DAC/amp to improve a pair of 599s

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

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I've tried asking this on several audio forums and all but one banned me "for asking questions as a new user" (seriously!) which apparently is a big no-no on audio forums. These places sound like a lot of fun. The only place that didn't immediately ban me is ASR, who seemed friendly enough :p

Tbh the learning curve for this stuff is too freaking high, and I really need an abridged version. They tell you to "spend time looking around" but there's a fricking butt ton of graphs and stats, and people using language which is so floral they could be wine tasting, to describe something they are hearing which I might not. And frankly I can't understand half of it.

What the actual Frank does it mean when something "sounds rounded", for instance? Like, what?

So I'm hoping (mostly because this is the only place I'm not banned from yet) that you guys are audio pros :p

Current setup: PC (mostly YouTube) -> $5 usb soundcard -> 599. That's what I'm using atm. I'm not sure if it sounds good or not, because I have nothing better to compare it to. That's half the problem, I really need a good (neutral) frame of reference. I'm absolutely not a bass-head and I listen at low volumes.

So I think I'm supposed to buy a DAC/amp now to improve the sound of the 599. I'm not sure what's wrong with it atm, but the general consensus is everything sounds better with a DAC/amp? It must do because everyone buys one.

Whatever I do I will not really understand any of it, and I'm a) perfectly fine with this and b) not expecting to take this very far. Audio is not my #1 hobby and never will be, but I want a decent setup that I will not be worried is some kind of bottleneck to sound quality.

Does that make sense? I'm putting my ears in your hands, because I don't have a the faintest clue about any of this, nor do I want to become an expert.

Was thinking of the L30 but lots of them have blown up and so now I'm not.
Was thinking of the Schiit Fulla 3 but ASR seem to hate them based on their measurements.
In general it's next to impossible to get hold of US-made products, like Schiit or JDS Labs.

If I buy something for £50 and can't hear any improvement (over the $5 sound card) I'll simply regret not spending more. Budget is about £200 for DAC+amp.

Suggestions welcome. Bans not so much.
 
Basically.... ANY dac/amp will pee all over your onboard. Your 599 are sort of wasted on your pc otherwise.

They are more suited to a proper headphone/amp setup on separates for say a dedicated cd/ blu ray player. When you go into headphones on pc market over £100 you really need a dac/amp combo. Old school pc sound cards will drive a budget headphone easily.

Depends on what your after tbh.
 
Firstly, don't take too much notice of ASR, they believe in (mostly meaningless) numbers rather than their ears and are pretty much a cult of objectivists built up around the prophet Amir.
I'm in the same boat at the moment, I want a Schiit Bifrost 2 but god only knows when they will be in stock in the UK. With the current Schiit shortages, if I was looking for a good sounding entry level DAC/Amp, I would be looking at the iFi Zen DAC, the price is right at £129, all in one that sounds great and has a very effective bass boost function should you need it. If you are running it off your PC then it's easy, just connect via USB 3.0 which supplies both signal and power. If you want to use your phone to drive it you will need an external power supply - the iFi one is pricey.
 
FoxEye said:
...What the actual Frank does it mean when something "sounds rounded", for instance?...
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In most cases, nothing at all. Even average quality modern audio amplifiers are good enough to be effectively transparent in double-blind tests. If it's not transparent, such that you actually can describe the sound of the amp in words, then it's not good enough.
 
Mr Evil said:
In most cases, nothing at all. Even average quality modern audio amplifiers are good enough to be effectively transparent in double-blind tests. If it's not transparent, such that you actually can describe the sound of the amp in words, then it's not good enough.
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Right. And I'm very conscious of (wary of) subjective descriptions of what people are hearing.

I guess I'm a bit biased *towards* the mentality of ASR, because I can't see how measurements can lie.
 
the measurements they use to rank amps and DACs don't lie, they just don't tell you anything. All solid state amps and DACs measure flat for frequency response and the distortion figures are mostly way below the threshold of hearing, so Amir's graphs, while pretty don't actually show anything meaningful. I'm all for measurements and graph plots where they are needed, such as the frequency response and phase measurements of headphones.

