Bel canto DAC 2

John,

the DAC2 user manual/guide is available here:
http://www.belcantodesign.com/pdfs/UG_DAC2.pdf

I have a gut feeling that you can feed it a 24/96 signal, say, from a Monarchy 24/96 DIP unit & it will accept that signal just fine.
I've not personally tried feeding it a DVD-A 24/96 signal so I cannot say for sure w.r.t. this.

I just hooked up my Bel Canto PL-2 (digi-out) into the DAC 2 and I'm getting the red light, meaning it's not reading the digital signal. No problems with 16bit - green lights all the time. The 24 bit disc is in dvd-a format. Reads and plays fine through the RCA analog outs, just not through the digital out on the PL-2. Shouldn't be any copyrights or anything as I burned this myself. So perhaps the DAC 2 cannot accept a 24bit signal? Hard to tell just by reading the manual. But it says it can play 24/96 DAD recordings. Is this different than DVD-audio? My dvd-audio disc is 24/48.

is it set to PCM out on the player's menu?

A regular dac will not work with SACD or DVD audio discs. You have to use your analog outs.

Thanks for the info, appreciate it. I'm learning... slowly.

John2525: Does the DAC 2 provide an improvement for CDs over the analog outputs of the PL-2? I am going to try a PL-2 and was hoping the PL-2 would be good enough as is and not need an outboard DAC. I would think the analog outputs of the PL-2 would sound very close to the PL-2 going through a DAC 2.

I haven't had much of a chance as of yet to do an honest comparison. But I will in time. I got the DAC 2 more so for other digital sources I have, such as the PC, DAT, other hard drive recorders. Also, I like playing dvd-audio discs which will not output a digital signal from the PL-2. So far, I'm very satisfied with the analog outputs on the pl-2 > Cayin A-70T > VR2's