Adda Phasing Dac

[JimmyM]

Hi guys, i'm following this threqd for quit some time....

I have a question about an issue here.
Whenever I go out analog from any daw, the stereo image changes, it gets less 3d and more mono when coming back in.
I tried this with an Avid HD OMNI, Symphony Mk2 and Antelope HD32Gen3.
I did some tests with a white noise generator in Protools.
Btw, this problem does not only in Protools but Cubase and Wavelab as well.

So I send a white noise generator at -20 as you can see on the pics. Via Aes/Ebu to my Weiss Eq1 the signal stays -20.
Under the noisegenerator I wanted to measure that signal with a plugin, the TC Clarity measured -16.5, this is also whats the analog outs is measured, so not the -20 as on the Weiss or the HeddQ ( also via Aes/Ebu )

In the left Nugen Visualiser is whats coming back analog.
This is an analog roundtrip direct out/in no hw attached.
Tested the cables too, the TC measurement is itb..no io roundtrip.
Im on PT Ultimate 2023.12, Mbp M1 Ventura 13.6.4 Sonnet Chassis with HDX Card.

Btw I tried this also with an iMAc and macbook Air, the results are the same.
Could this be a driver thing or something?
Someone tod me to use balanced power, did that but problem stays the same.

Does anyone has a clue?

[Darryl Ramm]

Not sure what thread you are talking about? A thread on DUC?

There will be nothing here to do with any driver or likely anything else technical like that. You are almost certainly seeing correct measurements of signals. But what signals and what exact measurement is a puzzle to solve.

How accurately calibrated are your analog outputs and inputs?.. you can test at least outputs with a multimeter and sine wave signal gen, ideally while driving the load and hopefully you have nothign here with demanding loads anyhow.

Is the stereo noise correlated or not? That's an area of potential issues and likely a large part of what is confusing things here. Play around and show yourself the difference.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by JimmyM

So I send a white noise generator at -20 as you can see on the pics. Via Aes/Ebu to my Weiss Eq1 the signal stays -20.
Under the noisegenerator I wanted to measure that signal with a plugin, the TC Clarity measured -16.5, this is also whats the analog outs is measured, so not the -20 as on the Weiss or the HeddQ ( also via Aes/Ebu )

The TC Clarity is measuring true peak (dbTP). The Weiss and most other things measure RMS. That's why those numbers differ. True Peak is a useless measurement (other than to prevent clipping) for finding a level on a signal that is a sum of multiple sine waves (ie, anything not a pure sine wave) which is why RMS is used.

This has nothing to do with power or driver. It is strictly hardware or user error.
Just measure the phase with a sine sweep. All ADC and DAC have filters (to deal with out-of-bound noise). That affects phase. But if something sounds less "3D" that means the sound isn't decorrelated on return. That could be due to dithering.

Grab REW, loop your DA to AD and measure. Then check your results (phase, noise.)