Delta Sigma DACs

Cheeg, The product of Delta Sigma converter is square wave with modulated duty cycle (Pulse Width Modulation).  The only processing necessary to convert it to analog is to filter (average) it.  DSD (and SACD) is the same product od Delta Sigma converter.

Can a Delta-Sigma DAC translate both DSD and PCM streams to analog?

Yes it can do both, it’s needed for DSD, but if PCM is your priorty (that’s Redbook 16/44, 24/96, or DXD), then your better off for best sound quality with a "well implemented" R2R Multibit dac, discrete or chip, as they do PCM bit perfect, while Delta Sigma is a facsimile it.

MoJo Music.
"When a PCM file is played on a native DSD Delta Sigma single-bit converter, the single-bit DAC chip has to convert the PCM to DSD in real-time. This is one of the major reasons people claim DSD sounds better than PCM, when in fact, it is just that the chip in most modern Delta Sigma single-bit DACs do a poor job of decoding PCM."

Cheers George

No DAC is perfect. All modern Delta Sigma DACs are actually bit perfect in operation however the noise floor (or resolution) on the very best is about 21 bits. So nothing does 24 bit even remotely perfectly so far. Most good quality delta sigma will be close to bit perfect at 16 bits. However be wary of R-2R DACs as many are only 18 bit or often less (16 bit). For example, the Schiit DACs perform truncation to 24 bit digital data - these are grossly NOT bit perfect because of this throwing away of the least significant bits of data - worse still the truncation operation introduces high amouts of added quantization noise distortion. Definitely about as far from bit perfect as you can get in a modern DAC.

The other factor in many DACs is the final brick wall filter - this causes the final analog result to be slightly different depending on the filter design.

A good DAC and it’s ADC equivalent can be looped more than 10 times with no audible differences.

A bit perfect DAC and its ADC could in theory be looped infinitely and the sound would be identical - so far none exists.


DSD or PCM are just different formats. Mathematically they can be an equally accurate representation of the original musical analog waveform. It is just mathematics - 16 or 24 bit at low sample rate or DSD 1 bit representation at very high frequency. DSD has inherently a huge amount of high frequency noise which must be removed and contains no added audible benefit. Since PCM is what all studios use it is undoubtedly the closest and best distribution format to remain faithful to the product coming from the studios and the mastering process. 

Let's not start this delta sigma vs. R2R chip. You are not going to win.

Jwm, nobody is trying to win anything (that would be juvenile).  Sound quality is a matter of DAC quality and not the architecture.  When you listen to SACD or DSD you're listening to the output of the Delta Sigma converter.