Rob Watts of Chord Electronics on DAC designs and drawbacks - CanJam NYC 2023
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- Rob Watts talks at CanJam NYC 2023 about the advantages, disadvantages and technical challenges of various approaches to making a digital to analog converter.
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Mojo2 just relegated the internal DAC of my Hegel H95 amp to a dust bin. Hegel H200 (no internal DAC, but similar audio capability plus more power) is now in my sights. Rob Watts, you are an engineering magician.
Thanks
I was just about to buy a Holo Spring R2R DAC. Now I am not so sure.
Please tell me that his second lecture was also recorded…..
Ever find it?
@@richkovach unfortunately not :(
@@johannl2147 ditto :(
Talking about jitter noise floor modulation in XXI century is just such a troll, those modulations are at like -130dB, get some grip on reality
Also can we setup a test for Mr Watts where he demonstartes how easily he discerns distortions in range of -130 to -150? its in his presentation that its easy.
Interesting..I’m still spinning 💿 on a decades old Denon 3520 player …and you know what …it still sounds good to my ears .
Would I like to try a high end DAC to see if there’s a night and day difference between the players DAC and something from CHORD …there’s the test.🤔
I did a back to back listening test of my old Sony DVD player with coax digital output vs RCA output vs Spotify. All digital signals went thru mojo2. The differences were noticeable. Coax output from CD disc was a 10, Spotify of same music was a 7 and RCA output was like a 4. All of them easily recognizably different in quality.
@@utube321piotr interesting 🧐
Can someone explain how we can hear the effect of something that is 200 db below the noise floor? How can any analog device reproduce this digital information to this level of accuracy - this is resolution way beyond what analog devices are capable of. The best analog devices have 21 bit resolution. I see similar arguments for HQ player. The only thing audible will be the effect of any apodizing, phase distortion or slow in band roll off, which I suspect is at the heart of all audible aspects of these massive tap length complex filters.
He said, basically, that he found that a DAC needs to be able to reproduce signals down to -300dB (this is going to be in the digital realm - not from the analog outputs) to correctly reproduce the music. He didn't say that you'll actually be able to hear anything that low. Many people get confused on that point.
@@Currawong Agreed. I believe there is a mechanism and it causes audible pre-echoes due to equiripple - the origin is from the upsampling filters in most DAC’s. Once you have the kind precision of -300 dB then the pre-echoes caused by the passband filters become inaudible. -300dB out of band filtering isn’t audible vs -140db but the passband equiripples on simple -140dB short tap filters do cause problems as their tiny equiripple is actually “integrated” right across the entire passband to produce a time domain echo.
Would love to try a Chord one day to see what they’re about
I have only heard a Chord Mojo but it definitely has a unique "house sound" going on that they seem to prioritize. I would say it excels at clarity, speed and imaging. But you know, writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so... ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
@@r00s. totally feel you there haha
The chord mojo is good though a bit pricy. The rest are overrated.
Just buy a topping.
@@sonickiller360Topping products are sterile and lack dynamics
Oh dear Rob. I hate to say but you have to choose your ground. Either Psychoacoustics or signal processing. You are very much jumping from either. So Either we shall believe the ear over the measurements or vice versa, otherwise I'm not going to take your word for it that you simply "heard" the difference. Staging, Timbre, depth, etc, I mean come on. One guys asked an honest question, where to read further and you simply evaded the question! Sorry but you can do better than that, even if you are trying to protect your intellectual property
timbre, details and soundstage is better but other reviewers say dynamics suffer vs desktop dac's around 700usd - 1k. interesting that the analog measurements shows the best sharp filter of any dac tested but the multitone distortion is around 20 bits and not 22-23 like some other dacs. wonder why all that fpga and oversampling magic didn't translate into lower analogue distortion although i won't go so far as to say these metrics translate into better dynamics and better bass response that the reviewers report. micro usb is the worst connector ever made IMO.
Mr Watts neglects manuf. examples of various topologies presented. PWM (Matsushita, MASH); PDM (Philips, Bitstream), R2R (Burr-Brown, Analog Devices, discrete ); Delta-Sigma (ESS, AKM, TI, AD, Cirrus/Crystal). And perhaps the biggest miss is Philips' orig , very popular multi-bits (DEM and CC). The classic TDA1541 is "DEM" (dynamic element matching). With DSD, one can ditch the DAC entirely and low-pass filter the signal.
its 2023 and there should be no excuse for not having balanced outputs on the mojo 2
@Ambient Blue-eyedMonkey how else am I going to mitigate the noise from turning my entire room into a wireless charger?
Balanced headphone outputs are more marketing gimmick than practical performance. Electrically, they don't really have many advantages over SE. If the Mojo is powerful enough as it is, then there's no point in going balanced.
It’s all good but it’s time to make a mojo 3 with proper connections and built in Bluetooth. I want to get into the world of Chord but I just can’t buy a mojo2 and a poly in 2023.
Yep, I'm a big fan of Chord products but for portable listening I carry a Sony DAP even though I've got a Hugo 2 + 2go.
Use a Poly, yes it has its issues but it does support Bluetooth, no idea how good it is because I've never used Bluetooth with Poly. While Chord still sell Poly I doubt we will see Bluetooth on the Mojo.
