The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.

Also @Lee Newman glad to see you digging the CD players and spinning some CDs. Since getting my transport I’ve been loving doing that again. It’s been great to discover some of the music that I love that’s not on vinyl and also to use it as a way to stop myself buying stuff on vinyl from artists that I already have huge collections of on CD!
 
Joe Mac said:
That’s debatable. There are some audiophiles who swear blind that options to disable everything, including display, have a huge impact on all their digital stuff. They also buy those funny plastic input and output covers that are comically priced for little pieces of plastic. My feeling is that it makes little or no difference but that options are nice and it might be worth seeing what you think yourself.
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The noise and distortion numbers are so low in the digital realm now that turning off displays and funny plastic caps are highly unlikely to impact a digital signal transfer. It’s possible they had more effect in the very early days of digital audio, but not now.

The high noise immunity in digital transfer is due to the algorithms used to insure that the data transfered is what is actually received. If the signal is correctly created, it will be correctly received in almost all home audio environments. Even jitter has been practically wiped out as an audible factor.
 
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Angsty said:
The noise and distortion numbers are so low in the digital realm now that turning off displays and funny plastic caps are highly unlikely to impact a digital signal transfer. It’s possible they had more effect in the very early days of digital audio, but not now.

The high noise immunity in digital transfer is due to the algorithms used to insure that the data transfered is what is actually received. If the signal is correctly created, it will be correctly received in almost all home audio environments. Even jitter had been practically wiped out as an audible factor.
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I don’t disagree but people are strange and rich people are often the strangest and like to spend their money on things that baffle because they can.
 
Joe Mac said:
Also @Lee Newman glad to see you digging the CD players and spinning some CDs. Since getting my transport I’ve been loving doing that again. It’s been great to discover some of the music that I love that’s not on vinyl and also to use it as a way to stop myself buying stuff on vinyl from artists that I already have huge collections of on CD!
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Two cheers on that. Just this morning I’ve listened to Grant Green on CD and Bill Evans on vinyl. Highly enjoyed both!

I do avoid buying albums on vinyl that I have on CD, especially if the CD mix is good. In fact, I generally will not buy something on vinyl that was originally distributed first only on CD.
 
Angsty said:
Two cheers on that. Just this morning I’ve listened to Grant Green on CD and Bill Evans on vinyl. Highly enjoyed both!

I do avoid buying albums on vinyl that I have on CD, especially if the CD mix is good. In fact, I generally will not buy something on vinyl that was originally distributed first only on CD.
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I can’t say I haven’t and i went through a phases where I decided that I must have everything on vinyl but tbh that got exhausting and I’ve been working the last year on stripping back the vinyl collection a bit and getting some CDs back into the mix instead. I do still have a bit of a mental block where, if at all possible, I don’t like the mix an artist across formats, so all vinyl or all CD, but I’m trying to work on that…
 
So a question and some notes from first listen to the marantz over headphones….

Do DACs burn in? My thought is no, but I’m also an idiot and know next to nothing.

The Senns like the marantz’s dac better (slightly) and through the headphone amp on the NAD (slightly).

I’ll be damned if I can tell a difference between the dacs on the b&ws. Unlike vinyl where I actually prefer the senns for most things. The B&ws blow away the senns on the cds but I assume that is the b&w’s dac as again no distinguishable difference tonight. I have done no streaming listening over the senns because if I’m gonna be tethered to the amp, I’m gonna listen to vinyl!

I’ll probably be doing a lot of cd listening because new toy and also because determining which dac I like better overall will be very important to what I do next.

There are also a couple of filters on the marantz to play with. Will report back.
 
Angsty said:
That’s not uncommon. The measured variances between DACs is much smaller than most other components. Most people cannot tell the difference between DACs in blind tests.
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Since they are Bluetooth, I figured the dac on board was just better than the ones in the marantz and the nad. But again, I have no idea what I am actually talking about.
 
Lee Newman said:
Do DACs burn in? My thought is no, but I’m also an idiot and know next to nothing.
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I’ll start with the preface of acknowledging that not everyone believes in burn in. If you don’t, I’m not going to try to change your mind.

