Sony CDP XA3ES

NeilGabriel

I have been comparing this unit that I got from a forum member with my NAD and Rotel.

Can someone tell me how many bits it is and the oversampling (rate). I thought I knew what these meant, but now I am not sure. The three units, especially the Rotel and Sony sound almost identical and I am trying to figure out how bit rate and oversampling affect the sound.

The info is not in the manual, or on the unit from what I can see, and I could not find it in a google search.

I see 1 bit dacs and 20 bit, and don't get it...I thought bits were packets of digital info.

Thanks....ng

billbillw

Since the XA3 uses the same complement of DACs/Filters as the XA7ES, your best description is probably found here:
http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-CDP-XA7ES.html

In essence, the Sony Pulse DAC system is a 1-bit converter. There is a 20bit filter involved though.

Bottom line, it really doesn't make a difference whether a DAC is 1-bit, 18-bit, 20-bit, or 24-bit because most of the sonic signature of the CD player comes from the analog output section that comes after the DAC.

Stereophile has this to say:

Sony's Direct Digital Sync circuitry is said to reduce jitter. The digital filter is a feed-forward design with 8x-oversampling, and the digital/analog converter is Sony's "current pulse" design—Sony's take on one-bit conversion technology. Twenty-bit output resolution claimed, though of course, with a CD's 16-bit word length, this is not possible in reality.

NeilGabriel

Thanks Bill, I was hoping you would see this. Am I right that the bit rate is how much info the DAC converts per second and the samnplig is how often it grabs bits...or is this again too easy....I have read this about audio ripping, but not on DAC's....thanks....I am playing the Sony along side the NAD...but haven't been able to do a real A-B comparison....

billbillw

Not really. Its too complex to fully discuss it here. Keep in mine that oversampling rates really has nothing to do with the DAC process itself. Its kinda like a filtering process to help clean up the digital signal prior to conversion.

Also remember, when you are thinking about bit rates (which can loosely translate into resolution), you have to look at both the bit depth (1, 16, 24, etc) and the sampling rate (44.1kHz, etc). It really just has to do with how many individual data points can be calculated to fit the wave form. Theoretically, the higher the resolution, the closer to an analog waveform you can get. However, due to the complexities, higher resolution doesn't always mean better sounding.

NeilGabriel

billbillw wrote: »

Not really. Its too complex to fully discuss it here. Keep in mine that oversampling rates really has nothing to do with the DAC process itself. Its kinda like a filtering process to help clean up the digital signal prior to conversion.

Also remember, when you are thinking about bit rates (which can loosely translate into resolution), you have to look at both the bit depth (1, 16, 24, etc) and the sampling rate (44.1kHz, etc). It really just has to do with how many individual data points can be calculated to fit the wave form. Theoretically, the higher the resolution, the closer to an analog waveform you can get. However, due to the complexities, higher resolution doesn't always mean better sounding.

For CD ripping and burning, I found a very good conversion chart from bit rates to bytes...I'll for it again....thanks again....I need to do a lot more reading this winter....Mike