What's the use of 20 and 24 bit DACs with CDs?


Many standalone players and modern DACs are now using 20 and 24 bit DACs. Is there a significant advantage to doing so with a 16 bit recording? Are these players and DACs doing upsampling on the original 16 bit signal to take advantage of the DAC or are we just looking at extra bandwidth that is being squandered for the sake of advertising? To me, the extra bandwidth doesn't seem to be merited unless there is upsampling or HDCD involved. Opinions?
cjcerny

Showing 1 response by flex

A couple of points more here. When a 16 bit word is read from a cd, some form of processing, typically rate conversion, is needed to produce a 24 bit word from the 16 bit word. The rate conversion can be done inside the D/A chip, or it can be done in a processor preceding the D/A. The 24 bit word does not increase the information in the original signal, but just represents with higher precision the mathematical product of the 16 bit data word with the rate conversion filter coefficients. So Cjcerny is correct in assuming some form of processing to get from 16 bits to 24 bits.
Secondly, upsampling (typically done in a processor) can be significantly better than oversampling, 8x or otherwise, done inside the D/A chip because the quality of the upsampling filter can be much better than that used in most D/A chips - so there can be a significant difference in upsampling vs oversampling depending on where and how the rate conversion is done.
Thirdly, Cjcerny is correct in using the term 'bandwidth'. Bandwidth is frequently used in digital processing to mean total bits per unit time (e.g. the increased bandwidth of DVD), and not just to mean spectral bandwidth.