DirectStream DAC Output Level

Audio Components DACs
41
xianharris said
yacheah said

How do you listen to the brighter RVG’s through the DS?

Do those RVG Blue Note CD's sound great on any system? I don't like the transfers. It's too bad, I have quite a few...some of my favorite music.
Yes, they sounded fine on mine with the Cary DAC.

They sounded better on Harbeth’s with modest Quad amplification - very textured. Also on Rogers LS 3/5 A’s driven by Audio Research Classic 60’s. Ditto for Miles’ ESP. And for the overly brassy Reprise era Sinatra if you like those.

They just need a midrange bump. I think just some on the DS would do the trick.

Try it you’ll be surprised

42
yacheah said Lon, do you still play CDs? How do you listen to the brighter RVG's through the DS? I played Freddie Hubbard's "Breaking Point" earlier - the air, soundstaging and low noise make the rhythm section and piano sound good but when it comes to the crescendo of horns it can be jarring and verge on earbleed unless you have Harbeth speakers which have a midrange bump to compensate for it like davidl from the Torreys thread did.

Ditto for any Jackie McLean with his sour tone.

Kinda was a throwback to my Krell owning days - on good recordings yeah, on lesser ones which is probably the majority of what I have meh. I am exaggerating - the DS is more rounded but still you get the drift.

It’s overall a nice DAC. Turning up the volume on my preamp filled out the mids somewhat on Cannonball’s “Somethin’ Else” and Dexter Gordon’s “Doin’ Allright”. In fact I preferred these on the DS than the Cary DAC I compared it with even though the latter had a richer midrange. The DS’ sweet, grainless, more extended highs won out on these recordings as well as on Jennifer Warnes’ “Famous Blue Raincoat”. The DS midrange veers towards open and clear which is nice in its own way.

It just needs like Jazznut says a richer midrange. Not too much as to be thick and slow sounding but just enough in the upper mids to keep piercing brass at bay, vocal sibilance away and give more voice to the sax.

I’m gonna try some more aggressive Trane tomorrow to see how it fares and whether to keep the DS or not.

I am wondering if I can tweak it with cables but think that’s likely to be a vicious cycle. Also, is there an older firmware that has pretty much most of what Torreys is but with a richer midrange? Alternatively, does anyone know of a DAC that sounds like what I describe - that would be the bees knees…

Yes, I still listen to CDs, that is the bulk of my listening. I have a very nice and useful tone control set up on my amp, and I can pad the output of the ribbon tweeters down on my speakers, and I also put a nice Mundorf cap on the ribbon tweeters. And it may be that my amp with the tube set I most often use has a bit of a midrange emphasis. All this allows me to listen to a lot of cds others don't listen to, although I must say in the case of Blue Note I have been buying the Japanese cds reissued the last seven or eight years and play that version first of any title.

The tone controls on my amp are why I will probably keep it in my system for a long time to come. I think they are exceptionally useful and not detrimental to the sound. Here is what the builder has written to describe them:

The treble and bass controls for each channel are less than conventional. The treble control is a simple shunt to ground meaning it's not in the signal path. It was designed to roll off the top end frequencies should they become too loud. There is no “flat” position of this control because it changes from one loudspeaker to another. It has to be set by ear. One way to do this is to simply turn it all the way down (counter clockwise) and then slowly raise it until you're satisfied with the amount of treble.
The Bass Control is not a frequency adjustment as the name would suggest. Instead what this control does is allow you to adjust how much interaction your loudspeaker has with the amplifier. This works by placing the voice coil of your loudspeaker in parallel with the cathode resistor of the input stage in this amplifier. As the impedance rises the gain of the amplifier is reduced in real time as the music plays. The control simply lets you vary how much this happens. The result varies widely from one speaker to another so again there is no such thing as a “flat” position on the control. In fact it can even work backwards with some speakers, so you simply have to listen and adjust. I usually start with the Bass Control fully counter clockwise and experiment from there.
43

I like such options, even if not fully puristic!

IMO every music lover usually needs it if he wants to play various music at a similar tonal quality without too many compromises.

Unfortunately most of today’s high end components, which usually allow no tonal control from source to speakers, seems to rely on a situation where every recording and mastering was done to a certain tonal standard. As we know exactly the opposite is a fact. I will probably never understand how most customers accept such limitation for themselves (not only if one component has a special tonal tendency)

44

Agreed. A bit of tone control can be a good thing.

