Is no DAC the best DAC?

[@emiel333]

Correct. Music production is about recording analog sound to digital bits. Then it gets to the customer who wants to play the song. That digital sound must be converted to analog sound. Otherwise it isn’t even possible to play recorded music. So, yes Paul, any audio playing device has a DAC. I couldn’t agree more. Great knowledge and video. I really like your channel.

[@NormDPlume-mc5dh]

If it acts like a dac, flacs like a dac, and dacs like a dac, it's a dac. It's a fact, Mac, that quack needs shellacking.

[@mightyhail8707]

😆

[@byronbae8606]

By 'no DAC' wouldn't he be saying a completely analog system. Vinyl records, through an analogue amp?

[@miro007ist]

That would mean going all analog. Playing vinyl records for example or tapes.

[@monsterrun]

if you want to check out the Ath dsr series of Audio Technica. they released those headphones in 2017 so they are not the newest thing but they claim at the time that thwy made bluetooth headphones with no dac.... the drivers have been specialy made with a capacitor beneath that tells the how to move the voice coil.. but essentialy it remains a pair of headphones that remain digital from one end to the other. there is a wire between the 2 earcups but it is only a digital signal that is sent in. the Ath dsr7bt is the cheapest rightnow. just check for renewed models they can sell ad low as 60$ us instead of the msrp of 299$ us.

[@roygalaasen]

I have heard about the same, always being critical that you can feed a digital signal directly into a loudspeaker and magically get analogue audio out with no conversion from digital to analogue. Of course it can't happen. As you say, even if the conversion is through a capacitor, there is a conversion somewhere, i.e. a DAC. I think your explanation is spot on.

[@timharig]

Depending on the digital coding, you CAN push digital signal into a speaker and get a representative tone out. This is precisely what we used to do with square waves back in the early days of computing. Toggle a speaker at the right frequency any you will hear that frequency as a kind of buzzing tone of that frequency out. There were even a few games that were able to output sampled audio. It wasn't high fidelity; but, it it did work.

[@roygalaasen]

@@timharig uh... 3 years ago... yes I am old enough to remember that computer era. In fact, I made a simple 8 bit dac myself using a resistor network and a capcitor and connected it to the parallel port. It didn’t sound pretty, but it did play what i wanted to hear in lack of an audio card. What you describe sounds like one of two things: one bit audio, which can’t sound very pretty. The other thing is the way you did samples on Commodore 64, namely run the “random” noise sound with modulation of the volume on top if i remember correctly. The sound chip runs through some filtering, which acts as a dac sort of, or you probably would get some pretty nasty high frequency harmonics. I do also remember a pc version tune of maniac mansion that was very choppy and in one channel only, but sounding like it was multiple channels, but that was actually 8 bit or something where samples were played so tight that it sounded like several channels. I will see if I can find a link. In total, if you have digital on one side, and analogue on the other, there is a conversion somewhere, even if it is in the speaker itself. The sound arrives in your ears as a continuous, not discrete wave. Hence there is a conversion there. A link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g5K6dn6hoZd0iZo i didn’t find the song I was looking for, but this is doing the same technique so it is probably a different song from the same game/ developer. Found the link, it was for a different game, same dev: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6G5mp-gqN2nmaM

[@timharig]

@@roygalaasen No it actually happens in your brain. If your ears hear a properly spaced series of sound pulses, they will interpret it as continuous beating/buzzing sound. And those high frequency harmonics on the edges of the square wave are exactly what are creating those pulses.

[@roygalaasen]

@@timharig those edges are discontinuities. Real world does not allow discontinuities. If you dive into them you will find infinity. Real world doesn’t like infinity. (You would need an infinite amount of component sine functions to create a true discontinuity. This is physically impossible.) Hence even air itself has a built in DAC. Edit: when you say sound pulses, do you mean square or sinusoidal pulses? If you talk about sinusoidal pulses, you are touching into the realm of wavelets. If you talk about square pulses, see my answer above. I am also not disputing that the brain itself can act as a filter. It is not a DAC, though, because by the time anything reaches your brain, it is analogue already.

[@timharig]

@@roygalaasen Agreed; but at the audio frequencies we are discussing, there is plenty of room for slew time and damping between individual audio pulses at the rising and falling edges.

[@MikeSylvestre]

"the best dac is no dac" - probably means a 100% analog setup is the best.

[@muhammadazim8625]

but is that even what we say is analog the real sound? what is real sound?

[@MikeSylvestre]

@@muhammadazim8625 I'm assuming in this case "real" means analog with no digital conversion in the path. Just straight up electricity from source to speakers.

[@muhammadazim8625]

@@MikeSylvestre yeap its the most "real" we can get

[@maaxsxzone2914]

Anyone can explain Sharp 1bit amp tech back in early 21st century? Is that direct digital output to speaker? Without conversion?

