Is there any such thing as a bad sounding DAC these days?

For example, does anyone measure equipment using white or pink noise (better representation of actual music) and compares spectrum? Or, better still, take a piece of music, play back via two DACs, then measure difference in analog outputs using high precision instruments? Never seen any measurements. So there.

Well, null tests are common enough with music signal, loop back testing too. And noise is used in testing things like DAC filter performance. Noise as a test signal is common enough in addition to both individual frequency testing and frequency sweep testing (which is going to be better at showing you the spectrum of harmonic distortion than what you'll be able to glean from noise).  Noise is challenging for some of these tests -- like you can't can't measure SNR with noise obviously, with DAC if you have random noise like white noise you can wind up with randomly occuring overs, I guess.  And of course it's really not so much a signal more like music, I mean, music doesn't have anything like random frequency and constant sound power across all frequencies, unless you're listening to something like Merzbow or something. 

@chervokas - to be entirely correct, it is just Fourier Transform (FT). FFT is a Fast Fourier Transform which is an algorithm (one of many) that implements FT in discrete form for a typical computer chip. FFT is only approximation, it is NEVER precise as Fourier sequence is infinite for complex signals like music. Thus, ANY transfer to frequency domain and back (such as for Dirac) is somewhat lossy. Discrete chips and methods all have limited precision.

I’m just noting that our hearing in fact does work in some ways that are analogous to a FT, in that our ears and brains break down an incoming complex wave into it’s component discrete frequencies. Our ears and brains don’t seem to have to flip between frequency and time domains, so that's a substantial difference in kind, we seem to be able to process both simultaneously by processing information from the location on the cochlea that is activated and the timing pattern of the neural firing so activated -- at least up to about 4kHz or 5 kHz above which our neural ability to phase lock to the signal breaks down, our perception of pitch starts to break down, and our ability to resolve timing with respect to frequency becomes less precise and depends on information we can glean from other biological processes.

But like anything else, our ears and brains are definitely far from infinite in resolution, highly non-linear even in the frequencies and spls and time increments that we can resolve, and limited in precision too.

@mapman lol - see what you started?

@chervokas excellent post(s).  While I think you went quite far in explaining how different digital filters can be perceived and appreciated differently by different listeners, I am not sure you exactly answered my question regarding how DACs that currently measure “the same” on the bench can sound different to listeners.  In other words, what is needed in terms of measurements to better approximate how a DAC, or really any piece of gear or cable, will sound to a range of listeners? It just feels like the field of how psychoacoustics interact with sound reproduction and measurement still has a ways to go.  I have a head cold right now so maybe that is clouding how I am receiving what you have written (and my posts on thus thread for that matter).  Apologies if I am not tracking.

kn

A lotta bullsh here and in the previous post, are you recruiting chat gpt for the word salad as well?....there’s no frequency domain analyses, none, happening in human perception/auditory/cns.

Some crappy design/analysis tool never fit in your ear. Keep the human out of it and crunch away. 

I’m just noting that our hearing in fact does work in some ways that are analogous to a FT, in that our ears and brains break down an incoming complex wave into it’s component discrete frequencies. Our ears and brains don’t seem to have to flip between frequency and time domains, so that’s a substantial difference in kind, we seem to be able to process both simultaneously by processing information from the location on the cochlea that is activated and the timing pattern of the neural firing so activated -- at least up to about 4kHz or 5 kHz above which our neural ability to phase lock to the signal breaks down, our perception of pitch starts to break down, and our ability to resolve timing with respect to frequency becomes less precise and depends on information we can glean from other biological processes.

But like anything else, our ears and brains are definitely far from infinite in resolution, highly non-linear even in the frequencies and spls and time increments that we can resolve, and limited in precision too.

@deep_333 now there’s a conversation starter.