45
jazznut said I will probably never understand how most customers accept such limitation for themselves . . .
For me he music itself is vastly more important than the sound, and I also find how the recording was made interesting onto itself, especially historical recordings. I want to know what the engineer/producer intended. Thus, I prefer components which do not add or subtract.

If there happened to be a recording which I enjoyed but for horrible EQ, I would simply pull the file, EQ to taste, and put it back on my server - but I have yet to find this even vaguely tempting.

Thus, I do not not need or want tone controls on may playback equipment. I similarly do not want a DAC with rich or threadbare mid-range, ripe or thin bass, hot or recessed treble. Just accurately reproduce what is on the recording.

For those using players to listen which recognize VST plug-ins, there are many real time EQ options one can easily employ if you prefer to tweak.

46
Elk said
jazznut said I will probably never understand how most customers accept such limitation for themselves . . .

For me he music itself is vastly more important than the sound, and I also find how the recording was made interesting onto itself, especially historical recordings. I want to know what the engineer/producer intended. Thus, I prefer components which do not add or subtract.

If there happened to be a recording which I enjoyed but for horrible EQ, I would simply pull the file, EQ to taste, and put it back on my server - but I have yet to find this even vaguely tempting.

Thus, I do not not need or want tone controls on may playback equipment. I similarly do not want a DAC with rich or threadbare mid-range, ripe or thin bass, hot or recessed treble. Just accurately reproduce what is on the recording.

For those using players to listen which recognize VST plug-ins, there are many real time EQ options one can easily employ if you prefer to tweak.


One thing we have in common it seems, the other not:

In common:

I also want no colored DAC etc. Just which of the “uncolored” ones (due to their producers and followers) and regarding “coloration” very different sounding ones is the one we want to take as a reference?

Not in common:

I bet what you call the “intention” of the engineer, mostly is not. It’s simply different monitoring gear, more or less care taken or like on Eagles/Hotel California: Monitoring speakers put under a desk for mastering (as far as I read)

I personally also like to know how Rudy wanted his Blue Note recordings to sound (on the equipment of 1960 ;-). No problem as the optional tonal tweaking is just an option in my theory. But I don’t want to hear all 80’s Rock music without bass because equipment of that time, which this was voiced to, was crappy to today’s standard. I don’t really prefer tone controls, there are other options (also other than plugins). But I’d accept them if they help the music.

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jazznut said

I bet what you call the “intention” of the engineer, mostly is not.


Untrue. Even the smallest project studios care about sound quality. There are horror stories of course, but most engineers and producers truly do want, and carefully create, the sound they release. I have spent too much time in studios both behind and in front of mics to accept otherwise. It is not uncommon to spend more time tweaking mic placement and equipment choices/settings than to perform and record the final track.

Unfortunately for pop recordings, this can include deliberate compression which many of us find excessive. But the mere fact we do not like it does not mean it is unintended. In fact, there are plug-ins and stand alone processors specifically designed to compress the dynamic range as much as possible with as few obvious artifacts as can be accomplished. Some are quite expensive. None of this is by accident and is exactly what the producers, musicians, and the vast majority of the public want.

I continually wonder where the myth originated that sound engineers are uninterested in the quality of the sound they capture - especially given the training, the high cost of better sounding equipment, trade magazine articles offering tips, books and other publications on the topic, pro forums, awards for best sound, AES articles and presentations, etc. which indicate otherwise.

Recording engineers are silly obsessed with the quality of sound they capture - trying different mics, mic preamps, mic locations, rooms, etc. to capture just the right vocal or instrumental sound they want. They are obsessed as audiophiles are with equipment, tweaking, setups. They pay for microphone and equipment mods by favored tweakers and more. Monitoring equipment often is better quality and much better setup than most audiophile home systems.

It is far from an accident that the recordings we play sound as good as they do.

48

Our misunderstanding now is that saying that what you call intention often is no intention, is not because I think the engineers don’t care (if they don’t it’s an exception).

What I mean is they even possibly all want exactly the same( with smaller variations), but due to i.e. Just different monitoring equipment (whatever high quality) the outcome at the end is different if played on the same system even if it should have been quite the same intentionally.

