Who listens primarily to Redbook CD?

I tend to listen to redbook, for the most part, but I’m using a ladder or R2R DAC. No delta-sigma single bit DAC here.

Which makes a huge difference, IMO. When folks hear it they keep asking me how to get that incredible sound out of digital.

The answer is to find a good ladder dac and (properly) modify the hell out of it.

Or spend a ton of money ($15-50k) for one of the newer discrete dacs that have emerged.(essentially the same design criteria)

I've also been working on designing that particular digital cable for you (and others). The fluid requires a whole different set of analysis, in design, as compared to 'wire'.

To add to what Georgehifi said: About 15 years ago R2R DACs were indeed better sounding than early Delta Sigma DACs. However early Delta Sigma issues (glare) have been resolved and their performance currently far exceeds R2R.

The most lauded and celebrated and lusted after dacs in current cutting edge technology.... are all R2R discrete dacs.

going back in time and buying a 20-24 bit R2R dac unit and upgrading it, and using it for redbook 16/44 playback, will far exceed what any delta-sigma dac can achieve.

The manufactures of the units that use delta-sigma dacs (99.9% of all audio dacs available these days) would gladly use R2R dacs in their units, but those R2R dacs are simply not available at any price.

They are simply too expensive to make via the wafer process for IC manufacturing, in modern times.

You can’t put a $100 chip (when bought in thousand lots) in a $200 or even $800 dac unit. It has to be a $3-8 delta-sigma single-bit dac chip. Which they all are.

In the world of digital....It is a elephantine, 800 pound gorilla in the room, "bull in a china shop" "emperor’s clothes" issue in audio, where we all had to take a DOWNGRADE in musical quality when the industry was forced to call it an UPGRADE (measures well, looks great on paper!), as no alternative existed to go forward and upward with.

The whole thing went Orwellian doublespeak and pear-shaped, due to the introduction of more than 16 bits of resolution. When we went to 20 bits, we could make a $10 (thousand lots) chip, and when we went to 24/96, we could do a $50 (thousand lots) DAC chip, but when we went beyond that..to 24/192 and then 32 bit..we could no longer produce a R2R dac on a chip.

If even possible, they might be some astronomical cost per individual item. Suffice it to say... it is not really possible to do a 32 bit R2R DAC wafer based IC chip... it is a theoretical projection. It simply cannot be done. Price is: infinity. Simply not gonna ever happen.

So we were stuck trying to jerry-rig a delta sigma bit chip to being good. That mess is still being fixed, but the industry cannot wait, so it used and uses..... inferior sounding chips to get to these high sample rates. According to the principle on how a delta-sigma dac works, the problem will never be fixed.

the entire digital audio world took one in the butt and was forced to cover it up in order to stay in business and move onward. Very little was spoken about this when it went down and now that the moment is in the past, the more finalized shape of it ...is saying exactly what I’m saying here.

Obviously, no one wants to say much about it. these things happen. Just like digital originally was a step backward from the best in analog..and it slowly evolved, even digital in it’s own market and design issues, etc...suffered the same fate at a point in it’s evolution. One that is still affecting it today.

The alternative... is a 24 to 32 bit discrete ladder/R2R dac, coming in at about $15k US for a stereo unit as the baseline cost in the market for one of them. Then the price goes up from there.

They (dac chip companies) are coming up with different schemes to improve the delta-sigma base design parameters at the design and execution level (wafer design compatible), and have issued such, but we are still not back to the quality level available from the $50 chips, the 24/96 ladder/R2R dacs that were available in the early-mid 2000's.

The problem for the high end audiophile market is that price drives development as the prime motivator and market force.

Audiophile sound quality aspects are 2nd, 3rd, or 4th down on the list.The next limitation point is the one mentioned, the wafer design/build limits. That's the part that is really getting in the way. Costs vs quality vs technology available. Same questions as ever.

Look for something on this subject from George Rankin (wavelength), is where I would start.

I expect we are looking at a re-clocking issue of some sort.

The vast majority of older CDP's, IIRC, get some of their important aspects of clocking cues from directly off the disc read. I has to do with the original design spec. Ie that the disc read itself is intrusive into the jitter spectrum question. Part of why Sam Tellig of Stereophile thought that some of the first buffering portable CD players sounded quite good. The buffer means the disc read jitter spectrum issue is not directly connected to the emergent waveform of the music signal. That sort of hardware does a re-clocking of a sort.

When we rip, the clocking happens elsewhere and if done well, it can be a better reconstruction of the waveform, jitter spectrum wise.

The given individual case sensitive final clocking set up and reconstruction of the waveform is where it is all at. Which is pretty well what Gordon Rankin is on about.

Note to Geoff: the Popper reference elsewhere made me look him up. Thanks for that. I (and many others, obviously) have similar or parallel conclusions in many ways, but not so explicitly perfected and outlined. I've not spent a lifetime refining it as he had. It's nice to be confirmed in one's ideals/conclusions.(Standford website, I'm still reading...)

And the more I say the more I become a target, which takes you 'round to his thoughts on theories......

One can’t help wondering if copying an audio cassette would also result in a copy that sounded better than the original. Or is that just too crazy?

It is possible that some people might think it does. It has to do with the given individual genetic pre-disposition of "Ear-Q" (hearing intelligence) in the individual’s neurological aspects, and how they learned to hear (how they ended up wiring themselves as they grew-over time) and how they used this feedback loop to wire up and chose a given audio system. Learning speed also plays as part of the IQ and E-Q package in as it changes the size and scope of the field of analysis, and in time, or work done over time, so the final position maybe quite far down the road and encompass much, or ...not.

Since it is connected to their unconscious aspects and flows through the place their reproductive impetus is located, it can get into an intractable and unstoppable force the size of their own life force..when it comes to protecting that given ’position’ on audio. They have to project it and have the world echo-mirror it back, part of the ego awareness loop that passes through the conscious-unconcious barrier.

Which is how you get to intractable positions which are forced upon others --as if said positions are every one else’s reality. Complex sociological aspects are also at play.

And so on.

There’s much more to say but one cannot wire a 50 page explanation for each post, so it can be better received. To err in the smaller post on the side of ease, not pressure and force.

My point is that most people in this thread are saying that Delta-sigma is a fail when it comes to representing the best that digital can do.

The math and the measurements and the science of it can take a walk... if it fails to meet what people think of as representing music. One person proclaiming strongly that it does meet such....does not change that.

What we hear is what we hear and measurement in engineering terms is not what the ear hears or how the ear works. Engineering weighting of error vs signal does not work in the same way the ear does. This is the critical break point in situations that put too much emphasis on science in electrical engineering, and fail to properly work out what the ear does and expects in signal. The ear is not a ’finished’ science. That area of endeavor, physically and neurologically.. is not complete, or as measurable as the electrical engineering.

The problem is almost equivalent to the one where the drunk looks for his keys under the light, even though he lost his keys somewhere else, in the dark. As he can’t see in the dark. Which we recognize as near pointless. One has to go into the dark, as that is where the question and the answer is.

These flame wars are as usual, the people who use their ears.... and... the people who push about science and electrical function.

And few on the electrical side of the argument realize they don't have a complete question and answer set. And they push almost blindly. They tend to weaponize the science and engineering and use it as a stick and firebrand to attack those who use their ears and aren't deeply versed in the science end of the pool. It is, in it's extreme cases... in a word, incorrect or incomplete, as positions go.

Norm has a fix for that: he rebuilds and mods out gear, all the time. :)