High end DAC vs DVD


Can I high DAC ever sound better than a regular DVD player? Is that the benchmark? Or the DVD will always give you more resolution but analog conversion may make the DAC sound better.
tz7

Showing 2 responses by rcprince

I have yet to hear a standalone DVD player that sounds remotely as good as a high-end DAC. You get less resolution from the cheaper DACs, analog section op-amps and power supplies, and more digital noise from the extra video circuitry in the DVD player. Where did you get your information?
Tz7, are you talking about the hi-rez format DVD-Audio, as opposed to a regular DVD player with a 16-bit/44khz audio? If the former, based on what I've heard from cheap SACD players, the hi-rez format on a cheaper player can sound better than a modestly better CD only player, but there are many out there who wondered what the fuss about SACD was all about when they compared cheaper SACD players to their more expensive and better engineered CD playback systems, because of all the other variables that Ckorody so aptly points out in his excellent posts. Make no mistake about it, while the additional information in a DVD-A or SACD makes them potentially better than the standard CD, it's power supplies, analog sections and well-engineered circuits that can dig that information out of the discs, and if manufacturers cheap out in some areas to meet a price point or to deal with space constraints, they will not be taking full advantage of what the new formats have to offer.