RMAA testing on different transports

[evil-zen 0]

Ack! dAck! is a NOS DAC based on the TDA1545T chip. Feeling bored during the holidays, I decided to make measurements of my equipment using the version 5.4 of RMAA. The stars of show are Revolution 7.1 soundcard, Denon DCD-835 and NEC MultiSpin 6Xe. It is by no means conclusive or statistically significant but I tried my best to make it so. All tests were repeated 3-4 times and I took the median values.

 

All cables (digital + RCA-Mini) used are the same for all 3 tests. Connection is from Transport -> digital cable -> Ack! dAck! -> RCA-Mini cable -> M-audio Revolution 7.1 soundcard line-in. The wav files are burnt on a CDr and same CDr is used for both NEC 6xe and Denon DCD-835 cd players. For the soundcard, foobar2000 is used. Settings are kernel streaming, no DSP or replaygain involved.

 

Here are the results

Denon

NEC

Revolution 7.1

Overall comparison

 

Some of the results surprised me and not like what I heard. Can anyone explain some of the terms, particularly IMD and THD?

Edited December 18, 2004 by evil-zen

[master 0]

THD - Total Harmonic Distortion

IMD - Intermodulation Distortion

 

While I believe u have known about THD, here is a couple of explaination about IMD...

• http://lp2cd.com/audio_terms/i/intermodula...distortion.html
• http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-019/_2813.htm