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Can Digital beat our Analog installations?

Having gone a long walk on developing my analog systems I am addicted to phono reproduction. Nevertheless I always kept an eye on CDs and also SACDs. Before I currently updated my digital dCS chain to the complete Scarlatti boxes I experimented on the best wordclocking connections. in the end I decided going for an additional rubidium clock added to my Verona master clock.

I am using also a second system equipped with the Accuphase 800 drive and 801 DAC, an Esoteric XO1 Limited and a Wadia 861 SE for other utilization. Let's concentrate on the dCS stack. These four boxes are sounding such good and analog like that I like to question my friends, Why isn't Digital an alternative to our best analogue chains?

So it's time comparing digital vs. analog systems and maybe some sophisticated digital chains are beating our sophisticated analog systems. Will it be possible?
thuchan
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,099 posts
 
Jfrech and Thuchan, while I agree that the software plays a huge role, I feel like I have to point out an often overlooked issue:

We often see very well done digital recordings. They sound amazing, and seem to challenge analog reproduction. The question though really is- what would this same recording sound like if the master was analog instead of digital? I ask this because you might be surprised at how modest the record chain can be in an excellent digital recording (although there are recordings that sport some high end hardware in the record chain too). What I am getting at here is how easily a good analog recording system can best the best of digital. It can do it in a heartbeat.

If you are playing an LP that has a digital master, it quite often can sound better than the CD simply because it is mastered from the master file and has less data loss. But you really aren't hearing what that LP can do unless it also has an analog master.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,702 posts
 
The topic has been beat to death here over the last couple years. Not much new to say unless specific questions asked or making specific comparisons of specific products as opposed to digital versus analog in general.

"I'll go out on a limb and say wireless wi-fi connection is dramatically inferior"

Better climb back in a little.

I am a fan of the DCS Ring DAC technology...just waiting to be able to afford it again someday maybe.

Meanwhile my non oversampling mhdt Constantine DAC (<$400 used) does the job quite nicely for me and does not sound "digital".
thuchan OP
1,009 posts
 
Czarivey,

To lock the DAC to a word clock signal, it is necessary to synchronise the DAC's internal clock with a Phase-Locked Loop. You cannot do that directly from (for example) an SPDIF cable carrying digital audio. Therefore you are using separate wordclocking cables going from the sources (CD, DAT, Upsampler, Laptop etc.) to the Dac or to a Master Clock (here including the Dac as source - in slaving mode).

Wordclock is "something digital" -SPDIF see under Wikipedia
czarivey
5,946 posts
 
Thanks Jf, That's what I thought of some kind of synonym to our ordinary digital cable "wordclocking".
thuchan OP
1,009 posts
 
Czarivey,

maybe this is also helpful:

Word clock is used inside electronic equipment as part of an I2S interface, which conveys PCM digital data in serial format between chips (e.g. FPGA chip to DSP chip). I2S consists of 3 connections:
- serial data (both channels multiplexed together)
- bit clock (used to clock each bit into the receiver)
- word clock

A word clock signal is a square wave with very fast edges and the same frequency as the (PCM) sample rate. Word clock carries no digital data, it used to set the timing of the digital words and select L/R channels.

Word clock has also been used for decades to synchronise different pieces of electronic equipment (e.g. a digital multi-track recording system). The source data MUST be locked to the master clock generating the word clock data. You can use any good-quality 75 ohm BNC coax SPDIF cable for word clock, provided it is DC coupled. Some SPDIF cables have a coupling capacitor in series with the signal wire - these cannot be used for word clock as the capacitor blocks the DC offset.
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