Can over loud cd's overload dacs ? (Jocko?)

[georgehifi]

I have a very loud cd and I'm sure it's either overloading the output of the Tent XO3 on the transport or overloading the input of my da converter. Can any of you digital heads give any comment on this? (Jocko your the input output king)?

Cheers George

[davidsrsb]

CDs data cannot exceed the range 0000 to FFFF.
Many newer CDs are heavily compressed and have many samples at the limit values.

Some DAC digital filters cannot cope with signals too close to full volume as they produce interpolated samples beyond the limits.

Some badly designed filters even go unstable when thet get internal overflows in the maths.

You could rip the cd to a PC and using software like goldwave or audacity reduce the volume by 3dB say and burn a CDR with the quieter version to try.

[rfbrw]

Originally posted by georgehifi
I have a very loud cd and I'm sure it's either overloading the output of the Tent XO3 on the transport or overloading the input of my da converter. Can any of you digital heads give any comment on this? (Jocko your the input output king)?

Cheers George

The value of the sample in the digital domain has no bearing on the amplitude of its physical representation.

[Elso Kwak]

The digital filter from Sony; CXD1244 clips on the ringing of a 0dB square wave.......

[Samuel Jayaraj]

I cannot recall the month and year of publication, but Elektor had published a clipping circuit which indicated that many CDs produced exceeded the input limit of DACs.

[I_Forgot]

Originally posted by Elso Kwak
The digital filter from Sony; CXD1244 clips on the ringing of a 0dB square wave.......

Your ears would, too, if you listened to that sort of thing. Fortunately there aren't that many 0 dB square waves in music.

I_F

[phase_accurate]

Fortunately there aren't that many 0 dB square waves in music.

No - but many that hit 0000 and FFFF quite often.
I even know one that is regarded as audiophile by some demonstarators !!

Regards

Charles

[jean-paul]

Originally posted by I_Forgot


Your ears would, too, if you listened to that sort of thing. Fortunately there aren't that many 0 dB square waves in music.

I_F

I am glad musicians do not create such sounds.

[Nordic]

Originally posted by jean-paul


I am glad musicians do not create such sounds.

Come on, have you heard Brittney sing?

[davidsrsb]

Originally posted by Samuel Jayaraj
I cannot recall the month and year of publication, but Elektor had published a clipping circuit which indicated that many CDs produced exceeded the input limit of DACs.

I have never seen a DAC chip that cannot handle all posssible 16 bit data codes. If there is sucha thing it is seriously flawed.

There are some "audiophile" commercial CD players with outputs much higher than the red book standard 2V rms. Magazine reviewers always seem to fall for "louder is better"

A preamplifier with +5V powered cmos analogue switches is going to clip at these high levels. Some are high enough to overload switches running on +/- 5V