[JLM]

This is the old quandary:  whether to have the "ultimate" system that makes a handful of recordings sound incredible and the rest like sh*t, or a lesser system that you can enjoy a wide selection of music on.

Not wanting to give up on music I enjoy (audiophile guilty pleasures) I've tried to strive for improved resolution in the form of improved imaging, not improved detail.  I picked up a DSPeaker DAC/preamp/DSP recently and believe I'm pretty close to this balancing point.

So I wonder if owners of more resolving DAC's feel they're at this point and how they deal with it.

[Freo-1]

The Benckmark DAC2 is about as good as it gets.  It makes ALL recordings sound about as good as one is going to get from the original medium.  Since I picked it up recently, been going back to listen to a lot of CD's I hadn't played in awhile.  In every case, there is significant improvement from any other DAC playback setup. 

A properly working DAC setup will make all digital sources sound as good as they are going to be able to.  Some digital recordings that were not transferred well will never sound all that hot, regardless of what DAC is used.

Some DAC's upscale the 44 KHz to 348 and higher, etc.  Those DAC's sound good with the CD format, BUT, I find the DAC2 actually sounds better with CD's then the upscaling DAC's.    It's all about keeping the noise floor low, along with actual bit resolution.

[maty]

If you play music from a computer you can modify the sound of the bad music or MP3.

An example, now, with VST plugin TAL Tube and foobar2000.

Arthur Schoonderwoerd - Chopin - Mazurkas, Valses & Autres Dances (2003) [MP3]



-> https://nauscopio.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/foobar2000-tal-tube-vst-plugin-amplificacion-valvular-emulada/

To English -> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnauscopio.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F10%2F29%2Ffoobar2000-tal-tube-vst-plugin-amplificacion-valvular-emulada%2F&edit-text=

-> https://tal-software.com/products/tal-effects

TAL-Tube is a saturation plugin that have the characteristic of tubes and an additional amplifier mode. It's very suitable for adding higher harmonics and can give more excitement and analog character to digital sounds or drums. At extreme values it can also be used as a grungy distortion effect...

With foobar2000 (windows) you need: Foobar2000 VST 2.4 adapter

-> https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,84947.0.html

If you want a good resampler:

Resampler SoX 0.8.3 (you only need Normal)

-> https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,67373.0.html

[JLM]

The Benckmark DAC2 is about as good as it gets.  It makes ALL recordings sound about as good as one is going to get from the original medium.  Since I picked it up recently, been going back to listen to a lot of CD's I hadn't played in awhile.  In every case, there is significant improvement from any other DAC playback setup. 

A properly working DAC setup will make all digital sources sound as good as they are going to be able to.  Some digital recordings that were not transferred well will never sound all that hot, regardless of what DAC is used.

Some DAC's upscale the 44 KHz to 348 and higher, etc.  Those DAC's sound good with the CD format, BUT, I find the DAC2 actually sounds better with CD's then the upscaling DAC's.    It's all about keeping the noise floor low, along with actual bit resolution.

Yes, old CD's are showing more detail with my new DAC too, but its those "not so hot" cases of good music, but poor recording is what I'm talking about.  Being a purist of sorts I agree that proper execution of "basic" technology wins out over lots of poorly done more "extreme" technology.

So does your new DAC's additional resolution result in less enjoyment as warts are revealed?

[JLM]

Sorry maty, you lost me at the 2nd sentence.  I'm an old fart and a computer cave man (still use iTunes on my Macs) after upgrading DAC's twice.  And as a purist of sorts I'm suspicious of the sonic validity of such manipulations. 

[maty]

Only to bad recordings or MP3. If not sound good => to the trash.

Almost everything I hear are excellent vinyl rip 24/96 FLAC (classical and jazz mainly).

Only VST plugin iZotope RX 5 De-Hum: two notchs at 65 Hz and 130 Hz (resonance frequency of KEF Q100's woofer and the harmonic).

-> http://medleysmusings.com/kef-q100-drive-unit-testing/

I modify the output buffer size of foobar2000.

* with only 50 ms (minimum) => mode detail, sometimes much => fatigue but more spectacular

* with 180 ms => for longer and pleasurable listening

[Freo-1]

Yes, old CD's are showing more detail with my new DAC too, but its those "not so hot" cases of good music, but poor recording is what I'm talking about.  Being a purist of sorts I agree that proper execution of "basic" technology wins out over lots of poorly done more "extreme" technology.

So does your new DAC's additional resolution result in less enjoyment as warts are revealed?

No.  If anything, the new DAC makes it seem as if there are less problems overall.  All the CD''s sound better with the new DAC2.  I think it's a combination of the outstanding jitter circuit, along with the four balanced 32 bit DAC's, which get the noise floor below just about all the competition. 

[kingdeezie]

IMO, there isn't such a thing as too much resolution.

The more resolving your system gets, IME, the more the system gets out of the way of the music. This doesn't make everything sound great, and there is a huge amount of variation between recordings, but nothing should be painful or unpleasant to listen to.

If a system is well matched, the music should be enjoyable, even if the recording isn't great. The better the recording, the more alive and real it sounds.

[JLM]

I'm trying to enjoy all my music including early digital pop recordings and vintage recordings (like Bix Beiderbecke).  I'm a music lover but as I upgrade my source these recordings are becoming harder to enjoy.  These are not well recorded due to the technology of the day that modern equipment is revealing the warts all too well.

I've also found with my recently upgraded DAC (DSPeaker) some of my old audiophile recordings (that I've impressed others with and used to audition gear with over the years) now sound very ordinary. 

