“Think of it more like a claw hammer than a screwdriver.“
Somehow that is helpful.
Somehow that is helpful.
analog to digital to analog conversion
Potential stupid question alert.
There seems to be quite a movement of people favoring R-2R ladder DACs over chip based technology. A common impression is that the R-2R approach sounds less digital and more natural. When music is recorded, the analog to digital conversion is done using chip based converters, not some type of resistor ladder ... correct? So it would seem to me that a chip based solution that reverses exactly the digital encoding should be able to do a better job of restoring the audio back to its original analog state, retaining the least amount possible of "digitalness." What am I misunderstanding?
There seems to be quite a movement of people favoring R-2R ladder DACs over chip based technology. A common impression is that the R-2R approach sounds less digital and more natural. When music is recorded, the analog to digital conversion is done using chip based converters, not some type of resistor ladder ... correct? So it would seem to me that a chip based solution that reverses exactly the digital encoding should be able to do a better job of restoring the audio back to its original analog state, retaining the least amount possible of "digitalness." What am I misunderstanding?
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I think a lot of DA conversion is filtering noise causing artifacts from the process and compensating for clock or other errors. AD conversion doesn’t have the same filtering and noise issues. By the nature of the process any frequencies above half the sampling rate are simply lost without a trace. The clock on the other hand is very important. It’s a different process. Think of it more like a claw hammer than a screwdriver. |
OP, you are on the right track, be aware that conventionally in most applications the performance of professional A/D convertors (in terms of accurately capturing the analog signal) actually exceed the performance of even the best D/A convertors. Thus it becomes a matter of which technology one prefers to recreate the original analog information contained within the captured digital audio data stream. |
jjss49 - that makes sense. I'm just curious as to how an approach that is very different could do a **better** job of re-creating the analog output than a reversal of the process that put the analog into digital form in the first place. But I am ready to abandon this inquiry because it isn't a burning question - just a curiosity. |
This is true. FPGA rules. For now. https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7251 May the peace of understanding.... |
