Heartbroken: Unhappy with the sound of my new DS Sr

That was a joke - I was referring to the System I’m using to post on and read this Thread. Nothing to do with audio.

I do feel that wacky opinions are rendered with much greater accuracy on the new iPad Pro vs. the Gen 1. Opinions are rendered more colorfully, though they are not necessarily Brighter than usual. The speed with which the words are communicated has improved considerably as well - much less jitter and temporal blur when scrolling past Soundmind’s posts, for example ; )

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Since moving, your humor has improved at least 20%.

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Must be the mountain air.

Yes, I agree. Much more air, and joke separation. He sounds more like a stage comedian than ever before, like I have Beef in my living room performing on stage at a comedy club. A step improvement indeed!

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My brotha

I thought the volume control on the DSD was lossless. Has it been confirmed that there is some degradation in the sound when engaging the volume control?

Thank you…please…thanks so much! You are such a great audience! I’ll be here through Thursday…be sure to try the veal! ; )

I do feel happier. Glad to finally be here. It’s been a long journey. Half the reason I moved here is there are 300 sunny days a year. I still like four seasons, and so I still get them here without the months of grey skies, slush, blah, blah of the Midwest. Not down on the Midwest - lived there all my life. I’m just not a Florida or Arizona sort of person. At least in cold weather, you can put more clothes on.

The air is also indeed fab. Eddie and I were out for our morning constitutional today, and we were smelling the Wind through the Pines. Either that, or our neighbor was doing a Wake and Bake.

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My feeling about it is that, independent of the volume control, 100 is nominal. That is the standard output level. Otherwise you are attenuating it one way or another. Back in the day, CD players or DACs only had fixed output level. That is assuredly their optimal spot.

But now we have the possibility of using the DAC without a pre. So in that case, you pretty much have to use the volume control, and in some cases the 20dB attenuators as well.

I think I mentioned here earlier that I’ve put my trusty VTL in between the DSJ and amp. When Darren came over to do some listening, he immediately asked me why the DSJ was not on 100. I said, “Well, I tend to like running the VTL close to its nominal mark (there’s actually a big groove cut in the faceplate) to get all the analog/tube goodness without overdriving them”. As a result, I had the DSJ down around the 65-80 range. He insisted I should run it at 100. The VTL is barely cracked open when listening quietly, but it’s not like the sound is suffering as a result. YMMV.

Ted has mentioned many times that the volume control is indeed lossless.

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No it has not! In fact with Red Cloud the people complaining about clicks playing DSD was due to the very fact that they were playing at full volume. I never experienced those issue as I don’t run anywhere near 100. I get clean clear uncompromised sound all the way down to level one on the DAC. The biggest advantage of Ted’s design is that there is no ACTIVE gain stage the video switch creates the output stream and uses a transformer to remove the ultrasonic noise. Most DACs sound quality is restricted by the gain stage after conversion.

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Not correct.

There are a couple of things going on.

Indeed in Redcloud there was a bug (fixed in Snowmass) that running near 100 with loud or dynamic music (music that stayed for a little above -3dBFS) a crackle could happen. The bug was very dependent on the material being played, but a volume below about 84 would keep it from happening. In a technical sense the bug has nothing to do with the volume control, but that’s a little beside the point.

The DS has a fixed analog noise floor. The volume control is completely lossless but if you are running with the volume set at around, say, 20 then you are running with the noise floor about 40dB louder than it needs to be. The noise may or may not be bothersome, but you will be missing some details there.

If you are happy with the DS volume at, say 100, and you change nothing in the system except the volume, the DS volume is more transparent than turning down a preamp, any preamp.

But if you change the DS’s volume and you change your preamp you can either get better sound or worse sound depending on the gain structure of the rest of your system.

The 20dB attenuator is actually very good, BUT there’s an inherent interaction between the output transformers and the interconnects. This is true for DACs systems without output transformers as well, but with them higher capacitance cables usually roll the top off. With the DS if the 20dB attenuator isn’t being used (“High Level”) the transformer cable interaction is reversed from what most people are used to: higher capacitance (or longer) cables tip the top end of the frequency response up. The peak level of that tip up depends on the cables, but it’s about 6 - 10 dB. With cables that have more capacitance than anyone would sell that whole 6 to 10dB would be in the audio band. That would be very noticeable. With the attenuator engaged the opposite happens - longer or higher capacitance cables will roll the top off more like a typical DAC.

Then there’s the simple matter that louder is almost always perceived as better. Doing controlled experiments with a great preamp to check that lowering the volume on the DS and exactly compensating with a preamp are very hard to do. You’d need to measure a test track with a sound level meter each time you changed volumes. It’s also hard to do with the 20dB attenuator simply because dialing in exactly 20dB with a preamp to compensate is just as hard as an arbitrary volume setting.

