{"id":286,"date":"2011-05-24T07:09:05","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T23:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/wordpress63\/?p=286"},"modified":"2013-03-29T19:36:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T11:36:41","slug":"old-but-still-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/old-but-still-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Old but Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Digital audio has come a long way. From the introduction of compact disc to today&#8217;s high resolution media, we have indeed covered lots of bytes, err miles. Bearing this in mind, how does a &#8220;vintage&#8221; DAC chip of circa 1993 fare in today&#8217;s high rez media?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Charles Altman from Altman Micro Machines explains what is more important for digital audio is the sampling rate of our media rather than number of bits. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mother-of-tone.com\/cd.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Have a read on his page.<\/a> Don&#8217;t worry, I&#8217;ll wait.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for coming back.<\/p>\n<p>So the higher the sampling rate, the better it is for our &#8220;signal reconstruction&#8221;. Hey, that&#8217;s what a DAC does basically.<\/p>\n<p>So how about some real life example? How does Monica&#8217;s TDA1545A cope with higher sampled material.<\/p>\n<p>And thus, I began my experiment.<\/p>\n<p>But I hit a snag. Apparently, high resolution test tones are not easily available. 44.1\/16 versions abound but not higher rez. Fortunately, you could create your own high rez wave files by using Linear Tech&#8217;s excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/linear.com\/ltspice\" target=\"_blank\">LTSpice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I also have a bigger problem in that I don&#8217;t have a media capable of high resolution. For the sake of you dear readers, I have to spend money&#8230; [another excuse to buy!] and I bought a <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/hifacemods\/home\/announcements\/hifacei2s\" target=\"_blank\">John Kenny modified I2S Hiface module<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"i2s monica beside vintage oscilloscope\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/scope_setup.jpg\" width=\"90%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The signal path is now&#8230; Mac Mini -&gt; jkenny I2S Hiface -&gt; I2S Monica. Software is Channel D&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channld.com\/puremusic\">Pure Music Player<\/a> and music library is via iTunes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, did I mention I built a new I2S Monica as well?<\/p>\n<p>Did I mention I had to haul the whole Mac Mini setup to the listening hall?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All this done [phew!], began feeding test tones. Please note that these test tones are created using the described sampling frequency. Note that no software\/hardware upsamping nor over sampling is performed at all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>44.1kHz sampled<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1khz sine wave. 44.1khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/44k%201khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>10kHz sine wave.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"10kHz sine wave. 44.1khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/44k%2010khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>16kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"16kHz sine wave. 44.1khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/44k%2016khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As you could see above, 10kHz above, the DAC is struggling to reconstruct the sine waves.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>96kHz sampled<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1khz sine wave. 96khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/96k%201khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>10kHz sine wave.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"10kHz sine wave. 96khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/96k%2010khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>16kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"16kHz sine wave. 96khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/96k%2016khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>10kHz is still decent but 16kHz is a stretch&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>192kHz sampled<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1khz sine wave. 192khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/192k%201khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>10kHz sine wave.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"10kHz sine wave. 192khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/192k%2010khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>16kHz sine wave<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"16kHz sine wave. 192khz sampling\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/img\/192k%2016khz.jpg\" width=\"50%\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Wow! 16kHz is no problem here!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So what does all this tell me?<\/p>\n<p>The problem of digital audio is not in the equipment. It is in the material. We just need higher sampled data to begin with.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>If fed high resolution material, our &#8220;vintage&#8221; DAC chip is far from an old clunker. It is still capable of reconstructing the signals properly.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, <strong>Old is Gold<\/strong>.\u00a0 ha ha!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital audio has come a long way. From the introduction of compact disc to today&#8217;s high resolution media, we have indeed covered lots of bytes, err miles. Bearing this in mind, how does a &#8220;vintage&#8221; DAC chip of circa 1993 fare in today&#8217;s high rez media? &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1520,6],"tags":[1639,1638,1641,1640,1642,1396,1397,1637,1398,1516],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-learn-learn-learn","tag-176khz","tag-192khz","tag-44-1khz","tag-88khz","tag-charles-altmann","tag-digital-audio","tag-high-resolution","tag-sampling-rate","tag-sine-wave","tag-tda1545","has_thumb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Old but Gold - diyparadise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/old-but-still-gold\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Old but Gold - diyparadise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Digital audio has come a long way. 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