Audio-GD Singularity 19 DAC - Measurements

Discussion in 'Source Measurements' started by Hands, Mar 23, 2017.

  1. Dino

    Dino Friend

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    From my skipping and skimming read of that Singularity 19 thread, they have several cautiously negative comments. Of the ones I saw, those were always countered with something to the effect of "It is not the DACs fault, it's...".
     
  2. MattRG

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    I just caught up with this thread this afternoon but all I can say is "OUCH" at those measurements and listening results. The fact that this product exists for sale must mean that someone in the management chain at Audio-GD thinks it sounds decent to good which is downright scary to me. Or maybe they just don't care that it sounds bad and are hoping that the "R2R Discreet NOS" label and the super low price will get unsuspecting customers who don't know any better to buy it anyway.

    It looks like we took a bullet on this one, folks. But maybe it's a bullet that will save someone else's wallet somewhere down the road.
     
  3. Rockin_Zombie

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    There's no management chain, AGD is one person. Ask any technical question and Kingwa will be the one answering.

    I have owned one AGD product and had a decent experience, but the problem with Kingwa is, while no doubt he is technically proficient, he does not have any proper product development philosophy. He has took the "different strokes for different folks" idea a bit too far and pushes out way too many products, even a 1000-person mega company (are there any in the DAC world?) wouldn't release products at this speed.
     
  4. Clemmaster

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    It was actually my SA-2 ("warm") versus your Master-7 ("neutral") at CanJam SoCal 2014. Amos just happened to stop by and had a listen, too.

    The SA-2, which was supposed to be of the warmer SA series, was in fact more neutral than the M7 :rolleyes:
     
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Haha. See, it wasn't lies! Just reversed.
     
  6. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    Isn't a lie by omission inversion still a lie?
     
  7. Clemmaster

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    It actually worked out well. The M7 is definitely more enjoyable AND more technically proficient than the SA-2 :D

    They both sucked with any source that wasn't i2s.
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    To be clear, The AGD Master 7 was a really good DAC using i2s and was my primary DAC for a while. We are not A-GD haters. We just hate shitty gear.
     
  9. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING MEASUREMENTS AND USB INPUT

    I made a comment earlier about the S19 possibly having a broken SPDIF implementation OR hating my Soundaware D100. I only tried the D100 and S19 combo via BNC, not RCA (shouldn't matter, the wires go to the same place) or optical. To be fair, my D100 sounds great with every other DAC and spits out great looking measurements. Or, at least, it doesn't make the DAC measure worse than it should.

    It got me thinking, so I wanted to do some quick listening and measurement tests via USB. Mind you, this is not from a clean USB source, but I'm not keen on messing with this DAC for too long.

    Subjective Findings: The S19 actually sounds better via USB. It gains some staging, layering, and air (still sub-par) and sheds some of that really crunchy, distorted sound (still kind of crunchy sounding). Sonically, it went from total shit to...watered down shit? It's still a bad sounding DAC overall. I guess the tone is OK, but overall it sounds like a crunchy taco from Taco Bell.

    I also took some quick measurements.

    Immediately, you can see that weird skirting, pyramid, sideband stuff HAS improved. That will be more clear later. THD relatively unchanged. Noise floor overall looks worse (expected with USB from a crappy USB source).

    USB 1K -3dB.PNG


    However, when fed a -90dB signal, 24-bit, we see that things have NOT improved in these regards.

    USB 1K -90dB.PNG


    The 19KHz test looks MUCH better in terms of the really weird noise floor anomalies from before as well as the monolithic pyramid sideband shenanigans. Still some funky stuff going on, though.

    USB 19K -3dB.PNG


    Side bands have been dramatically reduced. Great! But why? Also note that we still see some skirting and some sidebands, albeit not horrible. The closer you get to a pencil dick sticking out of the ground, the better.

    USB 19K Zoom.PNG


    Jitter also looks much better. Noise floor is lower. Less sidebands overall, or at least the weird kinds from before.

    USB Jitter 24 48.PNG



    So, what the hell does this all mean? I can't think of a good reason why another SPDIF source would produce better results if my D100 couldn't. Why does USB look better? My guess is the new SPDIF bullshit Audio-GD came up with, rather than use off-the-shelf chips, probably sucks.

    Or, hell, maybe this unit is broken. I don't know. My hunch is it's not broken and just a piece of crap.
     
  10. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    Is the S19 you have using the Amanero USB input board?
     
  11. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    I think he only did that because the M2Tech stuff output too high of a signal with overshoot too. He mostly did it to tame that and damp the overshoot. It just so happened people found it reduced reflections too. However, the D100 is about as by-the-books specs wise as you want for digital output signals and the like. I shouldn't have to use attenuators with the S19, nor was my old NOS1704 from them nearly this stupid.

    Will ship no later than tomorrow. Roads are clearing up today so might be able to this evening if time allows. Interested to see if your impressions and measurements match at all.

    Agreed on MOT measurements.

    Even if they didn't censor, the regulars there would try to discredit us anyway.

    Yes.
     
  12. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    In which case, in the event the DAC comes my way ... i.e. doesn't get returned, floated down the LA river, or have an untimely encounter with a very long drop, I'll have a look at how they've done the input stage. No doubt, at this price point, that input board is handling all the inputs at some level (which is "okay" if you do it properly). This won't explain why it generally sounds like arse, but it might provide some illumination as to what's going on with those pyramids from S/PDIF input.
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    This is depressing. Isn't the custom DSP Singularity stuff supposed to offer improved SPDIF performance from the readily available on-chip solutions? It seems even more likely that the pyramid sidebands were a result of ChiFi programming maestros after all.
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I'll be sure to burn in the Amaretto Burrito or Moo Shoo Rou TXCO ZYX ABC VCO OPA for 48 hours if you haven't already done so.

    Very interested in this, at least from a science point of view.

    Do you have a -60db sine, to see if the langoliers took a bite out of the sine wave?
     
  15. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    First @Hands , now you. I'm going to run OUT of Scotch at this rate - without actually getting to consume any!

    In the new place I've rebuilt my audio stacks to accommodate both short-term and long-term "guest" hardware, so it's easier to burn-in stuff properly while listening to other things. Next up is adding an audio-specific measurement capability so I can join that particular party.
     
  16. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophileâ„¢

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    All the current situations pointed out that AGD treated S19 buyers as beta testers for a very experimental product. Sadly testers are not paid tho (rather they PAY oh well).

    Based on the good comments for AGD's old M7, I speculate that M7 did not suffer from this set of shits (did anybody measure it before?).
    I am pretty interested if the failure of S19 is shared with entire current generation AGD dacs, other singularity lineups (pcm1704-based M7/M11), or nothing else (just S19's problem).
     
  17. Scott Kramer

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    Maybe we should measure / AB it against this :p

    building-your-first-dac.jpg
     
  18. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    I still can't fully fathom the horrible distortion measurements, especially with the higher order stuff that just keeps going.
    I measured my HD800 at about -72db for the 2nd order (0.025%) at 95db in the midrange (1kHz). All the higher orders were more than 90db down, buried below the noise floor. And this is with my $0.50 microphone capsules, which almost certainly limit the distortion measurements. To get this much distortion from a DAC, that's honestly hard to believe for me. The pyramid stuff looks even worse, like a horrible kind of jitter and IMD combined.
     
  19. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    My NOS1704 measured decently a few years back. The noise floor still had some spurs in it, making me think AGD doesn't do a good enough job with clean power for their DACs.
     
  20. Walderstorn

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    I'm not going to pretend I understand half of those memeasurements but this looks to bad to be real, I really hope you just had a bad unit and can ask for a refund.
     

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