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DAC's : The missing feature: Signal quality

One thing I wish DAC's would provide is some idea of how much jitter and noise a particular input provides. This is something which I think with a little work could be gleaned from the input circuits.

I want something that tells me "woah, that's a really dirty signal coming in, but i"ll do the best I can with it."

One common source of noise is ground loops. Another may be high jitter from a source like Apple TV. This would also help us evaluate the benefits (if any) of various signal cleaners and reclockers.

Best,
E
erik_squires
erik_squires OP
16,268 posts
 
Todd -
I didn't know they had that! That's pretty awesome.

E
erik_squires OP
16,268 posts
 
audioman -

The issue there is the same. I’ve read technical reviews on iFi purifiers that show them to be a really mixed bag. They don’t do enough to control power supply noise, and end up just moving noise from one area to another. See if you can find it on google. Lots of charts and measurements in it.

The problem for us consumers is if there is an audible change, we don't really know which is better. What if the purifier, or digital cable is actually awful, but we buy it because it sounds different?

I'd rather have some way, built into my DAC, that tells me. Like signal strength meters or tuning centering meters on old FM tuners.

Best,
Erik
decooney
2,116 posts
 
I just returned a very highly regarded high-end low noise DAC. It has some of the best specs in the industry, lowest distortion, lowest jitter, super quiet dark background. It produced super clean, open, two dimensional "sound". Not "MUSIC".

While the digital designers were seeking absolute perfection, they also managed to completely eliminate the three dimensional and sweet sound of music right out of the equation. Could not wait to get back to my older distorted imperfect DAC. Once I did, real music returned.

Seems perfect digital specs on paper don’t always make for good music and maybe some of the good stuff gets filtered out of the "signal quality" to achieve sound perfection, not musicality. 


erik_squires OP
16,268 posts
 
decooney -

I'm not arguing that the total elimination of noise and distortion is audio nirvana.

I am saying that there could be a boatload of noise in the digital signal chain we are not aware of and it is best to know that than to start guessing what might be wrong.

Best,
E
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Having some sort of Green/yellow/red indicator about signal quality and noise I think would be helpful. For instance, there are a number of reclockers and signal cleaners on the market. Wouldn't it be nice if our DACs could indicate directly if a particular source might benefit from it?

That would be really nice.  Unfortuntately, the industry does not even have any metrics for jitter versus audible correlation yet.  I'm working on this actually.  Equipment that can actually measure direct jitter accurately is very expensive, on the order of $100K.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

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