Confused by DAC price / performance figures

[tino]

I've recently bought an MF V-DAC2 ... at a discount ... to dedicate to my Squeezebox. I took this step as I am currently unwilling to splash out lots of money on a "high-end" DAC as I want to establish a baseline performance for this type of device. I've no doubt tht if I spent more I would get something that sounded a bit better, but at what price does the law of dimishing returns come into play. And how confusing is it when a manufacturer or reviewer says that a £X DAC performs up to £Y (where Y is usually much bigger than X). Does it mean that spending north of say £600 on a DAC is a waste? What does my extra money buy ... it's so difficult to quantify. I can understand that there is some improvement in the PSU / analogue section and maybe some extra features ... volume / preamp / hedphone amp etc. Maybe some of the more esoteric DACs cost so much because they will sell in such smaler quantities and come in a nice box, or come straight out of a research lab and employ some esotericf or bleeding edge technology. Who knows?

PS Ideally I would like a Northstar Essensio Plus ... nice ... but it's 1K+ more than the V-DAC2 :-(

 

[tino]

... apologies for lack of punctuation and spelling mistakes above ... not a reflection on my English I hope ... more my typing ability, and the fact that I can't edit the previous post! :wall:

 

[dannycanham]

How about a DAC is about 50% of a CD player.

£200 DAC is similar to a £350-450 CD player

£300 DAC is similar to a £525-675 CD player

£500 DAC is similar to a £900-1100 CD player

A £400 CD player is a good CD player. It won't do a bad job in most systems. It is possible to think of CD players that cost more having dimishing returns. A £550 CD player may not be seen as much of an upgrade. A £1K player sounds like a big jump in cash.

However when you get to a £1500 amp and £2500 speakers. You aren't really making the most of them with a £400 CD player. It won't do a bad job but after sinking £4K into the rest, you are going to want to make the most of them. A £1K plus CD player would fit along the chain better at making the most out of what each piece of kit can do. The way most companies match amp and CD player costs a a £1500 CD player would be up for consideration.

In DAC terms a £500 DAC would probably be minimum for making the most of the whole chain and an £800 plus one would be up for consideration as well.

What does the money go towards?

A good clock section creating even timing between each sample conversion.

A good power section creating low noise and low ripple power to other sections.

A good quality input section that reads in the digital bits well.

A good quality output section that amplifies the signal well.

Good quality electronics around the DAC chip or multiple chips even though the chips themselves don't cost the earth and good DAC chips exist across the range.

A good quality box and layout creating as little as possible interference between components.

You can sink allot of money into most of those areas just like you can with an amps inputs, box, pre and power sections and a speakers box, cone and crossover.

 

[dannycanham]

Ive read speaker reviews since the early 90s with speakers said to be equaling models at twice the price. There were improvements in refinement in design and materials which made new models worthwhile purchases over older models but I never heard a speaker that sounded like a speaker in the twice the price bracket.

Something similar happened with CD players form the mid 90s to the mid 00s where companies appeared to get a better grip on what they where doing and created more refined designs. Again there were reports of as good as twice the price kit. Again I never heard it. Just worthwhile improvements within their range.

I think a similar progression is happening with DACs at the moment. There are plenty of competing models and plenty of ears to listen to them. There are going to be plenty of mark 2 and mark 3 models. Their refinements and improvements will largely be hyped as massive leaps.

At the end of the day no one has started using £1K components in £500 kit. We have had better DAC chips in CD players and DACs which helped push for improved designs. We have had new materials in speakers which helped push for improved designs. Mostly companies have just learnt better design techniques and manufacturing techniques that have managed to squeeze that little bit more out of £500.

I always replace huge claims in magazines with "slight audible improvement". The reviews usually then get allot closer to what my ears tell me.

 

[Anonymous]

Component costs for modern audio electronics (unless very esoteric silver transformers and similar nonsense are used) are very low. The commonly used D2A converter chips, the very heart of the DAC, are less than £10. For many DACs, the fancy metal cases will cost more than the electronic components.

Main driver of cost is the number of units sold. All the R&D costs have to be carried by the units shipped out the door. As an extreme example, if you only sell one box it has to pay the entire R&D cost, if you sell 10,000 then the R&D cost per box is negligable.

This becomes even more noticable with high software content products where software development costs dwarf everything else. Logitech are selling the Squeeze Touch for £200 on amazon. The box contains a streamer, a decent DAC, WiFi, colour touch display and functioning Linux computer along with who knows how many 1000's of man hours of software.

The small volume high-end producers are struggling to get streamer boxes out the door with a fraction of the features of the Touch for many times the cost.

