Will a dac improve my listening pleasure?

[gregmacc]

Hi all ... first post here and a newbie to computer HiFi so please excuse any "obvious" statements or questions ... my current system is as follows:

 

HP Mini notebook/Windows 7/JRiver Media Center 19/ Spotify Premium ... internet/WiFi connected to our home network (we  are connected to the Australian Broadband Network, so reasonable bandwidth, at least for audio streaming).

A 1980's vintage NAD solid state receiver (amp + A.M./F.M. radio tuner).

A pair of stand mounted Krix Equinox speakers in the main listening room.

A pair of Krix Brix wall mounted in the adjacent family room/kitchen/living open plan area.

 

The analog signal comes straight from the headphone jack of the notebook to the receiver's RCA inputs via a Y cable. The speaker sets are both hard-wired passive units.

My music library consists predominantly of my CD collection ripped to Flac and a smattering of downloaded 24/96 albums. I remotely control from an Android smartphone running Gizmo and the Spotify app.

It all sounds  just OK to my ageing (60 y.o.) ears although nowhere near as satisfying as I remember some of the vinyl and CD based systems that I owned in the 70s and 80s.

When seated in the optimal position in the main music room and actively listening some of the better recordings sound quite good. On the other hand most are lacking something. I suspect the Krix Equinox speakers would be capable of much better performance if they were fed a better quality signal. Obviously the Spotify sourced music sounds ordinary but is acceptable for what I use it for ... which is a convenient cost efficient way to discover new music.

 

So to the DAC question - 

Will I notice any significant improvement by adding an external Dac to the system?

My budget is limited to about AUD $400.

I've been reading online reviews and some of the units that I am interested in are:

ifi ione, Schiit Modi Multibit and JDS Labs Ol dac.

 

Any suggestions or ideas? ... Thanks in advance to any and all respondents. 

 

 

Edited October 18, 2017 by gregmacc

[Snoopy8]

To answer your question, yes DAC will definitely improve your listening experience. You will need to get a DAC plus a moderately priced usb cable (not the one you use for printers) to feed the signal from the notebook to the DAC. 

 

Have a look at the classifieds and your may be able to pick up something to suit your budget.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Snoopy8
Typo

[powerav]

As per snoopy’s comment Yes it will improve and by a fair bit , better low end, much more detail and better stereo separaration. The million dollars question is, which dac?

[PleasantSounds]

DACs included in the laptops these days are much better than they used to be say 5 years ago, so the answer may not be that obvious. The best way would be to borrow a DAC and try it in your system before making a decision.

Depending what in your view should sound better than it does, there's a few other possible sources of issues:

- your receiver is quite dated and may require servicing, in particular checking/replacing the electrolytic capacitors

- your listening room may require some treatment to help minimising impact of reflections

If the above are just wrong guesses, then I'd give a new DAC a go, especially if your notebook is a few years old. Out of the lot you're looking at I'd pick the Modi multibit, as it sounds reasonably "analog" for a DAC in this price range.

 

[Citroen]

Yes,  a DAC will almost certainly improve upon the headphone out of your notebook. 

 

You should notice quite an improvement even with something like the $200 Audioquest Dragonfly Red. But the ifi's are a good bet too.

 

Personally, wouldn't worry about the cable for now, as the biggest difference will be with the DAC. (And you can always get an audiophile cable later, or better still a cable with a separate power supply ).

[mjs]

The reason for the improvement will be the fact that you are currently using the analog output stage in your pc (headphone) feeding the line level RCA input of the receiver. It is likely that the quality of the analog stage (frequency response/distortion/separation etc) is less than ideal and there may be some impedance/level mismatch between the headphone out and the RCA thrown in for good measure, compared to taking the digital signal straight to a reasonable DA converter via USB to get good quality analog line level outputs to feed to receiver RCA inputs.  

 

It is possible that the amp has deteriorated with time and needs recapping to bring it back to spec, but I suspect this may not be worth it (or needed). USB cables may make a marginal difference, again, not something  you need to worry about initially, just get the right component parts for the time being.

 

There are plenty of DAC choices for $250-$400, the Schiit Modi Multibit is one, the Modi 2 is slightly cheaper as is the Cambridge Audio DACMagic 100, and there are others.

 

Good listening!  

[MLXXX]

3 hours ago, gregmacc said:

My music library consists predominantly of my CD collection ripped to Flac and a smattering of downloaded 24/96 albums. I remotely control from an Android smartphone running Gizmo and the Spotify app.

