference, I was thrown off. I’ve upgraded all my cables, and placebo/nocebo effect or confirmation bias, sighted test, whatever, I’ve noticed changes and enjoyable differences with them.

Same with amps, especially phono preamps. And not just tube vs solid state, but differences amongst and between solid state gear.

The item that truly, completely blew me away though was a blinded speaker comparison of two extremely well engineered speakers that both measured brilliantly. I thought I’d hear a difference, but that the differences would be small. It wasn’t. I could repeatedly hear the differences between the two, even when I was in different seats. The speaker i ended up preferring through your the test wasn’t the one I wanted it to be. The M2 measures better than the Ultima Salon2, but I proffered the Salon2. As did the majority of the other attendees.

I believe in science. I believe in engineering. I don’t believe in magic, or dragons, or green markers making a CD sound better. But “Measurements Über Alles,“ I can’t say I believe in that anymore either.
Click to expand...

I think the problem is trying to shoehorn science into the appreciation of art. The measurements exist. They can be taken and observed. I’m not entirely sure how they can translate into telling two different people whether or not they’ll enjoy a presentation of a piece of art. Or if that’s even the goal?

Measurements are only scientific if they have a meaning, otherwise they’re just the equivalent of me measuring everything in my house just because I own a measuring tape.
 
Joe Mac said:
I think the problem is trying to shoehorn science into the appreciation of art. The measurements exist. They can be taken and observed. I’m not entirely sure how they can translate into telling two different people whether or not they’ll enjoy a presentation of a piece of art. Or if that’s even the goal?

Measurements are only scientific if they have a meaning, otherwise they’re just the equivalent of me measuring everything in my house just because I own a measuring tape.
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I do believe in the science of acoustics and the ability to translate measurements into meaningful data about what can be audible. I just doubt that those things purely correlate to preference.

If @duke86fan is looking for a tabletop dac/headphone amp, it’s hard to beat the value of the Schiit Magni + Modi stack. Topping does have some DAC/amp combos, but reports on reliability vary.

Schiit Audio: Audio Products Made in USA

www.schiit.com www.schiit.com

apos.audio

TOPPING DX3 Pro+ Bluetooth DAC/Amp

The evolution of a classic The TOPPING DX3 Pro+ DAC/Amp is TOPPING’s upgrade of their classic DX3 Pro. With a new Bluetooth chip and DAC chip, the Pro+ outperforms its predecessor while also coming in at a lower price point. The Pro+ has 60% lower THD+N (DAC), 85% lower THD+N (HPA), over 100%...
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Angsty said:
I do believe in the science of acoustics and the ability to translate measurements into meaningful data about what can be audible. I just doubt that those things purely correlate to preference.

If @duke86fan is looking for a tabletop dac/headphone amp, it’s hard to beat the value of the Schiit Magni + Modi stack. Topping does have some DAC/amp combos, but reports on reliability vary.

Schiit Audio: Audio Products Made in USA

www.schiit.com www.schiit.com
Click to expand...

I don’t doubt that those measurements are of something and that they can be read to mean something.

My question is: What is the hypothesis? If you are seeking to hold them up as a measure of reviewing a piece of gear then how do they inform why it sounds good and why you can recommend that someone else might think that it sounds good. And if you can’t is it really a scientific approach or is it in fact a pseudo-scientific approach.
 
Numbers have merit for sure. It can tell you which equipment will maybe play well together. However, it isn’t the whole picture. If for no other reason than each of our ears is different… so speaker a with these outstanding specs may not sound as good to you as speaker b with good specs. This is over and above the whole difference in rooms and how that affects the sound before it reaches our ears. We each have to find the sound we are looking for and can afford. It’s a journey and you have to understand your sources of information in that journey. I posit that anyone that just throws the numbers at you and doesn’t talk about what they actually hear or feel is doing all of us a disservice.

Almost all of us here know that a great pressing of a high quality recording on good gear will elicit something different than that same recording in hi-Res digital over the same good equipment. To @SnowmaNick’s point the numbers say that shouldn’t be the case but it is.
 
Lee Newman said:
Almost all of us here know that a great pressing of a high quality recording on good gear will elicit something different than that same recording in hi-Res digital over the same good equipment. To @SnowmaNick ‘s point the numbers say that shouldn’t be the case but it is.
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Actually on that last point I’m going to have to disagree with you. The limitations of the vinyl format mean that it has to be mastered very differently to hi res digital. Certain high end information has to be rolled off and the depth of the bass has to be taken into account and varried depending on factors such as the groove width. It creates the sound we love but also means it is contains different information to the hi res digital version.
 
Joe Mac said:
Actually on that last point I’m going to have to disagree with you. The limitations of the vinyl format mean that it has to be mastered very differently to hi res digital. Certain high end information has to be rolled off and the depth of the bass has to be taken into account and varried depending on factors such as the groove width. It creates the sound we love but also means it is contains different information to the hi res digital version.
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But that’s my point. It’s different, to be done well we have to change it but according to science… the ones and zeroes are the best representation available.

More to the point DAC Ms Can have different flavors in the way it presents the music, so fidelity is not the only thing that matters.
 
Lee Newman said:
But that’s my point. It’s different, to be done well we have to change it but according to science… the ones and zeroes are the best representation available.

More to the point DAC Ms Can have different flavors in the way it presents the music, so fidelity is not the only thing that matters.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure I follow you Lee? Sorry!

If both masterings were saved on a digital file they would be expected to sound different because they are different. Like a 128k mp3 and a cd.
 
Joe Mac said:
I’m not sure I follow you Lee? Sorry!

If both masterings were saved on a digital file they would be expected to sound different because they are different. Like a 128k mp3 and a cd.
Click to expand...
We have to master for vinyl in a way that changes what was in the recording (this has always been the case)… as such we make it imperfect compared to the hi-resolution unaltered digital file. Yet this sounds better to us in the right equipment because it does. I.e. The numbers in and of themselves don’t ever tell the whole story.
 
Lee Newman said:
We have to master for vinyl in a way that changes what was in the recording (this has always been the case)… as such we make it imperfect compared to the hi-resolution unaltered digital file. Yet this sounds better to us in the right equipment because it does. I.e. The numbers in and of themselves don’t ever tell the whole story.
Click to expand...

Ok. Sorry. The way your original post was worded made me take it to mean something completely different. Gear does also come into that equation too. Especially dealing with the physical nature of analogue reproduction.
 
Joe Mac said:
Ok. Sorry. The way your original post was worded made me take it to mean something completely different. Gear does also come into that equation too. Especially dealing with the physical nature of analogue reproduction.
Click to expand...
Yeah probably not as clear as I wanted to be.
 
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