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Say No To Computers, Say Yes To Your Ears
Most DACs are designed in isolation, and optimized around abstract metrics.
...But this isn't how the real world works.
An amplifier is not a dummy load, and your ears certainly aren't computers.
The reality is much messier than that. At Loāz, we embrace reality instead of fighting it.
The biggest oversight in modern DACs and how we fixed it
Since standard DAC design is done in a simulation around a dummy load, designers would never consider this:
Speaker Back-EMF.
Unlike what people would assume, real-world amplifiers are imperfect. Some back-EMF absolutely does pass through and reach the DAC. The DAC's output stage, also being imperfect, lets some of that back-EMF reach the conversion stage.
This causes performance issues, mainly raw digital signal leakage.
This is the main reason why most DACs sound "digital".
To fix this, we put optocouplers in the analog signal path, right after the conversion stage. Since light is strictly a one-way street, signal comes out of the conversion stage, but nothing can go back in.
We call this Photobond, "Photo" signifying light, and "Bond" signifying the harmonious connection between audio and light happening in our products.
Designing for your ears instead of computers.
A computer will tell you any THD is bad. The reality is, there are plenty of different types of distortion, some bad, some good.
The distinction that matters is distortion that exists in nature vs artificial distortion only machines make.
Second-order harmonic distortion, for example, is abundant in nature. Instruments create it, your brain creates it, etc. Nature loves it, but computers don't.
On the other hand, plenty of DACs use Linear Phase reconstruction filters, which introduces pre-ringing. Pre-ringing is only possible with DACs, it does not exist anywhere else in nature. But, a computer will tell you that it's good because it "preserves phase accuracy". Reality is a digital sound to your ears.
The Beaugrand of course uses a Minimum Phase filter, which exclusively contains post-ringing, which is abundant in nature just like second-order harmonics.
Since too many masterings are sterile, we also intentionally added a tasteful amount of naturally generating analog second-order harmonics in our Beaugrand to make it more forgiving.
The result is a DAC that sounds like a musical instrument instead of sounding like a computer.
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