USB audio DAQ

I used to consider myself a bit of an audiophile, and was rather picky about things. Lately I have read a number of studies to show that most of it is just faff.

Blind test have shown that the most expensive DACs in the world cannot be reliably identified in blind test over the stock standard run of the mill stuff. The key is that levels must be matched. So when I used to think my outboard DAC was better than my inboard one, it was because it was louder. Unless there is something totally wrong with your inboard DAC, which is not out of the realm of possibility, it will likely sound as good as something costing two grand or more. Line out headphone jack should be just fine. And as long as you run the volume at 100% on your laptop and turn off windows system sounds, your CPU should not modify the signal at all to mix in other sounds.

It's also been proven that cheap amplifiers are just as good as expensive ones, as long as you have enough power to run at the volume you want. Someone's had a $10K reward for something like 30 years for anyone that can reliably identify one amplifier over another, and nobody has been able to do so. Again, the key here is that they must be level matched, and neither amp can be driven until clipping. The only reason to spend more money on an amplifier is to have more power, so you can play louder without clipping. (some amps sound better when clipping than others do when clipping. But no amplifier that's not clipping will sound better than another that is also not clipping provided they are at the same volume level .) What a shock it was to me, who thought I could do this. But not. one. person. ever. has been able to so for a $10K reward. http://tom-morrow-land.com/tests/ampchall/

Same story for HD vs CD. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

There are 3 things that matter, and only 3.
1. The quality of the original recording/mastering. (Here's where some people mistakenly assume that 24/96 recordings are better than the CD… because the master is different)
2. Having enough power to play at the volume you want. Yes, this could mean you need a $2K amp, or maybe more if you want to really pump out the jams in a huge space, but generally a few hundred $$ will get you the highest of audio bliss at moderate volume for your living room.

Aaaand 3. The only place you should spend frivolous cash… your speakers (this includes subs). They are the only place that makes a difference should you satisfy 1 and 2.

If you made it this far… all I'm really saying is save the money on a DAC and spend it on speakers or a sub, or more power if you want it louder.

I've been thinking this way about audio equipment for years. A few years back I spent about 3k on a pioneer system with JBL speakers, yeah it sounded good but I definitely felt the law of diminishing returns come into effect. It didn't sound better enough compared to my big 80's value village system to justify the price, at least not to me.

^ I'd say this is pretty accurate with just about anything…

Quality jumps a bunch at the low end, and as you move up, you are questionably paying for better quality stuff.

One could argue it's the exact same in the bike industry…

Worst advice ever.

1) your headphone jack at 100% almost always produces a higher powered signal than a standard consumer line-level out… so if you're feeding that into an amp, don't put it at 100%

Nominal levels for line-level outs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_level#Nominal_levels
for your laptop, reference your computer's spec sheets… should be there somewhere.

2) the cpu has nothing to do with the signal your DAC produces. Your dac is simply a clock saying, at this interval (frequency), turn this number between -1 and 1, into an electrical impulse. The accuracy of that process both the clock, and the conversion, ultimately decides the quality of the DAC.

Again, false.

I would argue the biggest different, like the dac, is the noise floor of a quality amplifier. Take a piece of crap, feed it a signal, and crank the volume. Chances are, the static volume will come along with the amplification of the sound. If you ever try building an amplifier, try using some cheap resistors, and capacitors… I'm sure you'll notice a difference. Also, most modern amps generally have a pre-amp as well which most definitely shape the sound… so a crappy pre-amp will generally produce less than ideal results.

If you wait to claim you used to be an audiophile, and now you don't give a shit. Go ahead. I'm not an audiophile, nor do I claim to be, but I happen to know a little about sound reproduction.

Sorry, you could be right about the line level at 100%. I was mistakenly thinking of when I use HDMI output. When I was researching at the time, to get windows to not mix all the audio streams together, you had to turn of windows sounds and put the volume at 100%. This is probably only useful when using digital out with hdmi or spdif.

There's $10,000 in it for you if you can distinguish one amp from another. If you're so sure, take the test and come back and gloat about your reward. Any modern amp that has the ability to drive a speaker to a moderate volume without clipping has a THD and S/N ratio that is beyond the limits of human hearing. What is the point of taking an amp and cranking it to listen for noise? You could never drive a speaker with it at that volume. You missed the part about where both amps have to be driven below clipping for the comparison to be made. If you need more power, you need to spend more money. But if you have enough power, it matters not if you spend $500 or $5000. No person ever has been able to demonstrate otherwise. Do you think you can be the first? Go collect your cash if you do.

