does anyone here own an audiolab m-dac grado sr325es and ipod or ipad?

[ontheline]

i've not long bought an audiolab m-dac to use with my awesome grado sr325es headphones as i felt i wasn't getting the best from my headphones with just my ipod touch. now, i have owned the dac long enough for it to run in and my test song is billie jean by michael jackson. playing billie jean through the mdac with usb ripped wav file and exact same but with my ipod touch i don't think there is much if any difference. put it this way, if i was to hear the song without known playing from the dac and listening also from the ipod i don't think i could tell there were from 2 different sources, does anyone else have these components to test this, as i feel at this moment it's £600 wasted and maybe thinking of returning the product?

 

[steve_1979]

With my admittedly easy to drive Sennheiser HD700 headphones they sound identical played from my Sony MP3 player as they do from the Epiphany Acoustics EHP-O2Di DAC/headphone amp.

Unless you have hard to drive headphones such as the HD650 or HD800's then I doubt you will hear much, if any difference using an iPod rather than a proper hifi DAC/headphone amp.

 

[bluedroog]

I own an M-DAC, arious idevices and the previous model of the Grado 325, the 'is' version.

A couple of points, firstly the Grados are very easy to drive and as such any headphone amp upgrade will be less profound compared to if you were using a pair of hard to drive headphones such as Sennheiser.

Devices such as the M-DAC are primarily DACs, the headphone section is really an extra. You can buy multifunction devices which really look to perform across the board but while there is nothing wrong with the headphone output of the M-DAC it didn't really impress me. The DAC is a fine unit for the money but as I said, it isn't really a headphone amp as such and given you're using easy to drive Grados I'm not suprised you're not hearing much difference.

You may want to try a dedicated unit from the likes of Graham Slee to see how you get on.

 

[philpot1001]

a lot of people that just use headphones appear to be buying the Pioneer U-05 which is a dedicated headphone Amp - which also comes with a fine DAC..might be worth considering instead? I have heard a lot of people on forums say they cant tell the difference between the basic DACs and the Audiolab MDAC, but almost all of the complaints come from headphone users.

My guess is you may need full blown speakers to hear the difference the DAC brings, but thats just a guess.

 

[bluedroog]

a lot of people that just use headphones appear to be buying the Pioneer U-05 which is a dedicated headphone Amp - which also comes with a fine DAC..might be worth considering instead? I have heard a lot of people on forums say they cant tell the difference between the basic DACs and the Audiolab MDAC, but almost all of the complaints come from headphone users.

My guess is you may need full blown speakers to hear the difference the DAC brings, but thats just a guess.

A pair of qulaity headphones such as the Grado 325 will show up the differnences in DACs better than most speakers under a couple of grand. The differneces in DACs is subtle but if you were to hear it headphones would be a good tool for doing so.

OP - How is the DAC connected to the DAC? I doubt there is anyway to pass an anologue signal through, are you using one of those camera kits? Also just checking you're not using a signal amplified by both units.

I think really what you've discovered is easy to drive headphones and units where headphones outputs are a secondary function and you'll not reap major improvments.

With Grado 325is I found little difference between a iDevices, budget Caiman DAC headphone output, portable Fiio E17 amp / DAC or M-DAC.

As I said, perhaps try a deicated device such as a Graham Slee which are well regarded or just save you money.

 

[ID.]

Not the same kit, but the differences between my iPod and U-05 weren't that huge with my easier to drive headphones. Volume matching is an issue and may further reduce the differences if I could volume match other than by ear. Although I'm fairly familiar with the song, Billie Jean wouldn't be my preference for testing. I usually go for something that has some subtle details, reverb or productions effects/tricks that only really pop out with certain kit.

Then again, any competent DAC should sound (surprisingly) similar to any other.

 

[Esra]

Well what´s special about the Mdac is that it has a very good dac with different filters implemented ( which can be usefull with speakers) and many different inputs and outputs , you can use it as a preamp+it does also headphones and all this in a little box for reasonable money in comparison to other units.It does all this things pretty good but maybe not stellar in every aspect.If you don´t have use for this options and only concerned about headphones you could get nearly similar performance for a lot less money as you found out yourself with your smartphone.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_100004211376004]

I think the main problem that your not getting much of a difference in s/q is probably more to do with your source material,although the mdac can utilise the USB function from the ipod touch /phone etc,it's not really the best example of a good source to show off it's true abilities as a dac (and firstly it is a dac)not a h/p amp.if you hooked it up to a streamer and fed it some 24/192 khz material I'm pretty sure it would have the measure of the apple products in built dac's.It's only as good as what you put in front of it.

 

[ID.]

I think the main problem that your not getting much of a difference in s/q is probably more to do with your source material,although the mdac can utilise the USB function from the ipod touch /phone etc,it's not really the best example of a good source to show off it's true abilities as a dac (and firstly it is a dac)not a h/p amp.if you hooked it up to a streamer and fed it some 24/192 khz material I'm pretty sure it would have the measure of the apple products in built dac's.It's only as good as what you put in front of it.

I think you misunderstand. It's a comparison of the (presumably lossless file) played back with his headphones plugged into the DAC vs plugged into the iPod. While it's amp section is better than the iPod touch, that makes very little difference with easy to drive headphones. It's also an indication of how similar any properly designed DAC is (i.e., both the DAC in the iPOd and in the M-DAC should be outputting a flat signal with levels of distortion unlikely to be detectable by the human ear). Anyway, there should be almost no difference between sources, so it shouldn't matter much whether your digital signal is coming from an iPod, streamer or computer.

For what it's worth, I'd be prepared to bet that you could not consistently tell the difference between 24/192 material or the same material downsampled to 16/44.1 in a blind test. Some claim to be able to, but even assuming that the differences are audible they are pretty negligible.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_100004211376004]

Yep,your probably right and I certainly don't declare to have such fine hearing to differentiate between 16/44 and 24/192 khz,heck all my Spotify streaming is done through an amazon fire tv and into the ir dac at 16/44,and I have to be really listening hard to tell the difference between that and a cd copy of the same album on my naim cd5i (italic),which in theory should wipe the floor with the streamed stuff.I was going to upgrade my dac,but doubt it'll be worth the outlay at least until we're into Hugo territory.