MBlue72;577430 Wrote: > 5) I am now considering an additional outlay (Touch or DAC) for two > reasons. First, I have read more and more about improved sound quality > via ever-improving digital-to-analog conversion technology. Second, I > have noticed something odd recently. During the last few years I have > become more and more interested (and appreciative of) legacy > recordings and artists from the 60s and 70s. Of course these recordings > were originally analog and later converted to digital for releasing as > CDs. Some have been re-mastered and re-released, some have not. I > recently discovered that on these discs the A-B comparison on my system > has been much more dramatic the music played through my Sony player > sounds obviously better. If the sound quality improvement is so > substantial using a twenty year old DAC chip, what miracles might be > occur with the newest technologies? (BTW, I do not understand how a DAC > can seem to dramatically improve the sound quality of some CDs, have > minimal impact on others and none on still others.) > > Thanks again for your help and sorry this has turned out to be a > novel. > > Dave
With all this talk of new and improved DACs we seem to be forgetting some important factors. A DAC has two parts - the first converts the digital signal to a low level analog signal and the second part converts the low level analog signal to a line level analog signal. So if the second part of a given DAC is not that good the resulting analog output will suffer regardless of the quality of the first part of the DAC. I strongly suspect that the sonic differences you're hearing between your Sony ES player and other devices is a reflection of the high build quality of the second part of Sony's DAC and not differences in the first part of any of the DACs. Of course I may also be completely full of BS but it's worth looking into in any case. -- ralphpnj Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -> Snatch -> The Transporter -> Transporter 2 (oops) -> Touch 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82067
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