Feeding the DAC

[joe_cool]

<quote>I'd read that the X-Fi cards were the only ones to officially (and legally) support this.<quote>

Yes, I read the same and so was surprised that "WinDVD Player 6 Platinum" was so cooperative.

[infinitesymphony]

Very interesting... I'll have to give it a try with an E-MU 1212M.

[joe_cool]

I bought a new legal copy of WinDVD Player 6 Platinum on eBay for $9.99 plus shipping.

[little-endian]

Originally Posted by joe_cool

IMO the only economical way to get high-resolution data to your DAC is to use a computer.

I have no problem playing 96/24 DVD-A tracks with my M-Audio equipment, using WINDVD-6.

If I use the FW Audiophile I can output 96/24 SPDIF (coax) and physically loop back to SPDIF input and send to the PC (via firewire) for recording and conversion to FLAC.

Nice setup. Unfortunately, i could never get it to work to loop the s/pdif output of my "M-Audio Transit" to its input. When i even try (not connect properly, yet), awful distortions occur. When it is connected, there's no output (via s/pdif and analog 3,5 mm connector) anymore, at all. This really sucks because this way i can't verify if it is bit-perfect or not. I have a Envy24-HTS based sound card as well but this seems not to be able to record higher than 44.1kHz/16-Bit. Argh!

Originally Posted by joe_cool

<edit> Oh yeah, the Toshiba optical SPDIF is not specified for data rates over 96kHz.<edit>

It's not the first time i read that statement. But as far as i know, the standard just limits the bit depth while the sample rate is rather determined by the timing capabilities of the hardware. At least the later versions of the DAC1 definately support 192kHz optically so there must be sources which provide this optically, too.

Originally Posted by infinitesymphony

There are a lot of players that don't resample, as long as the disc is not copyrighted (unlike all commercially-released DVD-A discs). You could burn your own non-copyrighted DVD-A from 24/192 source files and it would play back over the digital outputs.

Yes, my DVD-player Yamaha DVD-S540 doesn't have any problems to output 96/24 via s/pdif if the DVD is not encrypted, either. It would be a possible way to "free" the commercial discs and rewrite them thus the player will output the data without resampling.

Do you know players that are able to output 192kHz optically, by chance?

Originally Posted by joe_cool

Yes, I read the same and so was surprised that "WinDVD Player 6 Platinum" was so cooperative.

It wouldn't be the first time that commercial players would allow sometime that isn't too official.

[infinitesymphony]

Originally Posted by little-endian

Do you know players that are able to output 192kHz optically, by chance?

I figured that any player with a 24-bit/192kHz spec and an optical output would be capable. I hadn't heard about any limitations until today.

Of course, testing that assumption would be difficult. I'd guess that the easiest way would be to take a DVD-Audio disc with a 24-bit/192kHz stereo track, rip it using dubious methods that essentially strip the watermark / copyright, and re-author the MLP stream to a new DVD using a program like Minnetonka discWelder.