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Title: Dac at 44 with coax or 96 with optical connection? Post by: GerardA on September 10, 2009, 10:12:42 pm Hi Peter,
I noticed something strange today. I bought me a new DAC from Hong Kong with CS4398 which has an optical and coax input (and USB). Since the coax only connects with 16/44 I tried the optical which connects with 32/96. What I did not expect is a big change in sound quality. Coax being forward and bright, optical more warm and pleasant. The difference is so big that I was thinking you do some of your magic treatment on 32(24)/96 which is not possible at 16/44? I thought both have to be bitperfect than only you can do something with the timing, like making bits shorter in time when the angle of the sinus is steep and making the bits take more time on top of the sinus.... This is a bit over the top maybe and it's just my dac having different sounding inputs? But anyway it's an important way to tweak my sound now. Title: Re: Dac at 44 with coax or 96 with optical connection? Post by: PeterSt on September 11, 2009, 09:48:29 am Quote I thought both have to be bitperfect than only you can do something with the timing, like making bits shorter in time when the angle of the sinus is steep and making the bits take more time on top of the sinus.... Haha, nice thinking. But no. As usual and always no DSP from my hands (but don't upsample of course). The bright one probably is "wrong" (it is much more difficult to let the "easy" one be the wrong one). So, if the difference is so apparent, just think of a buggy interface (what did the Chinese try to copy this time ? :)). Btw, strange that the coax connection doesn't allow for 24/96 !? Note that when you don't use the digital volume, the output to 16 bits and 24 (actually 32) is the same. This is not so when you use the digital volume, because then the 24 bit output is still the normal output (no losses) while the 16 bit output *does* have losses. At more attenuation this may create a more rough sound, but in the end it's pure distortion. I don't think I'd ever call that more bright, so I don't guess that is the "problem" (hence you won't be digitally attenuating). Peter Title: Re: Dac at 44 with coax or 96 with optical connection? Post by: GerardA on September 11, 2009, 11:33:06 am OK, then it must be either the interface ( FW to Terratech and coax to DAC) or the input of the DAC.
The coaxinput has no transformer which according to some can give a more rough sound. But still the coax does not allow for higher sampling/bitrates so I'll use the optical which is directly sourced from the motherboard. ( I guess USB will not improve on this but I'll try that too) |