As for the Schiit Heresy, Jason actually designed it as an inside joke, he designed it for one reason and one reason only - to measure perfectly. They then sent one to ASR, sat back and watched the sparks fly. They also released the Magni 3+ at the same time, which also measures well but instead of an op-amp based amp it used discrete components. Both amps sound good but while the Heresy is ultra clean and sterile the Magni 3+ just sounds more fun and actually has some character.
 
rids57 said:
As for the Schiit Heresy, Jason actually designed it as an inside joke, he designed it for one reason and one reason only - to measure perfectly. They then sent one to ASR, sat back and watched the sparks fly. They also released the Magni 3+ at the same time, which also measures well but instead of an op-amp based amp it used discrete components.
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Yeah see...what sparks? They rated both very highly. If Jason designed it just to poke the bear then they failed miserably didn't they?

the Heresy is ultra clean and sterile
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All solid state amps and DACs measure flat for frequency response and the distortion figures are mostly way below the threshold of hearing
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^^ Ahem. What else would explain a DAC or AMP moving away from a clean and sterile sound?

From the horse's mouth:

Jason Stoddard said:
Let’s Come Together

So here we go. At the end of the chapter. We’ve challenged our own internal dogmas, and we’ve decided to, well, leave it to you. But let’s not fight about it. Come on, guys. This is audio. It should be fun. Whether you like Magni 3+ because it’s all philosophically congruent and schiit, or you like Magni Heresy because it’s such a radical departure—or if you still like (gasp) tubes in Vali 2, that’s your choice. The bottom line is: both Magni 3+ and Magni Heresy are great amps. Both have their strengths. Both deliver good (or great) measurements. Both are affordable and built right here in California. So try one out…or both out…and see what you think. Meet with friends, get their opinions. It’s perfectly OK to like one or the other or both or none, and it’s perfectly fine to base your opinion on what you hear, or on the measurements, or simply how you feel.
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Yeah see...what sparks? They rated both very highly. If Jason designed it just to poke the bear then they failed miserably didn't they?
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Yep, his little joke was a big failure and he laughed himself all the way the bank as the sales went through the roof due to all the extra publicity. :D
 
rids57 said:
Yep, his little joke was a big failure and he laughed himself all the way the bank as the sales went through the roof due to all the extra publicity. :D
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hyperbole aside, you aren't telling the truth. You obviously have something againt ASR are are using their previous poor reviews of schitt hardware as a basis for this opinion yet when i tell you they reviewed both the magni 3+ and Heresy very favourably, and give you a quote verbatim from Jason's blog, you ignore it because you've got nothing.

As if Stoddard had the company design a completely new dac just to wind up ASR when they already knew it measured AND sounded brilliant. :o
 
james.miller said:
hyperbole aside, you aren't telling the truth. You obviously have something againt ASR are are using their previous poor reviews of schitt hardware as a basis for this opinion yet when i tell you they reviewed both the magni 3+ and Heresy very favourably, and give you a quote verbatim from Jason's blog, you ignore it because you've got nothing.

As if Stoddard had the company design a completely new dac just to wind up ASR when they already knew it measured AND sounded brilliant. :o
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Not telling the truth? Jason designed it as a joke, found that it actually sounded good and provided both the Heresy and Magni 3+ to prove a point, the point being that a chip based amp will always measure better but an amp using discrete components will sound better. As it ended up he failed to make his point because all Amir and ASR were interested in was the measurements and the Heresy measured slightly better than the Magni 3+, actual sound produced was of little concern.

Yes I get annoyed by ASR members, specially on Reddit, where they are constantly spouting rubbish, such as there is no point getting anything better than an Apple dongle as "measurements prove" that all DACs sound exactly the same. This is definitely untrue as my Modi Multibit sounds very different to my Modi 3 (flat soundstage), which sounds different to my Modi 1 (brighter) - with the Multibit DAC the timbre of instruments is more natural, wider and deeper sound stage, better imaging, etc and none of these can be defined by measurements. We're born with excellent measuring devices for audio - our ears, I just wish ASR members would try and use them more often.

