Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
TDIdriver wrote:Quality of cables is largely irrelevant.
Look into ODAC or if you feel like you need it for some reason shell out slightly north of $1000 for a Benchmark DAC1.
Milo Burke wrote:Another of my friends that frequently receives DACs and other products for reviews says you get what you pay for, and he can easily tell the difference between a $400 DAC, a $1,000 DAC, and a $3,000 DAC.
ordskiweicz wrote:Thanks for the great ideas.
I guess a key difference among these is the types of inputs accepted - here the ODAC is USB only, the Schitt takes optical, etc as well.
The ODAC with RCAs may be my starting choice. Anyone have one? Or tried one and decided against?
moriz wrote:as for schiit products... that name kinda describes their product quality perfectly. i remember they released one headphone amp that could destroy headphones on power cycles. schiit is frankly... ****.
TDIdriver wrote:Quality of cables is largely irrelevant...*snip*
Hz so good wrote:TDIdriver wrote:Quality of cables is largely irrelevant...*snip*
Really? I was under the impression that optical cables, like S/PDIF, were rather terrible due to being crap plastic, as opposed to copper. I just learned something new!
just brew it! wrote:Well... with all forms of digital cables (whether copper or optical) it tends to be an all-or-nothing deal. Either it works, or it doesn't. It is true that optical cables don't care much for being bent/kinked... but as long as the cable is up to spec, glass/plastic/copper really doesn't make a difference for digital.
For analog, cable quality matters a lot more since lack of shielding, connector corrosion, etc. can degrade the signal in subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) ways.
superjawes wrote:Transistors tend to be better at linearity (lower distortion), but tube amplifiers still have a strong showing because they sound different, and people like different.
superjawes wrote:Heck, where would Rock n' Roll be without distortion pedals?
mako wrote:IIRC optical SPDIF is supposedly inferior to copper because the optical receiver adds jitter, which affects the clock that times the DAC. I think this assumes an awful lot about the coax solution one would be comparing it to though: terminated correctly, no ground loops, etc. These days the good DACs are asynchronous and there's no compelling reason to use to a SPDIF clock recovery scheme.
superjawes wrote:The goal of analog signals, on the other hand, is fidelity to the original signal. So in this case, anywhere you can see distortion on the signal is going to change the end result. Cables can make a pretty big difference. I still wouldn't spend $1,000 on cables, so just know what the differences between two cables are and don't spend more for a brand name.
moriz wrote:ordskiweicz wrote:Thanks for the great ideas.
I guess a key difference among these is the types of inputs accepted - here the ODAC is USB only, the Schitt takes optical, etc as well.
The ODAC with RCAs may be my starting choice. Anyone have one? Or tried one and decided against?
i have one. the ODAC is probably the only computer DAC you'll ever need tbh, unless you need something that can record as well.
as for schiit products... that name kinda describes their product quality perfectly. i remember they released one headphone amp that could destroy headphones on power cycles. schiit is frankly... ****.
Hz so good wrote:Not sure if it's true, or just an urban legend, but there was supposed to have been an little experiment set up at an Audio Trade Show. It involved a speaker company setting up a blind test for supposed "golden ears". Two setups, with identical speakers, DACs, etc... The only difference was one setup used some $1000 gold-plated Monster cables, while the other setup used cables made from extension cord quickly obtained from a local Home Despot or Lowes. According to the story, nobody really could tell the difference between the two.
Gandolf wrote:The initial shciit headphone amp had an issue where the power on thump could possibly blow headphones, but this was still rare.
They fixed the problem years ago. Their products are top notch.
kumori wrote:I'm always skeptical of these sorts of claims since I've never actually seen a test where an "expert" was able to distinguish this in a blind or A/B/X test. I'm betting your friend also swears by $1,000 cables.