SBAF DAC Talk II

I think those would be separate but related issues. There wouldn’t be anything stopping you from using the filter with a DS Dac, at least if you’re using a chip that allows you to bypass the onboard oversampling. The question would be in whether or not there would be any benefit to it based on the reasoning you outlined

 

I think Audio Alchemy did exactly this in their dac/pre. 211 is a prime number, so...shrugs.

Edit: After some research, AA's pre upsamples to 216khz, which makes more sense mathematically, but the principle is the same.

 

Amir is just another scammer who can’t even hear the obvious coloration of many of these products that is obviously much more important for their real world usage than whatever numbers he pulls out of his ass.

His pirated Chinese electrical part dacs are going to be worse than Behringer and Steinberg cheapo interfaces.

The most insane is what Prism does with the CS4398. Some of the Callia and Lyra reviews explain it. The gear is good but Prism found a way to dial in British sound with DSP chips and their weird not quite minimum phase response filter.

Is it still wimpy?

The Grace and Schiit boxes try mitigate the wimpiness but in doing just sound bloated and still veiled compared to the shrimpy but neutralish And still veiled RME. Audiofuse and Teac/Tascam were wimpy and veiled too. All of them pretty much were compressed trash to me compared to the Dangerous and good ole Lavry boxes.

What comes out of R2R dacs are approximations too bro and usually lesser ones than DS. Linearity errors, error correction, oversampling filters, etc. True original signal conversion stuff isn’t buildable in the real world. Think Plato’s allegory of the cave.

With modern tech, a->d and d->a conversion is still way less lossy than pressing to vinyl, dubbing down tapes. or converting to mp3

 

So AKM makes toilet brush DACs?

 

But Grace and Schiit are $99 max before shipping. It isn't like they cost $500+.

 

I have not received the Bifrost yet, as it will ship on Wednesday. But the previous owner told me he purchased it in 2016, and sent it to schiit for Gen5 in mid 2018. I think it's schiit policy to update the firmware of anything that comes though the doors for service, so it should at least have a recent firmware, if that is true. But I don't know the extent of "running changes" does that mean new hardware, or new firmware, or both.

Modi 3 does look like a fantastic value. My comments about bringing more resolution to lower products, were mostly targeted at Modi Multibit and Bifrost however. But yes, moving forward in value/performance for any of the line is good.

 

hmm I never got the Yggdrasil being too incisive at all. I still heard a hint of digital glare with the original Yggdrasil, but anything more of a brighter & incisive sound & it would be like every other overly sharp delta sigma sound I've heard.

 

Lowballing a used Dangerous Source or D-Box (no usb, different sound) seems to be the best bang for buck option right now. If you look hard enough, you can get them used for under 500. They're worth their new price though for those who don't want to wait. Headfiers massively overvalue used gear though.

RME ADI-2 FS (the pro without the dsp chip equalizer and USB) gets the new RME sound for 500 GBP, 650 USD. Good buy for wimps who already have gear that can feed it AES or ADAT.

 

Some people only eat solid real food. Other people prefer steel cut oats, instant oatmeal, or god forbid, cream of wheat.

 

Also, thank you @purr1n for confirming my worse fears about current AKM chipsets. Very helpful for future gear purchases.

Now if only used Lavry Black boxes weren’t massively overpriced for decade old used gear... that no frills, no special filter, well done AD1955 on the DA and the saturation feature on the AD sound great.

 

And some people can't hear worth a f**k, and some have no teeth.

 

Just saw this was released. Wondering how long it will take for the high end DAC makers to use it:
https://www.akm.com/akm/en/aboutus/news/20181207AK4499_001/

 

Had me at bourbon.