Wanted: a good DAC for solo piano music

I play quite a lot of solo piano music and have found my Luxman D-05 to handle this very well, so I'll throw in a suggestion of one of the Luxman stand-alone DACs.

 

That uses an old ESS Sabre chip.

The technical part is highly misleading. The samples are not connected by straight lines in any DAC!

 

Yes, it uses a standard chip, as it adds it’s own functionality through an Texas Instrument chip that does the final conversion. BTW, there are many very enthusiastic reviews of this system.

 

No, the conversion is done by the ESS chip, the signal processing ahead of it is done by their hardware DSP.

If you think it sounds good, that's all that matters, but the web page you linked to is full of nonsense. There are plenty of DACs with dual clocks, there are plenty of DACs with their own DSP (done in conventional DSP chips or FPGA), there are DACs that do their own USB interfacing (even though XMOS specializes in that and works with DAC designers to develop custom solutions), and I could go on.

The ESS chip is no longer state-of-the-art, the clocks are cheap (companies like Crystek are the go-to here), they don't show the results of their upsampling compared to the on-board upsampling in the ESS chip, they include graphs with NO axes! Any time I see stuff like this it makes me highly suspicious.

 

I ordered the RME ADI 2 and will have it Monday.


Will tell you what it sounds like compared to my Marantz HD DAC 1 for piano.


my Marantz translates reality of piano notes super well.

 

It is a very neutral DAC. Make sure you connect it with the balanced outputs if you can.

 

Thanks, maybe the fascinating natural sound comes from creating multiple natural harmonics somewhere in their process? This is quite unique in DAC‘s as far I know.

 

yeah that ain’t gonna happen no balanced inputs in my Rega Elex R ha

 

You should be OK, I had ground loop hum issues with mine and it had to go back.

 

Shouldn't a good DAC for solo piano music be a good DAC for ANY music? A good DAC doesn't know what kind of music it's processing and shouldn't have an opinion about the music one way or another, should it?

I've come to the conclusion that once you get to a certain point in equipment quality (and I think getting there costs less money than many would have us believe), the quality of the recording is what you're hearing more than the quality of the equipment and much of the talk about how this or that sounded better or worse with this or that piece of equipment is of little use because everybody is making comparisons with differing and often undisclosed inputs that probably are not comparable. Somebody needs to create a standard test recording that the entire world could use exclusively in comparing equipment.

 

Yes. Ideally. In an ideal world. But in the real world the music can make a difference and guide you towards different sounding DACs.

There is some hip-hop and electronic music that is mastered to sound right on a consumer DAC and can sound wrong on a high-end audiophile DAC.

One example is Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp A Butterfly": DAC choice

Another example would be choosing a DAC for use in a disco or dance club or home theater. The best DAC for a disco club is likely different than the best DAC for an audiophile system that optimized for acoustic music. Both systems could have the same budget for the DAC. Both will likely choose differently. An audiophile system is going to choose a DAC with layering and separation and 3D imaging. A dance hall DAC is going to choose a DAC with more punch even if that means sacrificing layering and separation and 3D imaging.

 

Can you give an example of a good dance music DAC?

 

A Dangerous Music Convert DAC would be an example of a good DAC that would be good with dance music.
Dangerous Music CONVERT-2 2-channel D/A Converter

A Chord Dave probably not so good. Dave and other Chord DACs have too much layering and separation and nuance in the bass and not enough punch.

 

I suspect that all "digital" parts of most reasonably well made DACs are as good as needed to be. Yes, D-S and R2R sounds a little bit different, yes filters, DSP and FPGA counts, but.. it is analog output stage where the main audible differences are occurring. It is of course IMHO and based only on my limited personal experience.

 

Just stumbled on this quote and immediately thought of this thread:

"If the old saw is true, that the piano is the hardest instrument to reproduce correctly, then the BDA-3 should truly win a prize for how it handles this material."
Bryston BDA-3 DAC Review - HomeTheaterHifi.com