[charmerci]

I'm trying to enjoy all my music including early digital pop recordings and vintage recordings (like Bix Beiderbecke).  I'm a music lover but as I upgrade my source these recordings are becoming harder to enjoy.  These are not well recorded due to the technology of the day that modern equipment is revealing the warts all too well.

I feel your pain.... 

[paul79]

Personally, I want to hear warts and all. The great recordings are much more enjoyable, emotional, and realistic this way. You just have to "listen to the music" because those poor recordings are never going to be fantastic. So just enjoy the music for what it is, and forget the technical when listening to songs you like that are not all that impressively recorded.

There is a fine line here. When everything sounds overly smooth and relaxed, you can also get into boring territory.

I have tuned my system to be as balanced and resolute as possible. Nothing in the frequency spectrum stands out, but it is all there. This allows me to ignore the bad artifacts in some recordings and focus more on the performance.

[Nordkapp]

Personally, I want to hear warts and all. The great recordings are much more enjoyable, emotional, and realistic this way. You just have to "listen to the music" because those poor recordings are never going to be fantastic. So just enjoy the music for what it is, and forget the technical when listening to songs you like that are not all that impressively recorded.

There is a fine line here. When everything sounds overly smooth and relaxed, you can also get into boring territory.

I have tuned my system to be as balanced and resolute as possible. Nothing in the frequency spectrum stands out, but it is all there. This allows me to ignore the bad artifacts in some recordings and focus more on the performance.

I get where you are coming from. My last two DACS were highly lauded by the press. I ultimatey found them too smooth and uninspiring. I won't call out any names or chip sets used. Then I picked up my Concero HD and heard detail and nuance like never before. Now I just deal with the bad recordings, cause they sure do sound worse than ever but I'll gladly make that trade off.

[Folsom]

I don't believe there's too much resolution. But I think a lot of equipment can accentuate the small stuff to an unbelievable level. Tubes are typically very guilty of this, probably because of the high voltage.

But at the same time a lot of equipment lacks portrayal of the smaller stuff, largely due to noise interfering.

[charmerci]

I'm thinking that it's probably the pre-amp section of the DSPeaker that might the problem here.

[glynnw]

I vote the other way.  As my system improves I keep finding old recordings that sound excellent to me now.

[JLM]

Don't you guys hear digital thinness/harshness on some early CD's and vinyl surface noise as the level of retrieval increases?  Apparently from your replies most of you accept moving towards more of the same.

Some of my favorites (like ELO - Out of the Blue) from the 70's (my college days) are almost hard to listen to now being so rough/lacking the exuberant body I've experienced from it over the years and makes me wonder if all this modern technology is all it's cracked up to be.  And every time I upgrade gear reproduction of those "iffy" albums gets worse.  On the flip side, some older pop recordings (like the Carpenters greatest hits) and maybe 60% of more modern recordings sound better than ever on my current rig.  Thus I believe I'm approaching a balancing point of "too much resolution" and why I started this thread.

I literally dropped my nice turntable 30+ years ago and have never looked back because surface noise to me is like nails on chalkboard.  Now some of my vintage transcriptions make me feel like I'm surrounded by mosquitos.  How can anyone be entertained by that experience?

I've been almost exclusively solid state over the years.  Most of my tube experience has been "meh" (little different and no better than my solid state gear).  I've heard tube palpability and loved it, but not if it makes everything euphoric (or adds bass bloat).  I haven't changed my full range floor-standing speakers or room in over 10 years or mono-blocks for 7 years so I've had a constant reference (unlike most audio top guns). 

Perhaps this is a matter of striving for accuracy in a "take no prisoners" level of enthusiasm, even if it's annoying.  This that what is means in general to be an audiophile?  Where does that leave those who wants to enjoy well reproduced music?

[Anji12305]

I think you have neatly explained why so many of us are migrating to loudspeakers that favor dynamics and time coherence over dead flat frequency response.

I suspect that if you listen through good headphones, it might not sound so rough.

It's an inexpensive way to evaluate one factor at a time.

For one, I'm not in favor of more processing at home.

Let the professional recording engineers 'paint the picture' it's up to us to provide the most comfortable gallery to appreciate their efforts.

If I may ask, are your loudspeakers aligned to point directly at your listening position?

[Nordkapp]

My one complaint, as I am a dedicated headphone guy now, is because of the ridiculous level of intimate detail retrieval  (and I am referring to mid-fi to truly high end cans and DACS here), early digital recordings, to me, really are excruciating. I think that the effect the is not so noticeable on 2 channel stereo. My stereo was once pushing $20K and I do not recall ever feeling tortured on poor recordings like I do now. Small price to pay for sheer bliss on everything else though.

[Nordkapp]

Great thread BTW. Very thought provoking.

[HAL]

I found after listening to a lot of types of DAC's over the years, that the reconstruction filtering in use by many gave me listening fatigue problems.  These were always linear phase filters in the designs.  Research at a UK college and by Wolfson Micro, Ayre and Meridian gave an interesting finding that the non-causal filter has psycho acoustic effects that the ear-brain system does not like.

This is very noticeable on digital recordings after they went away from the original analog filters used with A/D's that were successive approximation style and moved to linear phase.   Artifacts that I thought were processing turned out to be filtering related.

My preference is now for minimum phase reconstruction filter DAC's like Wolfson Micro (now Cirrus Logic), and Ayre.   AKM has some new minimum phase DAC's out as well. 

I think this is also why some folks prefer the older DAC's that do not have linear phase filtering, like the early Philips DAC's.

The minimum phase DAC's have all the resolution without the artifacts that make the linear phase filters sound hyper-detailed to me.

Good luck with the search.