Here are a few news stories that recently crossed my desk...all related to how the industry is acknowledging and addressing the incredible resolving power of the ear/brain.
The audio news forum Headphonesty published an article regarding the perplexing differences in sound between CD players. Its worth a read...we've all had the similar experiences of markedly different sound while tweaking our signal chain. The author, after much research and analysis of the testing, determined that the small (1.7dB) discrepancy in output volume between players likely accounted for the subjective difference ...as we can easily get fooled by louder=better. In my opinion, this may be factor but due to the varied test subjects and repeated tests to match volume, unlikely the primary reason. Instead, the reports of less-grainy smoother sound from the preferred CD player indicate that the causal reason was more likely our ear/brain sensitivity to timing issues, analog stage design and power supply quality. In general, the digital bitstream in all CD players was functionally identical but it was the digital-to-analog conversion (bits-to-volts) that varied and became audible. The author considers this unlikely but allows that it might 'shape what you hear'.
Taiko Audio announced their Olympus I/O DAC module as part of their Extreme music server ...a design is all about ultra low noise processing. I considered that $50k was too much to pay for some power supply and signal path engineering - something that I implemented in my Cyan2 reference system. At AXPONA, a few users in the PGGB beta testing group auditioned the Olympus I/O DAC and reported, remarkably, that Olympus approached the transparency of PGGB with ordinary CD resolution files. ZB, the developer of PGGB technology indicated that hardware processing the higher sampling rates of PGGB content modulates more audible harmonics. So our ear/brain responds similarly to near zero noise in Taiko hardware as it does to near perfect reconstruction and low noise floor of PGGB software. The goal now is to combine the benefits of both approaches.
MSB Technology announced their new Sentinel DAC. A $300k R2R design that is a multi-box system with extreme attention to lowering noise. Notable in the design is i) optically and power isolated digital and analog sections, ii) aggregation of 32 R2R modules, per channel, with a dither to reduce signal correlated noise, iii) separate left and right mono DACs to reduce any cross-channel noise. Head designer J. Gullman appreciates the incredible resolving power of our ear/brain and takes a 'cost-no-object' approach to addressing the issues.
NOTE: The separating of channels to improve sound were also recent topics on headfi and audiophilestyle ...where users used multiple DDCs to multiple DACs to realize the benefit of dual-mono vs stereo processing.
AKM (Asahi Kasei Microdevices) announced commercial availability of their new flagship DAC solution based on a AK4499EX / AK4191. This is a dual-chip design to address isolation for digital/analog signal and power using two separate devices. AKM has been in the DAC business for a number of years and they understand the issue of RF noise isolation to provide high end sound. We can expect designs from Asian DAC vendors within the next few months.