Regarding the DAC, I recently read an article where even a $10 chip couldn't be distinguished from high end DACs. So if you want to claim that you can, go ahead. I've searched extensively for ABX test results to prove otherwise, but have not found any. By all means post them if you've got them. Or take your own ABX tests and show us some results that no one else seems to be capable of producing.

You can measure differences between DACs and amps with regards to noise floor and THD, but when passing music through them at a volume that doesn't result in clipping won't reveal those differences.

Confirmation bias is real. There were a couple of guys that worked in a HiFi store in Australia, and they took a little test. They listened to a high end CD player and a very low end CD player in a sighted test. They all claimed there was a big difference, and that they would easily be able to distinguish them when tested blind. Once the blinders were on, they couldn't do it. These types of tests always end this way. http://www.cowanaudio.com/ (click on blind test on the left of that page).

If you want to claim you know a little about sound reproduction, go ahead. But if you're going to make claims about being able to distinguish DACs and amps from each other, you should back them up with ABX test results. I would genuinely like to see positive results, because I have many times thought I've heard the difference and it would be comforting to know that it may not have been due to confirmation bias. Unfortunately that's all I can chalk it up to from what I know now.

And as far as your final comment… it's not that I no longer give a shit. I have come to realize that I had been sold snake oil and was subject to confirmation bias, based on scientific evidence that was contrary to my beliefs and perceived observations. Reading all the magazines, hanging out in hifi stores, and constantly wanting to upgrade my system thinking my $3K receiver was not good enough, that my $300 toslink cable to my $1000 DAC with $500 RCA interconnects actually made a difference and that the lack of 24/96 proliferation was a tragedy (that myth blown here… http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf ). Right now in my home office I have a $5 set of RCAs connected to the headphone jack of my PC plugged into a $300 receiver that makes my $1000 speakers sound just as good as they do downstairs on an amp worth 10x that. As long as I don't turn the volume up to point the amp starts clipping. Maybe, as someone else pointed out, you'd have to be deaf to not hear a difference. Which is quite possibly the case with me after many years of abuse to my ears.

There's $10,000 in it for you if you can distinguish one amp from another. If you're so sure, take the test and come back and gloat about your reward. Any modern amp that has the ability to drive a speaker to a moderate volume without clipping has a THD and S/N ratio that is beyond the limits of human hearing. What is the point of taking an amp and cranking it to listen for noise?

I'm not saying you need to buy a $10000 to get a good amp, nor do I think I could tell the difference, but to say simply that the only thing to look at is power output when it comes to amplifiers is a pretty naive way at looking at sound reproduction.

I do like watching movies a little louder once in a while, and turning up the volume, only to hear shit come out of the speakers to me qualifies as a crappy amplifier. I've also experimented with enough cheap class T amps to know what a crappy pre-amp can do to a sound.

Just trying to get a point across that it's not as simple as you claim it to be.

Regarding the DAC, I recently read an article where even a $10 chip couldn't be distinguished from high end DACs. So if you want to claim that you can, go ahead. I've searched extensively for ABX test results to prove otherwise, but have not found any. By all means post them if you've got them. Or take your own ABX tests and show us some results that no one else seems to be capable of producing.

For a moment, lets say you have a dac that supports sampling at 880Hz, and given Nyquist's Theorem, you can faithfully reproduce a 440Hz tone (which happens to be the A above middle C on a piano).

Now, if you imagine a size wave, with each peak and trough, the computer's representation of that 440Hz tone would be:

-1, 1, -1, 1… etc.

Now the dac's job is to turn that into a nice, clean, beautiful sine wave. And you are telling me, given that input, they all perform that job exactly the same, with the exact same output?

Now, if you were to take some rudimentary algorithm, you could average the values to fill in your signal, which would give a triangle wave. Or, you could just jump between -1, and 1, and give a nice square wave. Or, you have some significantly more complicated algorithm, and turn that simple sequence of numbers back into a proper sine wave.

Examples of waves here: http://onlinetonegenerator.com

Now obviously this is a stupidly simple example, and the difference in sound is substantial, but are you really going to stay with your claim that every DAC ever produces the exact same output? Whether one is better than the other is pretty subjective, so I would argue that none are better, but there is a difference, and some will reproduce your samples better (and by better, I mean more true to their original input) than others.

