Technical data

OWNERS MANUAL FOR WEISS DAC202 D/A CONVERTER

Page

Date: 03/10

truncation. After truncation the signal does not show any

distortion components but a slightly increased noise floor. This

works like magic..... the distortion is replaced by a small noise –

much more pleasant.

I have given the example of a 24-bit recording, which has to be

truncated to 16 bits. Where is the application in High-End Hi-Fi

audio? More and more signal processing is implemented in the

digital domain. Think of digital equalizers, digital volume

controls, upsamplers, digital pre-amplifiers, decoders for

encoded signals on DVD etc. All those applications perform

some mathematical operations on the digital audio signal. This

in turn causes the wordlength of the signal to be increased. E.g.

an input signal to an upsampler may have a wordlength of 16

bits (off a CD), but the output signal of the upsampler may have

24 bits or even more. This comes from the fact that the

mathematical operations employed in such devices increase the

word length. E.g. a multiplication of two 2-digit numbers results

in a four-digit number. So after the upsampler the word length

may be higher than the subsequent processor may be able to

accept. In this example, after the upsampler there may be a

D/A converter with a 24 bit input word length capability. So if

the upsampler generates a word length of more than 24 bits it

should be dithered to 24 bits for maximum signal fidelity.

I hope these excursions into the theory and practice of audio

engineering has been useful for you. If you would like to dive

further into those issues I recommend to visit the website of Mr.

Bob Katz, a renowned Mastering Engineer and a Weiss

Engineering customer. He publishes articles on Dithering and

Jitter and many other topics at http://www.digido.com/