Do AKM DACs suck?

[Anarchist420]

I was wondering. My HK-3490 has an AKM DAC. It could sound a little bit better with the speakers I have (Infinity Primus P160s), but it sounds okay. Would I have been better off going with a Yamaha receiver?

 

[kornphlake]

What makes you think the DAC is making your speakers sound a little bit bad? Does music sound better with an analog source than a digital source? Can you quantify the sound quality you feel is missing when using the integrated DAC in you receiver?

There's a lot of hype around DACs, and it may be true, but I remain a skeptic for the most part. If you're really concerned about the DAC you'd probably be better off using an external DAC instead of buying a new receiver, the HK is arguably a better amp than a Yamaha.

 

[moonboy403]

Remember, the DAC chip is only part of an equation. There is also the analog stage to consider.

 

[mshan]

Logitech Transporter has an older AKM chip in it: http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/207slim/ (these sell for about $800 - $900 used now). Transporter's analog output is supposed to sound very similar to Lavry DA-10, which I believe uses a different DAC.

Modwright does extensive modifications of analog stage and produces dac that is supposed to be competitive with $10000 stand alone DACs: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/modwright3/transporter.html

So like others have said above, you may be limited by analog output stage and other cost cutting steps throughout any particular budget avr.

 

[uhohs]

the presonus central station uses a AKM dac chip, pretty great all around unit.

if i remember correctly the Lavry DA-10 uses a AD1955 dac chip.

 

[Howard]

Sound quality, assuming a clean recording, usually is impacted in the following order:

1. speakers
2. room
3. recording
4. amp
5. dac

Generally speaking, of course.

 

[JSt0rm]

Adc and dac errors generally occur after you get build up of whatever mucky muck they are altering in the signal. For instance if you are tracking an orchestra with crappy adc chips (not that you would but just for argument) that have some weirdness around 2k. If its a very subtle weirdness you wont really notice it with 2 channels or 4 even but when you get up into 128 channels of intput this soniq character impacts what you are hearing. Likewise with a dac if you are going in and out many time with the same audio you get a degradation.

In a home enviroment get the best 2 channel dac you can afford and remember that as howard says lots of things are more important then the actual dac. I would actually put room as number 1.

This is what I'm looking at for next years write off

http://www.burlaudio.com/products/b80-mothership/

 

[Modelworks]

Even the cheapest of DAC produced in the last couple years is going to be fine. It isn't like years ago when there was a huge difference. You can get $30 motherboards now that have a DAC that would have cost $1K in a receiver 5 years ago.