Filter after DAC

[Kal]

Hi,

I heard that simply removing all passive filter elements after the DAC really improves sound quality a lot. Are there any risks in doing so?

Thanx

[wuffwaff]

Hi,

it depends a bit on the DAC and the pre / power amp.

High over- or upsampling DACs don´t need a brickwall-filter directly above 20kHz. You can use a filter with a -3dB point of 44 or even 100kHz.

Leaving this out will bring all kind of high frequency noice into you pre/power amp. How they react to this will be different with every amp and depends on frequency responce and topologie.

So the best thing would be to just try it.......

William

[Extreme_Boky]

Hi,

I agree and would like to add that some (current - out) DACs have amplitude - modulated impulse "train" responses that should be passed through I/V converter. These DACs are not suitable to work without any filters.

The remaining DACs have I/V converters on die and could be experimented with....

In my opinion it is important to remove aliasing artefacts, as well as to properly reconstruct the original analogue waveform in time domain. Hence, I prefer carefully implemented anti-aliasing filter. However, I like to experiment a lot as well, so only your imagination is the limit.... Be careful if you decide not to use any filter because some over sampled implementations could cause vast amount of high frequency rubbish which could burn your tweeters and destroy compensation LCR networks just after output transistors in your amplifier!!! Looking for these rubbish frequencies with a good analogue CRO should be done first at the CD player’s (or DAC’s) output RCA connectors.

Regards,
Extreme_Boky