My personal taste is for a smoother, warmer sound, which is why I have a Modi Multibit (saving for a Bifrost 2), an Asgard 3 and Denon AH-D7200 headphones (among others). The Modi Multibit measures very badly yet sounds really good and even the top of the line £2000 Yggdrasil measures poorly yet sounds incredible (Denafrips Ares is even worse). Basically, if "sound quality" for DACs is measureable, nobody yet knows how to do it, which metrics are actually important etc. A smoother, warmer sound means a touch of even order harmonics on the amp, a slower transient decay from the DAC and slight roll off in the high frequencies in the headphones - none of which make for perfect measurements but who cares when it sounds this good :)
 
rids57 said:
Yes I get annoyed by ASR members, specially on Reddit, where they are constantly spouting rubbish, such as there is no point getting anything better than an Apple dongle as "measurements prove" that all DACs sound exactly the same. This is definitely untrue as my Modi Multibit sounds very different to my Modi 3 (flat soundstage), which sounds different to my Modi 1 (brighter) - with the Multibit DAC the timbre of instruments is more natural, wider and deeper sound stage, better imaging, etc and none of these can be defined by measurements. We're born with excellent measuring devices for audio - our ears, I just wish ASR members would try and use them more often.
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Some members of this forum are morons as well but I dont blame OcUK for that. The apple dongle is great but it has it's limits as ASR rightly pointed out. ASR never ever clamed it was the end of all dacs or anything close.

"As you see, it leaves both Google dongles in the dust. Mind you, built-in DAC in LG G7 ThinQ is much better still so Android fans don't need to kill themselves. Clearly someone cared about audio performance here in design of Apple dongle."

"Conclusions
It is time for us Android users to crawl under a rock. Apple showed us that a bit more thought and engineering put in a dirt cheap and small audio product can produce respectable performance. "


^^^ Straight from ASR's review. Not exactly christ reincarnated in a dac stuff.

As far as why Heresy exists, Jason's own words again:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To use an op-amp based stage when we have the budget and capability to go fully discrete…that’s crazy talk!

Or at least that’s what I’ve always believed.

Heretical Thoughts

“So, wait a sec,” someone says. “You’re going through all this angst because you prefer to use individual transistors and resistors and crap, rather than op-amps? Who cares!”

Well, wars have been fought over interpretations of religious texts. And flame wars have been fought over everything from operating systems to car engines to different ways of making coffee.

Aside: Sometimes I think our “functional comparison filter” is fundamentally broken. Most of this stuff really doesn’t matter. If aliens came down to study us, I think they would probably summarize us as, “Promising bipedal species, but high danger of extinction due to broken pattern recognition leading to unnecessary conflict. Also, they eat anything. And we mean ANYTHING. Visit at your own risk.”

But yeah, I get it. Arguing over discrete vs op-amp seems like crazy talk.

Annnndddd…really, that’s the whole gist of this: what’s better these days, discrete or op-amp based design?

In the past, there’d be no question: we’d just do discrete, even down to levels most manufacturers would think ridiculous. Magni 1, at $99, was discrete. Magni 2 and Uber were discrete. Magni 3 went to a new current-feedback gain stage, but it was still discrete. And still $99.

But times change.

And so when I went to design Hel, I had a choice: I could do a Magni 3-style discrete stage, or I could go op-amp. We had the budget for either one. The Magni 3-style stage would be pretty big, though, and it would need a DC servo, and there were some new op-amps from TI that were looking pretty good, and we’d had good results with the Fulla 2 and 3 with op-amps…

…so I squinched up my face and did an op-amp stage for Hel.

And you know what? It sounded quite good.

“Gonna do a Magni 4 like this?” Tyler asked, when he heard the Hel.

“Switching supply and op-amps?” I asked. “Are you kidding?”

Tyler shrugged. “All I know is Hel sounds great, bro.”

Aside: the “bro” thing is just Tyler’s way of poking fun at another of our employees, a friend that he recommended we hire. Tyler actually has a Masters degree in philosophy. I think he’s the most edumacated person at Schiit beyond Ivana, with her math Ph.D.

