It isn't the bits, it's the hardware


I have been completely vindicated!

Well, at least there is an AES paper that leaves the door open to my observations. As some of you who follow me, and some of you follow me far too closely, I’ve said for a while that the performance of DAC’s over the last ~15 years has gotten remarkably better, specifically, Redbook or CD playback is a lot better than it was in the past, so much so that high resolution music and playback no longer makes the economic sense that it used to.

My belief about why high resolution music sounded better has now completely been altered. I used to believe we needed the data. Over the past couple of decades my thinking has radically and forever been altered. Now I believe WE don’t need the data, the DACs needed it. That is, the problem was not that we needed 30 kHz performance. The problem was always that the DAC chips themselves performed differently at different resolutions. Here is at least some proof supporting this possibility.

Stereophile published a link to a meta analysis of high resolution playback, and while they propose a number of issues and solutions, two things stood out to me, the section on hardware improvement, and the new filters (which is, in my mind, the same topic):



4.2
The question of whether hardware performance factors,possibly unidentified, as a function of sample rate selectively contribute to greater transparency at higher resolutions cannot be entirely eliminated.

Numerous advances of the last 15 years in the design of hardware and processing improve quality at all resolutions. A few, of many, examples: improvements to the modulators used in data conversion affecting timing jitter,bit depths (for headroom), dither availability, noise shaping and noise floors; improved asynchronous sample rate conversion (which involves separate clocks and conversion of rates that are not integer multiples); and improved digital interfaces and networks that isolate computer noise from sensitive DAC clocks, enabling better workstation monitoring as well as computer-based players. Converters currently list dynamic ranges up to∼122 dB (A/D) and 126–130 dB(D/A), which can benefit 24b signals.

Now if I hear "DAC X performs so much better with 192/24 signals!" I don't get excited. I think the DAC is flawed.
erik_squires
Sorry, but I forgot 268 billion TIMES higher resolution.  And yes, I thought 32 bit processing would be correct but the rep specifically stated 36 bit processing.  Maybe he made an error in his presentation.  At 2:15  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb_LBRSefvE  I've heard this system using my own LP and CDs.  The best system I ever heard and my wife said it was uniquely musical.  Of course, it was $1.4 million.  
I did not hear this latest version of the Esoteric transport or DAC, but the 2018 version so I cannot comment if this latest one sounds any different.
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It's in the FPGA

The D-02X uses 32 (16 + 16) DAC circuits to achieve its low-noise and phenomenal linearity. Its AK4490 chipsets are produced by Asahi Kasei Microdevices. In addition to directly processing DSD signals, a new 36-bit D/A processing algorithm performs analog conversion of the PCM signal at 36-bit resolution for smooth, delicately detailed high-resolution sound