I’m not claiming that the 20dB attenuator doesn’t affect the sound, but the method by which the sound is affected is not what most people think.

And for those that haven’t seen some of this before - there is absolutely nothing special about 100. If one claims that the volume control is broken then it’s still broken at 100. 100 doesn’t cause a multiply one somewhere or cause the volume control to be skipped, it’s just a multiply by another really weird number.

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Ted, I followed you up to the last paragraph. Are you saying that 100 on the DS DACs is not the same as Full OP Level on a traditional DAC, or were you just referring to the “100 vs. Any Other Setting Being Special/Better” subject?

I’m not sure I understand your question either :slight_smile:
100 on the DS is simply the number that gives an 1.414VRMS output . There are other scaling operations, etc. in the DSP flow in the DS and I combine all of those scaling operations in the volume control multiply. Even if there wasn’t a volume control there would still be a multiply to get things to the correct level before converting to one bit. So saying that 100 is any better or worse than 99 is just wrong. The only difference (outside of the Redcloud bug) is that 99 is 1/2dB closer to the analog noise floor, but there’s no different signal flow for 100 or 99. The multiply is still there, both 100 and 99 (and everything else) is a multiply by a number with a pretty random set of 1s and 0s… (And for that matter sometimes changes release to release.)

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Thanks. Still haven’t totally gotten my head around the “multiply” thing, but if I read you correctly, taking the DS in isolation, anything lower than 100 is closer to the noise floor, and so if you turn the DS volume control down, and a preamp up, In an absolute sense, you are raising the noise floor more than if you were at 100. Which to me is sorta what I was asking.

However, totally read you on the fact that any pre is going to be noisier than the DS, potentially rendering it a moot question. Just depends on what sort of noise and distortions you’re into ; )

As I mentioned somewhere, my NOS Mullards and Telefunkens are nearing their end-of-life in the VTL, and are making noise - but it is SO much more (koff, koff) “MUSICAL” than without it, it’s a no-brainer. (Y’all are welcome to argue amongst yourselves with regard to my brains, and whether I have none to begin with).

No, many preamps are quieter than the DS in two ways - they may have a better signal to noise ratio and the signal to noise often stays the same as the volume goes up or down.
But any analog preamp will have imperfections, various forms of distortion, non-linearities, etc. that change with different volume settings.

So if we use a small range of volumes and ignore the distance to the noise floor using the DS’s volume is cleaner, more consistent and has less distortion than any preamp.

But a preamp is often necessary to match the output levels of the DS to a given amp. A preamp may filter ultrasonic noise that bothers a given amp. A preamp might be euphonic in a pleasing way. A preamps remote/other UI may be easier to use, etc. than the DS’s. A preamp may allow longer interconnects without as much interaction with the DS…

I use a preamp and recommend using one, but there are certainly systems where a preamp is not needed and can only make things worse.

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Ted, that’s the clearest explanation of the volume settings so far. Much appreciated.

But I have to ask, is 106 --attenuator active—good, bad, irrelevant? I know it’s there to get more gain when the attenuator is active, bit is there a sonic cost?

By the way, It’s unheard of to have this kind of seemingly instant access to you and Paul. .You guys don’t have to do this, but you should know it adds a ton of value to your already great products and service.

Cheers.

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Being able to go to 106 with the attenuator in is a compromise for the few who have too much noise without the attenuator in and not quite enough volume with it in. Going to 106 allows playing most any music 3dB louder without additional distortion and with the 3dB extra headroom. But music that’s compressed to within 3dB of the max for any length of time will get a little more compressed (more like tape than digital compression.)

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So if I wish to try the attenuator at the 106 volume under the new fixed volume scheme (where I currently have it locked at 100 and fixed volume) with the level at “high”, I go to the setup page, unlock it, set the volume at 106, and put the level to “medium”?

Is this correct?

Eldrick - here is why I disagree. 100 is the highest possible OP level with respect to the noise floor. In that sense it is like a traditional DAC. While we’re not “attenuating” in the traditional sense, turning the volume control down is moving the OP level closer to the noise floor, so that if you then raise the volume with a source or preamp, you are raising the noise floor with it (as always) except now (relative to the 100 setting) the NF is closer to the OP Volume.

With attenuator in, that’s Actually Attenuating 20dB, AFAIK, and allows one to “turn it up to 11” so to speak (AKA 106). However 106 is giving you +3dB above the -20, and so is still about -17db attenuation relative to 100 without attenuation.

How many of us can even HEAR the noise floor on these DACs is another thing entirely ; )