Is there a pattern between blacker background and less resolution?

I’ve noticed a pattern with DACs’ now with the 2541, Yggdrasil LIM, Rockna Wavelight and Yggdrasil A2 where blacker background comes at the cost of resolution. Not a big enough sample size to say that this is a general pattern but enough to ask the question.

By resolution I mean plankton, or what i like to call "grit". The tiny bits of information along the edges of. notes. When DACs have a blacker background, they smooth off this grit and loose this information. The Yggdrasil A2 has a more gray backhround but has more of this grit than all 3 of these DACs.

I liken this, as I’ve said elsewhere to noise reduction in photography. You reduce noise (blacker backgroiund) but you also loose information and smooth the sharp grit along shapes that is the information that makes up detail. More noise reduction = smoother = less inforamation.

There’s a similar pattern with DACs and black background that I feel confident now is likely a pattern through all DACs. A balance between black background and resolution. The Yggdrasil sacrifices some black background for resolution, the most of any DAC I’ve heard (not that many).

The 2541 and ultimately the LIM after spending more time with it bothered me because of this smoothing effect where you loose the grit and hear more of a smoothed tone. The Waveligiht didn’t bother me like these others. I’d rank them like this in terms of smoothing effect for the sake of black background, from more to least smoothing

2541
LIM
Wavelight

Seems like something worthy of discussion. I'd be interested to know if others have noticed this pattern or have experiences that contradict this pattern. And what those magic DACs are!

 

Yes many digital components simplify music which gives a false perception of greater contrast.
by the way, this is as much a function of the transport as it is the DAC itself. at least a 50/50 split. so it's not really appropriate to evaluate one without the context of the other.

You can have your cake (what you call resolution) and eat it too (contrast & separation) but it requires taking into account the entire D/A chain from transport to cable to digital receiver to converter to analog output.

 

I was going to respond to this hypothesis on the Wavelight thread. This might be a better place. Btw, the grit you mention, I think it is what I call as texture. So let me just use the term, texture for the rest of the post.

Regarding your hypothesis, in my experience, it has not been true. I have come across equipment that have very black background and still have good texture and ones with grey background that lacked texture. I’ve not heard the Yggdrasil. But I have a Biforst2 here and I must say even the Bf2 beats the Wavelight in texture. The lack of texture on the Wavelight has been one of the 2 deal killers for me about this DAC. It is too resolving in the treble but does not resolve the fine note details and texture in the mids, and ends up sounding too Hi-Fi.

One thing I would say is, for my ears at least, a more mid-centric signature helps me perceive textures and midrange resolution better. Again that might be just me, as I am severely allergic to treble to a point, where a bright treble can actually cast a veil for me, similar to how bass casts a veil, and thus preventing me from being able to perceive midrange detail and texture.

 

How much noise matters? is a black background true to the content? Some vinyl lovers will say simple the noise is there but it is not the music. witch begs the questions, what if the noise is there always? But we use transient shaping techniques to keep things squeaky clean and straight lines? I always felt that was one of the reasons for tubes, add some of the harmonics lost during the digital process.

Are all feedback mechanisms digital or analog subtractive of the information? Though so say. but one of my friends once measured an amplifier I was interested in and it had a whopping -60 sinad, and under his breath he would say it was the best sounding amplifier he has heard.

Now when we come to digital, how much information are we losing to these digital filters and output stages to achieve these black backgrounds? Im not sure. But this has but my suspicion of backgrounds and Chord electronics.

 

I really appreciated Mike Moffat's take on "black" background over at HF. Keeping with the visual tech analogies, he comments:

"A perfect analogy to “black” backgrounds is OLED technology in phones and projectors. Many agree the image contrast to be vastly superior to the older LED tech. This may be quite valuable for games, cartoons, and superhero CG non-reality based images. For outside and inside photographic recreations, the OLEDs black background is extreme and artificial. A visit to a local museum for an analog reference on some film based photographs as a reference followed by a well pondered look at some photographs on OLED vs LED screens may be quite telling. Only my opinion, but these principles guide me in my engineering."
​

 

I’ve always thought vinyl has the ability to recreate blacker background while also having more detail (assuming no hiss in the original tape and the record is in good shape). Cartridges that bring out more detail have more background noise, but I think that’s related to imperfections in the media source most of the time. So I’m not sure if this is a digital phenomenon, or if Moffatt’s view could apply to both mediums.

