[leng jai]

I've been reading a lot of threads lately in this section of Headfi lately and as you can see by my signature I have settled on the DacMagic. From what I've always understood is that DACs are regarded in how accurately they the represent the source material the are decoding. So my question is, why is it that people say certain DACs have sound signatures? Shouldn't they all sound relatively similar, with the main differences being in detail and frequency range? I mean, people say this DAC is "warm" or cold" and that doesn't really make sense to me.
 
I would have thought things such the amp and headphones would be the ones "coloring" the sound, with the DAC simply decoding the source file to sound as optimal as possible. Why would we want the DAC to also color the sound when there are so many other parts of the chain doing the same thing?
 
Is my thinking wrong here?

 

[Epoch]

A DAC can have a sonic signature because there is an analog stage after the actual DAC.  The DAC chip doesn't go straight from output pins to RCA/XLR connectors, so the circuitry between those two points can have an effect on the sonic signature of the DAC.
 
I can't tell you why you would want coloration from a DAC, but to some that extra coloration would be what they consider as optimal in the first place.

 

[haloxt]

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So my question is, why is it that people say certain DACs have sound signatures?

 
People who think there are differences between dac's usually believe that ALL dac's have their own sonic characteristics.
 
 
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Shouldn't they all sound relatively similar, with the main differences being in detail and frequency range? I mean, people say this DAC is "warm" or cold" and that doesn't really make sense to me.

 
When people use descriptors like warm or cold, they are describing how they believe their senses perceive x y z, but in this case, the permanent or ever-present sound signature/coloration of dac's. And this kind of description can be applied to just about anything, from recording style, music genre, individual songs, individual musicians or instruments, like warm cello or cold harmonica. Does that mean some instruments are flawed, or not 100% suitable for the particular music? Just like musicians might pick the "wrong" instruments for the music, dac designers might pick the "wrong" sound signature for the recording, and reproduced music is arguably subject to more variables than real life music.
 
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I would have thought things such the amp and headphones would be the ones "coloring" the sound, with the DAC simply decoding the source file to sound as optimal as possible.

 
Maybe so, but that's just not how many manufacturers do dac's. Besides, everyone has different ears and interpretations of the terms "optimal" and "uncolored", and I don't view these two things as synonyms.
 
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Is my thinking wrong here?

 
Your opinion of dac's is not uncommon, but keep in mind that many manufacturers certainly have their own unique interpretation of dac sound signatures. On the other hand, some manufacturers may not even think there is much difference between different components inside dac's, nor care about compensating for the shortcomings that occur before or after the dac, and just aim for something that measures very well on RMAA and never do any subjective listening tests.
 
It is possible that something that distorts sound may contribute to the PERCEPTION of the qualities often associated with "better eqiupment". It is easy for people to presume that any distortion leads to less fidelity, or technical ability, or intelligibility, etc. But there is no such simplistic relation between "uncolored" and "optimal", human perception has many variables. If you are interested in the topic I suggest reading Alfred Tomatis' theories, which I admit haven't been very substantiated but still gives you a good idea of how complex the issue can be.

 

[leng jai]

[size=x-small][size=x-small]Pretty enlightening stuff, I'll definitely check out the [/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small]Alfred Tomatis' theories[/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small] at some stage. As always with audio there are several trains of thought and no defininite answer. So am I right in saying that the theory behind a DAC is to reproduce the source material as accurately as possible, but in practice this is not the case. Whether it be manufacterers deliberately manipulating the sound or just a natural by product of what parts they use. [/size][/size]
 
[size=x-small][size=x-small]The DacMagic itself has 3 different filters which are meant to change the sound (personally I have trouble discerning the differences) and this in itself contradicts what I initially thought was the purpose of a DAC. [/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small]Theres also another group of people who believe that DACs are largely the same once you get to a certain price threshold ie. Any decent stand alone DAC above entry sound pretty much the same.[/size][/size]

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

[size=x-small][size=x-small]Pretty enlightening stuff, I'll definitely check out the [/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small]Alfred Tomatis' theories[/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small] at some stage. As always with audio there are several trains of thought and no defininite answer. So am I right in saying that the theory behind a DAC is to reproduce the source material as accurately as possible, but in practice this is not the case. Whether it be manufacterers deliberately manipulating the sound or just a natural by product of what parts they use. [/size][/size]
 
[size=x-small][size=x-small]The DacMagic itself has 3 different filters which are meant to change the sound (personally I have trouble discerning the differences) and this in itself contradicts what I initially thought was the purpose of a DAC. [/size][/size][size=x-small][size=x-small]Theres also another group of people who believe that DACs are largely the same once you get to a certain price threshold ie. Any decent stand alone DAC above entry sound pretty much the same.[/size][/size]

Close but no cigar.  I've discovered that almost everything has some sort of sound signature.  I have a bunch of dacs (see profile) and although they sound similar, they don't sound exactly the same.  The biggest difference is in resolution, space and air and where you are sitting in relation to the stage.  My Stello, for instance, seats you closer to the stage than my North Star and the North Star has a greater resolution than the Stello.  My older DAC-AH sounds flat and unresolving compared to them.  I have a Constantine which I use for cable TV but it doesn't have the resolution and depth of the North Star.
 
I've experimented with transports for a laptop rig and found the USB Blue Circle Thingee, sounds pretty much the same as MB optical out of a pair of Shuttles I built.  I tried the HiFace, but it played louder than the BCT and had a treble tilt that altered the tone of instruments and vocals in a way that I didn't like, relative to the BCT  I also felt that the treble tilt, or brightness, created pseudo-details rather than greater resolution, so I don't use it.  The North Star dac I was using it with is an upsampling dac and apparently upsampling dacs neutralize the low jitter effects of the HF so there was little going for it.  The other problem with the HF was that because it played louder, it was easy to fall into the "louder sounds  better" mode.  Volume balancing showed that it was just brighter, or as I said before, treble tilted and didn't sound realistic because of it.  There was a bigger difference between these transports than between the Constantine, Stello and North Star dacs.
 
The other thing I found was that the onboard USB converters in the Stello and Constantine were pretty bad and easily beaten by the BCT.
 
I auditioned the Neko dac and volume balanced it against the Stello using my two identical Shuttle computers only to find that I really couldn't tell those two apart.  At a meet we compared the Stello to a non usb Benchmark I using the BCT (which as dual outputs) and although there might have been slight differences, it was too close to call at the meet.  But if I had more time with the dacs, sound stage, depth and resolution might have separated them.
 
So to get to the "decent dac" level where things start to sound very similar, you're probably looking at around 1k to 2k.  The cheaper dacs are lesser dacs but not by the orders of magnitude of their prices.
 
And don't get me started on amps.  I have 3.  My Woo3 and my M^3 (637/627) have pretty much the same sound signature while the GS-1 has more resolution (clarity) and sound stage than the other two.  Of course that's an over simplification, but it will do for this post.
 
The only thing that sounds the same is wire:   power cords, interconnects and cables.
 
YMMV
 
USG