Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

I think you don’t know what your talking about. Delta sigma beat discrete how could that be if information is missing?

@jwm 

In answer to your question, please refer to the post I directed to audioengr 01-13-2018 7:34pm. Thanks.

If the Bricasti was not used with Ethernet through it’s own internal board then no contest. Through usb it’s good but not great. I had the latest total dac and the Bricasti had way more dynamics. There was nothing about the total dac that was better. If you like hi fi sound then I could see how you could like the total dac. 

Hi Hal,

I would put it that delta-sigma is a **less direct** way of accomplishing D/A conversion than R2R. However, the results of BOTH approaches are approximations, in the sense that what comes out does not correspond to what goes in to an infinitely precise degree. And of course the same goes for everything else in the recording and reproduction chain, both theoretically and in terms of the various practical implementations, from the recording microphones to the speakers in our listening rooms and everything in between. Even the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, which underlies A/D conversion, D/A conversion, and essentially all digital signal processing, is an approximation in any real world implementation. (For example, note in that Wikipedia page the various equations involving integrals or summations that are taken from minus infinity to plus infinity).

So in that sense **everything** in the recording and reproduction chain is lossy, to some degree. Which of course tells us nothing whatsoever about which design approaches and which practical implementations of those approaches are to be preferred. But my perception and belief, as evidenced in part by various posts from highly experienced audiophiles in this very thread, has been that depending on the specific implementation both approaches can provide results which are satisfactory to many, at pretty much all price points that can be considered to be audiophile-oriented.

It’s as simple as that, IMO.

Best regards,
-- Al

@almarg

Thank you so much Al for putting all of this into lets call it "much better perspective". Given what you are stating - that in a sense everything in the recording and reproduction chain is lossy - can/would you provide your opinion, even if mere speculation, as to what Schiit is meaning by their statement:

"we can’t get over the fact that delta-sigma DACs throw away all the original samples"

This appears to indicate samples - which I assume and perhaps is implied is equivalent to music - is in fact lost, at least to a greater degree than could or otherwise should be lost.

Hi Hal,

I would begin my answer to your question just above by noting the second sentence in the Wikipedia writeup on delta-sigma which you linked to:

It [delta-sigma] is also used to convert high bit-count, low-frequency digital signals into lower bit-count, higher-frequency digital signals as part of the process to convert digital signals into analog as part of a digital to analog converter (DAC).

So in that sense, yes, the original samples are "thrown away."  However that says nothing at all about the degree to which musical information is lost in the process.

And regarding my opinion, I would say that as is usually the case in audio how well a design approach is implemented can be expected to be more important than which approach is chosen.

Best regards,
-- Al