SBAF DAC Talk II

I also agree. I think it’s the sound of odd-order distortion, which comes across as detailed but zingy. I wrote a long posting about this and got chewed out for extrapolating from a set of non-ideal measurements. If I get my hands on a GungnirA1 again I’ll do this properly.

 

I don't even recall the Soekris 1421 having such an accentuated top end and that was directly comparing with Directstream Jr. Now that dac is gone and to be fair, I'm going off of pisspoor audio recall.

 

You got some push back because you claimed to hear something at -110dB. If you are still claiming your heard the cross over glitch, you should still get push back!

 

I never claimed that! Indeed, just a few posts up I said a -82dB noise element was well below audible.

In the original post I cited crossover glitch *on a -90dB signal*. If that glitch produced a -110dB distortion signal (I don’t recall if it was) then that would be only at -20dB relative to the fundamental, and that implies when the signal is louder the glitch could also be louder. But I’m not going to get into it. We all have better things to do.

 

@winders @skem take it anywhere else please.

 

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate thread to post it, but I would like to address what appears to be a weird DAC issue which I recently experienced.

My current setup consists of Yggdrasil A2 -> KGSSHV Carbon -> SR-007A. The Yggdrasil is left powered on 24/7 for constant warmup on standby, and Yggdrasil and Carbon are connected via a pair of balanced XLR interconnects (as the Carbon's inputs are balanced only). The Carbon is a very powerful electrostatic amp (more powerful than any other stat amp I'm aware of, including BHSE and T2), so I rarely ever have to crank up the volume beyond 12 o'clock even with a relatively inefficient headphone like 007, so it's possible this issue may have eluded me for some time.

Yesterday, when I was listening to a track that was recorded at a lower volume, I felt like cranking up the volume knob, but when the knob hit somewhere around 1 o'clock, the music was muted completely and replaced with a constant knocking sound coming from the amp. When I turned down the knob, music played normally again. The knocking noise continued when the volume was cranked up to the max (although the volume of the knocking noise did not increase with the knob).

I turned off the music and simply raised the volume knob, and the knocking noise came back at that 1 o'clock. At this point I assumed that the Carbon was faulty. I tried turning the amp off and on, to no avail. I contacted Spritzer for help, but even he had no idea what was going on and how to solve it.

Interestingly, when the Carbon was completely disconnected from the Yggdrasil, the knocking noise disappeared after the 1 o'clock position. Reconnecting the Carbon back to Yggdrasil caused the noise to come back. I thought it might be possible that the problem is not with the Carbon but with the Yggdrasil. So this time, although I was aware of its consequences (having to wait again for it to optimally warm up), I turned the Yggdrasil off and on. After doing so, the aforementioned problem was solved completely. The music played beautifully without any issues even past 1 o'clock.

So that’s the good news, but I’m curious as to why it happened. It never happened with any balanced dynamic headphone amps I had used with Yggdrasil, and I’m not sure if it will ever happen again (though should it happen again in the future, I can just reboot Yggdrasil to solve the problem).

Could it be an incompatibility issue with Yggdrasil and Carbon? Although I currently own the A2 version of Yggdrasil, there was a time back in the days of A1 when Yggdrasil A1’s balanced outputs ran too hot for the balanced inputs of certain headphone amps (e.g. EC Studio). When the A2 was developed, Jason addressed this issue so that the A2’s balanced outputs could be used with any amps. Of course, I’m not sure it’s in the same vein as what I just experienced, because the outputs being too hot simply meant a bit of distortion, not the music being muted and replaced with knocking sound (perhaps muting is a self protection mechanism of Carbon from a potentially harmful—or too hot—signal input?).

 

Hey guys,

I'm maybe searching for a new DAC. The Holo Audio LVL 1 looks like a possible option, maybe used. I'm trying to keep the cost down. Don't really give a shit how it measures, as long as it sounds good.

