Why Do DACs Always Contain an Op-Amp?

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^ Thanks for the info about the Japanese experiment, and if you stumble across any info about it, I'd appreciate a link (but don't go looking for it on my accord!). Otherwise, just wanted to mention we're in agreement, and I think you're vacuum-state DAC is pretty dang cool.
 
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BTW
Did you see this review?
Review and Measurements of JDSLabs ODAC Rev. B Compared to Fiio E10K | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

The winner from the 2 mentioned is none of them,
but the Topping D30, which appears to be not bad at all.

It's a 120$ DAC.

Topping D30 Multi-Function S/PDIF and USB DAC


What do you think about it?
Still junk?


Do you know that ALL reviews from the internet and magazines are paid?
In this case the results are not very important.
 
Good point.
BTW I've never seen such reports,
are they included in a DAC's datasheet, or some place else?

I've also not seen such reports in any S-D DAC chips I've looked at. Multi-bit DACs though do show this effect but its jolly hard to find in the DSs because they don't in general characterize them at multiple sample rates, normally just the highest one.
 
I've also not seen such reports in any S-D DAC chips I've looked at. Multi-bit DACs though do show this effect but its jolly hard to find in the DSs because they don't in general characterize them at multiple sample rates, normally just the highest one.

You can see it in the PCM1792A datasheet and the AK449x datasheets. I haven't checked any Cirrus or ex-Wolfson parts. It looks to be the over the same measurement bandwidth. I agree that all these datasheets are lacking compared to the AD1955 which doesn't really show this effect.
 
https://www.akm.com/akm/en/file/datasheet/AK4490EQ.pdf

Page 10; looks like they keep expanding the bandwidth as they up the sampling rate? Which case it's no surprise the THD+N goes up (N part at least!). It's a bit goofy representation of the data. I know JensH has characterized the 4490 very carefully so hopefully he can chip in on how it behaves at its respective sample rates.

Ah, I think I may have been misreading the table actually now that you point it out. At first I thought the different BW was the line that is the -60 dBFS row.
 
You can see it in the PCM1792A datasheet

It is indeed quite evident in the 1792A DS. So I visited some other DACs in the same PCM179X family and found something inconsistent. That is on the X=5 and X=6 parts the headline THD numbers for 96k and 192k don't at all correspond to the plots. The plots (fig11, fig15) show THD almost unchanged between sample rates (slightly worse at 192k but practically identical at 96k) and well below the 'headline' numbers in the earlier table for the higher rates.

Take the PCM1796 as example - fig15 (page 12) shows 96k THD+N at 0.0005% whereas the table (page 3) shows 0.001%, a 6dB discrepancy.
 
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