[Iamnothim]

Quote:

What do you all think of dithering? It is a digital/analog filter which smooths the sine wave so that it is less blockey and has less harmonic distortion (at the cost of a higher noise floor).

I'm curious, because I don't know about dithering.
A quick definition states that white noise is added to reduce low amplitude distortion.
 
I've only come across it as a setting in my Amarra player.
As I understood, from Sonic Frontier, it could help keep the audio signal from being garbled when changing the source volume in software.
Although I like and use Amarra, the dithering settings did not prevent a track that is playing from becoming garbled while adjusting the volume slider.
I could not hear a difference otherwise.
 
Is this a Foobar2000 setting?

 

[ToddTheMetalGod]

Well I'm using JRiver Media Center and it has a built in setting for dithering, but yes Foobar2000 also has a setting for it. Look under Output. I personally like the idea of it, but I haven't done much research into it. I figure that since I'm getting a high end DAC soon with a high signal-to-noise ratio that I might as well use it.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
 You DAC does not decompress files.

Your DAC doesn't but your media player does. A DAC wouldn't know what to do with anything other than PCM data.

 

[Iamnothim]

Quote:

Your DAC doesn't but your media player does. A DAC wouldn't know what to do with anything other than PCM data.

I get that.....now
Thanks for the correction.
 
Ditto ADC?

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

I get that.....now
Thanks for the correction.
 
Ditto ADC?

I can't say I'm too familiar with ADCs, but I'd imagine that they just spit out PCM data and the software would be responsible for any encoding. Correct me if I'm wrong anyone.

 

[davidsh]

I have yet to se any reasonable reason why to buy 24 bit / higher sample rate. CD quality and I am good to go.

 

[ImperialX]

Quote:

is there a particular thing to look out for when downloading
flac files , how can you tell if they are good quality or not?

 
Buying the original CDs to compare is a good start.

 

[Gustav Mahler]

Flac files......No problem with what I create or download from reliable services like Linn.  If your dac supports higher than cd redbook resolutions then 96/24, 176/24 or 192/24 studio masters are worth the extra $$.  I usually run my Audacious player at 24 bit depth and convert to 192000 with best sinc interpolation the output of which goes via my Xonar's iec 958 pass through to an MSB Power DAC. Freebies are.......whatever gets posted but free.  Garbage in garbage out.