Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Hi Matt- yes, my experience has been that hearing speakers or electronics in another system has little value. Gotta hear it at home and ideally for a decent stretch of time.

I'm looking to put a "short list" of CD/SACD players and stand alone DACs into the context of the design- delta sigma, R2R, etc. And then note for each the analog stage design, power supply or other important distinguishing engineering. Thought it might be a nice way to put them into some perspective and then see how it evolves over time.

-Josh

Yes. I got my Regen last week.
No, I haven't tried it yet.
Been crazy at work and have been practically obsessing about picking out my speaker.

I've had a crazy amount of speakers going through the room and seam to be narrowing it down nicely. My issue is that the pair I really really emotionally bond with are crazy expensive and the pair I'm comparing them with (which are exceptional but I can't quite seam to connect with as much) are way less expensive.

I still need to give the Vandy 7's another listen and have a few others I'm looking at. But the Marten Tenors grab my heart and my soul every time I put them back in the system.

Once I get that all settled I'll try the Regen and report. I also need to get that Bricasti M1 in to try. And I'd like to see if I can get John to bring over that Romulus Sig CD/DAC to try as well.

Well for starters Jh901 the top of the line MSB uses their own designed discrete version of R2R Ladder Multibit.

"MSB Sign Magnitude R2R DAC

MSB has always known the ladder was a superior conversion method and introduced the world’s first discrete 24 bit Sign Magnitude R2R Ladder DAC. The term Sign Magnitude describes the special architecture we use that dramatically improves the sound of low level signals. Instead of always starting at the lower limit of the signal and adding voltage to reach the music signal, we start at the midpoint, or zero crossing, where music is quiet, and we either add or subtract voltage to get the required signal. Because this requires a much smaller addition or subtraction on average, it can be done much more accurately.

MSB has designed and built a new proprietary R2R architecture that far exceeds the performance of the original ladder DAC design. The performance of a Ladder DAC is defined by the precision of the resistors. There are hundreds of very expensive aerospace grade resistors on each MSB module producing a DAC with a level of precision that is unheard of. The noise floor (the lowest sound that can reproduced), is much lower than most test systems can even measure. But most important to MUSIC rather than TEST SIGNALS, and very different from Delta Sigma DACs the MSB DAC module are most accurate with signals crossing zero, where music actually exists.

Sample Rates

When we talk about digital sample rate we mean the speed of the bits in kHz. CDs are 44.1 kHz (44.1 thousand times per second), and higher resolutions typically go up to 192 kHz with the next generation of hi-res recordings just now available at 384 kHz. MSB DAC modules can operate beyond 5 mHz (5 million times per second), so these modules can receive and reproduce all current formats and conceivable future formats for many years to come. Unlike Delta Sigma DACs the performance of the MSB ladder DAC actually gets better with more bit depth and recording resolution. Low level resolution is recovered to an extraordinary degree"

Cheers George

Hi George. Thanks , that was great. I am actually considering the new msb V series. Looks very intriguing. I'm working an audition hopefully later this summer. I'll report when I can.

From a technical standpoint, the paragraphs George quoted from the MSB literature all make sense to me, as opposed to being the kind of marketing techno-babble that seems all too common in audio-related white papers and other literature.

An additional theoretical advantage of using sign-magnitude architecture in a ladder DAC implementation, besides the one that is stated, is that the "offset binary" architecture they seem to be implying is used in other ladder DAC implementations will cause all of the bits to toggle (i.e., to change from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1) **simultaneously** at or near the critical 0 volt crossing. Which in turn can contribute to noise issues at that crossing, and hence degrade resolution at very low signal levels. With sign-magnitude, only a few bits would toggle at or near the 0 crossing.

I'd have to add, also, that providing 20.8 to 28.5 effective bits using a ladder approach, depending on model, as shown here, and not just for the D/A circuit but for the unit as a whole, is quite an amazing achievement. Primarily because of the incredibly tight +/- tolerances that would have to be met by the resistors in the ladder.

Which leads me to the one concern that is raised in my mind by a quick look at their writeups. Their focus seems to be on achieving the best possible performance at very low signal levels, i.e., near the 0 crossing. Which arguably makes a lot of sense. But consistent with that, I see in the figure I linked to that their measurements comparing their results with those of delta-sigma DACs were taken with the test signal at -90 db, a very low level. So what I wonder is how well the much superior performance of their approach that is depicted in the graph would hold up at moderate to high signal levels, if in fact it would hold up at all.

Just some thoughts to keep in mind. Best regards,
-- Al