In Reply to: Discrete DAC's posted by The Killer Piglet on November 11, 2016 at 23:56:27:
Discrete (full native resolution/non-sigma-delta) core DACs are driven by the lack of such cores in commerical D/A chips in current production. Commercial audio D/A chip vendors have transitioned to sigma-delta conversion some years ago. There really isn't an objective performance argument in favor of full resolution converters (also commonly, and sometimes incorrectly, referred to as ladder or R-2R converters) in audio applications. The argument usually centers around subjective performance. Some DAC component vendors, such as Audio Note, have been utilizing new old stocks of full resolution converters, such as the AD1865. No doubt, dwindling stocks are driving those same vendors to develop discrete core D/A converters.
That said, producing consistently high performance discrete D/A converters are not a trivial design or manufacturing endeavor. Pretty much, all such discrete solutions will perform objectively worse than the out of production commercial IC versions. Those that do perform well are relatively costly.
_
Ken Newton
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- RE: Discrete DAC's - knewton 07:20:29 11/12/16 (10)
- My unanswered question on these kinds of DAC remain... - DAVID 10:06:14 11/12/16 (3)
- Depends on implementation - BenM 19:59:15 11/12/16 (0)
- RE: My unanswered question on these kinds of DAC remain... - Todd Krieger 14:38:56 11/12/16 (1)
- RE: My unanswered question on these kinds of DAC remain... - ahendler 15:37:39 11/12/16 (0)
- RE: Discrete DAC's - ahendler 07:36:08 11/12/16 (5)
- Precision resistors - jusbe 07:49:34 11/12/16 (4)
- RE: Precision resistors - knewton 08:06:31 11/12/16 (3)
- Yes. Dynamic Element Mathcing (DEM) - jusbe 05:38:04 11/14/16 (2)
- RE: Yes. Dynamic Element Mathcing (DEM) - knewton 12:07:48 11/14/16 (1)
- Cheers. nt - jusbe 13:58:35 11/15/16 (0)