Cd's sound just fine to me on a very good player. Maybe I'm old....I have no need or intention on ever streaming anything.....and sacd's sound even better. I am I guess one of the crazies that likes to hold and touch my physical media. Downloading crap just ain't for me.
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?
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?
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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 |
As explained to me by Paul Weitzel of Tube Research Labs, who was both a recording and equipment engineer, the problem centers around engineering, engineering of the source material and engineering at the reproduction end. People fixate so much on format types and it really comes down to the quality of the recording and the quality of the equipment used to transduce it. Hi Rez formats have no relevance to me as most of my source material and prized music is Redbook. |
@nickecb The Benchmark DAC3 L and Chord Qutest are both more transparent. Now, you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar. But if you want to hear the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000 price range. |
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