Thank you.
It seems it canāt be done so Iāll just stay with Roon/HQPlayer.
I donāt see what the point is. What do you think happens when you do this in HQ player or Roon?
Thereās no way to set the bit-depth of the output in Roon.
HQPlayer allows it. He probably uses Roon in an integrated mode with HQPlayer.
Thatās cool, but the end result is the same. The HQ Player will just truncate the remaining bits. Itās not that it applies some calculation. How can you recalculate a greater precision into a lower precision? It just drops the least significant bits.
Thatās exactly the same thing that happens here without having to care about it. I would call this a plus.
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He has a 32 Bit DAC. I donāt understand why he wants to output in 16 Bits bit-depth.
Maybe the chip inside is 16bit. I have such DACs. The point is, you donāt have to care about this, just play the files.
For some special cases, due to compatibility issues, you might need to select ālimit to 24bitā.
I donāt think so.
The Defarips Terminator is a modern high-end DAC.
BTW, I was mistaken. Itās possible to set the bit-depth output in Roon. Thereās a well hidden setting for that.
Ahh, sorry I didnāt pay attention. Iām lost then why @Sjcrowther wantās to do this.
As I explained at the beginning the DAC although capable of handling greater bit depths is not linear beyond 16 bits.
So you bought a fancy DAC costing multiple thousands of bucks that is not linear beyond 16bit? Says who that itās not linear?
Are you referring to this?
Thatās just a bunch of audiophile silliness.
From the article:
My mistake Lasko said it is impossible to build an R2R DAC that is linear to 24 bits.
Thatās true, so is with any DAC, R2R or not. Reaching 120dB is already exceptional and thatās 20bit. Most DACs, even great sounding ones are around 100-115dB. I bet you wonāt be able to notice the difference.
Just play your files and enjoy the music.
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The Computer Audiophile, who is a very competent guy, reviewed this DAC model on Audiophile Style, and he said that he got the best results with 20 bit / 1,536 kHz upsampling.
(Itās Chris Connaker, the founder of the site.)
I thought that the reason for buying R2R DAC is playing in native resolution, if possible in NOS mode.
@Sjcrowther ā¦ the question that comes to mind is: āHow are you measuring linearity?ā
https://www.denafrips.com/terminator-specs
From a DCS insights and innovations article:
The main drawback with both the R-2R and Binary Weighted DAC approaches comes from the fact that resistors, like all electronic components, have an element of error in their values. For example, a gold tolerance resistor guarantees the resistance of the component will be within 5% of its stated value. This means that for the resistors used in a Ladder DAC, the current generated by that section of the DAC could be either lower or higher than needed. The key point here is that a Ladder DAC uses the same current source for a given bit in the audio signal every time, meaning the error is exactly the same every time the bit goes high. Here, the errors in the component values are correlated to the audio signal. This results in an audible linear distortion of the signal, adding in unwanted harmonic components.
The issue with this is the fact that the larger current sources (correlating to the more significant bits in the audio signal) have the same margin of error as the smaller ones. In the case of a 24-bit ladder DAC, a 1% error in the most significant bit (MSB, or the largest current source) would be larger than the entire seventh bit, and 104dB louder than the 24th bit. The MSB needs to be accurate to 0.000006% to allow for 24-bit resolution. https://dcsaudio.com/assets/dCS-Ring-DAC-Explained.pdf
Those who upsample by the computer run the DAC in NOS mode.
The improvement is not as spectacular as with a Delta-Sigma DAC, itās quite subtle, and it varies between the various R2R models.
Some models, like the Spring, perform better with DSD upsampling. Itās not because DSD is better than PCM, but because their DSD circuity performs better. For other models, the PCM circuity performs better. Which seems to be the case of the Terminator, according to the review of Chris.
Sorry, but claiming that upsampling to 1.5MHz PCM sounds better is just bonkers. Maybe to him it does, but than thatās purelly subjective.
Funny, dCS made an error in the document. They say that generally accepted that human hearing can percieve 20bits of resolution or 140dB. Itās 120dB.
It depends on each oneās system. Thatās why I think that everybody should proceed with his own tests with his own system.
Just to give you an example. I get at the present the best results with a streamer that has an audio interface of 24-192. With it, and a digital interface that is limited to 384 KHz, the sound is very good. So, itās impossible to upsample with these devices to very high rates. Nevertheless, the sound is so refined that it makes no sense for me to remove them, and upsample.
I prefer to stick to bit-perfect.
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@bitracer, @Cloclo, @Sjcrowther
From the Wikipedia article: āResistor Ladderā
Accuracy of Rā2R resistor ladders
Resistors used with the more significant bits must be proportionally more accurate than those used with the less significant bits; for example, in the Rā2R network discussed above, inaccuracies in the bit-4 (MSB) resistors must be insignificant compared to R/32 (i.e., much better than 3%). Further, to avoid problems at the 100002-to-011112 transition, the sum of the inaccuracies in the lower bits must be significantly less than R/32. The required accuracy doubles with each additional bit: for 8 bits, the accuracy required will be better than 1/256 (0.4%)ā¦
On a printed circuit board, using discrete components, resistors of 1% accuracy would suffice for a 5-bit circuit, however with bit counts beyond this the cost of ever increasing precision resistors becomes prohibitive. For a 10-bit converter, even using 0.1% precision resistors would not guarantee monotonicity of output. This being said, high resolution R-2R ladders formed from discrete components are sometimes used, the nonlinearity being corrected in softwareā¦