I've been reading, both here and elsewhere, about outboard DACs as an alternative to sound cards and receivers.

Any one any idea whether the likes of an Apogee, Benchmark, or even things like the Lavry DA10 would yield significant improvements over the DAC in my RME 9636 soundcard

the rest of the gear being used is a TAG pre amp (which of course has it's own DAC) Cryus power amps and B&W 805 class speakers

thanks

I haven't heard of any preamps with their own DACs.

The amount of improvement you will hear will depend entirely upon your imagination. How good is that?

RME makes good sound cards. I don't know about your particular one, but if it's good I don't think you will hear an improvement buying better DACs.

Andy

I've lots of imagination, but have been burned plenty of times before when buying gear.

In truth I can't tell the difference between the DAC on my RME and the one in my TAG receiver. This means

1. There's no real difference, they are of the same quality.
2. My hearing isn't good enough to pick out subtle differences.

People talk of this class of DACs ($1000) as being as good as more expensive 'audiophine' class DACs, such as the Prism, DACs costing $2000 and those found in very expensive CD players. The arguement for the Lavry and DAC1 is that because they're designed for music professionals and they're cheaper than if they were in a shiny box being sold in a shop.

Is the RME good enough, yes, but if i spent another $1000 would I enjoy the music even more. That's the real question.

Could you post a link to the sound card? What is the rest of your setup?

Add:
3. There are differences, but they are masked by the rest of your system (including room and ambient noise), or are simply beyond human hearing capabilities.
(I'd vote for 3)


One thing is if you will enjoy the music more, another is if there will be perceivable differences in the sound arriving to your ears. Many people will answer "yes" to the first question despite I think a "no" is the answer to the second question.

>2. My hearing isn't good enough to pick out subtle differences.

Possibly, perhaps keep the ambient temperature in your room exactly the same (DACs are effected by temperature drift), or use batteries to power your devices (at the chip level, not regenrate mains, so no power supply distortions, or mains harmonics getting into the electronics, of course put everything in a faraday cage - or move to the country where there is little mains interferance). Sounds overboard? you certainly are into the realms of deminishing returns once you talk $xxxx for a component (be it a speaker, amp or card).

>The arguement for the Lavry and DAC1 is that because they're
> designed for music professionals and they're cheaper than if they
> were in a shiny box being sold in a shop.

Ironically (I used to design scientific electronic measurement equipment, working with some of the best DAC and ADC chips money could buy - our devices were so sensitive they could detect when another person walked into the room), you might find the cost of the actual DAC in your $2000 device costs only a few dollars...

I totally agree. I used to work with DACs and ADCs that cost many thousands of dollars, back in the '70s, and todays devices totally blow them away in performace, even if they cost less than $20.

The rest of my gear is

TAG 32R processor
Cyrus Smartpower mono amps
B&W 805s speakers
PC with the RME 9632 soundcard
Pioneer 668 universal DVD SACD ETc

The best things i've ever done

1. Replace an old Marantz 4200 with the TAG + Cyrus AMPs
2. Replace old Royd speakers with B&W CMT 1nt
3. Replace B&W CMT with the 805s
4. Buy a $150 Pioneer Universal DVD.
5. Dark side of the moon in SACD.

Worst things

1. Buy the Arcam DV88+
2. spend £400 on upgrading an old ARCAM DAC.
3. BOSE speakers!
4 countless SACD & DVD-A recordings
5. A Rel Subwoofer

Usual setup is the DVD or PC into the TAG using Spdif. much of the msic plays sounds wonderful and DVD soundtracks played back in DD or DTS are fab. SACD proper recordings are worth buying all the gear in the first place.

But I just can't help wondering, if that new DAC/Mono amp/bit of wet string will make a huge difference.

What the DAC mod i had done did, however, was to convince me that not all money spent makes a huge difference. I understand room acoustics makes a difference and am about to start on operation sqeaky floor.

i'm also aware of the cheap component arguement. Actually all this started with a 'I wonder if one of cheap far east DACs will make a difference......'

The great thing about forums is that we can share our experences, both good and bad and perhaps save ourselves a bit of pain along the way.

Another way of asking the orginal question would be to ask

How can I improve the sound of my digital sources?

Buy headphones? (seriously)

The amount of design that goes into board layouts, power supplies and shielding for these things is truly amazing. It allows us to do things digitally which were extremely difficult and expensive to do in analog ten years ago. I've worked with a system (from not that long ago) where the documentation brags constantly about it's "High Rate 9bit ADCs". By high rate they mean 8MHz and by 9bit they mean 7bit. That piece of hardware is currenly being replaced with properly high rate 12bit ADCs (12bits is all we need to be about the receiver noise floor anyways).

iwf - what are you currently unsatisfied with in your current digital sound? Is it the noise floor, the sound of the background noise, distortion or something else? If I were you, I would be looking at room accoustics. You can get huge gains for very little money by looking at what effect your listening room has on your sound. Cuttring out some traffic noise and the fan hum from next door (for example) will have a much bigger effect on your noise floor than buying a new DAC.

Actually most the time I'm very happy. DD DTS playback through the TAG is fab, as is most modern stuff.

