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 1 response by fredlobo

I am of two minds.  I have about 8K red book titles ripped to flac. Recently I upgraded my bridge to a SOtM sMS-200 Neo and was blown away.  My little Teac NT-503 never sounded better.  When I added the external word clock and Ben's Illuminati DC power it was unbelievable.  The CDs were alive!  But...  I also have quite a few HiRes files that sound great too.  I have found that those DSDs from analog master tape just sing.  Yeah it's mostly the mastering, but the best sounding files in my collection are DSD256s.

All that said, I have started buying 10" Jazz and Classical records.  In mono!