JD990, XV5080 and DAC

Many people who use the term DAC in describing their notions about why something sounds good or bad have little if any idea how a DAC even works. Most any engineer will tell you that modern 16+ bit DAC's are so linear that any audible differences you think are due to the DAC are far more likely to be caused by other components in the analog output sections following the DAC. The amount of compromise and non-ideal behavior in a simple op-amp is dramatically more than your average DAC.

Don was talking about the lossy compression used to compress the waveforms before storing them in the ROM. That has nothing to do with the output stage, yet that certainly has a FAR greater effect than any DAC might.

As soon as I see discussions where people start chattering on about DAC's I just roll my eyes and move on. You would benefit from doing the same.

Yes, you are correct that the digital outputs like s/pdif, ADAT, etc. completely bypass the normal analog output DAC's allowing the use of external DAC's.

Again, that's probably pointless.

Unless you have a friend over and rig up a double-blind test, you simple cannot trust your brain to accurate relay subtle audible differences when you are aware which device you are listening to. Golden ear hucksters selling $10k+ speaker cables will never submit to a double-blind test comparing their product to cheap 12 gauge cord from Home Depot. They are terrified of the results.

Thanks ScottRS101 for that insightful explanation. I'm happy out with the sound of my 5080 as is anyway, that's all that matters in the end.

Indeed. I have a GAIA that sounds great and is a joy to design sounds with. Others can spend their time debating about the merits of how each sample is generated for various architectures. That becomes especially amusing when it's something they can have no direct knowledge of. In the end it is only the sound that matters.

I am glad that the musician crowd has been largely smart enough to ignore the charlatans in the esoteric cable world. At least we don't have to deal with those insane discussions here. :-)

Indeed, Scott!

tomatoKetchup wrote:

Everyone is praising the sound of the JD990 mostly because of its DAC that are said to be of better quality than any of the JV/XV and Fantom series

IMHO, it's the filters and hard-sync abilities of the JD that set it apart sound-wise.

A Roland ROMPler with hard sync?
A Roland ROMPler with such ridiculously-good-sounding filters?

Find me one and I'll buy it.

“But it just occurred to me that modules like the XV 5080 offer digital outputs as well as the regular jack outputs. If I'm not mistaking, these digital outputs (R-bus, Coaxial and Optical) should bypass the unit's internal DAC converter and thus send an "unaffected" signal, right?”


I saw this post and I have a XV5050 that I took to my local repair shop in Fort Myers Florida. A trusted repairman informed me that the Digital to Audio converter is dead and can’t be resoldered because it’s too small.

Can I still use my module by just going out the digital output because it doesn’t use the DAC?

Any help would be great!

pianobillyboy wrote:

“But it just occurred to me that modules like the XV 5080 offer digital outputs as well as the regular jack outputs. If I'm not mistaking, these digital outputs (R-bus, Coaxial and Optical) should bypass the unit's internal DAC converter and thus send an "unaffected" signal, right?”


I saw this post and I have a XV5050 that I took to my local repair shop in Fort Myers Florida. A trusted repairman informed me that the Digital to Audio converter is dead and can’t be resoldered because it’s too small.

Can I still use my module by just going out the digital output because it doesn’t use the DAC?

Any help would be great!

I would say so, but you're probably going to have to use a Roland DIF-AT interface to convert the R-Bus signal onto 8 ADAT outputs. Otherwise you can use the SPDIF output but in that case you only get one stereo out instead of 8 separate channels

Thank you!