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Surely someone can weigh in

Posted this a week or so ago under "digital" but got no responses. 

A while back, I needed a CD player to replace my Madrigal Audio Labs Proceed player that no longer wanted to read discs. Not wanting to spend a lot of money, I took a flyer on a direct marketed CD player from a Swedish company called XTZ. I couldn't find a lot of reviews or info on their CD100 CD player but what I did find caught my interest. The CD player is fairly substantial at just under 20 lbs, uses a Class A output stage built around discrete components, has numerous outputs including balanced XLR, and uses separate transformers for the digital and analog sections. It's also nicely styled with a full function hefty remote though some of the unit's control functions are a bit quirky.

In any case, the player uses an Analog Devices AD1955 DAC which upsamples to 384 KHz! I don't believe I've ever seen a DAC with a spec that can upsample at this rate. My question is...is this just some marketing gingerbread (like power specs) or should I expect something really special because of the high upsampling rate?
Surely someone can weigh in with a response. 

J.Chip
128x128jchiappinelli
erik_squires
16,060 posts
 
Hey,
I think that DACs got really good about 12-15 years ago. Upsampling and high resolution doesn't make as much of a difference with new DACs as it did with older one's. Maybe because clock and jitter circuits got cheap and good.

Older DACs sounded much better by upsampling. Now, the Redbook signal sounds really good.

To me, the 384 kHz bandwidth is more about bragging rights. :)


Best,

E
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 
A variety of other factors will affect the ultimate sound signature of that component more than the upsampling rate.
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