As a side note, there are houses/cities/power grids that can barely produce a clean AC voltage, and sound signals are generally slightly more complex…

Reading all the magazines, hanging out in hifi stores, and constantly wanting to upgrade my system thinking my $3K receiver was not good enough, that my $300 toslink cable to my $1000 DAC with $500 RCA interconnects actually made a difference and that the lack of 24/96 proliferation was a tragedy. Right now in my home office I have a $5 set of RCAs connected to the headphone jack of my PC plugged into a $300 receiver that makes my $1000 speakers sound just as good as they do downstairs on an amp worth 10x that.

As for spending obsurd amounts of money on audio equipment… $500 on RCA cables? Really? Pretty sure I read a study somewhere of guys using coat hangers, and no one being able to tell the difference.

There's a couple of examples here of some decent setups for pretty minimal cost. I'm not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars, I'm just saying there is a difference in quality across different amps and dacs, and to say otherwise is silly.

vinyl-[HTML_REMOVED]turn table-[HTML_REMOVED]tube pre-[HTML_REMOVED]tube power amp-[HTML_REMOVED]speakers previously owned by jerry garcia
:idea:

I'm not saying you need to buy a $10000 to get a good amp, nor do I think I could tell the difference, but to say simply that the only thing to look at is power output when it comes to amplifiers is a pretty naive way at looking at sound reproduction.

I do like watching movies a little louder once in a while, and turning up the volume, only to hear shit come out of the speakers to me qualifies as a crappy amplifier. I've also experimented with enough cheap class T amps to know what a crappy pre-amp can do to a sound.

Just trying to get a point across that it's not as simple as you claim it to be.

Except studies have shown that it is that simple.

The amplifier must have enough power to play at your required volume. An amplifier that cannot play at the volume you want doesn't inherently make it crappy, it makes it underpowered. There are some very expensive amplifiers that are only capable of delivering 10 watts of power. And the do a marvelous job of delivering all 10 watts without clipping. Some amps that claim to have 100 watts may well have a hard time delivering 10 watts without clipping. That doesn't mean the better quality amp will sound better at 9 watts than the other one. What it does mean is that the numbers are pretty well fudged. And it probably means if you genuinely need 100 watts of linear power, you're not likely to get it out of a $300 amp.

Shitty quality amps certainly exist. But the science is saying that they only sound shitty when you drive them beyond their capacity, which in those cases is probably at a very modest volume.

For a moment, lets say you have a dac that supports sampling at 880Hz, and given Nyquist's Theorem, you can faithfully reproduce a 440Hz tone (which happens to be the A above middle C on a piano).

Now, if you imagine a size wave, with each peak and trough, the computer's representation of that 440Hz tone would be:

-1, 1, -1, 1… etc.

Now the dac's job is to turn that into a nice, clean, beautiful sine wave. And you are telling me, given that input, they all perform that job exactly the same, with the exact same output?

Now, if you were to take some rudimentary algorithm, you could average the values to fill in your signal, which would give a triangle wave. Or, you could just jump between -1, and 1, and give a nice square wave. Or, you have some significantly more complicated algorithm, and turn that simple sequence of numbers back into a proper sine wave.

Examples of waves here: http://onlinetonegenerator.com

Now obviously this is a stupidly simple example, and the difference in sound is substantial, but are you really going to stay with your claim that every DAC ever produces the exact same output? Whether one is better than the other is pretty subjective, so I would argue that none are better, but there is a difference, and some will reproduce your samples better (and by better, I mean more true to their original input) than others.

This is beyond my limits of understanding. However it's interesting to note that the Linn Majik DS-1, a multi thousand dollar DAC, uses a DAC chip that costs $2. http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=4842

I agree, that DACs have the capability to sound different. I had an outboard DAC that boosted the output level, and since louder sounds better, I thought it was better. If you intentionally put additional circuitry into a DAC to attenuate or colour the sounds, then yes they will sound different. But a DAC that is simply converting from D to A, from the blind ABX test results I have read, cannot be differentiated one from another. If a Linn DAC can use a $2 chip, I think it suggests that the one in a PC is likely no cheaper or worse.

