Drunk rant on DACs, vinyl, CD players, upper treble, and the ODAC.

This was supposed to be my drunk Thanksgiving weekend ODAC vs Modi 2U, ASIO vs DirectSound comparison. I ended up comparing them to many older CD players and happened to write my round up while drunk and raging so it touched upon many topics. I was unsure of the place to post it and I'm too lazy to edit it so I am posting it here. Please excuse the profaning of the ODAC. Enjoy:

I spent Thanksgiving week comparing the f'ing ODAC and Schiit MM Uber stack to a bunch of old cd players from the 80s to today. Let's just say that the warmed over underperforming NOS late 80s CD players sound like warmed over NOS DACs and are way less detailed than the early to mid 90s D-S CD players even if they are harsh with lots of artifacts and noise as the filters sucked. Despite CDs being a clearly superior format, they didn't replace vinyl until the early 90s for a f'ing reason as early CD players were so bad and had shitty DACs. They weren't going to stick what was in the Sony PCM-F1, the first actually 16-bit one in it. That was $1900 from Sony direct to pros. Who the hell knows what it would cost from a hifi showroom. Why would anyone choose harsh sound or warmed over sound with less high end detail than wax but better bass for more money? Only when CDs got cheaper and D-S DACs became commonplace did it kill off vinyl for good reason. A cheapo portable CD player from the mid 90s is Monty Python God coming out of the sky with treble resolution and proper instrumental spacing even if it is harsh. That's with anti skip disalbled. Tons of antiskip systems sounded like shit and couldn't be and compressed the sound. Even on awful recordings like my original CD of At the Gates The Red in the Sky is Ours (thin Swedish death metal), you can sense the detail easily and prefer it. More involving. CD players are dalmatian spotty in general though. Secure, accurateCD rips played through a well implemented asynchronous, oversampling DAC on ASIO will just be better than 99% of them as the DAC implementation is so half-assed even in supposedly 2000 dollar players. Many of them will be using stuff worse than the Realtek ALC1150s in gamer motherboards.

I find it very hard to actually judge a well implemented, oversampling D-S or R2R DACs (Yggdrasil oversamples) on which is actually better vs which is more euphonic and sounds better to me using certain recordings and headphones. Then you have to judge the analog stage. Especially if it comes in a combo with an amp or people are ABing through the amp bypass when the signal is still subject to first amp's sound before going into the other amp being used as a referencece. But I will say if anyone uses the Yggdragsil on DirectSound (some people in the Yggdrasil thread on head-fi are...) and claims it's more resolving (or that any non-oversampling DAC is more resolving) than a decent asynchronous, oversampling DAC on ASIO, then they're just wrong. Any well implemented asynchronous DAC on ASIO or WASAPI event in exclusive mode is going to be better than one subject to the DirectSound ditherer though Windows digital volume control (exclusive not checked in WASAPI push). The DirectSound resampler is even worse.
Check out the GO V2 on DirectSound here which was posted in another thread:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2015/11/measurements-windows-10-audio-stack.html
That rolloff you can hear instantly when ABed.

Implementation is more important than almost what modern DAC chip you use. A neutral filter and analog stage are important. Schiit DACs (the D-S ones and the R2R that actually oversample and perform at 16-bit are great, not the cheaper ones that only perform at 14-16bit.) tend to be great as their filters tend to be great and htey don't skimp on the f'ing USB controller. That's the biggest problem with the ODAC. Not hte Sabre inside it. People aren't smart enough to realize how D-S dacs work and how they can get away with being "only" 1-5bits. I don't want to explain them as I'm drunk but they rule cost/performance wise and all ADCs now are delta sigma for a reason. Dudes loving the detail on NOS DACs and claiming to hear nuances that aren't on their 80s LPs are hilarious as NOS DACs typically have more rolloff than wax. Honestly being cheap there are about two tiers of external DACs: well implemented asynchronous, mains powered delta sigma dacs with neutral enough analog stages that start out at about 150 and can go up to 500ish for more features well performing and oversampling R2R DACs that actually perform at Redbook and start at the Yggdrasil and even then ymmv. Constant sidegrading on DACs is a massive waste of money as they're DACs, they measure past hte point of audiblity. Choose one that sounds nice that you like the analog stage out of but amps and transducers will affect the sound much more.