Now let me flip this question on you. Why WOULDN’T a dac burn in if other equipment does. It has wires, power supplies, and an analog stage… just like any other component that would require burn in.
 
displayname said:
I’ll start with the preface of acknowledging that not everyone believes in burn in. If you don’t, I’m not going to try to change your mind.

Now let me flip this question on you. Why WOULDN’T a dac burn in if other equipment does. It has wires, power supplies, and an analog stage… just like any other component that would require burn in.
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I for sure believe in burn in. Have witnessed it.

My thought had to do with it being a chip that it may not actually burn in like the more mechanical pieces, but this makes sense.

I have no doubt that I have put more then enough time on the NAD’s DAC.

Any idea what burn it might look like for a DAC. I believe the Marantz has an ESS.

I don’t believe I’ve burned in the Senns at this point. So I’ll need to be aware of that.

Good news is it will probably be about a year before I make next moves.
 
Lee Newman said:
I for sure believe in burn in. Have witnessed it.

My thought had to do with it being a chip that it may not actually burn in like the more mechanical pieces, but this makes sense.

I have no doubt that I have put more then enough time on the NAD’s DAC.

Any idea what burn it might look like for a DAC. I believe the Marantz has an ESS.

I don’t believe I’ve burned in the Senns at this point. So I’ll need to be aware of that.

Good news is it will probably be about a year before I make next moves.
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I don’t think it’s ever going to be as drastic as say a power amp, or particular a class a or tube power amp, with huge toroidal transformers. They take a good bit of burn in, if you believe in that.
 
Lee Newman said:
Why are we all acting like we don’t believe in it?
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It’s a controversial topic. Some people are absolutely convinced it doesn’t exist. Others are convinced it’s huge. I think it exists, but that it is subtle rather than huge, and that it’s more prevalent with speakers and things with huge toroidal transformers. Always best to be measured and hedge your bets when talking about such subjects. Similarly cables.
 
Just my opinion:

I do believe mechanical, moving components can experience audible burn/break-in as compliances can change in the first hours of usage.

I do believe that some electronic systems audibly change as they “warm up” from a cold state, like from having capacitors fully charged.

I don’t believe that digital components or those mostly featuring small-scale chip components (like op amps and DACs) experience significant burn-in effects.

It’s possible to me that there are physical state changes in larger scale electronics (discrete transistors, FETs, transformers) that could possibly impact sound, but in orders of magnitude less a degree than mechanical components. The major reason for manufacturers conducting burn-in at factories is QA and defect testing, not to improve sonics.

For example, here’s what the Sutherland 20/20 owners manual says about break-in:

Break-In Time

After just an hour or so, the musicality of the 20/20 will open up. Often users stress about break in time. Don’t worry about it!!!!

Performance is very good early on. Just enjoy the music and let the subtle break in changes happen on its own schedule.
 
Angsty said:
Just my opinion:

I do believe mechanical, moving components can experience audible burn/break-in as compliances can change in the first hours of usage.

I do believe that some electronic systems audibly change as they “warm up” from a cold state, like from having capacitors fully charged.

I don’t believe that digital components or those mostly featuring small-scale chip components (like op amps and DACs) experience significant burn-in effects.

It’s possible to me that there are physical state changes in larger scale electronics (discrete transistors, FETs, transformers) that could possibly impact sound, but in orders of magnitude less a degree than mechanical components. The major reason for manufacturers conducting burn-in at factories is QA and defect testing, not to improve sonics.

For example, here’s what the Sutherland 20/20 owners manual says about break-in:

Break-In Time

After just an hour or so, the musicality of the 20/20 will open up. Often users stress about break in time. Don’t worry about it!!!!

Performance is very good early on. Just enjoy the music and let the subtle break in changes happen on its own schedule.
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Tubes in particular, in my experience, reward turning the amp on maybe quarter of an hour before you begin playing and just get better and better over the first hour or two.
 
Joe Mac said:
Tubes in particular, in my experience, reward turning the amp on maybe quarter of an hour before you begin playing and just get better and better over the first hour or two.
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One of the preamps I was looking at said that it took about 72 hours of just being turned on before it would sound right. It doesn't have a power button on it because they said just to keep it always on.
 
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