Anyone listening to 24/196?


If so, what DAC are you using? The Benchmark can intake those signals, but it downsamples them to 110. The BelCanto can't take them. The Bryston BDA-1 is one of the few non-megabuck DACs that can take 192 as an input.

Anything else under 3k?

From Bryston materials: "The CS-4398 operates in one of three oversampling modes based on the input sample rate. Single-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 50 kHz and uses a 128x oversampling ratio. Double-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 100 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 64x. Quad-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 200 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 32x."
lightminer
I downloaded some 24/96 albums from HDTracks. You can never speak in absolutes on these things because there are so many variables but they clearly sound better to me. There's a certain something there (an anolog sounding somthing) that is an improvement over regular redbook. I wold have everything in 24/96 if I could. Nicely fluid, detailed, organic, whole from top to bottom.

Absolutely; there’s no question about it. Also try http://bluecoastrecords.com/ which has a limited selection of exceptionally well-recorded acoustic material, which is recorded live on location and produced/recorded with great care. The Keith Greeninger stuff is fantastic (you can listen to samples prior to buying the download). The files are in 24/96 WAV, but you can convert them to Flac if you want to via "Foobar" (which is a free download).
Anybody bought any really pricey Linn downloads.They have Carrol Kidd whose a great jazz vocalist.
Chazz
reference recordings has also released much of their catalog in this format, as well as classic recordings..
I have a Northstar 192 Mark II DAC that can take the 24/192 signal. This is actually a pretty darn good dac and if you have a CDT/P outputting this signal, it may be worth your consideration. They are $2500-2700 new (I am not sure of the exact price), but can be purchased used for under $1,500 easily. I bought this DAC only to try out as I was buying a Northstar transport. I never intended to keep the DAC (unless it outperformed by DCS stack - which I felt was extremely unlikely - and accurate). But it did do a great job and for that price, was a really incredible piece. I can also take an I2S input from a computer and you can output from your computer at the 24/192 rates.
in the pro world, you have the apogee rosetta that will decode 24/192. but you will need double wire double speed digital AESEBU to do so, and its under 3K.