again very basicly. a digital audio signal is basicly a number between 0 and 65535 the higher the number the louder the sound. in order to attenuate the volume this number must be reduced. if you have a signal of say 3 which is represented as: 0011 in binary and you attenuate it by, say, a factor of 4 then you effectively run out of bits to represent the resulting fractional number (as cd players use integer maths) and therefore you lose the detail represented by these 'low' bits. if you have a 16 bit data source and a 24 bit dac then the '3' read from the disc can be represented as: 001100000000 you have 8 extra 'low' bits that the previously missing data can be shifted into so attenuating by 4 now gives you: 000011000000 but go too low and you still run out of bits. unfortunately it's not always this simple as those extra low bits on a 24 bit dac can also be used for other stuff like dithering and upsampling which can complicate things.
-- julian2002 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
