Stevige kost maar erg interessant. Een verhandeling van ontwerper John Siau waarin hij uitgebreid ingaat op de ontwerpstrategie achter de DAC2 en de daarbij toegepaste ES9018 converter chip.

The ES9018 is a very flexible D/A converter chip. It offers simple solutions that require very few external components, but it also offers opportunities to extract much higher performance. Benchmark has elected to perform most of the digital processing outside of the ES9018. Most importantly, Benchmark has extended the digital headroom to a level that is 3.5 dB higher than the headroom available inside the ES9018. The result is that the DAC2 will never clip when it encounters an intersample over. These overs occur many times per second in most CDs. There are wide variations in the measured performance of products that use the ES9018 converter chip. Never assume that the sound of a converter is determined by the D/A chip alone!
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