Much of that "digital glare" is just nastiness in the high end of recordings but there's still instrumental positioning information there so you do lose detail even though those frequencies are "sensed" rather than heard as we're adults who've been blasting music for years. Not thatthe ODAC doesn't have glare as it f'ing does but most of the dullness and claims of lack of accurate positioning information is due to DirectSound rolloff and horrible USB controller implementation not enabling exclusive mode so WASAPI push doesn't even work. You have to plug it into a Mac and max out the digital volume control then it sounds more detailed and instruments can be placed better. Still has glare in the treble. DirectSound was one of the reasons purrin was able to AB it so easily and why it's shit. Asynchronous is important. Nwavguy was a f'ing idiot. He commissioned a DAC built and voiced to resemble a Benchmark 1 on windows. SOUNDS FINE OUT OF DIRECT SOUND! Yeah dude. I'm sure he's never heard some direct metal mastered from the CD at GZ LP that actually sounds better than the CD as the CD has so much high frequency nastiness. The ODAC on a Mac still makes clipping horrible even on HD 650s. You at least will know where the string section is though.

Audiophiles judging DACs by comparison to vinyl is inherently wrongheaded as vinyl has both low and high pass filtering due to the need to not overheat the cutting head when making the metal stamper and to not have the needle just rumble outta the groove. Then there's the lower bass high pass filters and adding a slightly mid to upper bass lift to try to compensate for the loss of weight (not that much subbass below 20 kHz is actually recorded). Yeah there will be some 24hz frequencies on certain all analog recordings but good luck hearing them and the actual roll off usually starts at around 17 kHz to not overheat the cutting head and will usually be frequency masked anyway even if you could hear it. Sometimes the laquer cutting amplifiers have built in low pass filters too. Not HD 600/650 speakers in a room style, MrSpeakers compensating for bone conduction style but not in the subbass. Then you have to ask yourself are they part of the recording or just inaudible noise? Most mics have always only been rated to record up to 20 to 22 kHz. What you hear in the studio is not what you hear on a vinyl record.

There's a ton of stuff that has never had good digital versions due to poor mastering decisions and tape problems though. There's also stuff that always sounded poor until recent CDs. The first pressings of the early Beatles albums you could buy in a store in AMERICA that actually sounded great and high fidelity to the original masters was the Beatles in Mono CD box set from a few years ago, slight dynamic range compression to level the tracks be damned. It came with a warning for a reason as they knew people would bitch. But yeah comparing DACs to vinyl is just wrong despite one already being analog.

 

If you're ever in Upstate. NY, please shoot me a note. I'd love to have you over and give you a demo. No pseudo-theoretical bullshit. Just listening.

 

You need to get drunk and post more often. Not only was that pretty funny, but you educated me.
I'm telling my professors to get wasted before class next semester.

 

I agree on most points

 

Why would anyone bother with XP-era Direct Sound? Its not bitperfect and its resampler is optimized for speed, not quality. In Windows Vista/7/10, Direct Sound is emulated as a WASAPI session for backwards compatibility.

 

I didn't mention actual digital glare seen in crappy early to mid 80s CDs and there's some vinyl where the low pass filter in mastering was at 20 khz or so or that didn't use one but that doesn't mean the lathe at the plant didn't have one built in. I also didn't talk about the sound of Czech GZ vinyl which has also gotten worse recently as they're overcapacity.

I used DirectSound to refer to the Windows mixer in general which is still terrible. The OS still uses it as it's fast. The digital volume control is much better in 7 onward than in XP but still not the best. The one used in Microsoft's own Windows Media Player is better.

 

I'd say the biggest problems facing digital today:
- Proliferation of mediocre ADC implementations that throw away the life of the recording
- Protools. Digital filtering kills music
- Analog output stages
- Not being the Yggdrasil.

All you said about vinyl is completely true, I saw all the filtering firsthand at Capitol records with their lathe. That said, there are few digital recordings that really make me feel things the way vinyl does. I'm guess it's a mixture of bad ADC and non-rich/full sounding output stages. Maybe it's bad to compare that? But it's the same as live shows: I want to feel things. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by XRCDs. Too bad the number of interesting recordings makes DSD look like the sands of the sea.

Even with my Yggdrasil and my Mac with exclusive control over the Yggdrasil I prefer the vinyl though. It's about feeling for me and that's what gets me there.

 

Oh and the best I've ever heard was a copy of a master tape. Wish that getting those was simpler. Sounded better than the vinyl print the lathe cut on the same setup at Capitol

 

@drfindley
Many late 80s and early 90s CDs are just dumps of the tape. The Stooges and Black Sabbath had it done for most of their albums and those are still the best versions. You'll also find many early digital recordings were recorded and mixed in 16-bit 44.1 khz PCM onto betamax tapes with the PCM-F1 and just compressed a tiny bit for the CD. That's also why many of these albums (and albums recorded onto DAT) have audibly clipped drums.

