Comments on Profile Post by skem

http://www.aes-media.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/2018/oct2018/

That's my self-justification of small amount of digital attenuation! (but not entirely sure about whether or not gains exceed losses)

Oh cool! It was just an idea arising from my selling off a benchmark DAC3 that coped with this.

You mean this? : https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/intersample-overs-in-cd-recordings

What they said sounds largely reasonable to me but there might be always conflicts of interest and publication bias (e.g. cherry-picked results)..

AES talk seems more objective. I like the conclusion: "all performed similarly, with much more faithful reproduction when the source material was less than -3dBFS."

As an aside, didn't like either dac2 or 3. Sabre was not my cup of tea.

I found the DAC3 unoffensive but flat and not detailed as compared to the PSA DSD & Gungnir Multibit. It does have wonderfully low noise, however, and is compact, has a nice remote, good volume control, etc.

Just wondering.. When you talk about PSA DS, are your impressions based on red book sources (converted to DSD internally or externally) or DSD native ones?

Almost always PCM converted internally. I’ve never found any great benefit to DSDx1 native content. Sometimes I say DSD to mean DirectStream DAC... in case that was confusing.

Digital attenuation has artefacts. If you can't hear them your system is not resolving enough.

Shiity digital attenuation and/or extreme digital attenuation. Otherwise everything processed digitally would have artifacts...all those DSP plugins fouling up the music.

@m17xr2b not all digital attenuation is created equal. Though I see @GoodEnoughGear beat me to the punch. If you're that concerned, try Airwindows PurestGain or even more extreme, shift it down exactly one bit. https://www.airwindows.com/bitshiftgain/