However if I replay big orchestral classcal works everythings gets just a bit woolly, and looses definition. I guess it's soundstage stuff. smaller groups isn't an issue and everyone else (of course) thinks my setup is really clear.

I don't live on a noisy street on anything, though I am, like most people living in south london, under the flight path for Heathrow.

I shall be taking up the floor in the next couple of weeks, to put down some proper sound insulation. At the same time i have the opportunity to run a clean supply directly from the fusebox. A good thing ?

The benchmark also has quite a reputable headphone amplifier included along with what is outside of HA circle regarded as one of the finest ways to lay down US1000 on DAC amp combo for any price. It sounds pretty damn good through phones. You may check out the Grace m902 as well which though a little more pricey, has a few higher end goodies for DAC and a decent headamp as well. cheers.

Soundstage issues with huge orchestras (phenomenons like e.g. you cannot define where the violas or the double basses come from) are mostly due to bad microphone placement during recording and sub-par mastering.

If you are really sure about your record's quality, try to move your speakers around a bit (and use solid speaker stands) ... finding the proper placement and listening position will cure most of your problems.

Another option for bad staging could be room reflections ... reflected sonic signals arriving at a different time (compared to the main signal) will definitely disturb/diffuse the stage. There are lots of web resources about handling room reflections ... but you'll have to experiment a bit.

Perhaps not, if you did this and ran a blind test where it was plugged into it's old mains socket and new direct to fuse socket I am sure you would not hear the difference.

I'd only disagree in the case of speakers. The problem being that speaker design is a black art and you actually require lots of wood and precision craftmenship in order to make a speaker.

Speaker design isn't black art ... it's all plain physics - electrodynamics, paired with mechanics.

But developing and designing a speaker that 'does it all' is indeed a costly thing ...

I agree about speakers

My B&W 805s were by far the best thing I ever bought, and what's more when you've seen the B&W dvd on how they make then they sound even better <g>

will have a play on sunday. i've the whole place to myself all day.

wush i could try a different DAC at home though, without forking out £500 first.

I would not normally recommend such a device. It can not be expected to do anything different, audibly(or measured), as compared to a properly designed on-board DAC. But for other reasons(flexibility), I recommend the Behringer SRC2496. It offers an incredible amount of connectivity, and it's also an ADC, as well as a DAC. It has a full range of digital inputs/outputs(AES/EBU XLR, coaxial S/PDIF, optical S/PDIF) and balanced analog I/O(*unbalanced with a home-made plug adapter or pre-made adapter plug), as well as having a built in headphone amplifier with volume control. You can hook up almost anything to this product: it's like a universal audio I/O interface.

*Note: You may have to use a voltage divider(potentiometer, for example) to reduce the unbalanced output voltage to make it compatible with some home gear which may expect a lower voltage than pro gear usually produces.

-Chris

I have a Sony 3000es digital receiver, and I think its the direction things are going in, but maybe not quite there yet. Its all digital with the analog conversion as part of the output stage of the digital amps. Analog inputs are converted to digital, and it has no analog volume control, just some code embedded in the DSP that controls the switching of the output devices.

Kind of sad that audiophiles don't have many toys left to buy, what are we supposed to do, buy a pickup truck?

Just wondering, what do you think of the sound quality your Sony produces? How does it sound wit DVD, CD, vinyl, and SACD? I'd imagine that the SACD playback through the Firewire output of a SACD player would not be able to sound much better than this (apparently, this is the purest design for SACD purposes). It seems that people either love or hate it.

I read a Stereophile review of it, and the writer was not very thrilled with its sound... but he was listening to vinyl with it, and unfortunately he did not comment much about how it sounded with SACD with the Firewire link. I would think that if he focused more on its SACD presentation, he might have had more good things to say. It's a shame that SACD is dying off..

I think that this would be the perfect amp to have (since it is a pure DSD flow all the way to the point where it is output analog to the speakers) if SACD would have taken over.. but hey, DSD might not be over with yet..
The PS3 will have SACD playback, and just because it is guaranteed to be such a common item for a lot of people to have in their homes, the PS3 might give SACD a second wind.... or not.. I don't know if most gamers care much.

I've been wondering about whether to buy a Benchmark DAC-1 to connect to Squeezebox (instead of using SB's own DAC). I am more worried about the random noise caused by SB's internals (i.e. the noise floor) causing an audible difference (esp. when the volume of the track falls to quite low and the noise is no longer masked). Is this a legitimate reason to worry at all?

Indeed, if so then why is there no competing products in the pro DAC market being traded for much less? The DACs such as DAC1, Lavry DA10 are the ones that comes with no frills and thus more economical but even those cost ~$1k. I am sure people in the pro market must be paying this difference in price for some actual gain in quality (as opposed to the audiophile market, in which people can spend a lot of money for things like cables that make absolutely no difference). Wouldn't you agree? Maybe there's another component which costs more than the actual DAC chip?

Once, as you said, you have a pre-amp with it's own DAC that is the logical way to go (shorter analog signal path). Now. If you will be able to perceive any improvement. That's a whole new ball game.