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In Reply to: RE: Sabre DAC not 32-bit? posted by Thorsten on August 03, 2010 at 04:01:24
I think the D/A chain needing noise shaping at all is an indication of a flawed design, because the noise shaping suggests *lossy* conversion is taking place, and hence the need for the "band aid" application of noise shaping to mitigate the losses.
A good D/A should process the data at full resolution, in which all internal conversions are "lossless". In such case, noise shaping wouldn't be necessary.
Follow Ups:
Todd,
I personally think that any AD and DA chain that needs noise shaping is flawed, yet that is what the industry gives us.
And SACD/DSD is nothing but noiseshaping but many like it (I don't like it as much as CD done well or hi-rez PCM).
I am looking very hard at alternatives, but it seems not easy.
So we have choices between various unpalatable alternatives regarding ADC's and we are almost at the same point regarding DAC's now.
Ciao T
Sometimes I'd like to be the water
sometimes shallow, sometimes wild.
Born high in the mountains,
even the seas would be mine.
(Translated from the song "Aus der ferne" by City)
Thorsten, what about the MSB Diamond DAC. Hype or some truth to their claim?
Hi,
Your link is to a complete assembled Digital/Analog Converter device (eg including box, supplies etc.). The original discussion was primarily about the core part (usually a chip) for a complete DAC.
From what I can make out, the DAC used is a Multibit DAC, which would fall into my "Category 2" in the above list.
That is it has the ability to represent 26 (or 27, the information seems a little confused) Bit's worth of levels through it' bit-switches, however noise levels are such that the lowest levels are actually below the noise level.
I seem to remember around 130dB A weighted Dynamic range (A-weighting tends to add around 10dB to the numbers), so the real dynamic range is somewhere between 20 and 22 Bit.
Based on Gordon Rankin's measurements of the ESS Sabre the Sabre seems to offfer a little more dynamic range, but it uses noise shaping to attain it.
Ciao T
Sometimes I'd like to be the water
sometimes shallow, sometimes wild.
Born high in the mountains,
even the seas would be mine.
(Translated from the song "Aus der ferne" by City)
Here is a schematic of the core DAC itself. I think the main difference between the Platinum, Signature, and Diamond core DAC is the use of higher tolerance discrete resistors in the core DAC as you move up the line.
Hi Thornsten, I see your point. The reason I pointed out the entire DAC was to show that it seems they have gone in great lengths do decrease the noise floor of their power supply, among other things, for the Diamond DAC. There noise floor seems to average between 160 and 170 dB. I'm not sure many complete DAC package with those kind of noise figure for the power supply. Even if the effective dynamic range is "only" 130 dB for the Diamond DAC, at least power supply noise won't drown it out.
"The Diamond DAC contains EIGHT 24 bit DACs per module for a true 26 bit resolution. "
26?
Hype ...
bring bac k dynamic range
May be but could it be at least 24 bit? It is afterall a multibit DAC, not delta sigma. They seemed to have gone to extraordinary length to recover the last couple of bits from noise (electrical, magnetic, and thermal).
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