Yes, but look at how that is done: a simple 12khz tone will not give that answer, unless you actually love to listen to 12khz tones. Everything changes with load, and only by measuring a complete tune with regular volume could you do that. But that’s not how its done.
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I don’t know anyone who thinks that way.
No! Quality is objective. Perceived differences are subjective.
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What do you mean by that? We’re talking about the noise due to the PS, as measured in the output of the DAC. What does it matter what the “signal” looks like?
Your comment might make some sense if we were talking about the amplifier stage. As it stands, you have some explaining to do.
Its exactly that type of simplified almost wishful thinking that makes people think that measurements are perfect and has all the answers. In this case, voltage regulators will have to work less with a limited signal, the DAC chip itself has to work less, and the analog part of the DAC will have to create less output. All in all, the DAC has to work less, which naturally means less electronic noise.
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Lots of [moderated] seems to look down upon listening, and think that HiFi equipment that measures good WILL sound good, no matter what the ears thinks. I don’t agree with that!
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These devices are not in the signal path, so what is your point? The DAC is dealing with (typically) a PCM stream on its input and will work the same regardless. The analogue stage provides line level output; it doesn’t need to work harder because noise is an integral part of the signal.
I think you are going beyond the bounds of civility now.
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It’s clear to me that some people have nothing better to do than argue. 895 post arguing something that clearly does not have a definitive answer that anyone can prove.
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Clearly, you have no idea how a DAC works, and are simply stringing together technical-sounding words.
Even if it were true that the amount of noise varied with the signal sent to the DAC, we are supposed to be comparing the amount of noise accompanying the same signal but different power sources.
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No, but if I see a great photo, I’ll bet the histogram will be near perfect for the intended purpose. Hey, waddayaknow, measurements again.
I think you don’t know what noise means in photography. Image noise is a mostly unwanted effect. Not all image noise is electronic in origin. In underwater photography we call this backscatter and I can assure you nobody wants this.
When a photographer adds noise, it’s to achieve a special effect, usually an imitation of photographic film.
When a photo looks “flat” no amount of noise can save it. “Flat” is the result of bad photography.
So to get back on track, you seem to miss what a lot of us are saying: we listen. Difference is, we listen to the music, not to the gear. Whenever I hear something that sounds “off” I’ll bet you euros to boules de berlin the fault will lie with the recording, the room or the speaker placement and not with the interlinks.
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This whole discussion reminds me of Elon Musk’s rockets. He seems to have been the first to say to himself (and then to the world), “modern computation will let me do things, like land unmanned rockets for re-use, that we couldn’t do 40 years ago.”
I think a very similar thing is going on with digital music. Back in the bad old days of non-computation, people tuned their hardware chain to produce the sound they liked from the sources they had. Maybe you needed a different cartridge in your turntable; maybe you preferred a particular tube amp. Because they introduced the kinds of distortions and modifications to the sources that gave you the sound you liked. So this practice of tuning the whole chain of equipment with little tweaks and mods grew up. More importantly, the practice of “listening” to see what you thought of a change you made to the hardware chain also grew up.
However, the tuning now, with digital, should be for transparency, not “good sound”. What you want is for the hardware chain to do the most faithful replication possible of the sound encoded in the bits presented to the DAC. You don’t want “good sound” or “bad sound.” You want “faithful sound.” What’s changed is that, with tools like Roon and HQPlayer, you can introduce custom distortions to the sound, to make a perfectly transparent hardware chain sound like anything in the world. It’s a revolution, but some folks are still thinking of the pre-computation age. Same with the rocket industry, sadly.
And when you try for transparency, measurement is what you need. A carpenter doesn’t eyeball a shelf to see if it’s level – they use a tool, a measurement tool, a level, to see if it’s lined up properly. A surveyer doesn’t eyeball the elevation of a hill – he uses a measurement tool, a theodolite.
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Lionel, you have no need to worry about your English. I speak a few languages other than my native English, and you probably do better in English than I do in most of my non-native languages. Congratulations.
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In audiophile medival times you could influence the sound with components and cables. More bright, more warm, less whatever.
Today with digital music, you have data which comes from a source. It does not matter if it comes from Tidal, Qobuz, your harddisk. It does not matter it the data comes from your basement, a server somewhere in the cloud or a system in your listening room. You send this data to your DAC. If you stream music, you have a device which translates the digital data from IP packets to SPDIF, AES or uses USB to transport them. But on the whole chain, it remains digital and it is not modified.
Now on the DAC it becomes analog and the rules for analog sound apply. But until the DAC it is digital.
On the DAC you apply filters. These filters make a difference how you here the sounds. Depending on the design of the DAC you have digital filters and/or you have analog filters. But anyway, your digital signal arrives unmodified at your DAC. Even if Darko, Hans B, Stereophile, Absolute Sound and all the other magazines all over the world tell you, what could be wrong, they are just sales people. The data is not modified unless you apply a parametric EQ, apply a filter or you upsample.
Maybe you loose now and then a bit, but that is maybe 1 bit in 12 billions. That means you loose one bit in one day. Nothing you hear.
If you change a component, streamer, cable, switch, before your DAC and your hear a difference you can say, that your DAC, preamp, poweramp, active speakers, do have an electrical problem in the way the handle grounding, leakage current, potential differences.
The majority of audio devices is so badly designed, if they had to be used in medical environments, they would never get a certification.
