Is Your Transport Giving You All The Bits? is the title of a new whitepaper published by the folks at Benchmark:
http://tinyurl.com/mznlrm This article should provide plenty of fodder for discussion. For instance: "Surprisingly, many DVD transports currently on the market fail to transmit the exact digital audio data bit-for-bit as it appears on the DVD. Of the DVD transports Benchmark has tested (8 as of this writing), all of them modified high-resolution audio data before sending it to the digital output (although they did pass 'Redbook', CD-quality 44-kHz, 16-bit data without modification). Let's examine what all of this means to your playback system." and "Most DVD transports reduce 24-bit digital recordings to 16 bits by truncating the 8 'least-significant-bits' (LSB's). In other words, these 8-bits are simply removed without dithering. This type of truncation adds quantization errors that result in significant levels of distortion." Assuming for a moment that Benchmark is correct in their assessments, it seems to put the lie to ability of some DVD players to output digital data better than CD quality. In fact they seem to suffer from the issue of bit truncation similar to how our Squeezebox players did this prior to the implementation of Sox in Squeezecenter. If this is true, it reinforces that the playback chain of Squeezecenter/Sox/Squeezebox has the potential to be superior since it can natively play 48k/24b data and correctly re-dither/re-sample higher bit rates to the native 48k/24b. I have experimented with downloading some 96k/24b music from sources such as Linn and burning to DVD using a program that burns such data as audio only DVD video type disc that can play in any DVD player. While I thought the sound was quite good, it may be that I was only listening to truncated CD 44k/16b level quality if this information by Benchmark is correct. I do happen to have a Benchmark DAC-1 which I use in conjunction with my Squeezebox Duet. Maddeningly, while they mention they tested 8 players, they do not identify them. Maybe they don't want to get sued? -CB -- ctbarker32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ctbarker32's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2816 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65895 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
