Which part of audio components determine the sound "flavor"?

[greyscale]

I have been reading these forums for a couple of years now, and a question has popped into my head regarding the flavor of sound from audio components. I have a Marantz SR6007 and am wondering whether to add an external DAC?. By "flavor" I mean the brand sound of audio components. I believe the final output sound from a component is the basically the  combo of internal dac + output amps, then downstream equipment. So, i hook any external DAC to the Marantz. What flavor  will I be hearing?. The external DAC or the Marantz output amp, or something in between.?

Yes, I realize the input source, power supply, cables and speaker all add to the final flavor. Just keeping it simple.

[mansr]

Speakers and room have by far the most influence on the sound. Make sure you have Audyssey properly set up on your Marantz. It makes a huge difference. A while back, I upgraded my AVR from SR7007 to SR7010. The new one has the better Audyssey XT32, and the improvement is readily apparent, especially in the bass (at least with my speakers and room).

[Deaf Cat]

Keeping it simple  Ha!  ;-)

I would say your in "between flavor" guess would be right :-)

IMO I would say it would depend upon how strong a flavor the DAC has, compared to the Marantz.  Some mixes of avr and dac will no doubt be unlikable and some may well be sublime, that will depend upon your ears and how much testing of different boxes you feel like doing....   

Also, IME different dacs shine with different styles/types of music, yes that blew my mind! as I listen to a wide variety of music. Three £2k dacs on test and each was best at a different style of music.....Whaaaat!, so I stuck with my old pre/dac to keep things simple, and looked else where for improvements.  Fun yes, Fab if you can keep it simple! I have no idea how..?? 

I don't know if you have played about by bi-amping your fronts, this can make for a nice improvement, or then again test run different power amps, a nice amount of power can have a nice affect!  So long as your source is decent enough to shine through.  So many options... simple is cool but trying to keep it simple I find tricky.

 

[Deaf Cat]

Guess, if it has it, you have done the room calibration set up?

Can make a nice difference.

[semente]

Speakers most definitely, unless you are considering "tailored" electronic equipment instead of hi-fi.

In that case, anything goes...

 

R

[audiventory]

Room is most important component. Room can kill any speakers.

Next are speakers.

Of course rest components impact too.

[greyscale]

Thanks all for the replies.  I have done the EQ setup on the 6007. Have spent many hours moving FL & FR speakers to what I find are my optimal position, then EQ again. So, now I may try an external DAC .

I chose the DAC as the SIMPLE route. Speakers are not simple to trial and return compared to a DAC. And yes I'm aware of the cable wars, in which I'm a pacifist and a non combatant. Simple.

Thanks again.

 

[mansr]

26 minutes ago, greyscale said:

Thanks all for the replies.  I have done the EQ setup on the 6007. Have spent many hours moving FL & FR speakers to what I find are my optimal position, then EQ again. So, now I may try an external DAC .

I chose the DAC as the SIMPLE route. Speakers are not simple to trial and return compared to a DAC. And yes I'm aware of the cable wars, in which I'm a pacifist and a non combatant. Simple.

Thanks again.

 

 

If you use an external DAC, you'll either have to forgo the Audyssey room correction (direct mode) or be subject to the AVR's ADC/DAC combination, making the external DAC quite pointless).

 

You could of course use an external DAC together with a separate room correction package such as Acourate or Dirac. This route is hardly one I'd call simple.

 

Something you can do for free is experiment with your subwoofer placement. The Audyssey version in the 6007 is a bit lacking on the sub side, so there may be gains to be had here.

[Danaudio]

Totally agree with mansr. Speakers and room dynamics. I would also like to add Speaker placement. If the room dynamics is poor and all you hear is bounced signals than it won't matter what equipment and speakers you have. Second is speakers and speaker placement. You can have a great pair of speakers but if placement is too close to the wall than you will get heavy bass but poor imaging/soundstaging. If it is place too far from the wall than you will get poor bass. A good solution to this placement problem is a subwoofer for stereo listening like the REL or Sumiko. This will allow movement of speakers away from the wall and provide bass.

I can see that there are some fans for room correction but I am not a fan of it for stereo listening. For watching movies it is great but I find that room corrections usually hinders the speakers dynamic abilities.

[audiventory]

I'm wondering, available room correction systems suppress resonanses or boost too?

[GUTB]

In this order:

 

1. Speaker (*)

2. Amp (**)

3. Source

4. DAC (**)

5. Power cables (**)

6. Speaker cables

7. Interconnects

 

* = synergistic relationship with amp

** = amp and DAC benefits most from power cable

 

If the synergy between speaker and amp is bad, the quality of the system as a whole will take a dive and upgrading other components won't really help. Expensive power cables to upgrade lower end amps and DACs is a valid strategy. Source, which also includes the source power network, is more important than the DAC (where they are not the same) due to the garbage-in-garbage-out principal. Once a good amp/speaker synergy is found, cables can be upgraded right away to achieve immediate results in between major upgrades of the source and DAC as those benefits will generally scale with equipment upgrades.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, audiventory said:

I'm wondering, available room correction systems suppress resonanses or boost too?

Sorry, but I'm not sure I understand this question.

 

First, we are talking about electronic (usually digital) room correction devices, right?

 

If so, in general resonances should first be addressed by other means.  I understand that some nodes can require almost infinite power to deal with electronically.

 

Not sure what boost means?  More amplification for a certain frequency band (??)

[mansr]

6 hours ago, audiventory said:

I'm wondering, available room correction systems suppress resonanses or boost too?

 

Room correction systems measure the frequency response and apply an inverse adjustment to compensate. They don't care what caused the response to differ from the desired one. Now as Ralf11 said, extreme dips or peaks may not be possible to compensate for adequately, but the system will do the best it can. Gross errors are best addressed through room treatments, then a digital system can fine-tune the response.

[audiventory]

11 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Not sure what boost means?  More amplification for a certain frequency band (??)

 

Yes. I meant electronical frequerncy response correction.

 

I meant boost as resonance that increase level at frequency.

 

As far as I know, the "boost" may be decteased by EQ, but "dips" (inverse boosts, that Mansr mentioned) must not be corrected. Because compensation of lost acousric energy may lead to overload system or be just uneffective.

[Danaudio]

Room Correction software is the last I would use fix any problems with room dynamics. Reason is the system basically use EQ to adjust any sharp or drops in the signal measurements. This will affect the direct sounds you hear. With room treatment you are fixing bounced signals that you hear but the dynamics of the direct sound is not affected.

[Ralf11]

Good point.

 

I am almost always in the near field of my giant black monoliths, so am hearing mostly direct sound.

[mansr]

39 minutes ago, Danaudio said:

Room Correction software is the last I would use fix any problems with room dynamics. Reason is the system basically use EQ to adjust any sharp or drops in the signal measurements. This will affect the direct sounds you hear. With room treatment you are fixing bounced signals that you hear but the dynamics of the direct sound is not affected.

 

That's true, room treatments will only take you so far. DSP correction addresses speaker imperfections as well as (to an extent) the inevitable residual room effects. Anything short of an anechoic chamber will have some amount of resonance.

[Ralf11]

BTW, how many people can visualize a wave in their room of a certain frequency?

 

(the length of my room is about 35 Hz)...

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

BTW, how many people can visualize a wave in their room of a certain frequency?

 

That's what calibrated mikes are for.