Speaking just about tonality differences: I also think there’s sometimes some intention behind a bright, dull, bass heavy or bass shy recording. But 1. I think mainly not by intention and 2. I’m personally more interested to listen to such “faulty” sounding recordings in a better way.

If I want to hear each recording on a neutral setup, I do. But I also want to have the chance to listen to a 80s Rock recording like the group played it live. Strange that in concerts intention is mostly the same: no big tonal differences, all sound good in tonality to a wide range of listeners and engineers (with exceptions)

Finally I certainly believe in a lot of intentional engineering work, also tonality wise. But if there would be a chance to let every engineer hear the outcome on one and the same system, they would probably be shocked about the difference and how it came all out in comparison.

You can only hear the real intention of the engineer on his mastering monitors.

A lot of the other arguments is probably theory, justifying that for ~50% of the recordings, puristic listeners accept usually inacceptable tonality as “intention” to no purpose.

(All a little exaggerated to make my point clear)

Beeing able to precisely listen to i.e. mastering differences between good and “real” sounding recordings is also fun to me, I just don’t have too much fun anymore if it’s far from reality and sounds like an accident.

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jazznut said You can only hear the real intention of the engineer on his mastering monitors.
There is some truth to this on a theoretical level, but a good recording will sound good on any competent system. It will not sound bass shy, hot, dynamically compressed, etc. - unless this is what the engineer intended, or the playback system is deficient. One reason this is true is there is a good amount of standardization/commonality in how recordings are created. You may find Bob Katz's book, Mastering Audio interesting in this regard.

One of the primary concerns of the mixing and mastering engineers is that the recording translates well; that is, it sounds good on systems other than on which it is mastered. If this were not true, we would not enjoy the vast majority of recordings. Only the occasional random recording would sound decent.

Instead we have tens of thousands of very good to excellent sounding recordings, many of which nearly everyone agrees possess wonderful sound. A great example is the wonderful orchestral recordings of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The recording and monitoring chain was vastly different than what is available today, especially highly colored and limited range speakers, but the recordings are magnificent on even the best, most revealing modern system.

I submit that if the majority of recordings do not sound good on a system, the problem lies with the system - not the recordings.

Of course, there is dreck out there. There are also old recordings were the technology did not yet exist to capture decent sound. These can be helped by judicious, thoughtful EQ.

And it is a hobby; if one enjoys fiddling with the sound of even the best recordings, fiddle away.

50
Instead we have tens of thousands of very good to excellent sounding recordings, many of which nearly everyone agrees possess wonderful sound. A great example is the wonderful orchestral recordings of the 1950's and early 1960's. The recording and monitoring chain was vastly different than what is available today, especially highly colored and limited range speakers, but the recordings are magnificent on even the best, most revealing modern system.

I submit that if the majority of recordings do not sound good on a system, the problem lies with the system - not the recordings.

And therein we must agree to disagree. I am not an archivist and it tends not to be an academic point for me. I listen to music and not simply good recordings for enjoyment.

I fail to see the point of spending so much on equipment for the sake of listening to an accurate reproduction sans musical fulfillment and getting earbleed in the process. Life’s too short.

As to Lon’s point (and maybe Jazznut’s too) both like some midrange emphasis but do the correction post DAC. I see some systems of DS users listed on this board and the majority of them do have a midrange emphasis. I would contend it’s easier to do the correction at DAC level as it is a single component as opposed to on the level of many other components further downstream.

51
lonson said

Yes, I still listen to CDs, that is the bulk of my listening. I have a very nice and useful tone control set up on my amp, and I can pad the output of the ribbon tweeters down on my speakers, and I also put a nice Mundorf cap on the ribbon tweeters. And it may be that my amp with the tube set I most often use has a bit of a midrange emphasis. All this allows me to listen to a lot of cds others don’t listen to, although I must say in the case of Blue Note I have been buying the Japanese cds reissued the last seven or eight years and play that version first of any title.

Lon, are these the TOCJ's as opposed to the JRVG's? I have found the JRVG's patchy. Some like Dizzy Reece's "Star Bright" are muddy sounding while others are bright.

In recent years, I liked the Music Wave XRCD2 reissues and the Analogue Productions. Alan Yoshida does a fine job remastering some of these.

