3 ms·
As both a sound and an electrical engineer the issue here is the if. Many DACs claim 24 Bits, while their power rails are so noise that they will meaningfully r
by atoav 4y ago
As both a sound and an electrical engineer the issue here is the if. Many DACs claim 24 Bits, while their power rails are so noise that they will meaningfully reproduce much less. The you'd also have jitter on the DAC clock etc.
Just because it says 24 bits on the datasheet of the used DAC IC doesn't mean your circuit will output a voltage that represents your input with 24 bits of precision. Designing and layouting PCBs with high precision DACs on them is certainly something where a lot mistakes can be made.
But you are right, if the PCB is done correctly, the signal exiting the DAC would indeed be an truthful representation of the digital data.
That being said: nowaday reaching enough precision for even the most critical listener should be not that hard/expensive.
- naikrovek 4y agoDAC jitter is not the major problem people make it out to be. even the lowly, uncontrolled, $2, +-20ppm frequency stability crystal oscillator has less jitter than is audibly perceptible to a human, especially given that the jitter is dependent mostly on temperature variations. you are right about bit depth. a jellybean 24-bit ADC has around 8 bits of noise floor, maybe more. To improve that, you sample at an insane rate (making jitter even less of a significant factor in the final audio) and average your measurements, and you can get 2-3 more bits out of that. my overall point is that these problems you hear from people trying to sell you audio hardware are almost all not problems at all, as far as human ears and human perception are concerned.