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High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires

Showing 2 responses by emcdade

emcdade
95 posts
 
Media sample rate takes a backseat to recording quality no doubt.

However I am now a convert to upsampling and there is no going back.  I upsample all files to DSD 512 and play back through the T+A DAC8 DSD’s single bit chipless DSD converter.

While there are many “sounds the same” DACs around $2k that are very good, the T+A Dac is more than a couple notches above these.  How much of that is due to the upsampling and more powerful filtering, I don’t know.

I can’t help but think this method is going to gain more and more traction as CPU cycles get cheaper because it’s another significant step up.
emcdade
95 posts
 
@gosta  

All local files and streams including Tidal, etc. are first converted to DSD 512 on my server PC before heading to my Windows 10 streamer and finally through the DAC 8 DSD chipless converter.  As long as you have server horsepower, you can even use DSP while doing this, which is fantastic to tame a bass mode or to use as a balance control.

The PCM side of the DAC is ok, but once you hear DSD 512 there's no going back.  There's more texture, better tone, soundstage expands in every direction, imaging is more precise AND has more density (that is the hardest trick to pull off IMO).  It really is something.
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