There seems to be a dearth of Blue Note reissues now, except for the odd title that pops up on CD Japan - perhaps they have scraped the bottom of the barrel as far as these are concerned.

Sorry for cluttering up this thread but guess I am more a Blue Note fanboy than a recording one although you would be the authority in these neck of the woods :wink:

52
Elk said
jazznut said You can only hear the real intention of the engineer on his mastering monitors.
There is some truth to this on a theoretical level, but a good recording will sound good on any competent system. It will not sound bass shy, hot, dynamically compressed, etc. - unless this is what the engineer intended, or the playback system is deficient. One reason this is true is there is a good amount of standardization/commonality in how recordings are created. You may find Bob Katz's book, Mastering Audio interesting in this regard.

One of the primary concerns of the mixing and mastering engineers is that the recording translates well; that is, it sounds good on systems other than on which it is mastered. If this were not true, we would not enjoy the vast majority of recordings. Only the occasional random recording would sound decent.

Instead we have tens of thousands of very good to excellent sounding recordings, many of which nearly everyone agrees possess wonderful sound. A great example is the wonderful orchestral recordings of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The recording and monitoring chain was vastly different than what is available today, especially highly colored and limited range speakers, but the recordings are magnificent on even the best, most revealing modern system.

I submit that if the majority of recordings do not sound good on a system, the problem lies with the system - not the recordings.

Of course, there is dreck out there. There are also old recordings were the technology did not yet exist to capture decent sound. These can be helped by judicious, thoughtful EQ.

And it is a hobby; if one enjoys fiddling with the sound of even the best recordings, fiddle away.

Many points to agree here, especially that most recordings can and should sound good on a certain setup as well as the better a system gets, the more fun there is aside of tonality discussions. Just some points I see differently.

Although I sometimes hear quite unbelievable tonal differences to any “standard” even in exceptionally good recordings/masterings, I agree that nearly all good ones can be played without any tweaking. These were not the ones I spoke of for a fiddling need.

More general examples of exceptions could be:
take some exceptionally rich recorded albums like Holly Cole/Temptation or most Donald Fagen recordings and play them after some like Dave Brubeck/Time out or most Blue Note or some other golden era Jazz. All that stuff was mastered/remastered by best engineers in a great way. But I say it’s definitely not possible to play both on one system without tonal tweaking so that both sound “right” in terms of “commonly agreed” tonal balance how you would want to hear it live.

The recording analyst and purist says: nice I can exactly hear that the one sounds great but on the edge of “too fat” while the other sounds great but van Gelder seemed to intend some brighter sound with close to no richness and bass in comparison to the first. Both very well done and mastered to the intent of the producer (as far as this can be said about RVG or others and how theywould have wanted their recordings to sound on today’s equipment)

But the, lets call him “pure music lover” wants to hear both in a tonally fully satisfying way and therefore, if he had a +/- few dB bass button on his remote, he would quickly press it the one or other time. Even with some of the “best recordings”.

You’re defending the engineering/mastering business, which is fine and correct with me, they all usually do a great job and most of their work does need no fiddling with tonality. But many listeners don’t want to hear (exaggerated) just 2L, Reference Recordings, Patricia Barber or Ms. Barlow, Cole or Krall in realistic tonality, but also their 60s Jazz or 80s Rock CD’s and don’t not want to give up on 50% of their favorite music just because they bought a high end stereo. And I’m not talking about the dreck out there, this needs no notice.

50s/60s Classical recordings indeed are a good example to still sound fantastic. Big exception to me is most (not all) of the Living Stereo stuff, not only because I dislike most Reiner interpretations, but mainly because in comparison to modern classical recordings I think especially the tonality is far from the real thing if not played with a very special person n this case really colored vinyl rig, while dynamics is great.

Back to where we came from: IMO near “uncolored, extremely neutral” gear (as acoustics) tends to encourage analytic, comparable listening of good and similar recorded music while little richer sounding gear or acoustics or neutral gear with tonal tweaking options encourages to explore a wider musical spectrum and more focus on the music.