I'm dumb.. cliff notes plzzzzzzz
The moment he put "musicality" as a descriptor for a DAC I turned the video off. While I'm sure Rob Watts knows a thing or two about how to make DACs, he's got a conflict of interest and definitely tells people weird ideas of how audio gear works specifically to sell his overpriced stuff. I wouldn't trust a word he says, at least not in terms of what affects what. He MIGHT be telling the truth in some cases, but with Rob Watts you have no idea what's spoken to sell his product and what's objectively true, so. I'd look somewhere else for information.
Which other brand offers their very DAC DESIGNER as information source for their products? Topping? Denafrips? Shiit? Gustard? Whom do you believe?
@@utube321piotr Engineers that don't benefit by changing the information they tell me. Jason Stoddard directly benefits by telling me that he has some genuinely better method of doing something while explaining the process, or by highlighting certain aspects of how the technology works to make certain things seem more or less important.
I just don't trust any of them to be truly objective when it benefits them directly not to be.
@@KaneAmaroq your arguments make ZERO sense, Rob Watts is proud of his products and shares his knowledge, there are no objective data to disprove his claims, in their respective price brackets Chord products are second to none.
@@utube321piotr If my arguments don't make sense to you, that is your problem, not mine. I wouldn't trust a pharmaceutical company to tell me exactly why their stuff is so expensive and definitely worth going for over another product, it's no different here. There is a profit motive.
And actually, there is a lot of data that conflicts with his claims about DACs and sound in general, albeit controversial and not conclusive. Again, he COULD be honest, but you don't know him, you have no idea what is true and what isn't, because of the obvious conflict of interest.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you're just putting your head in the sand and not listening.
@@KaneAmaroq i love the sound mojo2 generates over other DACs and this performance confirms claims made by Rob Watts; while most other brands don't make any claims, don't share any product philosophy and that means that they don't have any; most Chinese DACs are junk pushed by paid utuber infomercial influencers
Not a fan of the Chord DACs past the Mojo. I find them a bit thin sounding.
Fix your HiFi
@@utube321piotr A Hugo2 was my hifi. They also measure average which is not ideal for the price.
I don’t like the fact that their flagship is so old yet has not received any hardware revisions or price adjustments.
They would have recouped their R&D costs a million times over by now, plus I’m sure there are minor things they could have added over the years, a bit like the way companies like Audeze slowly evolve their products.
i doubt anyone (me included) understood a single word he said.
Its essentially a very techy sales pitch for Chord. (i.e. my design is the correct way and so by definition Chord dacs are the best)
Ive no doubt he's an excellent engineer and the chord dacs do sound good (i have a 2Qute) but they can also sound a bit cold which is why ive also just bought an RDR dac.
Listening to Music is a very personal, subjective experience so the only thing that matters is what works for you.
The idea that all music should sound like live music is retarded. If you're listening to any recorded music it will never sound like live music. That is an impossible goal to achieve and no fancy over engineered DAC will achieve such a sound.
It was basically ignoring 99% of what matters and hyperfocusing on 1% of things that dont matter in reality, essentially nearly pure BS
34:58 ~ 35:28
and hence I buy different gear for different genres and artists.
Same approach as how some guitarists swap guitars during their performances.
Reason being... it's more fun that way :)
@SubjectiveObjectivist I don't care about reproducing "what the artist and audio engineers intended" (whatever that means since no consumer can ever know what that sounds other than those who worked on the said songs)
It's just my approach and I'm not here to criticize how people go about this hobby.
I just tend to have more fun with my approach of faithfully reproducing my emotional experiences (sometimes amplify and enhance) rather than focusing on faithfully reproducing what was recorded.
i really do not share this view, i think a good headphone dac amp chain should let you enjoy all you want from music, now if you want to have multiple headphones because you like the variations in sound this is another story
I find it ironic that he's acting like / trying to look like he's one of the science guys, one of the objectivists -- and yet, he keeps mentioning / talking about subjective "sound differences" in DAC output like there is one, which all we actual audio science guys know to be rubbish and just a product of imagination of a person because there is no measureable difference -- unless the DAC is faulty. He sounds more like a salesman to me.
He just can't help it
"there is no measureable difference" can you point to something that shows that there's no measurable difference between DACs?
Are you serious?
👍
Hey there, i’m genuinly curious why you are saying this ? I see literally every audio channnel commenting about diffrences between dacs, i have never seen on say that all dacs sound the same, why would they lie ? Especially when all these channels did blind tests and all sorts of testings ?
I’m asking because at the moment i have an ifi zen dac v2, and i am looking to improve my soundstage, there is a used chord TT2 for 1000 euros which is an incredible bargain and you say there will be nor can be a diffrence between my ifi zen dac v2 and the chord TT2 ?
All this talk and your DACs still hiss with IEMs.
What iem do you use? I'm thinking of getting mojo for andromeda and jomo salsa which are very sensitive
Question is, is it the DAC or the AMP part that hiss. But yeah charging as much as Chord does then it should never hiss.
@@neandrewthal I would like to know $15 IEMs that are better than I mentioned.
@@neandrewthal I have both dsp and wan'er but they're nowhere close imo, the Wan'er doesn't even have any detail.
@@leonarda8946 More likely to be the IEM, but some brands associated with "high end" companies like Earmen and Auris Audio made some very good sounding products that have terrible noise floor. Wouldn't be surprised if the hiss from the dac/amp itself. No idea why when new chinese brands like Topping and Aune can make desktop stuff that are hiss free even in high gain.