Conventional DAC

I do find that a bit hard to swallow Avguygeorge. You wouldn't be suggesting that any Pioneer DVD player plays CDs better than any conventional player just because it has a 24/96 DAC? Or have I misunderstood you?

The higher bit-rate DACs have the advantage of allowing better noise-shaping or dither, without losing resolution ie. not robbing the 16 bits too much. Whether or not a 24 bit DAC does this or does it well is another matter altogether. But I agree Garfish that more bits in the DAC is good. Using 20 bits well seems adequate to me. As to 96k sampling though, there is not a lot to be gained in theory with redbook CDs just because your DAC is capable of 96k. You just get to use some of the later DAC chips, but there is more to a good DAC than the DAC chip - otherwise there would be little to justify the difference in price between many DACs.

Now I get you Avguy, and concur that the 24/96 DACs have something very different and musically almost magical compared with earlier DACs - when all else is equal. My DAC did get to do the round trip by the way - thanks to your recommendation. I even upgraded my Meridian 566-20 to 566-24 on the strength of the experience - also very worthwhile.

At the risk of being boring on the technical side, there are real problems with PCM when trying to up the word length. The DAC chip has to incorporate resistor values that start with a value and then halve the value for the next resistor, then halve that again, etc till the 24 bits are provided. Providing these resistor values accurately on a chip and those values staying stable over time and with changes in temperature is very expensive and not really achieved accurately in standard chips. Therefore there is distortion and noise created (called non-linearity). This is one of the downside problems of pushing PCM up to the 24/192 standard. Sony's SACD uses DSD, which avoids this problem but creates its own problems. Noteably dCs (Elgar, Purcell, Delius) uses a mixture of DSD and PCM (putting it crudely) to avoid the problems both have when you push either technology to its limit. Sure the technology you employ is important, but the way it is employed is still likely to be the big differentiator for a long time.