There is an assumption that price is correlated to sound quality. That may or may not be true, it is certainly 100% correlated to the number of units sold.

 

[tino]

There is an assumption that price is correlated to sound quality. That may or may not be true, it is certainly 100% correlated to the number of units sold.

I certainly agree that volume reflects in the final price of the product, but I am not sure if it justifies the price differential entirely between an expensive DAC and a much cheaper one. There has to be some appreciable sonic difference between a £1000 DAC and a £200 DAC doesn't there? Perhaps there is a value that we associate with some features that does not actually reflect in the actual cost of including it or the audible difference it brings. £100+ power supplies are a case in point, or a £5 opamp as opposed to a 50p opamp. There is also the point whereby some people are willing to pay more (sometimes quite a lot more) just to differentiate themselves from the mainstream ... a hewn from aluminium enclosure with a fancy Greek sounding name is perceptibly worth a lot more than a slab of plastic ... and that for some people is worth paying for.

PS MF V-DAC arrived to day, and I will try to do some back to back testing with the analogue outs. I now have a combo that is double the original price of the Squeezebox, but I'm sure not 100% audibly better!

PPS I do appreciate the focussed expertise, time and effort that the lower volume specialist producers put into their designs and the tuning and refinement of their products ... am not knocking them! In the case of DACS though I think it will be harder for them though to differentiate themselves from mainstream producers.

 

[Anonymous]

Spend double the money and expect to get 5%-10% improvement (which itself is subjective), other than the cheapest of components you soon get into the laws of dimniishing returns.

Example: Upgrade my EPOS ES30s (£2500 years back) to Kudos Cardea C30 (£5650), was a similar improvement to upgrading my Transparent Ultra MM Balanced interconnect to the new MM2 technology equivalent which costs around £2k. I actually got more bang for my back through the interconnect upgrade than the speakers, although I had to use the new speakers to hear it :wall: Neither upgrade was night and day difference, but subtle improvements hence around the "5%" improvement. And I ain't spending thousands for a subtle improvement!!!

 

[tino]

Spend double the money and expect to get 5%-10% improvement (which itself is subjective), other than the cheapest of components you soon get into the laws of dimniishing returns.

Quite true ... I have had a few minutes to experiment with the VDAC-2 not on my SB Touch, but on a sub £100 media player [QNAP NMP1000 with internal HDD playing FLAC] via it's coax digital out. Wow ... such a massive difference over the cheapo analogue outs. In fact as a combo, it's pretty good! I'm overwhelmed now by my choices to play and visualise my music collection, so I think I need to work out a plan to reduce the number of boxes I have! The DAC however will probably feature somewhere in there whether it gives 5% (on SB tOuch) or 50% (on media player) improvement.

 

[tonky]

Hi Dr Lodge, notices you had the epos es14 speakers. I bought these preowned 3yrs ago approx. A very revealing and spacious pair of speakers

Tonky

 

[fatman]

tino,

Am hoping you are going to post your comparisions of the V-DAC2 and the Squeezebox DAC. I have read so many posts where people are claiming to now have redundant DACs as the one in the Squeezebox is very good.

 

[tino]

tino,

Am hoping you are going to post your comparisions of the V-DAC2 and the Squeezebox DAC. I have read so many posts where people are claiming to now have redundant DACs as the one in the Squeezebox is very good.

Will do ... but may take me a while to find the time and rig up the requisite number of cables. I took the DAC option for now because:

(a) my gut feeling is that it will be better than the unmodified analogue outs of the Touch

(b) I can re-use the DAC elsewhere if I perceive the difference to be marginal

(c) at some point (after guarantee expires!) I will perform surgery on the analogue outputs of the Touch to remove the in-line elecrolytic caps - this is said to make a meaningful difference

Also bear in mind that most of the comparisons you may have read have been made between the Touch and the original VDAC, not the more recent VDAC2. Can't comment on the former as I have no direct experience of it.

 

[fatman]

i agree, can always find a home for a DAC.

i have a SB touch using optical out to an amp with integrated DAC - haven't got round to hooking up RCA to compare, and in this set up probably wont.

i have however got desires on the Firestone Audio FUBAR 4 plus which is a one unit DAC & headphone amp when its offered cheap later this month and running with the SB touch and a decent pair of headphones.

BUT, the reviews of the DAC in the SB touch do present the question - should i just buy a headphone amp and let the SB DAC do the conversion?

i look forward to reading what you think. one thing is for sure whether the SB DAC is any good or not, the Squeezebox Touch is a great piece of kit.

enjoy.