You can easily check this by playing music on a high end system to non high end oriented but music loving friends or women. They will be just partly overwhelmed (for the part that also tonally sounds quite perfect). What they (not I) really need to have fun is a slighty bass heavy sound of any kind of music, just as most everyone prefers in a live concert. No need of a high end system. Another easy way to find out this is to try to convince them (not me) of the value of being able to analyze differences in the presumed intention of recording engineers instead of listening to all the music in an equally good tonality :wink:

Just to add this: all the recording differences are just one reason why some optional tonal adjustments in one part of a system can make sense. The other is, that all good recording/mastering is tuned to perfect room acoustics which just a minority even of high end system owners has. The major part of them listens to recordings mastered to not their acoustic environment on components not voiced to their acoustic environment (exaggerated) with no option to compensate except finding the exact mix of components with best match, with hopefully no reason to change too soon in one part that could change it all (like it happened to yacheah)

53

I’m not really an authority, just an enthusiast.

This veers off topic, but. . . .

The Japanese RVG series pretty much ended more than ten years ago. (Just as a further aside, I find many of these sound better in my system with the DS in “OUT” phase). I was referring to TOCJs until the move about four years ago of the label to Universal (US and Japan). TOCJ concentrated on a wonderful reissue of all the LTE titles in their final years of holding the catalog, and an even more extensive release of many jazz titles in other EMI holdings such as Jubiliee, Roost, Pacific West, United Artists, etc. These sounded great, warm, maybe a bit too warm. When Universal took control they had Bernie Grundman mastering the catalog in 24/96 and released these in the US in a few two and three and four cd sets of Monk, Miles, Blakey, and Brown, and they released a big series of single disc reissues from 2014 and 2015 called the 75th anniversary series that were 24/96 remastered and were printed on SHM-CD. I got most but not all of these at a cost. . . but I love the series and their sound.

There’s a lot of info here Mike: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/74255-classic-blue-notes-on-shm-cd/&page=1

There have also recently been three releases of ten titles each of mono material in the Platinum SHM-CD series that sound wonderful.

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lonson said I'm not really an authority, just an enthusiast.

This veers off topic, but. . . .

The Japanese RVG series pretty much ended more than ten years ago. (Just as a further aside, I find many of these sound better in my system with the DS in “OUT” phase). I was referring to TOCJs until the move about four years ago of the label to Universal (US and Japan). TOCJ concentrated on a wonderful reissue of all the LTE titles in their final years of holding the catalog, and an even more extensive release of many jazz titles in other EMI holdings such as Jubiliee, Roost, Pacific West, United Artists, etc. These sounded great, warm, maybe a bit too warm. When Universal took control they had Bernie Grundman mastering the catalog in 24/96 and released these in the US in a few two and three and four cd sets of Monk, Miles, Blakey, and Brown, and they released a big series of single disc reissues from 2014 and 2015 called the 75th anniversary series that were 24/96 remastered and were printed on SHM-CD. I got most but not all of these at a cost. . . but I love the series and their sound.

There’s a lot of info here Mike: Classic Blue Notes on SHM-CD - Re-issues - organissimo forums

There have also recently been three releases of ten titles each of mono material in the Platinum SHM-CD series that sound wonderful.

Thanks so much for this Lon.

I will try the “out” phase on the DS. Thanks for the tip. Does this work too for the US RVG’s?

I think I do have some of the SHM CDs but they were costly back then before the Yen depreciation. I have most of these titles already on previous Collector’s Choice, McMasters, Connoisseurs, and RVGs but warm is something I like so good reason to get some again.

I have some of the 3’fers but I didn’t know they were remastered. I also have some of the 24/96 on downloads but I guess the SHM process needs the physical CD medium to derive full benefits from the enhanced sound.

55
jazznut said

Back to where we came from: IMO near “uncolored, extremely neutral” gear (as acoustics) tends to encourage analytic, comparable listening of good and similar recorded music while little richer sounding or acoustics or neutral gear with tonal tweaking options encourages to explore a wider musical spectrum and more focus on the music.

Just to add this: all the recording differences are just one reason why some optional tonal adjustments in one part of a system can make sense. The other is, that all good recording/mastering is tuned to perfect room acoustics which just a minority even of high end system owners has. The major part of them listens to recordings mastered to not their acoustic environment on components not voiced to their acoustic environment (exaggerated) with no option to compensate except finding the exact mix of components with best match, with hopefully no reason to change too soon in one part that could change it all (like it happened to yacheah)


Amen to that

56

Mike

I haven’t noticed many of the US RVGs being “out of phase” necessarily. A few perhaps. I always try phase reversal out on the JRVGs and on US RVGs if the sound is thin and harsh.

