Anyone listening to 24/196?


If so, what DAC are you using? The Benchmark can intake those signals, but it downsamples them to 110. The BelCanto can't take them. The Bryston BDA-1 is one of the few non-megabuck DACs that can take 192 as an input.

Anything else under 3k?

From Bryston materials: "The CS-4398 operates in one of three oversampling modes based on the input sample rate. Single-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 50 kHz and uses a 128x oversampling ratio. Double-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 100 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 64x. Quad-speed mode supports input sample rates up to 200 kHz and uses an oversampling ratio of 32x."
lightminer

Showing 6 responses by lightminer

Yeah:

DSD64 = 1BIT / 2.8224 MHz = 2.8224 Mbit/s (per channel)
DSD128 = 1BIT / 5.6448 MHz = 5.6448 Mbit/s (per channel)
DXD (PCM) = 24 BIT / 352.8kHz = 8.4672 Mbit/s (per channel)

http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html

and they are releasing on Blu-Ray,

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/2L-Founder-blu-ray-audio-future-1652.shtml

And I found this, which is on 176.4 khz

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1215130465&openfrom&1&4#1
Yes, although you need a different DAC for SACD, as it doesn't resolve to the PCM x/y khz format. What I mean is that something like the Bryston can decode all variants of x/y between certain parameters, but SACD is a different (DSD) process and is not compatable.

Of course it is too early to tell, but PCM 24/192 will replace SACD. We have to see what Telarc and the others who are still recording and selling SACDs do, if they move to a Blu-Ray based 24/192 or not. I personally think it very well could happen, ergo my search for a DAC now for this.

DXD is still, of course, king. Just think - in 10 or more years, we will be using DXD on our wristwatch-phones.
One small interesting note, it seems the Bryston only takes 16-bit word length via USB (it can take the full 24 via other connections), wherease the Benchmark does take 24 via USB.

From what I hear getting a decent sound card with AES is best, however, so that may be mute if one goes the AES route.

The Receiver mentioned above and the item right above this one don't completely re-clock the signal from a quick read. I think reclocking to eliminate Jitter is important, and if we are playing with 24/196 I wouldn't even bother unless we are going to put serious equipment ahead of it.

The Bryston sets a high standard!!
Kijanki - tell me more. It outputs analog, so I assume you mean input? The literature says it downsamples to 110 even though ithas 192 kHz DACs - that is why I am confused by it. So you are saying they are doing that because they found with that particular DAC chip downsamples to 110 to reduce THD? That could be. But then we aren't getting the fluidity or fullness or whatever from 192, no? At 110, we could just as soon stay with 96? The whole point of going to 192 is to double the info over 96. The Bryston doesn't lower it and neither does the Berkeley, so perhaps it sounds better with the particular DAC chip the Benchmark uses - so in their case it could definitely be better.

The biggest thing the Benchmark has going for it is value. The Benchmark could be the best way to get into this movement, and then as prices come down and more quality is available later, maybe 3 - 5 years, and in the meantime participate in downloading the 24/192 music and building a library - even though you would only be listening to it at 110. If you get the Berklely at 5k at this point, I wouldn't want to replace it in 3-5 years, but in 5 years it could probably be beaten at 1k or even less I would suggest.

DACs are subject to the same phenomenon as digital cameras and other digital nonsense that falls in price by half each year. My amp is something like 12 years old and still seriously kicks butt. DACs don't age like that, so I'm hesitant to spend more than 1k on a DAC. People spent 20 or 30k on the dcs equipment not 8 or 10 years ago, and there are those who claim that the 2k Bryston is in the class of the '99 era dcs gear. (I have absolutely no idea myself, as I don't play in the 20k+ gear range.) The Bryston, while over 1k, does have me intruiged, though. But 5k is too much for something that devalues with such strong intensity - I'm not that well off! Pretty good, but not that good! 5k is still a lot. Heck, 1k is still a lot!

The Altman Attraction does look interesting, I'll continue to read more about it.
Just an interesting note a half year later, looks like 24/96 PCM is gathering steam as the next standard, although in the computer-digital world it will probably be a mix (i.e., 24/88.2 is currently also very common), but overall 24/96 FLAC set to level 6 compression has a slight lead over everything else from what I can tell.