 

I think the correlation is coincidental. Yggdrasil A2 is very sensitive to power. With a good power conditioner the greyground disappears but the resolution remains (and even improves). YMMV of course, I don't know what anyone else's power is like, but here, on a good power conditioner, I didn't notice a blacker background from Yggdrasil to Wavedream to whereas I did notice a much blacker background from Yggdrasil without conditioner to Yggdrasil with power conditioner. My conditioner is Pi Audio, who have now shut up shop. But from reading DaveBSC's stuff on Changstar some good alternatives might be Audience or Running Springs.

I know I am on the tweakier end of SBAF and acknowledge that a bunch of stuff I have tried is marginal at best, and generally things I could live without, but I am adamant that power conditioning is not among these. I would happily rather spend $1500 on good power for a Yggdrasil in place of selling for a $3k DAC. The improvement is not small.

 

I have a balanced isolation power transformer. Would you consider that sufficient? I like tweakers.

 

I also feel like the pendulum can swing the other way.

When a chain leans less towards a forgiving nature and more toward outright transparency, I prefer the extra refinement from the Wavelight vs. the (unnatural?) grit of my old Yggdrasil A2. Schiit multibit DACs were perfect for me when I was getting started in mid-fi. That roughness was maybe perceived as unearthed resolution or texture.

I definitely didn't feel any loss of resolution going from Yggdrasil A2 to Wavelight in my extended time comparing both. Just a different presentation.

It all comes back to synergy.

 

Is dithering (in one dac vs. another), either intentionally added or just input noise, a factor in this phenom? Related to this might be various noise shaping strategery in the digital domain...

 

I was very confused at first considering this is how I know the word tweakers... https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tweaker

 

I think Marv's original 'Vivid Mode' analogy seems right. A cheaper DAC can mimic a higher performance DAC the same way a display manufacturer can use picture profiles to transform SDR data to look HDR, and depending on the implementation it can be surprisingly good to trash. It may 'wow' the uninitiated but a trained eye (or ear) will know the difference.

A better analogy is how new photographers crank saturation, contrast and shadow/highlight recovery all the way up in photoshop because it feels like they're getting "more". Again, the naïve might be impressed but anyone with experience knows clown vomit is the mark of an amateur. It's not better, it's just exaggerating everything without tasteful intent. Re: Fledgling audiophiles emphasizing bass technicalities before having experience to know what good audio is.

 

Yeah, this is another way of saying what I was trying to get at. I don’t know if either way is more or less true to the source, but at least you can choose between flavors.

 

Dare I awaken an old thread?

I have also thought on this subject, so I'll dare to try.

If your product is going to be measured and judged using Sine Wave Symphony #1 in B major, you can make it measure better by filtering out "plankton" and micro-detail. Because you already know that superiority in fixed amplitude sine wave, at a particular frequency like 1kHz, will get you better "measurements". (Sine Wave Symphony #2 in F# major (12kHz) might also be used). If you eliminate plankton at the frequencies and below the amplitudes you know you're going to be tested at, you can engineer toward the best results. These measurements don't give you a higher score for plankton. Quite the opposite.

With that said we should maybe differentiate artificial blackness for "true blackness". Artificial blackness "cheats" and achieves itself by removing plankton. Whereas "true blackness" is the accurate rendition of blackness where the source recording has no plankton to render.

It almost makes me think we should put our heads together to engineer some new kinds of tests and measurements for this stuff, based on some baseline standard recordings which are optimized for certain qualities that don't currently get measured. Stuff like the USPPT (universal standardized plankton performance test), as well as some others such as for transient attacks, decay, micro-reverb, spatial qualities, etc.

 

With the amount of yoga studios that might actually chart well in socal