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
FYI, I had occasion to speak to the guys at Theta about the Casanova recently. According to them the DSPro is significantly better.
That's because all the 8 "Pro's" (except for the Pro Prime which was DS ) were all R2R and for PCM Redbook it's better, just like what we all expereienced with the two Shanling models in my last post.

Cheers George  
No, is not that simple.The cassanova card (at least the one i was holding) is also R2R. And all the DSPro's from Gen 1 were R2R. In fact, in 1994 i don't think there were sigma-delta chips yet. One of the big changes to the V and 8 was re-clocking (jitter, here we go again)

I was going to avoid the technical details, but it had to do mostly with the DSP power to execute the digital pre-filtering.
G
And all the DSPro’s from Gen 1 were R2R
Sorry, but the Pro prime was only one of the Pro series to be Delta Sigma it used the DS chip SAA7350GP. The Pro Prime II was not DS it had 2 x PCM67P-K R2R chips


In fact, in 1994 i don’t think there were sigma-delta chips yet
Sorry again, but whatever you want to call it (Delta Sigma, Bitstream, 1 Bit, Mash ect ect ) In 1984, at the Eindhoven AES convention, that Robert Adams of dbx presented a paper on their 1-bit adaptive delta-modulation A/D- and D/A-conversion system.
I had "one" of the first DS based chips in 1990 the Technics SL-PS70

No, is not that simple.The cassanova card (at least the one i was holding) is also R2R.
Sorry again the manual and other sources states it uses for D/A 24bit Delta Sigma dacs and that they are 94khz compatible. Just as the Casablanca does also.
And the A/D section conversion is also Delta Sigma but just 20bit.


I had occasion to speak to the guys at Theta about the Casanova recently. According to them the DSPro is significantly better.
This is also correct, as the DS Pro’s except for the Pro Prime, are all R2R and not DS.

Cheers George