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

so what’s your point?

Take a pill sunshine. I said That the DS PRO PRIME was part of the "DS Pro" series and it was the only one of 9 in that series that was Delta Sigma, the rest all being R2R.

I don’t know what gen Cassanova i was holding

And that the Casanova was also Delta Sigma, it states it in the manual specs and online, here is the page https://ibb.co/zf4T5Xp
You must have been holding on to something else too tight.

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

  The Theta Casanova from memory used the same dac chip/s as the Casablanca which had hybrid PCM-1792A converters in it, few bits of R2R and Delta Sigma mix, it was the time of the transition period from expensive to produce R2R converters such as PCM1704 to much cheaper to make Delta Sigma.

Shanling had two identical (earlier 4x transformer model) T100 units, but one used 4 x mono PCM1704 R2R dacs, the other used 2 x stereo PCM1792 hybrid dacs. The we did a/b’s with them and the one with 4 x R2R PCM1704 dac’s was clearly the better sounding unit with redbook.

Cheers George

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  

Beyond the hype of LP (and new digital formats) what delayed people from finding out how great CD can be were (2) setbacks in digital playback.

One was the giving-up of R2R DACs. This decoding scheme, despite it’s (potential) errors in switching, is still the best way to convert D to A. High-end makers have been returning to this since 2011 and the results are very welcome.

The other unfortunate thing that happened was the switch to hard-disk and SSD sources. The first generation USB standard was a disaster.

All of this has been solved -even if data-connections and converters are still not absolutely perfect. So glad everyone (seems) to be on board !

+1  So true.

Cheers George

fleschler
Does anyone know whether the EAR Acute which uses a Wolfson DAC is R2R or sigma-delta?

The Ear Actute uses the WM8740 which is a Delta Sigma
https://statics.cirrus.com/pubs/proDatasheet/WM8740_v4.4.pdf

The Acute II and III uses the later higher spec’d WM8741 which are also Delta Sigma.
https://statics.cirrus.com/pubs/proDatasheet/WM8741_v4.3.pdf

They had quite a peaked up treble that begun at 5khz which could make them bright to listen to.
https://www.stereophile.com/images/217ear.EARfig04.jpg

Stereophile:
" Although predicting the influence on sound quality of the EAR Acute Classic’s poor rejection of jitter is difficult, I do suspect that AD’s reporting of there being "an excess of high-frequency texture," and sound quality that was "slightly grain[y]," is related to this behavior. As much as I admire Tim de Paravicini’s expertise as an analog engineer, the EAR’s digital circuitry is not up to the standard I expect from him".—John Atkinson

From this you can probably understand why there was 3 different versions of the Acute.

Cheers George

I say again, you hear nothing. 

If you could hear what I’ve heard with my ears.

You say you can hear a difference in the direction of an ac mains fuse, you hear nothing!


Mark Levinson No 30.6
 4 x PCM1704-K + 2 x SHARC ADSP-21061L
" The Mark Levinson No.30.6's measured performance is about as good as it can get. No wonder I liked its sound so much".—John Atkinson

The ML 30.6 is now 20 years old and still a magnificent sounding R2R Multibit dac.
Only last month I had the pleasure of listening to one up against my Linn CD12, using the Linn as a transport there was a "poopteenth" in it between them, your lucky to have it  velveteen.

Cheers George

You have not heard every DAC, so making sweeping statements is not useful.

Yes it is totally useful, and you can get off "your own product protection horse", as I did say every dac I've heard, and I hear pretty much a new dac every couple of weeks. 

Other vendors have brought their DAC's over (I wont mention) and they lasted 30 seconds in the system because they sounded so bad. Even the other vendors wanted me to remove them.

Wow! you must sell so many, sound like nothing but an ad to me. 
 

I designed DACs with the 1704 as well. Musical, but not live like my Sigma Delta DAC.

Sorry don’t know about yours, but totally the opposite for me, no Delta Sigma I’ve heard can match it with those three R2R Multibit dac chips you mentioned or others when implemented well, for "prat", "boggie factor" and "dynamic slam" when converting PCM redbook.

If anything the good Delta Sigma’s are too sweet and limp, not exciting, without any "live" feel to them when doing PCM Redbook, but they can do DSD SACD if your into that stuff.

Cheers George

not realising what they had, traded them in on the latest craze of Sigma Delta super hires units.

They had to get a Delta Sigma based dac because they were sucked into doing DSD download playback, and this was their down fall.
As Delta Sigma does not get the best out of PCM redbook, it’s a "facsimile" only, and it’s not "bit perfect" .
That’s why many now with big CD collections are reverting back to used R2R Multibit dacs like the PCM1704’s ect like you did, and if not buying used, getting the new discrete R2R Multibit ones, which the numbers of, are growing at a rapid rate.

Cheers George

Apparently nearly 2500 requests for just 300 units......

Yes, it reached it's 300 orders very quick, a mate bought 3 of them, they were supposed to be delivered this month but got delayed a month. They look to be the bargain of the century.

Cheers George 

Now, we can finally do discrete dacs well enough and economically enough...so R2R comes back with a vengeance, in the high end area of digital. Same for the FPGA versions of similar design and thinking as discrete R2R dacs.

And this Airist discrete R2R Multibit Dac was peanuts, around $299 or something with a Massdrop purchase, got the quota filled very quick. All 300 getting shipped next month so they say.
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-airist-audio-r-2r-dac?mode=guest_open&utm_campaign=Drop%...

Review
https://darko.audio/2018/06/airist-audios-r-2r-dac-350-via-massdrop/

Measurements
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/airist-r2-r-dac-measurements.6418/

Cheers George