DEMO: Listening to the Cayin RU6 R-2R noise and distortions with headphone load. Confirming subjective impressions. And Jim Austin / Stereophile's "Thoughts On Reviewing".

Notice that the quest for high fidelity has always been, almost exclusively, a male pursuit. A picture from the Edison Diamond Disc and the "tone tests" done back in the day circa ~1916.

I've been critical of many audiophile magazines, websites, and YouTube channels because it's hard to believe some of these individuals truly can hear what they report. I know, it's perhaps "rude" to question subjective claims, but unless one questions stuff like this, how are we to differentiate thoughtful critical listening from potentially biased claims of sound quality?

For example, I honestly doubt the folks who claim to hear big differences between cables. I think it's silly that some people insist they hear differences because of unsubstantiated "jitter" effects in digital audio. Those who think "bit-perfect" playback can sound very different have never over the years proved their case. Then there are those subjective reports that sing the praises of "hi-res audio" despite research never showing differences as being anything more than subtle. How about claims of the ability to hear the effect of "audiophile" ethernet switches, or USB noise/jitter devices?! As you can see in the links to these topics, I've tried to address them over the years so when questions come up, I can just point folks to areas covered already.

IMO, with time, more and more nonsense articles and claims have built-up in audiophile magazines and the Internet. I think young audiophiles must have difficulties making heads or tails about what is true anymore while negotiating this massive minefield of questionable information. I would not be surprised that some in this Industry actually prefer the presence of this "fog of subjectivity" because it allows people to make irresponsible claims about anything they want and not have to provide evidence so long as some key reviewers or readers have faith to repeat the belief over time! 

That the ongoing majority of audio hardware reviewing these days is purely subjective is a bit of a problem in the context of what I believe to be very poor reliability.

REVIEW & MEASUREMENTS: Cayin RU6 R-2R USB Dongle DAC/Headphone Amp. Considering "Intentional Imperfections". (Topping D90SE -60dBFS input graphs.)

In the last few years, we've seen a resurgence in interest around R-2R DACs. Back in the day (like these old CD players for example), multibit ladder technology was the way to do the conversion until the rise of 1-bit and multilevel sigma delta modulation DACs became the norm.

High quality R-2R does require extra effort to make sure the resistor levels are precisely trimmed to achieve higher resolution. This is why hybrid techniques have also been implemented over the years such as the TI/Burr-Brown segmented architectures (like with my TEAC UD-501).

With this post, let's focus on the Cayin RU6 DAC (~US$250), a new USB-C dongle device (comes also with a USB-A adaptor) which aims to provide high performance headphone playback of PCM up to 24/384 and will accept DSD256 by converting the 1-bit SDM to PCM internally (no native DSD conversion).

Thanks to my buddy AudioPhil for lending this device for testing!