Question on how DAC’s work...


Hello all!

In my system, my digital sources are a Denon DVD-2900 disc player (CD/DVD-Audio/SACD) & a Bluesound Vault 2. Most of my listening these days is done with the Vault 2 streaming Tidal, especially the growing catalog of MQA offerings. 

My first question is, if I were to start using an external DAC, and that DAC does not have MQA compatibility, would I still be getting the potential of “better sound” from the external DAC even though the Vault is doing all the unfolding?

My second question is if my disc player exports SACD at a different bit-rate than what the DAC is capable of, will the DAC upscale or alter the bit-rate to get better performance?

Sorry if these are rudimentary questions, but the only DAC I’ve purchased to this point is a Meridian Explorer 2 that I’m using in a PC audio setup & was pretty much plug & play. 

Thanks for any help...Hope you’re all doing well!

Arvin
arvincastro

Showing 5 responses by djones51

The Vault isn't unfolding MQA if you're passing the digital signal to another dac via digital out, it unfolds if you use the Vaults dac and analog outputs. 
If your preference is to do Tidal MQA and you don't want to use the Bluesound Vault dac you would need a MQA capable dac to do the complete unfold. 
My second question is if my disc player exports SACD at a different bit-rate than what the DAC is capable of, will the DAC upscale or alter the bit-rate to get better performance?
If you use digital out to an external dac the Denon will only do PCM you're not getting the SACD signal to the external dac so it will play the 16/44 layer. Of course some dacs can upsample/oversample. 
The denon DVD 2900, at least the US version, has digital coax and optical outputs. Only the 44.1/16 layer of a hybrid SACD will play out. The DSD bitstream of a DVD video will pass to an AV processor on the digital out. 
I just read your reply. Are you saying if I connected my Bluesound Node 2i to an external DAC using digital coax, I could achieve complete unfold of MQA 

To get the complete unfold of MQA with an external DAC  the external DAC needs to be MQA compatible, some DAC's will do a partial unfold to 96k.