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High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Blame it on The Rolling Stones.
junzhang10
252 posts
 
I think hi resolution music 96/24 file for same remaster will sound better than red book 44.1/16 on the same delta-sigma DAC. Of couse, 44.1/16 will sound very natural from R2R compare to 96/24 on delta-sigma.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,885 posts
 
Hear, hear. 😄
No real need to upsample to dizzying heights. 16bit is good enough. Always has been. It's just taken technology time to catch up with the science behind it. Although, a recording engineer told me that 96 is the better way to go than 44.1 but it's not a deal breaker.

All the best,
Nonoise
junzhang10
252 posts
 
If Tidal offers same album: 44.1/16 and 96/24 (MQA). I will stream MQA. Of course, all through delta-sigma DAC. If I had a very good R2R dAC (16 or 20 bit), then I would try native R2R. I don't know if there is an affordable 24bit R2R DAC yet.

celander's avatar
celander
1,503 posts
 
Agree. The Redbook standard was likely sufficient all along. Just needed a good DAC to properly decode it. Low-jitter transports also contributed to this realization. 
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