MadTracker - Forum - 1 bit DAC ?

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D Vibe
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Sweden

Posted: Mon May 05 2003 21:24 1 bit DAC ?
Does anyone know what 1 bit D/A-converter means, like it stands on my portable cd player and some minidisc players ?? I mean, it's not really a d/a-converter who converts the 16-bit to 1-bit and then convert it to analogue?
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QBical
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Utrecht , The Netherlands

Posted: Mon May 05 2003 22:03
Well it has something to do with the signal to noise ratio, the higher the bit number the better I think, but I guess that higher bit numbers cost more and thus aren't used as much in portable cd players, my not-portable cd player is 8-bit btw... Grtz
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Sunbuster
Registered User

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Finland

Posted: Mon May 05 2003 22:45
It's a bit tricky to explain in short terms, but here's a pretty good explanation of the process: click me this page has a pretty good explanation also basically, it's a way to get rid of the need for several value matched resistors (which would be required in the analog way to do the conversion) in the process of digital to analog convertion. A 1-bit DAC is pretty standard these days, not sure if a higher bitnumber means better quality, but that would be pretty logical.

D Vibe
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Sweden

Posted: Tue May 06 2003 09:08
I asked a friend, and he said that they're pumping out mhz of bits and then have a lowpass-filter to get it equal to 16bit/44khz. This is a way to get it more linear... and maybe cheaper aswell? Dunno exactly how it works and what he means /Daniel
https://www.dvibe.se

Sunbuster
Registered User

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Finland

Posted: Tue May 06 2003 11:29
If you read through the links I posted you'll see they're basically talking about the same thing You could make a completely linear DAC with resistors, if you could find resistors that have the exactly correct value. Problem is, finding 16 resistors (for a 16 bit DAC) that have the correct values is too difficult to be worth the trouble, thus the 1-bit DAC is used instead, which skips the resistors all togheter and is much more linear.

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