DAC/Pre's Digital attenuation vs. analog

Edorr - The Overdive DAC has manual volume. It is more convenient to use an iPad anyway because you will need 2 remotes if the DAC has remove volume control, one for volume and one for music selection.

Does your Trinnov have digital in and digital out?

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Using digital volume exclusively for volume control will result in a significant reduction in detail and imaging. It's okay to do about -9dB, but not more. This requires that the DAC have some kind of gain control or a good volume of its own.

There are five types of volume control:

1) Digital volume control - reduces resolution as the volume is decreased

2) resistive attenuation - delivers detail, but kills dynamics with most amps

3) active gain control - adds distortion, noise and compression, but has good drive, so dynamics are good.

4) Transformer scaling attenuation - with strong DAC outputs and good transformer linestages, like Music First TVC, this is more transparent and preserves the dynamics. Easy to match to amps

5) D/A reference voltage control - This volume adds no noise, distortion or compression, in fact it actually improves S/N ratio as the volume is decreased. No loss of resolution. The best of all possible options.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Robertsong - there are two I believe, and Empirical Audio is one of them. $6K pricepoint for the DAC. Includes preamp, DAC and USB interface.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Edorr - what kind of digital volume control do you use?

Is it a slider in itunes or Pure Music etc? Do you do any gain control in the DAC?

The devil is in the details.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

"If I get your DAC but then have to control volume digitally on the Trinnov on the iPad (which is what I am doing now), I would not have the analog volume control benefit."

Yes, you could still get the benefit if you adjust the digital volume on the Trinnov to max and then set the manual volume on the Overdrive to a good listening level with your quietest track. Then, when a louder track comes on, just reduce the digital volume on the Trinnov 2-9dB. This will not impact SQ at all. You still have remote control.

Steve N.

Mr tennis - The "analog" volume control on the DAC that I am referring to is not analog at all. It does not suffer from the gain issues. This allows the digital volume to be at or close to max, which is optimum.

Volume control using analog "gain" adjustment is one of my least favorite methods. Best to avoid. My own modded ML preamp is a dust-gathering boat anchor now.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

"my next project may well be a shootout of your DAC against the Perfectwave MKII."

No problem, we can do that. Looking forward to it. It will probably be after Newport Beach show June 1 however.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

MRtennis - No need to do this. My older discontinued DAC the Spoiler, which is not as good and used Adaptive USB reclocked, was compared to the Zanden5000 here:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1211443920&read&keyw&zzspoiler

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1228141324&read&keyw&zzspoiler

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

"I find it interesting you prefer digital attenuation with its lack of detail over analog attenuation with its high compression. I would guessed the analog attenuation would be preferable. I assume you mean down to just -9db or even lower?"

Correct, certainly no more than -12dB.

"Maybe your Off-Ramp 5 with a benchmark will work for me?"

It will certainly improve on the Benchmark. I modded them for almost 10 years, but stopped in 2009. For the same money you could have Metrum Octave. I have a few customers that use this combo with great results.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Mrtennis - If you read the last 3 or 4 DAC reviews in TAS, you will see that once you have a really low jitter digital source (not a Transport), the differences in DACs are much smaller. This is the only way to compare DACs. Otherwise, you are mostly hearing the DACs ability to reduce jitter or replace it with other jitter as in ASRC. Without this low-jitter source, many older ladder and NOS DACs will sound really bad.

Its a lot like comparing decent turntables using a really cheap cartridge. Yes, the really expensive turntables/tonearms will sound a bit better, but they a will all sound relatively poor due to the cartridge. With a really good cartridge, the differences are much smaller I think. The cartridge is the most important part, as the Master Clock is in digital.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio