High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.


Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires
Sorry don’t know about yours, but totally the opposite for me, no Delta Sigma I’ve heard can match it with those three R2R Multibit dac chips you mentioned or others when implemented well, for "prat", "boggie factor" and "dynamic slam" when converting PCM redbook.

That's the point.  You have not heard every DAC, so making sweeping statements is not useful.  The dynamics and clarity I get is unsurpassed.  Every time a customer brings over or ships me a DAC to try, it is disappointing.  Other vendors have brought their DAC's over (I wont mention) and they lasted 30 seconds in the system because they sounded so bad. Even the other vendors wanted me to remove them.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
@fleschler, may i ask which digital front end do you use, which CD and/or SACD Player? Or streamer, as well?
You have not heard every DAC, so making sweeping statements is not useful.

Yes it is totally useful, and you can get off "your own product protection horse", as I did say every dac I've heard, and I hear pretty much a new dac every couple of weeks. 

Other vendors have brought their DAC's over (I wont mention) and they lasted 30 seconds in the system because they sounded so bad. Even the other vendors wanted me to remove them.
Wow! you must sell so many, sound like nothing but an ad to me. 
 
No matter how good the equipment, and/or bit resolution / sampling rate, it cannot fix a bad recording, and that's the bulk of them.

I love my digital front end, with r2r technology! I couldn't imagine my redbook CDs sounding any better than they do now.......

Mark Levinson No 31.5
Mark Levinson No 30.6