“Yeah, but why would you go op-amp when you can do discrete?” I asked.

Tyler shook his head. “That’s engineering talk, not my thing.”

His words hit home, because I was in the middle of deciding what to do with the next Magni. I knew it wouldn’t be a Magni 4 (because it had the same functionality as Magni 3), but I always thought it would be an improvement on the current discrete Magni. I mean, Continuity was out, because Asgard 3 ran plenty warm with Continuity, so Magni with Continuity would be a nuclear reactor, but I knew I could add a driver stage, which would dramatically improve Magni 3’s performance into low impedance loads (at least on an analyzer), but it might make it sound too cold and analytical unless the compensation was changed, because the loop gain would be different, and if we did some filtering, we could suppress some of the 60Hz fundamental (inaudible, but measurements are important).

But if we went op-amp…

My mind spun. If we went op-amp, we wouldn’t have to worry about filtering. We wouldn’t have to worry about drivers. We wouldn’t have to worry about anything, because any decent engineer with the right op-amps could deliver insane measurements with little effort.

Aside: yes, you read that right: discrete design is much, much more challenging than op-amp based design. That doesn’t mean you can’t get stellar results from either, but the fact remains: you want to do something that’s easy, foolproof, and measures good: op-amp.

“Ah, I broke the Jason,” Tyler said, seeing the expression on my face.

“Just thinking about options,” I told him.

“You’re gonna try to prove me wrong, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Tyler laughed. “Definitely.”

But yeah, he was right. How could a simple op-amp stage be better than a good discrete design? That was nuts. That was offensive.

That was heresy.

And so, after I spent literally a couple of hours laying out a larger version of the Hel stage on a blank Magni board, I put this on the top silkscreen:

Magni
Heretical Edition

Because, you know, there was no way it could be better than the crazy Magni 3+ I had planned.

Right?

Right?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Stoddard had the balls to challenge his company's own design philosophy, and good on him for doing so. It had nothing to do with baiting ASR or anyone else. Like he said further on in his blog (which is fascinating btw) there would never have been a Heresy if he didn't believe the product delivered.

 
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FoxEye said:
people using language which is so floral they could be wine tasting
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Well, you know how politicians use so much words talking BS?
Basically same in audio.
Were Hifi used to mean that accurate signal reproduction (which can naturally be measured) it's nowadays all about marketing and fancy words.
This sums it very well.
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/subjective-vs-objective-debate.html
Should find lots of things very similar to those used by political and religious parties...
 
james.miller said:
Stoddard had the balls to challenge his company's own design philosophy, and good on him for doing so. It had nothing to do with baiting ASR or anyone else. Like he said further on in his blog (which is fascinating btw) there would never have been a Heresy if he didn't believe the product delivered.
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Seems I have to hold my hands up and admit I was just plain wrong. It was Tyler that joined ASR and sent them the units, not Jason, in fact I don't think Jason even knew about it. As for the joke aspect, appears I was wrong there too, I could have sworn he said it on SBAF but I can't find it and it looks more likely it was one of the SBAF members.

As for ASR, I'm never going to be a fan because they hold measurements above all else, which is silly for an audio community, specially when a lot of those measurements have very little meaning. Their top amp list based on SINAD is ridiculous as the measurements are almost all below the threshold of hearing. Their DAC measurements mean absolutely nothing, and neither do anyone else's. He's branching out into measuring headphones now which should be entertaining. But what I really don't like is the cult atmosphere there and the way that some members go to other sites and try to impose their misguided beliefs onto everyone else. Admittedly that's not Amir's fault but he also does nothing to dissuade them.

I don't think there is an audio community out there that has the balance of objectivity and subjectivity right, or at least to my preference. ASR is measurements or death, HeadFi are mostly subjective and with too many believers in snake oil products, Reddit are overrun with a loud minority of ASR members that spoil it for everyone else and SBAF, while having a much more balanced approach are insanely toxic and biased against anything any other community says.
 
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