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I'm interested in going beyound 24 bit digital to analog audio. Does anyone know of a 32-bit DAC chip?

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anonymous Mon, 01/06/2003 - 05:02

As of now, 32 bit is being utilized with 32 bit float but Roland is supposed to have one in the works and their is even a 40 bit (rumor has it) being utilized.

With the advent of DSD (direct stream digital) that Sony has, jury is still out what format is providing the best high resolution audio overall.

DSD is 1 bit 2.84mhz and 24 bit 192k PCM is said to be very close in fidelity. The problems are how they are utilized. The sacd format for playback has had some lack luster mastering (Billy Joel 52nd St. and Toto IV to name two) and if the source was pcm 16/44.1 or 16/48K, without doing wave shaping, careful mastering in anolog and listening, then the higher rez for these formats can never exceed the quality of the source. Unfortunantly, the sources are being manipulated to try to restore the 16/44.1K to the original analog tapes and then it is up to the mastering engineer to "make it up".

Some of the analog tapes are not as good as the vinyl due to storage problems, glue problems (bake the tapes for one play) and alignments problems.

As per recording, DSD is getting less expensive.

As is, it is difficult at best to really hear the difference between 24/96K and 24/192K but in multitracking the differences can "add up".

We are in interesting times. Before too long, 64bit could be realized but have trillions of increments in level may or may not be audible.

I am certaint that 24bit will be with us for a long time, just like the redbook standard of 16/44.1K can be made to sound quite good, better in fact than some of the sacds I have heard. The downfall of dsd is that it is propriatary format in which Sony likes for their guys to play in it.

The marketing has been Sonytized. Remember elcassette and home betamax?

DVD-A format suffers from the same fate as lisences for philips/sony do not correspond to DVD so putting a universal carrier for the car or CD's on the DVD-A disc seem to be a battle as well.

You can record any way you want to, you must be able to play it back universally.

SACD pressing is out of the reach of project studios looking to make demo's for now.