There is no such thing as a high resolution file

[SAM992]

Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson

You will have to pry my high resolution, multichannel DAC from my cold dead hands.

I read somewhere that all DAC's sound the same.... from the $100 USB thumb DAC's to the $100,000 MSB and dCS stuff...

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by SAM992

I read somewhere that all DAC's sound the same.... from the $100 USB thumb DAC's to the $100,000 MSB and dCS stuff...

One can make that case because, aside from those that are designed to sound distinct, any differences in tonal character are small. More significant, to me, are the ability to play any format/resolution, have a suitable range of inputs and outputs, useful control and display features and, of necessity, have enough channels for my needs. I could live with any of the few of the qualifying devices but I do have favorites.

[SAM992]

Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson

One can make that case because, aside from those that are designed to sound distinct, any differences in tonal character are small. More significant, to me, are the ability to play any format/resolution, have a suitable range of inputs and outputs, useful control and display features and, of necessity, have enough channels for my needs. I could live with a few of the qualifying devices but I do have favorites.

I agree with you btw, but I was just pointing out that some (go over to ASR) will take the argument that you don't even need those other formats... 44.1 is already above your ability to hear...

I can see the science as making some sense, if we accept that we understand 100% of everything about human hearing, and that harmonics have no affect on our perception of the sound.

[W9TR]

Lots of misinformation in this thread wrt what MQA actually does.

The lossy characteristics of MQA are a stalking horse for the socio-political debate - and that has been well covered elsewhere.

One of the key advantages of MQA is the compensation for the poor A/D antialiasing filters and samplers used in early PCM mastering recorders.

By knowing the recorder used, Voldemort and the evil empire can create an apodizing filter to compensate for the gross phase and timing distortion caused by the mastering recorder’s anti-aliasing filters. No other service or component does this.


I’ve finally had a chance to listen to a few files I believe are identical on Qobuz, Tidal, and my NAS. DAC was a Mytec Brooklyn + so full decode.

NAS>Qobuz>Tidal (MQA) this was a sighted evaluation so bias will be unavoidable.

I have cancelled my AmazonHD and Tidal subscriptions and am sticking with Qobuz.

It works most of the time and while it doesn’t sound as good as locally played files, it is pretty good.

[cleeds]

At the risk of simply "piling on" to this discussion, I just can't understand justifying a lossy compression scheme in this day and age. I understand MQA promises other advantages but the arguments don't seem compelling to me. To be fair, I'm not usually an early adopter of technology - a practice that has worked well for me over the years.

[SAM992]

Originally Posted by cleeds

At the risk of simply "piling on" to this discussion, I just can't understand justifying a lossy compression scheme in this day and age. I understand MQA promises other advantages but the arguments don't seem compelling to me. To be fair, I'm not usually an early adopter of technology - a practice that has worked well for me over the years.

thats my beef with it.. I mean bandwidth is practically free these days.. what's the benefit / reason? A solution looking for a problem.

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by SAM992

I read somewhere that all DAC's sound the same.... from the $100 USB thumb DAC's to the $100,000 MSB and dCS stuff...

There are really only a handful of various mass produced DAC chips out there to choose from. I am not aware of any audio company producing their own. The circuits designed and built up around those DAC chips are of course at the hands of the various designers. Filters as well as components making up the DAC from the chassis/noise isolation/power supply as well as the various topologies can all make the DACs sound different enough to develop a strong preference of one over the other. I do like ladder DACs myself but have heard and owned plenty of Delta-Sigma.


Interesting that the earliest voltage divider or the "granddaddy" of the modern DAC was the Lord Kelvin and Cromwell Fleetwood Varley (the guy responsible for the telegraph and the transatlantic telegraph cable) invention/creation sometime in the 1800s.

The brilliant minds designed the electronic circuit used to generate an output voltage as a precision ratio of an input voltage, with several decades of resolution. Essentially, the Kelvin–Varley divider is an electromechanical precision digital-to-analog converter.

The circuit is used for precision voltage measurements in calibration and metrology laboratories. It can achieve resolution, accuracy and linearity of 0.1 ppm (1 in 10 million)

Not bad for the 1800s but progress seems rather slow in digital to analog converters considering nearly 200 years have passed?

[piolaxo]

I'm in the same boat, give me the full stream or download the high resolution file.
Compressed files' revolution happened because storage limitations and download speeds,
but these two have kept evolving whereas the file sizes are not going to continue to grow.
Better spend the money on a better DAC.

[SAM992]

Originally Posted by PHC1

There are really only a handful of various mass produced DAC chips out there to choose from.

Yes and no... in terms of pre-made DAC chips, yes, you have ESS, Analog Devices, and maybe TI... not sure who else... but for example dCS makes their own "Ring DAC" proprietary design that's a sort of hybrid of a ladder DAC and using an FPGA for software programming...

I think a few other high end brands are doing something similar as well as a few inexpensive Chinese brands like Denifrips (spelling?).

[bart]

Originally Posted by SAM992

Yes and no... in terms of pre-made DAC chips, yes, you have ESS, Analog Devices, and maybe TI... not sure who else... but for example dCS makes their own "Ring DAC" proprietary design that's a sort of hybrid of a ladder DAC and using an FPGA for software programming...

I think a few other high end brands are doing something similar as well as a few inexpensive Chinese brands like Denifrips (spelling?).

Yes dCS does it.
And Mola Mola (Bruno Putzeys).