Which part of a DAC creates (treble) grain?

I hate treble grain. ODAC has treble grain, many DS DACs suffer from treble grain. I don't know if that's what people define "digital" sounding with. I do though. It's the worst. Surely it's most likely a combination of many factors like USB, DAC chip implementation and PSU, but where is the crucial and deciding factor?

Now I have an used Essence One here I bought recently to carry me over until I can afford MB stuff and this damn thing has treble grain despite all that fancy internal buildup with dual mono config, huge psu etc then going out to XLR bla bla bla. So with the amp part left out and connecting to an external amp like the Valhalla 2 (which itself is slightly grainy though) there is more of that damn grain. It's like the Screen Door Effect of DACs.

IIRC someone at HF measured the PSU ripple and noise and attributes the results with the treble grain. I don't have any clue how right he is though.

Can someone define this nasty monster for me? Classify that evil!

 

Though I have not tried the GO V2, it reportedly has none or little grain. It must be very limited in terms of psu and is S-D Sabre chip based.

Personally I have found that the digital shit is less bothersome from r-2r/multibit dacs. One analogy how I have visualized for myself goes like this: the grain boundaries are well enough defined from multibit vs from s-d dac the grainyniess gives me headache with the grain boundaries shifting around, kinda wobbling.

Smoothest I know is my own built Soekris, which has shunt psu-s, over the top USB implementation and is sign magnitude r-2r discrete ladder based without active output buffer.The good stuff adds up to smoother presentation.
Properly warmed up Yggdrasil is not too far, but still has some edge that bothers me a little bit.

Probably very good NOS dacs are even smoother, but I have not heard the better ones like Pavane.

Everything else I have tried is far cry. S-D dacs I can't stand any longer with resolving chains. I can barely tolerate my Clip+ with some cheesy iem-s.

 

It might help if you list your complete chain and software setup (Player, interface ie: ASIO etc.). It's not as simple as pointing out the one thing. Could be digital processing, headphones, even the source recording if you have a favorite you use to expose graininess (wouldn't that suck?).

 

Treble grain in my experience comes from two usual suspect:

Noisy power input with inadequate ac power filtering. This is pretty common on computer internal soundcards. If you can clean up your power, you will notice the dac isn't as grainy as before.

Poor performing Sigma delta conversion. iPod classic gen6 is pretty easy to hear, iphone if you listen carefully

Other things like direct sound api also can contribute to grain.

The audio-gd master7 r2r dac with its old VIA32 USB input also has noticeable added grain. Also tenor based USB chipset also can have grain. Yggdrasil minimal grain is caused by its Cmedia USB, if you can use other input sources, then there's no grain to speak of. The Yggdrasil's usb grain effect which I described is like some kind of warble effect.

Use of good USB cable along with Wyrd also does reduce grain abit.

Certain dynamic driver headphones and iem also have its own grain.

Deoxit contact cleaning in my experience also reduces grain( improve smoothness in string instruments).