[@DaveJ6515]

@@muhammadazim8625 most recordings have something digital in the path, even if they are eventually put on vinyl. I think masters are mainly archived in digital format. Besides: why should the "analog" sound be "real"? Analog tapes recorded at high speed directly from microphones? Well that's arguable, but not certainly vinyl records.

[@szulat]

actually, people having cochlear implants can listen to digital music using no DAC at all - apart from the usual microphone, the implant can also have bluetooth and can transmit the digital sound from the owner's phone to the brain, completely skipping the analog stage.

[@niksoification]

@PS Audio can you please comment on the quality of the DACs that are included in music studio audio interfaces? For example the UAD Apollo X6 MKIII. I understand that they are primary targeting music creators, but are they also good for hifi audiophile listening, or are there better options out there?

[@johnthomas7281]

Paul, I think the person posing the question, mis-remembered "the best DAC is a 'chip-less' DAC."

[@idolhanz9842]

You can get a cambridge audio DacMagic 100 now for $150

[@amb3cog]

Basically there's two DACs. One is anything that does digital to analog converter. The other is a chip that does the digital to analog conversion. And to confuse things even further. The whole device that companies sell which contains that DAC chip, but also contains everything needed to hook it up to your stereo amongst other things like power supply, and LCD screens to show what is doing, are also called DACs. So there is a physical thing called a DAC. The noun DAC that is. And there is the action of doing a digital to analog conversion. The verb of DAC. In this case he was using them to basically make a little play on words. He's not using an actual DAC to do his DAC if you will. Both, some, and all are probably technically correct. Yet some may be wrong. Lol

[@el-danihasbiarta1200]

so dac as a device and dac the chip itself

[@eddiebaby22]

He means use a turntable.

[@machataegems6319]

Thanks for info. R&ST Space!

[@arthurwatts1680]

Agree that you need a DAC, but Arthur Salvatore spent years telling people that 'no preamp is the best preamp' - a hookup that is a potential accident waiting to happen if you get it wrong - but now he's pushing his customised version of The Truth pre. Never a dull moment with Arthur ;)

[@coachbluepill]

Best value USB dac

[@diregremo]

Paul, I've been watching a lot of your videos and it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are mad that they can't afford your products.

[@commentcommenter3529]

I don't understand. Isn't the digital eg. The mp3 file and my mp3 player the dac?

[@svetko05]

Your mp3 player has a dac ic inside that converts the digital data into analog sound. Every modern device capable of producing sound has a dac ic - pc's, tv's, music players, etc.

[@commentcommenter3529]

@@svetko05 thanks for the reply. Thats what I was thinking but wasn't sure. If from the media, CD data passes through its internal dac and exits as sound why then do they sell dacs? Wouldn't the dac processed audio going through another dac just mix things up? Thanks again.

[@svetko05]

@@commentcommenter3529 In order to use external dac you need a device that can export raw binary data to it. That would be a PC (and maybe some hi end tv's). External dac's are used by audiophiles who want the best sound quality. Manufacturers don't put the best dac ic's in their products because they're expensive and your average joe is not always concerned with sound quality. Hope this helps you, if you want to know more just ask.

[@commentcommenter3529]

@@svetko05Did not know there were other ways to get sound from a pc other than the speaker out (which uses a realtec dac?). But yes, I think I got what and how it is .. thanks to you. Thank you very much again. :)

[@svetko05]

@@commentcommenter3529 Every device that has spdif(optical) out can output digital audio. Pc's can output it from the usb ports too. Some smartphones can too with special apps.

[@milenedejong1400]

maybe the no dac teminology points to a chipless design like a r2r ladder .which will still be a digital to analog conversion.. and you would need something ancient like a parralel databus..yes.. the digital one....

[@3limin4torZockt]

I cant hear any difference between dacs.

[@cataprofu]

YES THIS IS TRUTH...THE BEST DAC IS NOT THE MOST EXPENSIVE ONE...

[@johnholmes912]

since virtually all the great recordings were made in the analogue era it could be argued that there is no need to have a dac

[@limomangeno]

True you need a dac.. a CD player aready has one.Then you can join in and find the one with the dac chip you like....or sep Dac n CD transport .i fell its another way to get you to keep finding the holy grail dac .

[@stevefagetaboutit8158]

Ugh.... I think he meant the desktop unit that costs hundreds of dollars.... jeez.

[@Coneman3]

Sounds like Bruce Lee saying ‘no way is way’

[@colanitower]

The questions on stack need no DAC 😉

[@elisha770]

Online questions comes in sealed envelopes ? Did I miss a century ?..

[@insaaanestuff]

Just use a record. Bam. No DAC

[@galus14436]

Would be nice to have that in a car, but we dont

[@chairshoe81]

hah, im in boulder too

[@milesdufourny4813]

The person who posted the question has no real idea what a DAC is or what it does.