EDIT: Also with older recordings even older digital ones from the late 80s, the original press run of the vinyl in the country where the label was located tends to sound best except for 70s recycled vinyl US pressings that can sound horrible. Often later cut stampers would have different EQ settings or the mixer intended for some things to be fixed in mastering for the vinyl such as an entire track that needed to be de-ssed but the CD would just be a dump of the mix and sound worse as nobody but Patrick Bateman bought CDs in 1985. Sort of like Beatles stereo panning.

 

Some of my favorite sounding CDs are Paul Simon's Graceland and Talking Heads. Or some of the GAIN2 CDs. There is a trick to getting a good quality CD out of a master tape, but there has been so much focus on so many stupid things (compression, protools, cheap ADCs, etc.) that the source is just not good enough. It's too bad as I think we've gotten much better at transferring to CD.

 

Well to be certain of your impressions ,you'll have to repeat how inebriated you'd actually been to verify your results !

(I think the rest of us will have to carry out our own "drunk tests" for the sake of scientific advancement; I suppose I'll have to read the OP now won't I ? There appear to be a lot of words though ! I better start drinking now)

 

This is good scientific thinking. We definitely need more of this science.

 

Nice, I TLR'd it for you I don't drink but the times I have gotten drunk I just prank call my wife.

Also I agree that CD's from the 80's and 90's are usually better than the CD's they push out today. The "mastering moves" they made back then need to make a comeback. It's too bad the tapes they are made from just get older and more worn out.

 

Sadly if you listen to Imagine Dragon's [Demon] song on a competent audiophile system, you will find that the song exibits loudness compression that artificially limits the feel of bass slam that your powerful speakers are capable of.

Listen to any of the older 80's mastering e.g Michael Jackson's [Billie Jean] and you will find that your same powerful speakers able to deliver bass that rocks your soul and/or irritates your Neighbors.

So many modern well written and nicely tuned songs have been sonically ruined by bad modern "mastering" technique imho.

 

That album has to be one of the worst of all time as far as mastering, with the exception of those intentionally going for an ear-rape sound. You can hear how crappy it is with a portable boombox from the mid-90s.

 

Great thread. It is astounding to me how little discussion there is about the impact of high dynamic range, well-mastered transfers of analog records in regards to how "good" systems sound. One classic album (take David Bowie's catalog for instance) can have wildly different masterings when you listen to it on Spotify vs. the latest box set. Yes, great headphones will make every recording sound closer to the original, but the gains you're getting with compressed pop, rock and metal are a lot smaller.

 

This is very relevant to my situation right now. I have two older CD decks on hand here: Toshiba from 86' and Sony 5 Disc affair from 90', amusingly enough my grandparents and my father's CD spinners. I've compared them many times over the years generally more against my UltraFi DAC than each other however recently I had a threeway. It was fun.

My NOS DAC and the Toshiba roll the treble which I find unacceptable. All three components are 'aggressive.' I've had widely varying experience with the Toshiba, when I had it rigged through a vintage receiver and into old STAX it was cold, glassy, and the most dynamic/well-staged sound I'd ever heard. If I listened to nothing other than drum solos I'd never take it out of rotation. The Toshiba also gave me the best experience I had with my Ultrasone ED12 headphones(using inbuilt amplifier, looked inside and saw a JRC opamp) with a great staged velvety sound, Nokturnal Mortum's NeChrist album if you know it OP. The later track with the campfire intro, the crackling fire is one of my references to test transient performance. The velvet sound I mention did not compromise this, my UltraFi does it nearly as well. The Sony doesn't stand out as a good nor poor performer on this, in fact that's my overall impression of the disc changer. Overall meh.. nothing really stands out as good nor bad other than the prevalent early CD player glass(my NOS DAC has is too, after 5yrs I'm adapted to it.) The UltraFi wins on vocal legibility over anything that's come through my system. It also just so happens that I have a Realtek 1150 on my new motherboard, take the Sony and remove the tiny bit of hash that I'm 100% guessing is from the early noise-shaping. Also the UltraFi is the only one that does proper timbre(exception for drums on the Toshiba in that one very specific scenario,) that treble roll-off though is really damn distracting.

I really need to hear more DACs, I tried to replace the UF with a Questyle and I could not get a hold of the smooth more liquid sound(also it lost my vocal legibility/fire crackling tests.) I'm more than half worried that bright/glassy is my normal and taking to a more accurate DAC will involve withdrawals and lots of confusion.