Older is better - D/A chip?

The older DAC chips, particularly ladder DACs and NOS DACs do sound better, provided they are driven by a low-jitter source. The reason for this is simple: no digital filtering.

The disadvantage is they dont support higher sample rates like 192 and they dont get quite as much detail in the HF as the newer chips.

It is possible to get the same great SQ with modern DAC chips, provided you can select or control the amount of digital filtering. This way you get the great sound of those older chips, but with none of the disadvantages. I set my digital filter on my DAC to 192 when I play all sample-rates. Sounds like a NOS DAC, but better.

The ancillary circuits, such as the output stage, I/V converter and power subsystem are all important as well to achieving an analog sound, but if the digital filtering is auto-selected, it usually wrecks the track, particularly 44.1.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Ghost - Thanks for the history, but I'm aware of it.

Many D/A chips do not give you the choice of avoiding the digital filtering, so the D/A chip does force this much of the time, and they auto-select the filter for each sample-rate. This simply sounds bad, not so much because of the digital filtering, because the digital filter implementations are so poor. If these were ideal, it would be great and the NOS DACs would not have such a following IMO.

But we live in a non-ideal world. I personally have had mostly poor audio experiences with typical digital filtering. This is why I made it selectable in my own DAC design. It is better IME to use more analog filtering instead.

However, I recently heard a DAC that had reasonable digital filter design, and that is the W4S DAC2 using the Sabre chip. This was using the I2S input on it driven from an Off-Ramp. World-Class SQ.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Elberoth - the Metrum Octave is a great piece. Many of my customers have one, but they also tell me that many of them cannot playback 176.4 or 192. Does yours?

Steve N.
Empirical Audio