Audio interface DAC VS Hi-Fi DAC 

The timing of you making this video couldn't have been better. As a musician and otherwise someone that uses an interface for communication, I always wondered why audiophile-grade amps and DACs don't give me the same capabilities. This information and expertise is great. Thank you.

Great, informative explanation, thanks!

Great stuff man. Subscribed

Great Info ! Thanks

Amazing stuff.. Thank you so much.

Thanks! That was really revealing

Wow, incredible quality of data dump here. Mind blown! A comparison between Neve 88M vs RME ADI Pro would be welcome.

Very well done vid.

thanks really nice and clean explenation!

thanks buddy !!

Thanks man

Noice job bruv

Yes!! FINALLY!!

this is a fantastic video on this topic. Exactly what I wanted to know... btw: you sound very much like lexfridman :)

Glad i found your video. I'm gonna stay with my Behringer uphoria umc-hd202 and not get any dac. Had a question. If i connect my audio interface with iPad pro 2021 and listen to apple music lossless will the interface change bitrates automatically? Will the headphone monitor on the interface be of less quality than the output of the interface or the same?

Some people can hear 0.2 pico second time difference? In this time sound travels: 0.2 pico second x 343m/s = 68 pico meters If this is true, then if you move your speaker for 0,068 nano meter closer, you can hear this. Do I need to explain how ridiculous this is?

Great info, it just ended and I was like..already?

Very interesting. I thought because "The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is an essential principle for digital signal processing linking the frequency range of a signal and the sample rate required to avoid a type of distortion called aliasing" the power of its Math would be able to avoid things like jitter, clock issues, etc., and thus maintain the integrity of the audio signal. But, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Hardware, specs, theories are important but DA blind tests are scarce. They reveal the real anwers to your question. I have A/B tested ifi Zen Air, EMU 0404, Delock Cheapo USB’s and onboard Realtek. Onboard was really bad and Delock surprisingly good. The choice between the first 2 was very difficult but the EMU won.

Very well explained. I’m an audiophile / studio engineer and getting more into mastering. It always irks me when people say hi end DACs are ‘snake oil’. You simply need to listen to a high end DAC (FPGA / R2R) through a high quality system to understand the difference between them and standard chip based DACs…. But there is of course some real engineering behind them. And yes it is measurable. People often get focused on frequency response but it’s more to do with timing and dynamics. I’m using a UA Apollo silver face in the studio and the D->A is pretty poor IMO. Has anyone used R2R to make a pro level DAC? I know there are several FPGA based ones (Crane Song / Antelope / Lynx / Prism). I’ve been spoilt by listening to Aqua’s R2R DACs in the HiFi world and they make chip based DACs sound very flat and lifeless.

Great explanation 👌 So does that mean it's still worth spending the money on an external dac vs just using the internal one? It's unfortunate that they don't sell is that they don't sell most DAC's we find on the Internet at the local store so we can try it out

So a 10Kilogram dac is not overkill for high end stationnary iem? Or is it money wasted because of so much power is not needed ?

which dac will be better in low price range under 200$? integrated in audio interface Focusrite scarlett, topping, ifi zen or dragonfly will be there huge difference or they are very comparable?

This is very informative video.. but still can’t connect the dots for noob like me.. so I want to listen to lossless from apple music for real here. But my car head unit is bone stock. The rest already upgraded with dsp and two way. Can I use cheap dac from phone to aux? Because the bluetooth seems to be not giving me real lossless 😢

I’ve noticed that some audiophile guy’s don’t mind a little coloration where audio mixers consider that a no no for their DACs. And yes, properly applied, specs matter!

so 44.1 vs 196 is a perceivable difference? idk if I can hear it with my current playback setup but I guess I'll record in 196 / 24 bit

Internal soundcards are useless because of all the electronic noise inside the pc. Not because tech ppl. have bad ears.

Ok, it seems there are some people here who know what they're talking about so I have a question: I'm a total noob when it comes to audio but I got my hands on an old Cyrus one amplifier plus the PSX thingy and some B&W speakers; very late eighties/early nineties. It sounds great with regular sources like CD players and TV. But I also have this decent bluetooth receiver I hooked up to it, a Marmitek BoomBoom 93 but the sound is just horrible; dynamic range between soft and loud and highs an lows is great, but there's soooo much which I can only describe as sibilance on steroids. Tweaking the equalizer on my phone when streaming helps a bit, but totally kills the sound. Cheaper bluetooth receivers have the same issue. Anyone have any ideas what causes this and how it can be resoved?

i did not understand any of this lol. except that i learned that the audio interface i'm using is a "regular DAC" and there are HiFi dacs out there

So if they both use the same dac chip, what makes them sound different? Its the stuff they ADD afer the chip, aka filters. Keep paying way to much money for hifi amps! I would rather use what the people mixing the audio use, and nowadays most pros say their really isnt much different between the high end and low end.

Imagine connecting a 10K U$$ DAC to a 3K U$$ Speaker set and hear a Hi-Fi Audio File Of Justin Bieber singing "baby, baby, baby..."

A dac is just a converter that use mathematic formulas to convert digital to an analog signal, it has... Per Definition, no coloration. What is after the dac (can be in the same box) can add coloration, the dac will not.

44.1khz sounds the best.

I’m sorry but I just can’t believe that you can hear above 22.05 kHz and that you listen to music at over 96 dB, because these are the limits of 16 bit 44.1 kHz audio

snake oil scientific measurements are what count ----- See Audio Science Review