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DACs and bass response?

I'm auditioning dacs in my system. One (COS) was way to analytical, overall, but had very tight bass. Another (Aqua La Voce) is what some would describe as "musical"  and sounds  terrific in all aspects except bass. My cdp alone does better in that regard. I have monitors and no subs. Can I expect that dacs that are hyper-detailed will also offer tighter bass as a rule?
stuartk
gdhal's avatar
gdhal
1,641 posts
 
@goofyfoot / @stuartk / @audioengr

I appreciate your encouragement and advice about the paths to improvement. At some point I suppose I’ll try new things (cables?, isolation platform?, not sure where) and presumably get closer to nirvana. I’m good for now though.

FWIW, my next improvement attempt (which will happen in the coming days, not weeks or months) will be to use shorting caps on the inputs to lower my already very low noise floor.
gdhal's avatar
gdhal
1,641 posts
 
...but I do believe that having a certain amount of musical knowledge is an asset.

@goofyfoot 

I agree. This is why soon after I obtained my Yggy I enlisted the help of my dear friend whose a professional musician (electric bass) and who has formal musical education. It didn't take him all but a few moments to direct me as to what to listen for to detect the sonic differences between my Oppo UDP205 and Yggy! That plus finding the proper source material made things ever so obvious. 
goofyfoot's avatar
goofyfoot
1,368 posts
 
gdhal, it's good to be at a place of sonic bliss and contentment. We foremost need to enjoy this hobby.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
FWIW, my next improvement attempt (which will happen in the coming days, not weeks or months) will be to use shorting caps on the inputs to lower my already very low noise floor.

This is a mod that will have little effect IME.  Inputs that are not selected are not involved.  Better off to figure out how to eliminate ground-loops.  Now this will actually reduce the noise floor.  I have zero ground-loops in my system.  Jet black background.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Why don’t you use an APX555 from Audio Precision?

I cant really tell much from an oscilloscope plot and triggering can be tricky.

Triggering is automatic and programmed.  It's a programmable scope with special jitter program.  It does have some limitations of scaling the axis etc., but useful so far.  The newer scopes don't have as many limitations, but they are way more expensive, like buying a house.  This particular scope when new was $130K with the jitter software.  I purchased it used. The active probes alone are $5K new each.

The AP stuff is great for analog, but this is digital.  Even the APX555 only has 1MHz bandwidth.  Way too low for digital.  Even the clock fundamental can be 49MHz.  Edge-rates have GHz components.

The Tek scope I'm using has 7GHz bandwidth.  This is 7000 times higher than the AP.  This is what is needed for accurate digital measurements.

The newest version of what I have is the DPO70000, which lists for $315K and that is not including the jitter analysis software which will probably be $25K more.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

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