I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in parallel.
Does anyone know of one?
tia
r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.

"R" wrote in message

I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel.
Does anyone know of one?
tia
r

Turtle Beach.

"Schizoid Man" wrote in news:cpo6ji$7jj$1
@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu:


"R" wrote in message

I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel.
Does anyone know of one?
tia
r

Turtle Beach.




It is not apparant that any of the models have two d-a converters running
in parallel.

r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:QN2dnU2d2-ywhV3cRVn-
:

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.



Arny,

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds 2 dacs
at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied together. Many of the
high end CD players and D-A units use that circuit topology as it lowers the
distortion levels.

Adding a second D-A to a sound card in the field would be very difficult at
best.

r

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:45:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:QN2dnU2d2-ywhV3cRVn-
:

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.


Arny,

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds 2 dacs
at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied together. Many of the
high end CD players and D-A units use that circuit topology as it lowers the
distortion levels.

You don't mean parallel, you mean a differential pair. Given that
distortion levels with conventional DACs can be 0.001% or less, do you
think this is important?

Adding a second D-A to a sound card in the field would be very difficult at
best.

Try a Lynx sound card, you will find no 'digital grunge' there. The
LynxOne is perhaps the best stereo sound card available, while the
LynxTwo-A will give you what you asked for - four channels with
balanced outputs.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:45:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:QN2dnU2d2-ywhV3cRVn-
:

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.


Arny,

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds 2
dacs
at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied together. Many of
the
high end CD players and D-A units use that circuit topology as it lowers
the
distortion levels.

You don't mean parallel, you mean a differential pair. Given that
distortion levels with conventional DACs can be 0.001% or less, do you
think this is important?



I don't think i mean a differential pair. Wuld not a differential pair be
2 dacs fed with the same source but one dac has it's invert pin asserted?

r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.

"R" wrote in message

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:45:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel
feeds 2 dacs at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied
together. Many of the high end CD players and D-A units use that
circuit topology as it lowers the distortion levels.

Thinking back for a while, I remember the days when doubling up DAC chips
was sorta popular.

There was even a tweak that stacked two DAC chips on top of each other. This
kinda worked because many DAC chhips of the era had high impedance outputs,
so that their outputs were summed at the input to the following stage.

The net effect was that the output voltage was doubled (6 dB), while any
internally generated uncorrelated noise increased by only 3 dB.

However, the effects of running the sucessive stages at twice the signal
voltage were, err *unspecified*.

I never saw any technical tests that quantified the actual results. Of
course we had the usual "sounds better" garbage from the peanut gallery.

You don't mean parallel, you mean a differential pair. Given that
distortion levels with conventional DACs can be 0.001% or less, do
you think this is important?

Of course, the whole approach is rediculous and futile and turned out to
pretty much be yet another passing fancy of tweakdumb.

I don't think i mean a differential pair. Wuld not a differential
pair be 2 dacs fed with the same source but one dac has it's invert
pin asserted?

This would be the better idea (in a land of futile non-thinking) because it
would eliminate such vanishing amounts of even order distortion as there
might be in the analog side of a quality DAC. Internally uncorrelated noise
would also be reduced, such as it might be.

Right now the better DAC chips are among the most precise of all audio
circuits. In production quantities I understand they run about $30. The real
challenge is finding op amps that will accurately deliver their performance
to the output terminals. Furthermore, if you look at the performance of
commodity DAC chips running about $1 or less, they are often as good or
better than the media being played.

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 07:20:41 GMT, R wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:45:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:QN2dnU2d2-ywhV3cRVn-
:

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.


Arny,

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds 2 dacs
at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied together. Many of the
high end CD players and D-A units use that circuit topology as it lowers the
distortion levels.

You don't mean parallel, you mean a differential pair. Given that
distortion levels with conventional DACs can be 0.001% or less, do you
think this is important?

I don't think i mean a differential pair. Wuld not a differential pair be
2 dacs fed with the same source but one dac has it's invert pin asserted?

Essentially yes, and this is a classic method of averaging errors
between the two DACs.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

In rec.audio.tech R wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:45:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:QN2dnU2d2-ywhV3cRVn-
:

"R" wrote in message
. 1
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in
parallel. Does anyone know of one?