The fact your HP mini notebook runs Windows 7 suggests an older model. As an experiment, have you tried the analogue out of your smart phone?  If a late model phone its internal DAC might possibly do a better job than the mini notebook's internal DAC. In any case it would give you experience in doing a comparative listening test between DACs. If you do such an experiment and find you can't hear any difference, then it could be that both DACs don't do a bad job. Or it could be that your hearing is not particularly sensitive to very slight differences in converting digital to analogue.

 

When comparing different analogue versions of the same source material it is of course very important to arrange that they are at the same listening level. All other things being equal, a louder source sounds "better", probably because we can hear low level extreme bass and low level extreme treble more easily at a higher volume setting.

 

Another thought: do you have a reasonably good set of headphones? If so you could try them out on your mini notebook, and your smart phone, and if you have a standalone CD player with a headphone jack, also with the standalone CD player.  In my experience headphones will sometimes reveal slight differences that loudspeakers won't. (Although it can work the other way!)

 

There have been great strides in the design and manufacture of DACs. Even mass produced ones incorporated into smart phones can do a remarkably good job. You really do need to test your sensitivity to different DACs I would say before shelling out $400 on an outboard DAC. It could be that you'd get more bang for your buck by upgrading your 1980s era amplifier. Or by simply purchasing more recordings!

[Happy]

@MLXXX  makes sensible points. Another thing to consider, a DAC may have different tonal qualities from another. This may initially be perceived as though a new DAC sounds better as opposed to sounding simply somewhat different. 

[MLXXX]

6 minutes ago, Happy said:

@MLXXX  makes sensible points. Another thing to consider, a DAC may have different tonal qualities from another. This may initially be perceived as though a new DAC sounds better as opposed to sounding simply somewhat different. 

Thanks, @Happy.

 

I note that when a DAC is used to convert 44.1kHz sample rate material (such as from a CD), slight differences in the tone at the upper end may be hard to avoid because of slight differences in approaches to the anti-aliasing filtering. (An aggressive approach vs a milder slope roll-off approach.)

 

A lot of material downloadable from the net is at sample rate of 48kHz (and some material may be at 96kHz or even higher). I note that at a 48kHz sample rate or above the anti-aliasing issue is much less difficult to deal with. [The frequencies to be filtered out are well above the upper limit of audibility for human ears.] 

 

In an ideal world where the aim is for a DAC to operate transparently and provide an analogue signal as close as possible to the original analogue signal (that was converted in the recording studio to digital using an ADC), there should be no noticeable differences in tonal quality. In other words, the very best DACs should sound the same. However when I have suggested that in the past I have been told by one or two people that there is no such thing as a transparent DAC. That was their strongly held view!

If that view were true then presumably there would also, correspondingly, be no such thing as transparent ADCs. And we should be quizzing the big recording studios on which ADCs they have used to convert the analogue signal to digital for a particular item of music, and use their reply to help us choose which items of music to purchase (i.e. only those with the tonal balance or other ADC qualities we prefer). However I see little evidence of audiophiles taking an interest  in the ADCs used for studio or stage recordings. It just seems to be assumed that the ADCs will be of "professional quality". I don't see evidence of people saying that the model of ADC used by a recording studio has such and such an adverse (or beneficial) effect and that recordings from that are accordingly to be avoided (or sought after).

 

Am I wrong? Do a significant percentage of audiophiles concern themselves with what model ADCs a recording studio uses? 

[swervyn]

Great topic, am finally starting to understand the whole idea of a DAC. I didnt realise there were good dac's and bad dac's as far as pc/laptop based ones or that the difference between using an onboard one compared to a dedicated one would be so great.

[powerav]

Dacs can even make Avr’s sound good.

[Ugly]

I reckon a second hand sub $100 dac with a printer cable USB would be better than the current setup.

[powerav]

1 minute ago, Ugly said:

I reckon a second hand sub $100 dac with a printer cable USB would be better than the current setup.

Yep sure would, that’s how I caught the bug. A $100 Fiio e10k and a printer cable.

[MLXXX]

I know it's not really good form just to link to comments in another forum, but the below is an example of very little difference being found between several DACs. It may provide food for thought for anyone who assumes that different DACs must sound different.

 

The tests were done in mid-2014: http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2343603&postcount=263

[powerav]

17 minutes ago, MLXXX said:

The tests were done in mid-2014

Were these tests done with human ears?

[MLXXX]

4 minutes ago, powerav said:

Were these tests done with human ears?

Er ... yes. It was a listening test. 

[betty boop]

7 hours ago, gregmacc said:

A 1980's vintage NAD solid state receiver (amp + A.M./F.M. radio tuner).

might need recapping quite possibly at 37 years old caps either close to shot or dried out ?

