Jimee23A ladder DAC, or R2R is a neat little piece of engineering. Distilled to its essence it is a series of resistors, each half the value of the previous. If you want 8 bits of resolution then you will need 8 resistors. It means that the smallest resistor is 1/2^8 the value of the largest. Now none of us listen to 8 bit music much, even 16 bit is rather pedestrian today. So a ladder DAC that can produce say 24 bit resolution needs it's smallest resistor to be 1/2^24 the value of the largest. That's a very small number 1/16.7 million. The problem here is that every resistor in the DAC needs to be accurate to 1/2^24 for the final bits to be more than noise. There are no ladder DACs that I am aware of that objectively produce this resolution. Even 1/2^16 accurate resistors are difficult to produce and to make matters worse, their resistance changes with temperature. It's why most R2R DACs measure so poorly. Now measures and sound enjoyment are different beasts, but in an objective comparison there is no R2R DAC capable of the accuracy that this DAC produces.
OldManNikoThere aren't any DACs, period, that can genuinely reproduce 24-bit audio to full accuracy. No electronic components exist today that don't have noise levels low enough to get better than about the equivalent of 21 bits of resolution. Doubling resistors and using one ladder compensating for another you can get pretty good results though.
CurrawongVery true, this DAC measures ~21 bits of dynamic range at -6db. That's still greater than 120 db of dynamic range. The last 20 db or so are lost in thermal noise. I've read that human hearing has a dynamic range of 140db. I doubt I can hear that.
OldManNikoMore like 120db, at 140db you're not actually hearing anything aside from the destruction of your ears. If you ever hear unsilenced gunshots without hearing protection a foot or two away from you, that's basically ~140db. I doubt anyone could last for a single song verse and be able to repeat the text of what was sung without collapsing on the floor in the fetal position covering their ears, though with enough exposure you could be deaf enough where it might not bother you that much.
jaydunndidditHey Jay, random topic but were you able to pick up the ether cx for $700 for black friday? I remember your focal elegia review and since then I held off the ether cx then pulled the trigger on the ether cx at $700.