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In Reply to: RE: Question concerning NOS DACs posted by DAVID on November 23, 2014 at 13:00:44
All the DACs I've ever owned have only analog outputs. They don't have digital outputs. Therefore, regardless of what digital signal I feed them, they give me an analog signal out assuming they are capable of converting the digital signal I feed them.
Best regards,
John Elison
Follow Ups:
...that's what DACs do, convert digital to analog. But I'm wondering if there are NOS DACs that do not over/upsample the signal but pass it along natively resulting in higer rez analog output. In other words they don't "dumb down" the hi-rez to Redbook.
I know very little about DACs, but I have never heard of a down-sampling DAC. I think all NOS DACs convert the signal to analog directly from the sampling rate they receive.
If you are really concerned, there is a very simple way to find out. All you need is a digital recorder that records at the sampling rate you are concerned about. Using a square wave generator, record a 1-kHz square wave. Play the digital square wave through your NOS DAC and look at the output on an oscilloscope. Count the ripples on the top of the square wave and that will tell you whether the square wave was down-sampled before it was converted to analog. Here is what a 1-kHz square wave looks like from a 16/44 digital recording.
The same 1-kHz square wave recorded at 24/96 will have twice as many ripples. I made this test on my Alesis Masterlink to determine whether it was actually doing an A/D/A conversion in its record monitor mode. I discovered it was doing the A/D/A conversion and I also discovered it was doing it at the sampling rate at which it was set.
Good luck,
John Elison
...I think I might have a little trouble getting ahold of a signal generator and o-scope. Might be fun though.
Any audio editor will generate a digital "square wave". Some are free, others have free trial downloads. This will take care of the "digital signal generator" portion.
You can also use a sound card to capture an analog signal, e.g. the output of a DAC. You can then use an audio editor to plot the resulting waveform.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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