 

7 hours ago, gregmacc said:

The analog signal comes straight from the headphone jack of the notebook to the receiver's RCA inputs via a Y cable.

headphone out usually pretty crappy on most lap tops. ok for ear buds or some powered speakers or something but likely not delivering the best  analog stages on laptops usually pretty carp as on most pcs. as is typical its not usually the dac built in .. but power supplies and analog stage that is usually the let down with most things...

 

so yes a dac(which usually include a better analog stage) will improve. but keep in mind the vintage of the nad receiver....

[Guest Sime]

Between my 2qute, oppo205, Marantz 8801 and the node2 with both standard DAC and MQA, if the 2qute was 100% the other 3 are within 97-99%

[gregmacc]

Thanks all for the extremely informative (and prompt) replies ...

 

So to respond to some of the points raised:

The notebook is at least 6 years old so possibly not bestowed with a fantastic on-board DAC. It is perched on top of the receiver which may not be helping in terms of noise/electrical interference? ... Speaking of the receiver, it would probably be the next component to be upgraded should the purchase of a cheap(ish) DAC not result in noticeable sound quality improvements.

As far as the listening room is concerned (and bearing in mind that I am a very long way from being an acoustics engineer) my uneducated guess is that it is relatively acoustically benign. It is 6m X 4m with a 2.7m ceiling height. The timber frame walls and ceiling are clad with thicker than standard Gyprock (plasterboard)  and all are insulated with rock-wool batts. The concrete slab floor is covered in medium pile woollen carpet. There are a couple of small items of timber furniture. All other furniture and window dressings are finished in soft fabrics. I've never felt that the room had any sort of boominess or echo. The Krix Equinox speakers are positioned on the short end of the room and well out of the corners. The stand tube sections are sand filled and the feet are equipped with stainless steel isolation spikes.

 

In respect of some specific points made by MLXXX:

I do own a pair of Grado SR80 headphones. I haven't got around to doing any same source material at same listening level comparisons yet but will attempt to do so. I also have a Samsung Galaxy S4 Android phone and an ipod touch ... both of which get used regularly for music listening but utilising varying source materials etc. 

At risk of pushing subjectivity to ridiculous lengths what I will say is that both the phone and the ipod sound better through the headphones than the notebook ...straight from it's headphone jack. In fact I really enjoy the sound of the ipod touch through the Grados ... even Spotify can be quite satisfying.

Thanks again to all who responded.

[Citroen]

3 hours ago, gregmacc said:

At risk of pushing subjectivity to ridiculous lengths what I will say is that both the phone and the ipod sound better through the headphones than the notebook ...straight from it's headphone jack. In fact I really enjoy the sound of the ipod touch through the Grados ... even Spotify can be quite satisfying.

Thanks again to all who responded.

That says A LOT. 

 

Looks like almost any DAC will be a huge improvement then if the notebook HP out is bettered by the ipod and S4

[gregmacc]

41 minutes ago, Citroen said:

That says A LOT. 

 

Looks like almost any DAC will be a huge improvement then if the notebook HP out is bettered by the ipod and S4

... yep ...

[EDM]

I recommend you get a DAP (Digital Audio Player) with USB/DAC functionality. You'll then have a quality portable audiophile player plus better sound for your PC/Laptop. Kill 2 birds with one stone. 

[gregmacc]

Thanks EDM ... Since starting researching ways to improve sound quality I have become convinced about the importance of a good DAC. I'm now contemplating going a step or two further and investing in something like a dedicated all in one music server or even a streamer/network player (e.g. Cambridge CXN or similar). I don't really need the portability of a DAP and I have plans for quite a large library of at least CD quality files ...so the storage capacity restrictions could also be limiting.

[EDM]

45 minutes ago, gregmacc said:

I don't really need the portability of a DAP, and I have plans for quite a large library of at least CD quality files ...so the storage capacity restrictions could also be limiting.

FYI, many DAPs already have 64GBs memory built in, and two SD card slots, both of which can accept 512GB SD cards. That's over 1 Terabyte of music storage! 

 

And many DAPs have aptX HD wireless streaming and DLNA.

 

 

 

 

[gregmacc]

Thanks again EDM ...  I'm a heavy user of Spotify premium (for discovering/auditioning new music) ... I need something that would look presentable sitting alongside/above a modular amp and require at least 1Tb of storage capacity. Remote control from an Android phone would be essential as would a convenient way to add files and backup to/from a music library.  DLNA would be handy ... would prefer not to be regularly sliding SD cards into and out of a player. Budget is about $2500 including a new amp (that's about the cost of a Camebridge CXN + their 80W amp). Any device suggestions?

Edited November 1, 2017 by gregmacc