opaqueice;581935 Wrote: > Well, no, there's at least one other rather crucial question - the level > of distortion and whether it's low enough to be inaudible. For mature > digital components like DACs, I believe that standard designs are > capable of reducing distortion levels to far below the threshold of > audibility. > > > > There is certainly a consensus among the people that agree :D. > > > > It's clearly possible to design a DAC so that it induces enough > distortion to make an audible difference. Personally, I'd immediately > chuck any such DAC design out the window and start over, because in my > view, the goal is to minimize the distortion the components in my audio > chain add to the signal. > > > > I will, if I get a chance. Thanks.
I wasn't very clear in my previous explanation: it is not desirable to use a DAC that will take the bit-perfect digital signal and just faithfully convert it to analog signal. Why? Because the digital source, when compared to the same analog source, sucks beyond belief. The digital source is just a crude approximation, a crass caricature, if you will, of the original analog signal that got captured by the microphone and stored on the magnetic tape. Think of a digital audio source as if being similar to an extremely pixelated photo. The DAC needs to upconvert the harsh jagged edges into smooth curves. In order to be able to do that, the DAC needs to be very creative, that is, built with some ingenuity. The job of a DAC is to be resourceful and try to interpolate as much musicality into that caricature of a signal. That's why bad DACs sound like shit, because they're staying too close to the original choppy digital information. It is very easy to build a DAC that will minimize any distortion, but the end results are horrendous. Extremely grating to the ears! Of course, no matter how much ingenuity we pour into the DACs, we will never be able to match the musicality of an analog source. But, as already evidenced by DACs such as Caiman, we're getting pretty darn close:) -- magiccarpetride ------------------------------------------------------------------------ magiccarpetride's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=37863 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82520 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