It is perfectly ok, if you listen and prefer one product over another. But digital data do not change on their way. You come now with the argument Jitter. That is another urban legend. Jitter is a problem in a studio, when I have to syncronize 64 different digital channels. Then you need a master clock. But in home audio it does not matter at all. If I use SPDIF I have the source as clock, if I have USB I have the DAC as clock. But it does not matter at all, if a CD plays 20 milliseconds faster or slower. Nobody can hear that.
If you come now with the other argument, not everything you can hear you can measure, that was maybe true 40 years ago. Today it is simply wrong.
I repeat myself. If you like it, buy it. If it make you happy buy it. But using audiophile cables and switches is like using viagra. If everything works fine, you do not need it.
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Most of my switches (Unifi SW8/60) run off 48V SMPS and are far too troublesome to power by battery.
However for those who want to get into the try it before you knock it zone, the Bonn N8 Silent Angel runs on 5V at 1A supply so that might run for a few hours with just a few ports active. An EtherREGEN is 7-12V but varies in current from 1.4A at 7V to 0.8A at 12V. So if you have something lying around that fits the bill then you should try it - I know I would. And before you ask yes I have installed a Bonn and EtherREGEN at a friends house along with his Supra Ethernet cables and LMPS too. I do repair HiFi equipment too, provide installation and setup for people and I am a computer and network specialist of some 40+ years.
I’m OK with running low power gear on LMPS and have done so for most of my Raspberry Pi endpoints where they use 5V, or I have built an LMPS to use with some using HATs at 19V too.
For me this is not so much about noise on the ethernet cables them selves but also the EMI interference of the switches etc inducing noise into other components and audio cables.
What filter settings did you use on the Topping? On the Yggdrasil?
Since the choice of digital reconstruction filter make far-and-away the largest impact on the “sound” of a DAC, it’s hard to take such statements with a straight face if you don’t specify which reconstruction filters you were using on the respective DACs, when making the comparison.
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I used whatever filters where default, but I don’t think Yggdrasil has any selectable filters, its not a traditional sigma-delta DAC.
But changing filters on a DAC gives a very subtle difference, the difference between the Topping DAC and Yggdrasil is much bigger. To give you an idea, cover the speakers in a thick blanket and you have the Topping DAC in comparison. I don’t exaggerate when I say the Topping DAC sounds absolutely horrible in comparison.
And yet the Topping DAC measures better and from measurements alone you would think it sounds better.
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Thank you StereJo, for your write-up. Just like you my head would say do not buy such products yet in the depths of my psyche a voice says ‘… but what if ! and what if it makes a 5% difference because you miss understand something?!’ Kind regards, Derek
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I think that’s what the companies who make these products ‘prey upon’? The ‘feeling’ (subjective, not objective) that by ‘improving’ things like Ethernet cables and switches, that there may be a very small (possibly non-existent?) chance of wringing-out a small improvement in the SQ of our kits. And expectation-bias then works to justify these purchases in our own minds.
I’m not saying that these things don’t improve SQ, as I haven’t tried them myself in my own system.
But when I see that the intervals of a Melco S100 switch are almost identical to those of a Buffalo BS-GS2016/A, I remain very, very sceptical…
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Yup, smart marketing and access to the psyche is a powerful thing; and have been caught wasting money a few times myself on bits and bobs.
I have found that good measurements are a good start yet not always end in better SQ! (my office DAC was $4,800+ with not the best measurements yet sounds very, very good. So, go figure!) I trust my ears, impartial nature (Hope there is no bias in that comments?), our less than lab conditions home blind testing and good HiFi dealers for ‘home’ auditions.
We are not clone’s and we each see, hear, feel differently and that is open to abuse and to greatness.
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How your music sounds to you is 100 percent subjective. Go with that. Nothing else matters except how much money you’re willing to devote to this hobby. Notice, I didn’t say “invest” because buying this stuff is not an investment, it’s an expense.
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So, you listen to both DACs through the same analog channel, and you hear a difference. I’m assuming that you’re using appropriate volume leveling, because you know what you’re doing.
OK, this is good, because measurements of each show a difference, too. It’s encouraging that your ears can perceive it. I’m not sure mine could.
But when you say, “better”, that’s a value judgement. That’s because you prefer the sound from the Yggdrasil. This is the part I don’t get. I don’t know why that is, because I don’t know you.
But I can think of various reasons some completely hypothetical person might prefer to listen to the objectively somewhat noisy, distorted sound from the Yggdrasil:
- Could be that person doesn’t like what they’re listening to, so they think muffling or masking it with distortions and noise actually improves it
- Could be they’ve listened to lots of low-fidelity music on various noisy or distorted equipment, so they have internalized that sound as the “correct” sound, and a transparent sound doesn’t doesn’t sound “right” to them
- Could be they’re a self-hating type, who doesn’t feel that they deserve accurate sound reproduction, so they perversely prefer the lower-accuracy model
- Could be they’re unduly impressed by the price differential, so they just know the Schiit device must be “better”
- Could be the “measurements” don’t capture some ineffable quality of the Ygg that resonate somehow in that person’s brain, perhaps due to the quantum effects surmised by Penrose in The Emperor’s New Mind
- Could be the measurable distortions and noise in the Ygg mask a set of exactly complementary defects in the downstream of their system, and the Topping reveals them, so listening through the Ygg actually gives that person a more transparent experience
These are just theories, so I don’t know if any of them actually fit any actual case.
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