This is beyond my limits of understanding. However it's interesting to note that the Linn Majik DS-1, a multi thousand dollar DAC, uses a DAC chip that costs $2. http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=4842

I agree, that DACs have the capability to sound different. I had an outboard DAC that boosted the output level, and since louder sounds better, I thought it was better. If you intentionally put additional circuitry into a DAC to attenuate or colour the sounds, then yes they will sound different. But a DAC that is simply converting from D to A, from the blind ABX test results I have read, cannot be differentiated one from another. If a Linn DAC can use a $2 chip, I think it suggests that the one in a PC is likely no cheaper or worse.

ultimately, when you break it down to that level… sure. It's hard/almost impossible to distingush quality at an opamp level.

Take a Tripath TA2024 chip (datasheet here: http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/90348/TRIPATH/TA2024.html)

That chip is wonderfully cheap ($12), and used in a wide variety of amps. Same chip, put probably in a cost range of amps anywhere from $20 - $500+. That said, that simple chip isn't all that makes up the amplifier. The quality of the electronics (resistors (for line level balancing), capacitors, diodes) around it, and most importantly the power supply both have a huge impact on the sound.

So at a chip level, sure, they are simply just amplifying, or converting, or whatever… but realistically, unless you're building your own hardware, you are paying for the whole package.

That said, even at the opamp level, quality definitely varies across different chips. Certain chips are common across companies for a reason. that tripath is quality, and I know texas instruments makes some good quality dacs.

As for spending obsurd amounts of money on audio equipment… $500 on RCA cables? Really? Pretty sure I read a study somewhere of guys using coat hangers, and no one being able to tell the difference.

Crazy right? But I could clearly hear a difference in sighted testing. And no difference when blind. I bought them used for $300, and promptly sold them after failing to identify them in a test for $300, so no loss there. Plenty of folks still believe that cables make a difference, when there's countless results of blind tests that say otherwise. Just like there are plenty of failed results to show that amplifiers sound different when driven below clipping levels. More people are willing to accept that cables make no difference, than people willing to accept that amps don't either (well, you know by now what I mean; as long as you pay for the power you need).

Here's the interconnects I had… http://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/mlinks_e.html a bargain at $450US per metre 15 years ago.
And a quote from that page… "OK, the Super doesn't come cheap but the sonic performance is astounding. And no, Virginia, there is no way to get such a performance buying cheaper 150/200 $ cables." which as you know is total fkn bullshit, because a coat hanger does just as good of a job. It's amazing what people (including an earlier version of myself) believe they can hear when a price is attached.

There's a couple of examples here of some decent setups for pretty minimal cost. I'm not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars, I'm just saying there is a difference in quality across different amps and dacs, and to say otherwise is silly.

There is definitely a difference in build quality, reliability, functions and features. Perhaps there are examples of crappy stuff out there that really does sound like crap because of garbage components that don't meet the specifications for S/N and THD. But when a $2 DAC chip does the job for Linn, I find it hard to believe that the basic minimum requirements to outperform the limits of human hearing would not be met with virtually any DAC out there, including those found on a PC.

And no, a $100 amp from best buy is not going to drive anything to 100dB. It's unlikely it would even make 90dB without clipping, regardless of the claimed power rating. And since, as I'm sure you know, you need double the power to raise the volume by 3dB, it doesn't take long before you need great gobs of genuine linear power to produce 100dB at your chair 3m from your speakers, which will definitely come at a cost if that's what you're looking for.

That said, that simple chip isn't all that makes up the amplifier. The quality of the electronics (resistors (for line level balancing), capacitors, diodes) around it, and most importantly the power supply both have a huge impact on the sound.

I believe that the impact it will have, particularly in the case of the power supply, is that the amplifier will be capable of delivering more power without clipping. Not that it would actually sound better below that level.

If I wanted to get some monitors for guitar tracking and NOT get into the realm of diminishing returns, what should I get? A pair of powered Behringers?

If I wanted to get some monitors for guitar tracking and NOT get into the realm of diminishing returns, what should I get? A pair of powered Behringers?

Tons of reviews/articles on quality speakers for a reasonable amount of money ([HTML_REMOVED] $200 pair).

That said, I've had generally good experience with Behringer stuff, some small things here and there with their mixers, but if you're just messing around at home, can't go wrong.

Just bought a Topping TP-30 amp. Hopefully it's powerful enough to power my Rose Wood bookshelf speakers.

Just bought a Topping TP-30 amp. Hopefully it's powerful enough to power my Rose Wood bookshelf speakers.

Should be just fine.