The “SHM” isn’t a process really, other than a manufacturing process using different, “SUPER HIGH MATERIAL” components for the disc. This in turn supposedly makes a disc more correctly mastered and played back. I think there’s something to this, regardless the mastering for this series is to my taste. I don’t do files or downloads, I imagine these sound very very good.

The sad thing about these excellent sounding Japanese issues (and I personally prefer them to the McMaster Blue Notes, the Connoisseurs, etc.) is that they are only in print for short stretches. The LTE remasters and the 75th anniversary SHM-CDs are almost all out of print now. Universal has for the moment turned its attention to Impulse SHM-CDs with a number coming out this fall (and the previous batches have sounded excellent to me on my system) and Sony is putting out another batch of the “CTI Supreme” series (which are a budget reissue line using Blu-Spec CDs.) It’s possible Universal will return to Blue Note material next year. I’d love to see them reissue the earliest (pre-hard bop) years of the label more thoroughly than Monk, Powell, etc.

57
yacheah said And therein we must agree to disagree.
Meaning you think the vast majority of recordings are awful to listen to?
As to Lon's point (and maybe Jazznut's too) both like some midrange emphasis but do the correction post DAC. . . . I would contend it's easier to do the correction at DAC level as it is a single component as opposed to on the level of many other components further downstream.
Are you stating you find that most (all?) recordings need the midrange emphasized? That they are all flawed with a recessed midrange? Do you find the flaw to be the same with all recordings, or does it vary from recording to recording?

The best to address this would be to use a player which accepts VST plug-ins and add EQ as desired. I suspect that what you find to be necessary midrange sweetening might not be what others want.

58
jazznut said Back to where we came from: IMO near “uncolored, extremely neutral” gear (as acoustics) tends to encourage analytic, comparable listening of good and similar recorded music while little richer sounding gear or acoustics or neutral gear with tonal tweaking options encourages to explore a wider musical spectrum and more focus on the music.
Your entire post is very thoughtful and raises some excellent points, but I find this most striking.

Along these same lines, I find that people tend to voice their individual systems to their music preferences. The listener that enjoys small ensemble chamber music puts together a system that makes this music sounds its best, the romantic classical lover goes for big dynamics and lush sounds, the rock/pop aficionado goes for slam, that rap lover wants chest pounding 120Hz thumps, etc.

This is fine, but then it is easy to only buy music that sounds good on your system. I prefer a more balanced approach where every genre sounds at least good. (At the highest level, the best systems play everything great.)

I like what you describe as “uncolored, extremely neutral” gear. I am interested in the music most; I will listen to anything musically compelling even if the recordings is awful. That is, I listen to music first, not to the gear. Secondarily, I am fascinated by the recording/playback process itself and a neutral system reveals the most about how the recording was made.

But I can easily appreciate your point that a richer sounding, more forgiving system (more musical?) may well encourage greater musical exploration. There can be no better recommendation for this type of system. I find it very sad when someone will not listen to a particular recording “it doesn’t sound good,” similarly listens only to “audiophile” recordings. If a bit of EQ fixes this, we need more personalized EQ!

Thanks again for your long post - great stuff!

59

thanks ELK!

A major point is, that problems with bass, like magister’s in the other thread or with treble are quite easy or at least straight forward to cure.

But if a certain harmonic richness in mids is missing somewhere or from a main component, this not only influences nearly all kinds of recordings at the same time, but also is nearly impossible to influence/improve to the point afterwards.

60

I like my other preamp to be set at approx 12 oclock when I am playing tunes as I understand that is where it is closer to 1:1 input/ouput - i.e its not attenuating nor amplifying the input. If I’m lucky using a non-adjustable source I get in the 10am - 2pm range. With the DS-DAC I can tailor that much more accurately without any loss of quality from the DAC.

Using the PS- Audio BHK pre and the DAC setting of 100 I find myself at around 40 for CD’s. For vinyl it is around 60.

Do you know where is the 1:1 location on the gain/volume control of your pre-amp?