Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

@willemj 

You are forgetting that no DAC except the Benchmark DAC2 and 3 properly handle Redbook intersample overs that are common even on high quality CD production like Steely Dan.

As it stands, I am aware of only two solutions - 

1) Use a Benchmark DAC
2) Use Roon - they have implemented a 3 dB drop in digital signal level which appears to be default setting in order to prevent DACs from clipping all the time with inter sample overs

see this 

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/tagged/dac3

The fact that that not even one other DAC manufacturer corrects this issue is shocking. Clearly most DACs are just thrown together using a chip and the chip user manual and without any real testing or engineering! How else can you explain that nobody else except Roon and Benchmark care about 1129 clipping distortion events on a single high quality audiophile track “Gaslighting Abbie”!

@gdhal

I did not read Archmago entire blog post but I agree with this “ideal filter is linear phase”! Always has been and always will be!

Archmago states:
“The key here is to remember that within a properly bandwidth limited signal where all the frequencies are below Nyquist, a linear phase FIR filter actually does not create ringing regardless of the impulse response appearance. As I have said in the previous weeks, any decent recording will follow this rule. And if it does, then the ideal filter to use is clearly a linear phase, sharp filter that can reconstruct all the frequencies in the audio data with essentially ideal temporal resolution.”

Different filters on DACs seems to be a popular thing right now - perhaps a mania. It sounds like “more” from a marketing perspective when in fact it is often less. Minimum phase filters for example are just plain WRONG! The MQA style anti-ringing minimum phase filters make no sense. For audio reproduction, it was established more than 30 years ago that linear phase is what you need. Linear phase preserves all the relationships between the multitude of frequencies that make up the sound - use any other type of filter and you ruin the timbre!!

Benchmark of course use Linear Phase only and they disable all of the other fancy distorting filters on the ESS 9028 chip. Furthermore they upsample to 211KHz so that the filter is tricked in to attenuating only around 105.5 KHz and above - way beyond Redbook audio band and therefore a gentle filter at a high corner frequency ensure no audible effect!! Meanwhile shameless marketing departments are offering the filter options on the newer chips to their user as a “feature” even though several of the filters are plain wrong and their implementation leaves a lot to be desired compared to the Benchmark approach (and also an approach used by Steve Audioengr in his own DAC design).

Great discussions and lots of reading and at some point will have to do more studying if I decide to try Dacs again for redbook purposes.

Maybe by the time I’m interested, technology would have advanced and price-points would be in the range of the Yiggy, Lampizator or Halo but that might be wishful thinking and glad I’m not in the market for a Dac today... :)

Wig

Shadorne I agree this is an issue to be sorted out. From what I understand it mainly applies to popular recordings mostly recently mastered up to the very margin, so it would not occur with the kind of music I mostly listen to (classical and jazz). Am I right about that?
Am I also right that reducing the output of the digital source somewhat at source (ie. in the Chromecast app or in the Equalizer Apo audio player on my computer) cures the problem as well in the same way Roon does?

shadorne, Lyngdorf uses ICC (Inter-sample Clipping Correction) to give their TDAI-2170 12 dB headroom for the intersample overs you mention, this and the Benchmark are the only 2 I know of.