Any discussion about DAC Technology should include the developments made by Rob Watts and John Franks of Chord Electronics. Custom Coded FPGA chips with over 500k lines of code replace off the shelf DAC chips. Thier new Hugo TT 2 also receives the benefit of an upgrade from 4-element design to a 10-element design, which works in harmony with the radically upgraded FPGA and code. In comparison to the 256-tap filters that traditional chip DACs may run, Hugo TT 2’s more powerful Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA, custom-coded by Chord Electronics’ Rob Watts, with 86x 208MHz cores running in parallel to create an advanced 16FS WTA 1 filter with 98,304-taps. That horsepower does more than just connect the dots of data to create an analog waveform, it creates a soundscape.
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The Linn Klimax DSM Katalyst is WOW sounding. Go out and hear one. You will be drooling. All Klimax DSs can be upgraded to the 4th Generation DAC Linn make today. Also the older boards can be Renewed to play in other rooms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1t6hZdKXLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGKEV7v7T8 |
For me, I like my converters to be transparent - If I want color I'd rather do that in other areas of the audio chain. To test the transparency of digital audio is actually pretty easy. You just have to make a digital copy of an analog recording (tape or vinyl, for instance) and do a double blind test to see if anyone can hear the difference. I believe such a test was done with analog tape but I can't seem to find it on google. Does anyone know about it? |
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