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RE: Not possible?

Rip the test disk and examine the samples numerically. You will find that no sample deviates from the allowed range of -32768 to +32767, inclusive. Therefore this test disk is a legal CD. A DAC should play it undistorted. If a DAC can not play it, it is a DAC problem. The most likely cause is limiting in the output of a digital filter. That this happens is evidence that the DAC designer was more interested in good numbers on a spec sheet rather than good sound. By sacrificing less than 1 dB of signal to noise ratio this problem could have been avoided.

Your comment about "hot" CDs is something else. In most cases idiot producers, engineers, and/or musicians are deliberately distorting their "music" with compression and even clipping in the hopes of selling copies to idiot customers who have never heard of a volume control. None of these CDs are too hot, they are just poor. When played on a good system they will sound the same as they did when played in the mastering studio.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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