Please explain more precisely what you mean.


Arny,

What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds 2
dacs
at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied together. Many of
the
high end CD players and D-A units use that circuit topology as it lowers
the
distortion levels.

You don't mean parallel, you mean a differential pair. Given that
distortion levels with conventional DACs can be 0.001% or less, do you
think this is important?

I don't think i mean a differential pair. Wuld not a differential pair be
2 dacs fed with the same source but one dac has it's invert pin asserted?

Can someone tell me what the difference is here?

Summing the output of two DACs should give "s1 + s2".
A differential pair, as I understand it, would be "s1 - (-s2)"

I don't see a difference. Am I missing something?

"Rich.Andrews" wrote in message


What I mean by parallel is that the data stream for one channel feeds
2 dacs at once and the resultant output of the dacs are tied
together. Many of the high end CD players and D-A units use that
circuit topology as it lowers the distortion levels.

Seems like a total waste, given the rediculously-low distortion levels
already obtained by more conventional means.

What a concept - use a better converter!

Adding a second D-A to a sound card in the field would be very difficult
at best.

Agreed.

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 01:51:43 GMT, R wrote:

I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in parallel.
Does anyone know of one?

You mean you want more than one stereo output? Sure. All the makers
of quality cards offer multichannel ones. M-Audio, Echo etc. etc.

"R" wrote ...
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA
converters in parallel. Does anyone know of one?

You wanna try that again?

Are you trying to solve some problem?
I've never seen a computer sound card that *didn't* have
at least two channels (i.e. "stereo")

Why do you think there is something "magic" about
"in parallel"?

"Richard Crowley" wrote in news:10s0v9njpd1hha7
@corp.supernews.com:

"R" wrote ...
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA
converters in parallel. Does anyone know of one?

You wanna try that again?

Are you trying to solve some problem?
I've never seen a computer sound card that *didn't* have
at least two channels (i.e. "stereo")

Why do you think there is something "magic" about
"in parallel"?



Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound card I
might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit harsh or
have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that two DACs in
parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

r

"Rich.Andrews" wrote ...
Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which
sound card I might be happy with.

Go to Arny's website and look at his extensive measurements.
Then look at the Google Groups archives on the numerous discussion
of the merits of various soundcards in these newsgroups (and in
rec.audio.pro) I would not rely on rec.audio.opinion for real
technical discussions. They have a reputation for more philosophical
(or much stronger deprecatory adjectives) conversations. If you
just want to talk about sound cards, you should probably go over
there, but if you want to actually select one to buy and use, you are
better off in one of the more real-world newsgroups.

Many of the common sound cards sound a bit harsh or have some
sort of "digital grunge" or both.

You may be reading to much marketing babble. It seems likely that
even the cheapest $10 audio card features simultaneous clocking of
the samples on both input and output. Whether it subsequently uses
a single A/D or D/A converter or two in parallel or even sigma-
delta, or "1-bit", etc. etc. conversion is mostly immaterial.

Digital grunge in my experience is caused by cheap design (little
or no shielding, skimpy decoupling capacitors, etc.) and has nothing
to do with whether the design has single or dual DACs.

The magic is that two DACs in parallel lowers distortion.

There is no technical basis for that statement, assuming some
minimal quality of the overall design. I challenge you to produce
the source of that factoid so that it can be properly evaluated in
context.

Proper chip decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the number of DACs.

"Rich.Andrews" wrote in message


Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound
card I might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a
bit harsh or have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic
is that two DACs in parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip
decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

Digital grunge is a marketing term with no real-world significance, in the
21st century world of top-quality converters.

Since I can run audio through a computer 20 times in a row without any
audible change as shown in the files from

http://www.pcabx.com/product/cardd_deluxe/index.htm

we have adequate proof that digital grunge is no longer a real-world
problem.

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:06:54 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound card I
might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit harsh or
have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that two DACs in
parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

There are good and bad-sounding cards out there. But I wouldn't
worry too much about this particular bit of snake-oil. You've picked
it up from an audiophile review or advert? Come on over to the pro
audio world. You can still spend a lot of money if you insist, but
you'll get more for it than in the audiophile arena :-)

Laurence Payne wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:06:54 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound
card I might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit
harsh or have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that
two DACs in parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip decoupling lowers
"digital grunge".

