I see the opportunity for a flame war here - though the counters to my points were quite polite (thank you) - and do not want to stoke that fire, yet stand by my above comments, but will not make a point by point response here.
To any reader thinking that is taking the easy way out, I invite you to send me a PM. I’m happy to discuss in reasonable conversation, and back up my assertions, but I do not want to drag down the OP’s question spiraling down somewhat OT rabbit holes.
So with that, I’ve expressed my opinions. Best wishes in your own audio journeys
Over the years I have experienced definite improvements going thru all of the different DACs. It is because compared to back in the day the technology has changed quite a bit and the signature improvements were the results of better sounding DACs.
Having said that the differences today are not necessary that noticeable because the technology is maturing. But technology will not stand still and a better DAC implementation will come along thus justifying a DAC upgrade.
This has been the case with everything else in this audio chain going way back as far as I can remember with amps, speakers, software, source material etc.
I’m an AUDIOPHILE and what I’ve learned is that your sound is limited by the weakest LINK in the sound chain. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort FIXING the reverb in my ROOM first. Only when sound reflections are controlled can you hear the ARTICULATION of your components. Only then can you test improvements. I stream music from a NUC with 7 Tb of ripped music; both CD and HD quality; DSD is best for me.
I upgraded the stream noise (Cat7 feed cable) with opticalRendu and only then could I fully appreciate the next upgrade on my BENCHMARK DAC; DAC-3B. WOW! I have upgraded Ribbon Cables (Silversmith); power cords and interconnects and even SOLID 3" wood DAC/PRE stand that improved sound as well. SO, my conclusions to this discussion is: Upgrade your listening space FIRST and then look to the weakest link.
Anything involving SQ differences inevitably leads to a flame war.
But what @Marian said are proven, demonstrated, consistent with all the scientific knowledge we have facts. “Jitter induced by external vibrations,” unless you are using a tube DAC, is something like aether, flat Earth, or spontaneous human combustion. One may believe in it, but it is exactly that, a question of irrational belief that really cannot and should not be discussed (other than to stop unaware third parties from falling into the rabbit hole of wasting money on magic crystals, artisanal DACs and grass-fed linear power supplies) seriously…
Unless it implements some kind of immersive sound, I don’t see how it can improve anymore, since it already reached our human limits. What manufacturers usually do is come up with fictitious problems, convince people that their golden ears can pick those up, and provide unnecessary and expensive solutions. And they sometimes come with new audio formats, which of course mean you need to purchase your music over again.
I agree about speakers, as they are the greatest source of distortion in the chain. Probably the walls themselves will be speakers in the future. I disagree about the amps, considering that even the reviled class D is now sufficiently accurate. As for software, improvements will probably be about immersive sound.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
27
When and where?
Calling something a fact doesn’t make it so. No matter how often one repeats the word “fact”.
Look, I don’t want to get into another p*ssing match, either. But that post is so full of what I perceive as obsolete FUD (jitter) and marketing ■■ (heavy cases are an indicator of quality), that I thought I should post my own understanding of the state of the world.
My humble understandings are that:
jitter, while it may have once been a factor, particularly with source-clocked digital protocols like S/PDIF, no longer matters with modern gear;
cost is only poorly correlated with quality, in the luxury market;
carefully auditioning each piece of your system independently is a mug’s game to start with, and then amateurishly trying to stitch them together in some kind of frankensystem with third-party power supplies and overpriced cables makes it worse – let the engineers do the integration, not any of us admittedly non-hard-core non-techies;
vibration only matters with very poorly made gear, and then not much.
I’m not claiming these are facts, but they seem to be what the people I trust to know what they’re doing think.
Measurements seem to indicate otherwise. Why wouldn’t we trust those measurements?
How can that be incorrect? Much less “quite” incorrect? From first principles: the waveform that was digitized to produce the digital copy is the waveform a DAC should produce. There can be only one! The measure of a DAC is how closely it approaches that optimal waveform.
I believe that as long as you stay within the linear range of each component and match your impedances carefully, you can combine any components together and build a good system. I do however agree that this approach is becoming outdated and that the future is in integrated systems, or at least in systems that are internally tuned using DSP. Soon enough, all you will need to do is connect them to your LAN and let them calibrate themselves to your room and your anatomy.
Jitter on the wiim pro and pro plus is terrible, so not it’s not a done deal and as it’s been shown on its measurements, yes some DACs can deal with it but some can’t and I’ve seen a few posts about problems where the DACs won’t lock. One has to ask why should the DAC have to clean up the mess made by other components inadequacies where a little more spent would have made it a far better and stable component. And this is a product raved about. Sorry but poor engineering should not be fixed by other kit.
Because the DAC is the only place where timing is really important. But then, as long as the bits are in the DAC’s buffer at the time they’re needed for the D/A process, other components can’t possibly create any jitter mess. The only jitter issue that is outside the DAC’s control is when synchronous inputs like S/PDIFF or AES or IIS are used. Even then, using generous buffers and PLL should bring jitter artifacts below audibility. The jitter introduced by those interfaces would have to be really bad for a well-designed DAC not to be able to fix. Needless to say, USB is the best choice of connection for any DAC, since in that case, only the DAC’s clock matters, and there’s really no way to mess anything up anywhere else.
But given spdif relies on the sending device for the clock this should still be fixed at source it’s just bad engineering to start with, the DACs becoming a sticking plaster which it should never be. The streamers job is to output a reliable bitstream if it can’t do that then it’s failed in its primary task.
It can be fixed at the source the same way it’s fixed at the DAC: with a good clock. But then, every time you put a signal on a cable, you arguably introduce the jitter variable again, so no DAC should just trust any sync interface clock and always “re-clock” them. That’s where good engineering happens.
(I think audiophiles should put a sign “Just use USB” on their walls.)
But why should we even be concerned with 1980s tech like S/PDIF? It’s almost 2024 now, there’s USB which is proven to work, is asynchronous, and is immune to jitter.
You are comparing 2 cheap dacs, so it’s no wonder you aren’t hearing any difference in sound quality. Same goes for any internal dac in an integrated amp, the dac is always a compromise vs an external dac from the same manufacturer. I had a $5000 preamp that the reviewers stated had an excellent dac and phono preamp built in. The preamp had a decent sounding dac and phono preamp, but my $10,000 external dac blew the internal dac away so I never used the dac inside the preamp.
If you are going cheap, then go with a dragonfly and call it good, it will probably equal the 2 pieces you are comparing.