Looking to hopefully find decent detail retrieval, good staging, and a bit warmth. Forgiving, but not muddy overly warm goo, if that makes sense?

Maybe I'm hoping for too much for a lower budget (under 2 grand CAD hopefully)

Thanks for any help in advance. Really appreciate it

 

The Spring L1 does meet those requirements imo. Just know that OS mode sucks and NOS will obviously sound, well, like NOS. So unless you upsample yourself via player or hqp you will need to like that NOS sound.

 

If this isnt too general/simple of a question, In your guys experience how do R2R DACs compare to DS when it comes to microdetail/plankton?

IME recently with a discrete class A HPA, there are situations where the cost of somewhat higher levels of THD (reduction in very fine detail?) is worth it for other SQ/plankton gains (SS, image, dynamics, timbre and so on).
Being only slightly similar in essence to a discrete HPA, Im not sure if moving to an R2R DAC may offer similar benefits.
From most reports it seems like the main appeal is getting away from underlying nastiness/unnaturalness of DS ''sound'', not necessarily outperforming it certains areas, or is that wrong?
I never had an issue with DS sound and was highly impressed by recent 9038 sabre chips abilities, I think most issues are rooted in powersupply design, clocking and PC source, which DS chips are probably more senstive too.

I had auditioned a friends AudioGD R2R11 a while back and hated it, muddy, sloppy sounding junk. Since there are a lot of R2R fans here and AGD was accurately labaled as junk, Im considering something else, like Soekris DAM1021.

 

How do you feel about the Spring DAC variations these days @Hands ?

 

@Hands thanks you for the extremely helpful reply!

 

This is me trying to be a bit of a devil's advocate, but if you're really not sure about how the rest of the stack is going to play out - and I'm assuming that this is the position that @ufospls2 is in - then with DS you have a lot of flexibility because generally, a cleaner and more accurate representation means that synergy issues are rare. If you have an amp that you particularly enjoy and is going to keep for a while , multibit can be great in the role of coalescing the overall signature or giving that final bit of "richness" if it's called for.

At the end of the day, the best multibit's are extremely clean and accurate, and the best DS DAC's are no less engaging. However, if one is working with a limited budget and facing uncertainty over the amp/headphone choice, there's an argument for maybe prioritizing the more technical, versatile, and safer option. Especially if you aren't in a position to extensively demo DAC's with your own amp and headphones. Of course, I agree 100% that if you can go try out systems with your own equipment and content, that's the only truly risk-free way of figuring out what you like.

A few DS options that I like:

- Crane Song Solaris. It's a bit thin and just the tiniest bit sparkly but very clean and resolving, a professional-grade machine. Pretty nice headphone out that works well with many efficient-ish cans.

- Benchmark DAC3. Transparent, neutral almost to a fault, although not the most dynamic entry out there. It's a ESS DAC and it still sounds sort like what you'd expect a ESS DAC to sound like, but Benchmark has some nice ideas in there. I'd use one for traveling if I can get it working with 12v 1a.

- Convert-2. It's an AD1955 implementation and it's probably one of the best takes on that design that I've heard.

- Mytek Brooklyn+. Another 9028 implementation but this one has MQA. I have mixed feelings about MQA in general but if you want the feature, the Brooklyn+ is one of the cheapest DAC's that has it.

 

Don't leave out the Matrix Audio X-SABRE Pro or the Pro MQA. Better value than the Brooklyn DAC+ if you want MQA. Plus that gorgeous CNC machined aluminum case.

 

I know that most of you hate mainstream companies but from what I am hearing I could rank Cambridge audio AD1955 dac's as very good and natural sounding.
For my ears better than my previous Gungnir Multibit A1.

 

I would add that if you wanted to try NOS, the Metrum Onyx is a good device for that. Plankton for days (can only imagine how the Pavane/Adagio sound in comparison but hard to justify spending 2-3x to find out...though I just might be).