There are good and bad-sounding cards out there. But I wouldn't
worry too much about this particular bit of snake-oil. You've picked
it up from an audiophile review or advert? Come on over to the pro
audio world. You can still spend a lot of money if you insist, but
you'll get more for it than in the audiophile arena :-)


I have actually picked it up from reviewing schematics of CD players and
stand alone DACs that I own or have considered owning.

r

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:12:20 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

There are good and bad-sounding cards out there. But I wouldn't
worry too much about this particular bit of snake-oil. You've picked
it up from an audiophile review or advert? Come on over to the pro
audio world. You can still spend a lot of money if you insist, but
you'll get more for it than in the audiophile arena :-)


I have actually picked it up from reviewing schematics of CD players and
stand alone DACs that I own or have considered owning.

Yeah. But is it a marketing ploy, or is it actually solving a real
problem?

"Rich.Andrews" wrote:

Laurence Payne wrote in
:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:06:54 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound
card I might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit
harsh or have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that
two DACs in parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip decoupling lowers
"digital grunge".

There are good and bad-sounding cards out there. But I wouldn't
worry too much about this particular bit of snake-oil. You've picked
it up from an audiophile review or advert? Come on over to the pro
audio world. You can still spend a lot of money if you insist, but
you'll get more for it than in the audiophile arena :-)


I have actually picked it up from reviewing schematics of CD players and
stand alone DACs that I own or have considered owning.

I suggest you look at DAC manufacturers data for modern parts.

Here's one from AKM for example. Note the differential output.

http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/akm/en/...95/ak4395.html

Check out the recommended grounding on page 22 and the external differential
Low Pass Filters on page 23 of the following pdf.

http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/akm/en/...395/ek4395.pdf


Graham

Laurence Payne wrote:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:06:54 GMT, "Rich.Andrews"
wrote:

Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound card I
might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit harsh or
have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that two DACs in
parallel lowers distortion. Proper chip decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

There are good and bad-sounding cards out there. But I wouldn't
worry too much about this particular bit of snake-oil. You've picked
it up from an audiophile review or advert?

I think you can probably catch brain illness/malaise from audiophile reviews too
!


Come on over to the pro
audio world. You can still spend a lot of money if you insist, but
you'll get more for it than in the audiophile arena :-)

Pros don't mess about with snake oil we just get it right.

Don't forget that everything ever recorded was done on pro-audio gear, not some
audiophool ****.


Graham

Pooh Bear wrote in
:



Don't forget that everything ever recorded was done on pro-audio gear,
not some audiophool ****.


Graham



Probably a good bit of advice. I have worked in the 'pro' field before
but it has been a while. "Broadcast Quality" was a joke. It might be
better now with the advent of HDTV, etc. but it wasn't that long ago that
the labeling 'Broadcast Quality' meant mediocre performance but rugged as
hell.

r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message


Don't forget that everything ever recorded was done on pro-audio
gear, not some audiophool ****.

Well, except some boutique recordings. Mapleshade, anyone? ;-)

"Rich.Andrews" wrote:

"Richard Crowley" wrote in news:10s0v9njpd1hha7
@corp.supernews.com:

"R" wrote ...
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA
converters in parallel. Does anyone know of one?

You wanna try that again?

Are you trying to solve some problem?
I've never seen a computer sound card that *didn't* have
at least two channels (i.e. "stereo")

Why do you think there is something "magic" about
"in parallel"?



Not solving a problem per se, but I am trying to sort out which sound card I
might be happy with. Many of the common sound cards sound a bit harsh or
have some sort of "digital grunge" or both. The magic is that two DACs in
parallel lowers distortion.

Not any more. In fact modern DACs have voltage outputs so you can't parallel
them like 12+ yr old current output DACs.


Proper chip decoupling lowers "digital grunge".

Actually - proper grounding design is the answer to that problem. I design
pro-audio DSP stuff so I know.


Graham

In practice we take the one output and split it.

--

Jerry G.
======


"R" wrote in message
. 1...
I am looking for an sound card that features dual DA converters in parallel.
Does anyone know of one?
tia
r


--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.