2. digital
  3. 155131-20253

It isn't the bits, it's the hardware

I have been completely vindicated!

Well, at least there is an AES paper that leaves the door open to my observations. As some of you who follow me, and some of you follow me far too closely, I’ve said for a while that the performance of DAC’s over the last ~15 years has gotten remarkably better, specifically, Redbook or CD playback is a lot better than it was in the past, so much so that high resolution music and playback no longer makes the economic sense that it used to.

My belief about why high resolution music sounded better has now completely been altered. I used to believe we needed the data. Over the past couple of decades my thinking has radically and forever been altered. Now I believe WE don’t need the data, the DACs needed it. That is, the problem was not that we needed 30 kHz performance. The problem was always that the DAC chips themselves performed differently at different resolutions. Here is at least some proof supporting this possibility.

Stereophile published a link to a meta analysis of high resolution playback, and while they propose a number of issues and solutions, two things stood out to me, the section on hardware improvement, and the new filters (which is, in my mind, the same topic):



4.2
The question of whether hardware performance factors,possibly unidentified, as a function of sample rate selectively contribute to greater transparency at higher resolutions cannot be entirely eliminated.

Numerous advances of the last 15 years in the design of hardware and processing improve quality at all resolutions. A few, of many, examples: improvements to the modulators used in data conversion affecting timing jitter,bit depths (for headroom), dither availability, noise shaping and noise floors; improved asynchronous sample rate conversion (which involves separate clocks and conversion of rates that are not integer multiples); and improved digital interfaces and networks that isolate computer noise from sensitive DAC clocks, enabling better workstation monitoring as well as computer-based players. Converters currently list dynamic ranges up to∼122 dB (A/D) and 126–130 dB(D/A), which can benefit 24b signals.

Now if I hear "DAC X performs so much better with 192/24 signals!" I don't get excited. I think the DAC is flawed.
erik_squires
heaudio123
689 posts
 
People still use CDs for live playback in 2020?


On a serious note I doubt there would be many audiophile CD players in the last decade(s) that are not reading ahead if not retrying and buffering on digital output rendering jitter at the player level non existent and if you treat your CDs in any half decent fashion like I assume most audiophiles do, then uncorrectable errors are rare, and as per previous statement as the data is reclocked, any timing issues from pipeline processing of the error correction isn't an issue.


Oh, and this thread is not about CDs.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 

heaudio

On a serious note I doubt there would be many audiophile CD players in the last decade(s) that are not reading ahead if not retrying and buffering on digital output rendering jitter at the player level non existent and if you treat your CDs in any half decent fashion like I assume most audiophiles do, then uncorrectable errors are rare, and as per previous statement as the data is reclocked, any timing issues from pipeline processing of the error correction isn’t an issue.Enter your text …


>>>>>One assumes that is pure speculation or maybe wishful thinking.

djones51
4,947 posts
 

This is expensive but it might address all those "problems" with CD playback.


http://www.esoteric-usa.com/Products/audio-players/Grandioso-K1.php
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Still, no matter how expensive it cannot address the self inflicted fluttering of the CD itself. As for the other problems I mentioned, it remains to be seen whether the Esoteric addresses any of them.
heaudio123
689 posts
 

>>>>>One assumes that is pure speculation or maybe wishful thinking.


Or, contrary to the post the reply was too, it was factual knowledge, and not an opinion or an unproven and evidence lacking hypothesis.
The CD can flop around like a beached whale in a tsunami, but unless there are unrecoverable errors, a buffered and reclocked modern audiophile player's output is not going to be effected.
This isn't the 80's and 90's when due to cost and limited functionality of player mechanisms you were beholden to the recovery of data impacting the clock PLL, and jitter due to the variable error recovery pipeline.
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