The Border Patrol DAC - Maybe linearity in a DAC is bad ... Spitballing

Thanks for pointing out that very interesting article by part-time audiophile, Eric.

I recently acquired and love the Border Patrol DAC SE. I find it to be the most transparent DAC I’ve owned ( previously owned Schiit Yggdrasil, PS Audio Perfectwave and Concert Fidelity DAC 040-BD) and Herb Reichert along with Scot Hull praised it for being so. Measurements are meaningless to me, I only care how a device sounds and the BP DAC SE is musical bliss. Both Herbs review and Scots article are spot on in my opinion. 

I’be never read such a review as Jons’ before. One where JA seemingly recruits Jon Iverson to confirm the DAC can’t be all that good because it didn’t perform on his test bench well and where Iverson admits to his preconceived bias from the start. Very interesting to say the least. 

Not sure if DAC’s require more compression or not to reveal more detail but whatever Gary at Border Patrol did with his DAC has it revealing things in my CD’s previously unheard yet doing so in a very “analog” manner....ie, unfatiguing and natural. 

I don’t know how to reconcile the competing views among the reviewers, including those writing for Stereophile, other than to listen for yourself. You could, I suppose, write all of this off as just another example of the divide between the subjective and objective schools of audio. Doesn’t this assume that measurements showing no departure from the input signal mean ’more accurate’ and (here’s the rub in my estimation) that ’more accurate’ measurements invariably mean a more convincing reproduction of a musical event?
I’m not so sure you can always make that leap. Music is complex. Accuracy to a series of test signals tells me something but it doesn’t tell me everything. Accuracy to the master recording? Leaving aside the colorations introduced in the recording chain, what’s been done to the master to make it sound ’good’?
Accurate to the live event? Where are you sitting? How good is your sonic memory?
I think, for me, the easiest way to make judgements about reproduced sound is to ask whether it sounds real. Does a piano sound like a real piano? Very few recordings of piano sound convincing to me, convey the gravitas of the lower registers and the air around the upper registers with the bite of the attack and the gradually diminishing envelope of harmonic decay.
Subjective preference? I think some people like to hear all the detail. My preference would probably go the other way, toward sins of omission, since I often find analytical systems fatiguing. But, those are conclusions, aren’t they? One person’s "analytical" is another’s "fully detailed and revealing."
Perhaps, rather than reaching conclusions, the reviewer's job is to report what they heard, without all the gloss about hot sauce and fur. One of the most interesting things about that whole dog fight was Atkinson’s characterization of his measurements as an "opinion."[1]
Full disclosure: I bought a Border Patrol and like how it sounds. I’m basically an analog guy in a digital world. I find the biggest variable to be the difference in recording quality and mastering. That’s been a long standing issue for me in vinyl-land, and as I have only recently started to play with digital in my main system (which is far more weighted toward vinyl playback in terms of expense), I’ve been sorting through various masterings of the same recording in digital formats, mainly Redbook. There are profound differences there, which I guess should be no surprise, but I’m new at this digital thing.
Will I go all spendy on a DAC at some point? Maybe. Does the BP sound like real music to me? I’ve been pretty pleased with what I hear on some recordings, despite many years of ambivalence toward things digital....
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[1]"In our review, the DAC SE impressed Herb Reichert for delivering "refined, human-sounding musical pleasures," but didn’t do well on the test bench. (In particular, I criticized BorderPatrol’s use of what I felt was an "underperforming" chip.) Given this conflict, I felt a third opinion was called for...".

I agree a lot with whart. I am not any kind of a measurements guy. But I do not think we can measure what Herb R. says is 'human sounding musical pleasures'. In a live event that is what it is like,  'human sounding musical pleasures'.  And also there is something about the physical feeling to a live event, I like to have much of that in my listening experience at home. And for me that does not mean listening to my music loud or bass heavy. Just that feel of being in the presence of a real musical production. That is when it becomes more real to me. I don't think you can measure that. And I don't need the detail to hear flies bumping into each other on the recording. Only just enough detail to make things real. I certainly pay attention to measurements initially to see if components are somewhat compatible, but after that I don't make use of them. So I appreciate the measurements and specs a whole lot to get started but not for a lot of my musical pleasure, there I appreciate my ears.

But I do not think we can measure what Herb R. says is 'human sounding musical pleasures'.

In this case, I actually genuinely think we can. My hypothesis is that he is enjoying the compression at the bottom of the dynamic range.

I'm going to see if I can prove this. :)

Stay tuned.

E

That would be nice if it could be correlated to what we perceive as 'human sounding musical pleasure'. Then it could be designed into our components. But so many, by my wild approximation of 250, systems I have heard most have a very small measure of that sound. Interesting topic Erik. I think it('human sounding musical pleasure')for me is a kind of core importance.