RMAF 11: Noise Shaping Sigma Delta Based Dacs, Martin Mallison, CTO, ESS Technology

Noise-shaping audio products are used extensively in everything from personal music players to high-end audio equipment and have become indispensable in digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital data conversion.

But how do they work? What is the basic principle of these devices and what exactly is noise shaping?

Martin will share his insights of more than 30 years of working with sigma-delta devices from the first 16 bit to the latest 32 bit devices. Noise shaping devices hide their problems in areas that conventional non-over-sampling devices do not. The audiophile is correct in asserting that he can hear the difference between most noise-shaping over-sampling devices and the conventional non-over-sampling devices, but what is he hearing since the measurements of a noise shaping DAC usually far exceed those of the non-over-sampling devices?

The presentation will focus on:

• communicating an understanding of noise shaping modulators, commonly called Sigma Delta converters.

• an explanation of why the ESS HyperStream modulator used in the Sabre Audio DAC and ADC devices differs from a Sigma Delta modulator.

• Category

  Travel & Events

[Se Bo]

Sabre dac's in general are very clean, "accurate" sounding , absent of life & musicality . To me, NOS dac in terms of musicality,texture & tone color always wins . Especially with SET amp....

[ChrisVonbrincken]

Sigma Delta sound artificial. Non Oversampling rulez!

[rimaspost]

respect to this lecturer!

[Aisupporter]

What do you mean by "can't go higher that 26 kHz"?

It is not like the speaker suddenly becomes totally silent at 26 kHz. Typically the frequency response is given as the interval at which the "ends" have attenuated 3 dB.

[stever128]

I have never ever seen a more interesting talk on Digital Audio ever. Martin Mallison you owned that subject. Your talk was so well thought out and your analogies so well put that I think you deserve a medal.

[ChckrdDemon]

My Gallo Ref. 3.1s are good out to 35kHz and a re *marvelous* speakers all-around...

[wenda86]

Bravo!

[David Clark]

I can accept for the sake of argument that some humans can hear way beyond 20 KHz. However, most speakers can't go higher than 26 KHz, such as the Magnepan MG-1.7, which is a very good speaker.